Guild Wars 2

Maybe you could make it so that all phantasms are chain skills such that the first activation creates the phantasm and all subsequent activations activate its skill, but require selecting a target/aiming AoE?
For example, casting phantasmal berserker would summon the phantasm at a target location, and a second cast would cause the whirl (in a similar manner to other targeted directional rushes), and could activate every x seconds (whatever the current timer is).
This would both make phantasms be more skillful and would allow for better control over AI. You would be able to attack stealthed enemies with zerker and target groups better, but it would take longer and potentially be less precise than a computer.
Has merits, but also a few things against it. Something to think about at least.

It just shouldn’t be master.

Ryn.6459:

Ty guys. I dont know why I like the fem armors but not males ones. Anyway, more or less, I found a convination between COF and T3 cultural that I like. Ty very much.

Ah yes, I know exactly how you feel. I recently switched my main over from human male to female because the male sets don’t really have any good leg or chest armors.
Also, yes CoF armor is awesome.

yes

/15chars

Drakent.9605:

I am posting this on all classes b/c I feel the need to share that the world is not flat

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-damage-miss-understood/first#post3739882

You know, interestingly enough, the world being flat was never a mainstream view, and has only had at most a slight following at any point in time, the reason being that pretty much any significant measurement you make with regards to the stars or distances over the earth will immediately reveal that the earth is not, in fat, flat. Despite popular legend and what your second-grade teacher may have told you, even Columbus wasn’t trying to prove the world was round, because that was already a well-known, accepted fact at that time.
In fact, the idea that the earth might be flat didn’t even arise until the 18th century (if I remember correctly), when some slightly crazy man decided it was despite every test he ever made proving that it was not. He gained somewhat of a cult following, which has since declined to the point of nonexistence.

Very tangential, but just sort of an interesting thing.

It is weird, and nobody knows why the current 25 pt trait even exists.

lol runescape
/15chars

Nightmare is pretty good.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure nobody who plays ele would object to Diamond Skin being taken away and replaces. Not sure what everyone is arguing about, it’s pretty awful for everyone involved.

There was a point in time where we were supposed to be versatile, but something happened and now that belongs to warriors.

Oozo.7856:

I haven’t seen anyone complain about asura animations since beta. Always good to have an excuse when you lose a fight, I guess.

I’m pretty sure there’s always been at least one thread active about them, if there isn’t one now it’s only a matter of time until someone makes another one.

Zero Day.2594:

@P Fun Daddy

o.O I sense you’re mad at me for something… or it’s misdirected because that reason is an exact copy-paste from the thread linked, so I didn’t even write that, just read it and copied it here (gave credit to him, notice “Originally by: gesho.9468”)

He requested a nerf, I added it to the wish list…
I’m just trying to make the forums a cleaner place, nerf requests for thieves occur very often and sometimes flood the forums, possibly making it harder for developers to read them… so this thread was created to stop the flooding and help the devs.

What? No, I wasn’t mad, I was trying to make a post in line with the humor of the rest of the thread, sort of trying to chip in to the aside at the end of your post.

One note here about thieves, because I saw someone post something that was factually wrong and I feel an obsessive need to correct that regardless of who it helps, is that backstab doesn’t actually require you to be behind your target. It also hits for full damage from the sides, which makes it vastly easier to land.

MidoriMarch.8067:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

MidoriMarch.8067:

thief is meant to be the best single target dps class..

seems like you dont understand the concept of thief.

tbh warrior have everything mobility/high hp pool/damage/toughness etc

go play a thief and see how hard it is to be a good thief unlike easy warriors can faceplam everything.

thief is the only class that are less forgiving if u make a single mistake it can leads to death

Elementalist says hi.

my elementalist got no prob having fights 1vsX

ele got massive burst heal and can wreck your face if played right.

but its true and i agree that ele needs a bit of buff.

I was more referring to the “thief is the only class that are less forgiving if u make a single mistake it can leads to death” which is a little off. An equivalently geared ele will always be much squishier than a thief, mostly because of stealth but also because of shadowsteps and that tiny armor boost.

Zero Day.2594:

Originally by: gesho.9468

What: No CD on Interrupts
Why: from different thread i just learned thief init skills are not subject to usual 5sec cd once interrupted. eg if you want to disrupt d/p thief’s stealth combo, you interrupt hs, no biggies, thief can still spam hs in the same powder, interrupted hs is not put on 3sec cd, like any other prof skill would. imo thief skills should be subject to the same 3sec interruption cd as anyone else’s. otherwise thief gameplay is largely beyond informed counter.
Suggestion: imo thief skills should be subject to the same 3sec interruption cd as anyone else’s.
Thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/pvx-subject-thieves-to-regular-interrupts

(Never mind the fact that we lose init if we miss, and init is sort of like a global CD/resource…. wait that’s too complicated, what am I talking about…)

Don’t try to use logic, they don’t hold with that sort of nonsense. Unfounded opinions and personal attacks are always more valuable than any form of cohesive argument on the forum.

What: Logical arguments on forums.
Why: You can’t win an argument against someone that clearly has a better argument than you, logic is therefore OP and needs a nerf.
Suggestion: Ban structured arguments from the forum, unless they contain at least a total of at minimum three logical fallacies, which of course must be the bulk and main premises of the argument.

Kyon.9735:

Ride The Lightning – Blind or Weakness
Shatterstone – Blast Finisher (It explodes!)
Ring of Earth – Evasion Frame or Block (Somewhat makes sense since you get covered by stones). Add torment too.
Lightning Touch – Add blind(?)
Lightning Flash – Blind

Ring of earth stops projectiles I think, intended or not, despite there never being any indication of this in tooltips.
Lightning touch already does weakness, blind might be overkill.
The other ideas I have no objection to.

Grevender.9235:

I’ll throw my two cents in.

First and foremost: stick with the class if it appeals you, experience will make up for some of the immense flaws of this class (yep, for all the player vs player modes we are currently the bottom of the food chain, deal with it).

Second: don’t go Celestial. It’s about to get nerfed and we still don’t know what will happen exactly, so I think it’s wise to save your funds until a clear picture of the scenario appears.

Third: in a couple of weeks we will undergo a process of class balance, so I would advice to be patient before making any definitive decision regarding the class.

Your friends are somehow right: “bunker” is the only viable build we have if we choose small scale combat (zerging is never a problem) but the con is having a very laughable damage output, and even if you choose to go full glass cannon, your damage will be far surpassed by other classes (which will also have way more efficient self sustain).
For personal fun, I always choose to play experimental builds, and there is plenty of room for experiments with Ele, just keep in mind that the class currently completely lacks self sustain and you will aaaalways targeted first by enemy (because you are the easiest one to kill)

Nobody can outdamage my GC staff ele, haha. You get instagibbed if you screw up, but if you play well and keep track of the thieves, you will beat face. It certainly isn’t quite as powerful as it should be, because you can only outplay passives to a certain degree (which is entirely what the meta is about), but if you can pull it off it’s really fun.
I currently use celestial to maintain a minimum level of defensive stats I want and condition damage, and then build zerker from there (for WvW of course, full zerker PvE and PvP doesn’t have this option), which will not change with the upcoming patch, especially considering that they might buff the ratio across the board to compensate for the crit damage nerf.

Balgus.3468:

If you think PVP/WVW ele is weak, then you have another thing coming. I’ve been facerolled before by an ele. The thing is, you just gotta learn the correct skill rotations. Once you’ve learned that, ele becomes easy pickings, and vice-versa. When you know the proper skill rotation, your ele will easily drop even warriors and guardians.

I can only say that you seem to have faced a few awful warriors and guardians if memorizing skill rotations got you kills, unless of course you’re talking about s/d fresh air burst which is really good for killing one person every 45 seconds. Everything else is more about knowing which skills do what and chaining them from there rather than going off of muscle memory. Even then, pretty much nobody that knows what they are doing as much as you do will be easy pickings for an ele.
In WvW you can zerg like a god, but I am of the opinion that zerging is only fun if you’re the commander, and everyone else just does it for the farm. Trying to roam as an ele, or any squishy really, is an uphill battle with all the thief squads around.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Wyrden.4713:

acutally, w evasive arcana u can:

atune to water :1k + heal , spell 5 2 k heal, dodge 2 k heal, skill 2 1 k heal

d/d btw

anyway, as d/d , i mainly use water for quick heal and to chill enemys, awesome against runners, water spells r fine as they r

its also pretty helpful for some fights that need that little extra range to avoid getting destroyed by some melee attacks.

Meh, it’s too slow and weak for me, and the vuln barely exists.
Water is fine in staff (would like to see a better coefficient on the auto heal but whatever), and it’s pretty good for scepter outside of shatterstone which is just flat out awful. Ain’t nobody got time fo dat thing.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Never mind, i miss read it. For some reason i was thinking of Ride The Lightening lol

Heh, that one actually would make sense as a blast finisher, even if it would be an entirely unusable one.

Liewec.2896:

i think it’d take more than chill to make condi ele viable XD
(note: i’m not saying it is impossible, it is just currently alot worse than direct burst damage)

I’d be satisfied if they just made hybrids a bit better. Currently it’s pure condi or pure power, no real middle ground for any class, least of all eles.
Pretty much any sane ele build applies damage condis by accident, if at all.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I would rather it inflict 5 stacks of confusion for 6-8seconds to all those that get damaged by it than us have just another Blast that will be pretty much useless solo.

Ew confusion.
Leap finisher would be more appropriate imo, you could get a heal, daze or aura out of it in staff and another aura buff proc in D/D.

ThiBash.5634:

There’s a few combinations that could result in massive chill spam. GoEP, arcane builds and of course Frost Bow come to mind.

ArcanePower+FieryGreatSword+GoEP=potential for disaster?

Ha, you can already close to instantly stack well over 15 seconds of chill with arcane surge+power with minimal condi duration (can’t remember if I had points in fire when I tried that build out). Sadly that’s sort of the only use for either arcane surge or arcane power that actually makes sense.

While I don’t necessarily like all of your suggestions, Swagg, at least you attempt to propose changes and have put a good amount of effort into this, which is commendable despite what all the people hating on your changes say.

Just wanted to put this here because so many people seem to actively hate you for suggesting changes to various things that they obviously treasure in their current state, instead of recognizing that you’re trying to create an entirely new meta based around more skill builds and less builds that focus on reducing the impact of skill and discussing your suggested changes in that context.

MidoriMarch.8067:

thief is meant to be the best single target dps class..

seems like you dont understand the concept of thief.

tbh warrior have everything mobility/high hp pool/damage/toughness etc

go play a thief and see how hard it is to be a good thief unlike easy warriors can faceplam everything.

thief is the only class that are less forgiving if u make a single mistake it can leads to death

Elementalist says hi.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

They have a pet that deals Chill so thought it might have a field, i know they have SO many pets that are about poison, fire and such so it was possible.

Not saying its okay for them to have so many, but the type of pet makes sense…

You’re not following. He isn’t saying engis or rangers shouldn’t have so many fields, he’s saying that, because other classes have even better access to fields and finishers, eles are therefore not the sole master of combo fields and finishers.

Oozo.7856:

Bawzdawg.2839:

well, asura condi warrior… nuff said, try to guess what an asura is doing when he randomly whirls his “arms” around, hs+condi op nayways, nothing to brag with. Fotm op spec.
Dont want to be a kitten, nor jelly, just honest.?

nerf condimeta pls kthx bye, its disgusting…

1. He doesn’t have any asura racials on his bar.
2. It’s the healing that is broken. Power warriors can run healing signet with shout heals too.

It’s all about the telegraphing, not the racial skills. In case you still don’t get it:

It’s a legitimate thing that at any moderately skilled level of play telegraphing becomes a huge deal, because knowing specific telegraphs allows you to mitigate the specific skills that are most damaging to you, interrupt heals, and block CC among other things. Asura are significantly more difficult to read due to both vastly smaller size and less clear animations, which combine to give them a clear advantage over other races in any form of PvP.

spotter.8632:

Started getting into Party mode as that was the way to obtain loot. Well, I just finished all 3 Knights (got gold on all) in a full party and got no loot from any of them. That’s right zilch from Blue, Zilch from Green & ZILCH from Red……

I haven’t gotten loot from the last, what, eight kills (two full cycles, only killed two on the third cycle)?
Seems a bit wonky.

Ancient Ranger.3276:

I’m glad he came to the Elementalist sub-form that means that Ele are best dressed in game! That why he came to to get advice from people that look the best duh. Ele’s are Op when it comes to looking good thats why we have the lowest armor and health it all makes sense now.

@OP: as for colors its hard to tell with out a picture of how you look. Maybe post and image of your armor with dye removed and we can help you.

Fo real though, we have the prettiest stuff.

As a default, pick 2-3 of anything resembling dark red, dark blue, gold, white, or black, and dye corresponding areas (major/minor) on each armor piece. Guaranteed to look good.

Sawnic.6795:

Mosharn.8357:

Sawnic.6795:

Mosharn.8357:

you people do realize. There is a point where you need condis for the fight…right?

That was covered.

And why was this moved to the profession balance board?

I thought id just let you guys know again that condis are needed for the most important part of the fight. The burst phase needs da condi spammers. So you guys do matter. Sure not in the beginning but in the most important part. Without you the full zerk guys wont be doing max dmg to it at burst phase.

Oh, so we’re not important in the sense that we’re contributing, only that we’re making the raw damage players better.

How is that any better?

Well conditions are sort of supposed to be support and not equivalent DPS, so it kind of fits.

This is a bug, right?
Having a randomly spawning group of mobs that is not part of the event able to instantly heal the boss to full from any HP is sort of… silly to say the least.
It’d be okay if it was like the Jungle Wurm world boss in that it only healed a set %, but a full heal feels like a bit much.

I think our autos should give us situational utility instead of straight dps, because I don’t feel that having powerful autos is really the way to go, nor is the current ele system of always having a better option really good either. More stuff like staff earth and water (very situational but at least they have some purpose other than just damage), and less stuff like d/x earth auto (mediocre damage and one stack of bleed at 300 range… yay).

Wintel.4873:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Don’t forget FGS!
Hardcore cowardliness.

Whoever blows the most powerful 3 minute elite in the game just to run away…argh

Well it’s good for hitting big things or bugging it against a wall/with lightning flash, and the evade is pretty useful, as is the extreme tagging ability, but in normal situations it locks you out of pretty much everything you need to survive with low armor and health (it’s pretty much just a better fire attunement), so it isn’t all that amazing unless you really want to be somewhere else.

Finally something to compete with the Asura as “most painful race to read the movements of”.
Seriously, I see a future where PvP is entirely populated by asura and quaggans who are partially blind from having to squint at the screen to see anything.

Kikidori.5916:

ElexOrieN.2130:

@Argodis
We will become “good” when the perma aggro issue the elementalist has is fixed.
Ele’s damage is the highest in the game, the HP and armour are low which wouldn’t be much of a problem if not every mob decided to attack the ele’s only. Fix the aggro issue make mobs/bosses focus on the other classes more and i’m not complaining anymore.

So that’s why in fractals, when I tag like 25 mobs, everyone and their mother tries to murder me dead. Luckily, I just use Burning retreat and double dodge + EarthStaff 3 and run away like a sissy. ^^

Don’t forget FGS!
Hardcore cowardliness.

norn engi dyes?
Better put it in the ele subforum!

I feel like having chill deal extra damage to a burned foe and vice versa would be fun, and not something entirely passive that you just throw on meaninglessly like the burn on crit traits.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Since most builds rely on one or two skills to be effective, this thread is a fail.

Are we talking about Path of Exile now?
But for real, even the most passive of warrior builds requires you to use all of your weapon skills.
Although come to think of it spirit ranger does rely somewhat excessively on autos, but they’re still relying on their heal and have to use their various spirits, which already makes more than two skills.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Elementalist, the whole class should be erased, they are so kitten annoying.
Reminds me of a bee when they run around with their daggers and shocking aura and trying to dmg you, and then suddenly run away to heal up. And looks so silly when they spam scepter 1 from air attunement along with some 2’s and 3’s walking towards you for a RtL and an updraft for some extra dmg and knockback. And gc staff elementalist doing way too much AoE dmg over capture points, while they die with 2-3 hits, annoying.

Minion Necromancer, minions automatically doing most of the job, while also the necromancer can cause devastating dmg and control. And they are so weak to high AoE that it’s silly.

Spirit rangers, too much dodge, protection and 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 with spirits.

Well, nah, I think everything’s fine, but I think there should be more build variation and more possible roles for all classes.

I lol’d.
I personally hate spirit rangers and stealthspam thieves, because both are low skillcap builds that have a disproportionate increase in effectiveness when fighting high skillcap builds, something that is to my mind somewhat silly.

Lawful.5314:

Crafting is character bound right? As in, if you have 500 craft in something, its not shared over all your characters on your account, or is it?

Not shared, but you can just move items between characters with the bank so it’s not like it matters.

I’m still a fan of Diamond skin being an immunity to two conditions based on what element you are in, regardless of health. That would be grandmaster worthy, and it would increase skill required by both you and your opponent (you would have to manage your attunements and their recharges with the conditions on you in mind, and your opponent would have to watch your attunement to make sure they can apply certain conditions). Make it so that it doesn’t actually remove the conditions, but makes you immune to their effects briefly, so that just spamming swaps off cooldown doesn’t make sense.

Looks like I have to repeat this:

It’s not about pure damage numbers, it’s not about continuous ticking, it’s all about ease of application.
Conditions are far, far easier to hit with than direct damage due to low telegraphing and low skill cast times+delays, not to mention autoprocs, and the damage on condition skills tends to be spread more evenly than on direct damage, especially due to crit procs and autoattacks. This devalues active defenses, which is always a bad thing, because dodging/blocking is far less effective against even spreads of damage (the more even damage spreads are, the less valuable intelligent dodging is, and the more dodging just becomes a stall).
It almost has the same issue as stealth, where it punishes players who take active defenses in preference to passive ones.

I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the post. This isn’t a complete sentence, and elicits nothing from the reader. F-, please come see me after class.

K U T M.4539:

100 power =/= 11.5% damage

Yeah, you would have to have less than 1k power for it to be over 10% damage increase.

runeblade.7514:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.

I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.

So does that mean they are not skilled?

Well, yes actually. It’s not hard to rank up (especially since ranks are account bound). On top of that, high ranks do not imply experience with that class (might not be a main), and duels are pretty low on the list of things that actually matter to class balance in any game mode.
More importantly, the guardian could bunker better than you and the thief could roam better than you if they knew anything about their classes.

Stogzlol.4795:

Prysin.8542:

To all of you, if you want to become good with Ele, IE; learn to manage what you here claim to be issues, you should play a ranger in WvW Roaming.
WHY?
Just like ele, the ranger is somewhat squishy, so you are forced to dodge. You cannot mistform, you cannot blink/teleport or use RTL. You are forced to deal with it in a close quarter battle. Trust me, a few weeks on a ranger and you know what i mean.
Secondly, rangers has less and worse condi removal then Eles. Thus if you think you are in a bad spot, now, you will learn to take care of yourself with even less luxuries then you have already.
Thirdly, Glass Ele, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, Engineer, Necro or Guard is nowhere near as glass as rangers is, as ranger glass builds (thanks to how traitlines work) makes them super glassy. Yes the DPS is awesome, you can do 6-7k crits with a LB on AA alone, however, you’ll get downed if someone as much as farts in your general direction.
In other words, with time, you learn to survive while being left with fewer survival tools then you have on ele.
A thing you should NEVER do is run trap ranger. Not because its hard to use, but because once you learn what real condition pressure is like on other roaming professions, you get sad when you try to do it on your ele. Just doesn’t come close to that pressure, like ever.

Why do i say this?
Because iv’e mained a ranger for over a year, and once i started leveling my ele i found it to be the easiest profession (apart from attunements, they still kitten me off royally) to keep alive. So many tools, cooldowns a kitten but thats ok.

Oh and forgot to say; Conjuration DF roaming FTW.

Lol. Seriously, lol. You don’t even know what glass ele is. Go back to the hole you crawled out of you 1 button spam wonder.

Yeah… 30/0/0/0/30 is my kind of glass, I don’t think it’s in anyway possible to exceed that level of squish or difficulty, especially on a medium armor/health class that is on the lower spectrum of skill to begin with.

runeblade.7514:

I have played mainly on my necro, warrior, ranger, thief, engineer for most of the time in pvp. I usually use my elementalist for casual dungeon running.

After a while, I felt bored and I wanted to play my mesmer, guardian, ele for pvp.

I hear horror stories about how elementalist are very weak in pvp and that they die instantly. But, I don’t see where is the weak part in elementalist. I can win in teamfights and in 1v1 with my elementalist even if I have very little experience in it in PvP.

Enlighten me and go away trolls.

Name one role you can try to fill on your elementalist and I can immediately tell you at least two classes that perform that function better.
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I just wanted to chime in about a common misconception: Diamond Skin does not promote passive play.

It is, on the contrary, quite active. You actively have to make it a point to try to stay above the 90% threshold, and your opponent actively tries to whittle you out of that 90% threshold to again be able to apply conditions. This is nothing like Healing Signet, which does promote passive play, whereby Healing Signet simply does the same thing regardless and has no play or counterplay at all (at the moment). Diamond Skin invokes a lot of play and counterplay, and although it’s rudimentary in the form of “stay above a certain amount of life”, it’s still very much active.

That’s all. Carry on.

This is only a thing against hybrid condi/power, which is rare enough that it isn’t much of an issue. The problem is that technically eles don’t have enough healing to keep health above 90% for any pure power build, and any pure condition build doesn’t have enough power damage to take you below 90%.
That’s why it’s passive. It either works without you doing anything, or just doesn’t work whether you do anything or not. This would be entirely different if hybrid was meta, but sadly hybrid builds are few and far between and aren’t particularly viable as you generally gain more through specialization.

Fuzzion.2504:

Grevender.9235:

Elementalist is not weak “per se”, I mean we can decently do most of the PvE stuff and some of the pvp; it is weak when compared to other classes, who can do twice as better with 1/10th the effort and 1/100th the skill/knowledge.

I do not understand why devs made thief so efficient at killing elementalists, yet no other class is so efficient at killing each other, but using any build other than the classic water/arcana bunker makes challenging even the most noob of thieves.

I confirm: on my thief, spotting an elementalist walking alone means free badges, no matter how good they are.

We should duel. I eat solo thieves for lunch. Thats if i can catch my lunch and they dont stealth away.

Duels don’t mean much. Most situations that a thief shines in are not structured battles, in that usually the opponent is not entirely aware that the thief is there, or prepared for an attack. This situation is extremely easy to engineer with stealth and shadowsteps in both PvP and WvW, but is irrelevant in duels, where both players are generally prepared and aware of each other’s existence.

Just wanted to point out that structured 1v1s are not by any means a gauge of viability in any official game mode, nor a way to judge the relative power of any class.

Really the reason I dislike clicking, especially for this class, is AoEs. If you are a dedicated clicker, to use an AoE you have to take time to move your mouse to the desired point and back before using any other skills.
Not to mention how much it will slow down your instant cast utilities and skills, and thereby disrupt your combos.