Guild Wars 2

Hey ele community I almost exclusively play pvp and play a lot of tournaments in the mists and feel staff ele is not strong enough. Here are my suggestions!

Overall this is an attempt to make staff viable in spvp without improving its pve or WvWvW quality too much.

Make all #1 auto attack projectile speeds a bit faster.

1 Fire – Lava Font – Make it hit right when it hits the ground like back in the beta weekends, not many people probably remember this ^.^

4 Fire – Burning Retreat – Add a damage portion to the beginning of it like a reverse burning speed but less damage.

1 Water – Water Blast – Add some more damage to it nothing major. Maybe make the healing aoe around the hit target a bit bigger.

5 Water – Healing Rain – Castable while moving (maybe, maybe not)

2 Air – Lightning Surge – Lower the cast time to 1 second, possibly less

3 Air – Gust – Add some nice damage to it that also has a very small aoe around it exactly like ride the lightning. Maybe lower the cooldown a bit.

4 Earth – Unsteady Ground – Add some more power damage to it so it can be used well against downed targets.

Remove the trait in arcana that makes staff skills larger, it should be baseline for staff. ( I think a lot of traits that are specifically needed to make a certain weapon/kit be viable should be removed but that’s another topic.) The 20 point major is very powerful for ele and being forced to take this trait weakens the ele a lot in Spvp. I imagine a new staff trait taking its place to match the scepter and dagger improvement traits in the same tier but I’m not sure what that could be. Brain storm away!

If this makes staff too powerful in pve or WvWvW then making changes only in spvp to the staff may be the only way to make it viable there.

Seeing your own icds is a good idea. Course, there is no reason show short icds though just long ones.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hotfix incoming. It’s so hawt and lava-infused. It’s like molten sun magma is dripping into an ocean of flames. And then put it in the microwave on popcorn setting, but then push the “add 30 second” button like 400 times. And there are lit candles around.

It’s that hawt.

The time it took you to type that could have been spent making spvp features!

Just kidding Jonathan, this made my day, was hilarious.

Guys, I heard that the matchmaking system isn’t about your pvp rank.

This thread is comparable to the people in league saying “wow I have 2000 normal wins and I get matched with a whole team of people with only 200 wins? Thanks riot.”

I for one love seeing the player with the highest glory that round as the “winner”. kinda motivates me to compete and try to get as much glory as I can.

That can be hard when I don’t go invisible and a bunch of people on my friends list come snipe me though.

Agree with the others. Many new teams ( or old teams looking for new players) are showing up and I wish the best of luck to all of you!

I half expected this post to be about leaderboards and e-sports. Foolish of me.

Actually I’m pretty sure this isn’t a glitch and just the fact that projectiles get absorbed when they hit an invincible target. Aka the fire ele when it is doing its dodge ability.

Edit: Hmm, that does happen at one point in the vid but there are other times that the fire ele isn’t dodging and the grenades just dissipate.

The very first absorb with the chill grenades was DEFINITELY the fire ele dodging though.

After watching more of your vids with the grenades being absorbed it looks like it might be he #2 on earth dagger also. I’ll test it today sometime.

Edit2: Yep, its earth #2 on dagger, absorbs all projectiles, broken!

Go watch the last state of the game and you can get a better feel for where they want to take the pvp.

This only happens to Asuras. This probably belongs in the engineer forums. I’d love for it to get fixed though

Erwin.5603:

Phantaram.1265:

Erwin.5603:

Phantaram.1265:

Mesmer – Greatsword got buffed a little bit and time warp got rightfully nerfed.
1 viable build: Shatter with staff or greatsword, whichever you want. There’s a few variations but I don’t like em that much.

I disagree. There is a completely different build in terms of playstyle. Many refer to it as “Phantasms”. Just because Xeph doesn’t play it, doesn’t mean it isn’t viable. Although I would like a buff to Mantras, so that a 3. build can emerge.

We used a phantasm mesmer quite a bit just recently on our team and I don’t think its viable. Just my opinion though. Maybe you could say its viable but its not optimal, you could bring something else in its place that performs the job better.

We used Phantasm Mesmer against you yesterday (I’m Fixi). You need to run a different strat with the spec though, since its kinda useless in teamfights but very good 1v1 – so you need to enforce that.

I’m aware of what it does and I know you beat us but we didn’t lose because your of spec :P

That was our first game in about 2 weeks.

Erwin.5603:

Phantaram.1265:

Mesmer – Greatsword got buffed a little bit and time warp got rightfully nerfed.
1 viable build: Shatter with staff or greatsword, whichever you want. There’s a few variations but I don’t like em that much.

I disagree. There is a completely different build in terms of playstyle. Many refer to it as “Phantasms”. Just because Xeph doesn’t play it, doesn’t mean it isn’t viable. Although I would like a buff to Mantras, so that a 3. build can emerge.

We used a phantasm mesmer quite a bit just recently on our team and I don’t think its viable. Just my opinion though. Maybe you could say its viable but its not optimal, you could bring something else in its place that performs the job better.

Xeph.4513:

Phantaram.1265:

Da heck xeph I literally just made one of these posts, noob.

+1

You must have ninja posted it while I was writing this one, sorry phantaram. :<

They are quite different actually, no probs mang.

Da heck xeph I literally just made one of these posts, noob.

+1

Good post folly. +1

It’s kind of like a class overview just taking into account the patch, lets get started!
Edit: For your info this is for high level play, not some hotjoins where you go in with whatever build you like and stomp face. Lots of builds are viable for that.

First off I’d like to discuss.
Engineer: There has pretty much been 3 builds used in serious competitive play through out the games life so I will discuss those 3.

Elixirs HGH: Over powered and didn’t get touched in the patch.
100 nades: Easily killed target, but it has a crazy 1 shot – never was overpowered but something did need to change about the 1 shot, the 1 shot is now non existent and it even lost some utility through the kit refinement change – verdict – went from semi viable to completely not viable.
2 kit with double elixir R (teldos fav build) – also easily killed like 100 nades, gets 1 shot by thieves, the kit refinement change didn’t affect the build very much. Hasn’t been viable for a while and will remain that way.

Engi overall – only 1 viable build and it’s over powered and brain dead. It’s interesting to also state that, hgh build is the most tanky, has the only condi removal, and does the most damage of all 3 builds. Kit refinements global cooldown on kits should be removed.

Elementalist – unchanged, damage scepter got a slight buff. Ele is a hard one to balance but cantrips should have at least been nerfed more this patch.
Viable builds – A bunch of variations of the same build pretty much, you just take different utilities/weapon sets, and 10 – 20 different trait point allocations.

Thief – Nerfed a little, still completely viable.
1 viable build: Full damage glass

Warrior – Before patch it was this beast that could only be unleashed if given the right support, so you had to sacrifice other things to bring a warrior. Now you are taking sacrifices in your team comp to bring a nerfed beast, so it just makes it all the more not viable. The haste nerf just feels really not fun on warrior, unnerfed haste on warrior was just really fun, maybe they should make a trait for warrior that makes haste faster or something.
1 viable build: Full damage glass, is it still viable though? dunno

Necro – Epidemic can now be blocked, dodged, line of sighted and all that crap. A buff to it should have came along with this change, like making the cast time way shorter. Otherwise nearly unchanged.
1 viable build – about 3 different variations of epidemic/corrupt boon build.

Ranger – Class I care about personally the least. Sorry don’t have much input here.
2 viable builds – traps and beastmastery

Mesmer – Greatsword got buffed a little bit and time warp got rightfully nerfed.
1 viable build: Shatter with staff or greatsword, whichever you want. There’s a few variations but I don’t like em that much.

Guardian – Symbols buffed a little bit?
1 viable build: bunker, I personally don’t think any form of offensive guardian is as good as something else you could bring.

Overall verdict on the patch – Haste overall was a good change but makes warrior worse than it was and not as fun. bunker nerfs should have came with the haste change. Kit refinement change overall is completely null of logic, zero sense it makes, but with a few tweaks can be for the good. Otherwise not much happened.

I think its probably a good change with a few more adjustments to the negative affects. People wouldn’t be so mad about it if they nerfed some of the defensive capabilities of others though. (aka ele’s)

After playing around with new haste I don’t like it at all. Warrior is not the same. Bring back the old haste!

aaron.7850:

I feel pretty disgusted with this… we have been asking for dueling, spectating, arenas and deathmatches since release… this is pretty much the closest thing we can get and they are charging us for it.

If I had known it was going to be this way I wouldnt have bought the game.

Pretty sure I heard about dedicated servers like, a year maybe year and a half before this games release and either was told or automatically assumed they would be paid for. Just look at other games with dedicated servers, lots of them are paid for.

Oni.5429:

It’s because it puts extreme pressure on the enemy team, is easy as hell to preform and is hard as hell to punish.

Listen to the mesmers my friends, they know of the wrath that is cantrip eles.

Traits and runes give stats also.

This would definitely be awesome. Certainly far in the future though.

Play out the down fight and see who wins, because that’s what happens in real games. Some 1v1’s actually go into down fight quite often.

Don’t stomp your opponent if it’s obvious you’ve won just let him rez.

I’d like to see a wider variety of classes be able to run condi, but the classes that can run condi at the moment are plenty strong.

Once?
Twice?

Clarification needed.

matjazmuhic.1649:

Does leaderboard make any sense even without custom matches and with current solo vs team possibility?

It’ll pretty much be a team queue for high rated players and a mixed queue at low ratings.

nakoda.4213:

I would not be willing to pay to do something games have been doing for free for decades.

the reason I chose to settle on gw2 is that I am also not willing to pay sub fees for unfinished products any more.

I’d say owning your own server in a video game, at least in most of the games that is featured in, is not free.

playandchill.3908:

I dont get it. What ll exactly show that leaderboard?

Pvp Rank? Or MMR? (Wich is better imo)

MMR

Fourth.1567:

That is how I feel about the current meta, way too much of a focus on where you send people. Seems like more of a dance of creating 2v1s than actually playing the game. Honestly the current meta makes me miss the AoE meta. At least that way there were even fights that were seen through to the end. Uneven fights are probably the least fun thing imaginable with the games current pacing and the downstate.

Gw2 is all about the combat. That is its strong point. Dominion is a hash of map control and combat but ultimately fails at both compared to the alternatives.

Fourth you’ve been out of the game for a while I don’t think you have a feel for the current meta, sorry. In the current meta you’d actually rather be the 1(cantrip ele) in the 2v1 rather than the 2.

When cantrip eles aren’t able to do what they currently do, conquest will be an amazing game type. I still think it is.

KarlaGrey.5903:

It is somewhat amusing to see how ppl new to GW cope with Anet.
Dw, you’ll get used to their approach after a few years.
Maybe.
I just feel somewhat bad for the undying optimists…
(Btw, nothing can fix what they’ve done to the game.)

People like me you’ll likely only see being optimistic on game forums; because I’d rather not post on a forum of a game I think has no future. It’s a waste of time.

Kwll.1468:

What are these leaderboards going to track exactly. This game confuses me with these rank points which you can still get tons of in a loss. Do actual w-l matter in this game? If they do then what the heck is the purpose of “rank points”.

Right now there is a match making system that has hidden elo and everything(seems to be working pretty well based on our play today). They plan to start putting people on this leaderboard based on their elo and after there stats are all nice and clean they will post up the leaderboard for us all to see.

Nord.5360:

I’m going to take a wild stab at this, but I’m assuming that by ‘activating’ leaderboards they’re going to begin populating the leaderboards. Once they have enough data they’ll make them visible. I wouldn’t be surprised if stats pulled from before March 26th won’t matter/aren’t recorded.

This is how I understood it. This is like the last thing to worry about anyways davinci. Its a single week. We’ve waited 6-7 months by now.

Rerroll I’ve seen you around in the community some (I think on my stream a few times) but recently when I started watching the forums a little more, I realized how much you do for the community. Amazing job my friend.

Archaon.6245:

Atlanis.6597:

I’ve seen a lot of teams ignoring it. Is it worth using? I know it does kittentons of damage, but seeing as you’re firing almost blindly and can ONLY deal damage, would it be better to have another man there to help out in other ways?

If you leave the usual op trap ranger at it is going to be a huge advantage since they have to send 2 if they want to destroy it..

There is more creative ways to deal with the treb than fighting the ranger face to face, I’ll leave that up for you and others to figure out though

Some teams use it very little, some teams use it a lot. That’s the beauty of it, it’s your choice! Khylo was definitely the best map on release. I think I like temple the most now though.

A cantrip ele’s team fight and support capabilities certainly aren’t the problem, it’s good and has certain team comps it shines in but its nothing absurd and really it’s balanced, in fact I think there is very few ele’s out there who have found a way to be particularly effective in a team fights.

The problem is, nothing in this game has the mobility, survivability, damage, and sustain to attack far point without almost no risk, except a cantrips ele. The class with the highest percentage of punishing a back point assaulting cantrips ele is thief, even then it’s not guaranteed. Every class after that has a horrible chance of killing the ele before he rtls away or uses his many other escape tools. (such as just walking away)

Attacking a back point on any other class/build is either useless (you don’t have enough damage to accomplish anything) or a big risk (you will die if someone comes back to kill you.)

There are times to assault back point on any class but cantrips ele doesn’t need to identify that, it just goes, summons its elite, and parties.

Mesmers themselves are very weak and only used for their utility. aka illusion of life, portal, and time warp.

There is too much else to balance to only be thinking about 5v5’s and 1v1’s.

You can add mine to the list.

twitch.tv/phantaram

Elementalist

Arcane blast and Hurl no longer break certain stuns.

Razor I’m completely in tune with how every ele spec was affected. No specs were killed off whatsoever any ele spec that was viable before is still viable. People, including my self, thought dps eles were nerfed more than cantrips eles until seeing all the notes that weren’t listed.

It’s intended. During the day, or in different areas, I’m not sure exactly, it glows or doesn’t glow.

Kylex.5962:

All of them are the “big” patch.
one of the biggest game breaking ele bugs is still in game even after J. sharp responded himself in game that it was on his list to fix, so im kind of disappointing about that.

i agree with some things you say but im mainly in agreement with jim. they are taking wayyyyyyyyyy too long to produce these patches, with the current state of the game it needs to be a lot quicker.

anyways, back to double/tripple ele for another month.

p.s i honestly did wanna go engi since it looks seriously fun sad to see even more random/un-neccesary nerfs to it.

The build teldo has been using is untouched if you wanna play that! But that’s pretty much your only option I think If kit refinement stays bugged you can try 100 nades too

Do it kyle, you know you desire xephs approval more than anything else.

Oni.5429:

the ‘’big pvp patch’’?

They talked about it in the SOTG. I’m pretty sure they stated that this specific patch is not the “big one” or something like that.

I wouldn’t call it a disaster I had mostly fun solo queueing, but I don’t think anyone would argue against your suggested change, I think it’s really what we all have in mind. It would be much better!

Great posts by everyone, especially lowell! Solo queue is great for everyone, especially people who don’t have the time to form a team that still want to be a part of the competitive community. You’ve all nailed it on the head that without a way for players to prove themselves it becomes an elitist community with no one at fault because you’d be foolish to try to take on a new name and hope to get lucky that he is a really good player when you could take one of the many known names that you know are good.

much <3