Guild Wars 2

Actually in WvW zerg battles both Condition thieves and Support thieves are currently viable options. If you are a power damage thief stick to what you excel at, taking down soft and downed targets fast and then quickly hitting another or retreating.

Condition Thieves: Caltrops and poison spam without even breaking stealth. Caltrops itself is a powerful opener on a zerg or prevents escapes and does pretty nice bleed damage, Poison spam from bow does lowish damage but every heal it affects is the equivalent of extra damage. IE a 6k heal is the equivalent of 2k damage.

Support Thieves: Thrill of the crime, bountiful theft, runes of altruism or dwayna. 10 into shadow arts for Regen on stealthing allies, 30 into trickery for obvious reasons, 30 into acrobatics for additional survivability.

Shortbow for poisons, blast finishers (combo for weakness), and movement, Sword/Dagger for neutering guardians and bunker ele’s, cripple, mobility/condition removal, and daze support. Caltrops for initiating battles and preventing escapes, Shadow Refuge for heal/stealth support, 3rd utility skill of choice (Charr Racial Roar for me).

Tulisin.6945:

“Losing a bit of stealth prowess in turn for that power” is called not putting traits into shadow arts. Stealth is already a specialization choice, not something innate to thieves, and people can and do choose to go without it in order to have power in other areas. “But stealth!” is no more a legitimate counterargument to thief abilities than “but traps!” or “but venoms!”, it just happens to be a more effective and therefore more popular specialization.

Considering how much stealth you can have without investing a single point I must disagree.

The devs are going in the right direction. They seem to be intent on giving you more survivability and utility if you spec for it, but overall a little less burst damage and survivability if you do not spec for it.

This seems fair. Stealth doesn’t perform very well on mobs but used correctly in conjunction with other skills it becomes impressive vs other players. As long as thief has a strong stealth basing you will be lesser than some other classes in straight damage, tankiness, and etc. This is due to the synergy of stealth with….everything.

If you wish the thief to be an overall more competitive class you will need to lose a bit of stealth prowess in turn for that power, otherwise thief will always be a balancing nightmare. This is the way stealth classes are in every game and the difficulty in balancing them.

6. Bugged Events, Skill Points, Dynamic events (there’s still a few of these but it’s a HUGE improvement compared to release.)

Totally agreed, this one of the few bugs that actually had any sort of real impact, just like the trader. While not game-breaking and not required by any means these were extremely annoying.

Considering that they kept re-breaking after they were fixed, and I do have some amateur programming knowledge, I can’t be too hard on them from a programming perspective. They spent alot of time trying to fix it and the bug was something more elusive than normal. It happens.

It would be more annoying from the lay gamers perspective by far I’d imagine though.

7. Game crashes and infite loading screens

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I’ve crashed perhaps a half dozen times in over 1,100 hours. Had an infinite loading screen once. They were always 1 time affairs with no common denominators that I could see.

Not only is this pretty reliable, and moreso than the internet I actually pay for monthly, considering that it is an intermittent failure that only happens extremely rarely it would be one of the highest difficulty bugs to squash. Intermittent failure is a dirty word in the IT world because the failure can take years to fix in some cases. You just don’t get hardly any information to work with.

8. Scaling issues on events (STILL a problem but you should have seen the Fire Elemental on release)

People complain about the scaling not going high enough these days because it was nerfed down for them. But in reality people don’t want very high scaling. It’s difficult to give this proper credence with the vocal population having so much of a hand in it.

If it actually becomes a challenge people gripe until its nerfed. If it gets nerfed into being easy, then the other half of people complain it’s too easy. OR you get level 80’s camping a level 17 world boss wondering why it’s easy.

9. Skills, Talents, Tooltips and Traits not working as described/intended. (Still an issue, but improved)

Ongoing battle. I don’t personally understand why this is so hard for games, but I haven’t seen a game that isn’t constantly plagued with this. This includes WOW, which had these issues at release continues to have these issues today.

My only conjecture is that companies back-burner this easy, but time consuming, job to fix more important things first and that there are always more important things.

10. Various game exploits. Often resulting in player bans (Though they probably deserved it)

Unless the exploit is incredibly easy and obvious I do not blame games for this at all. This is a player issue. We should not have to lock the players up in cages to keep them from spinning around 3 times, jumping twice, hitting a key combo, and then doing a back-flip to sneak into a keep.

The amount of effort players spend to find exploits simply cannot be countered as players as a whole have 500,000 more time and resources to find these exploits than the developers.

Even simple oversights like turning karma into large amounts of money is not something I blame developers for. You quite simply cannot think of everything.

I’ve done my best to make the points as wide and inclusive as possible. It would be quite easy to make this MUCH longer if I went over the bugs point by point.

You’ve shown a list of very minor annoyances with a few large annoyances. Certainly nothing game-breaking and not even close to the level of broken WOW released in a long time ago.

Outside of Broken dynamic event chains, overflow silliness, and the Trader issues quite honestly it just feels like you are nitpicking. I’ve seen no game released to date where I you could not easily make a list of this level of nitpicking magnitude.

Kaaboose.3897:

1. Trading Post Woes – No trading post on release coupled with no player to player trade system, TP when releases was buggy, Gem store transactions could take weeks to go through with no indication the order had been processes.

I’ll actually agree with you here that this was unacceptable. While it might not be equivalent to the WOW-fail that happened in that area on release, it is not acceptable for a game released in this day and age. Furthermore it took way too long to resolve.

If gear in this game was as important and hard to come by as it was in WOW Vanilla it would have been a game breaking issue. Luckily you could still easily gear out and gear is not as critical as in WOW-styled games. So this was just an extreme annoyance.

Judged by comparison to WOW vanilla you’d be half right with this point. However I’ll call it completely right as again this should not happen in a current day game.

2. Overflows seperating players, friends and guilds from one another (The “Join Player” Option was bugged.)

This was annoying for sure and the work-around obtuse. Much like the first point I’ll give you full credit even though WOW vanilla had worse failings. WOW vanilla your friend wasn’t even in game, he was waiting in cue. Guild Wars 2 both of you were in game and had to jump through a couple hoops if you got separated.

I’m uncertain of how much to dock for this however as it would have been difficult to break this alot during beta tests with partial population.

3. Right click targeting and other funtions not being able to be rebound. (Still an issue)

While I agree this should be an option, more options is better, I’m not sure that this is anything more than a small QOL issue. Certainly nothing that would have even registered on the scale of problems back in the old WOW Vanilla days.

4. Personal Story bugs preventing progression. PS also refering to events the player had not done ie. Thanks for saving the skrit when you saved the quaggans etc. (Still an issue for some PS combinations.)

Yup, there were some bugs with personal story quests that got fixed pretty quickly. Now the best you refer to is typographical mistakes. Not quite up there with the empty zones, complete lack of quests, AND broken quests of vanilla WOW, but minorly annoying nonetheless.

5. Getting stuck in the tutorial area and not being able to progress.

After researching this apparently it was a party related issue and was solved by quick google searches or threads already created by people. Leave party or restart. Certainly annoying, but easily remedied as well by anyone willing to put in more effort than complaining about it. Heck, even getting frustrated and logging would fix it if someone wasn’t wise enough to try and troubleshoot.

Stooperdale.3560:

I think you’re not really getting the idea behind smoke screen. It’s a missile defense that doubles up with some smoke. So increasing the cool down is dreadful since missile defense is a really strong ability (even it other classes can do it better). If you turn slightly in melee you can also put the smokescreen quite neatly onto melee opponents for the blind. The one change I’d like to smokescreen is a slightly faster activation, cutting it from 1/2 second to 1/4 second.

You didn’t read very well did you.

Ground targeted: Currently it’s placed at your feet and angled as you are, making it cumbersome to place accurately and dangerous as well. This change could be made and it would still be highly inferior to Wall of Reflection.

Make it an area of effect, similar in size to swirling winds. (400 radius): This makes the area blocked much larger, at this point the skill becomes slightly weaker than Feedback. Feedback can be traited to actively blind and confuse AND it reflects. Combo effects are equally useful.

Enemies within are blinded every 3 seconds: This would essentially give the Smoke Screen the blinding power of Feedback. Still minus the reflection and confusion, but the blind is slightly stronger.

Increase recharge to 40 seconds.: This puts it on the same recharge as feedback, which is now a directly comparable skill. Feedback would have damage possibly traited into it as well as having reflection built it. However Smoke Screen would blind better and possibly be useable as a poor man’s veil with leap finishers.

As the skill stands now it’s inferior to every projectile block and reflect in the game and you are in here telling me it’s fine. Thieves do alot of things well, support is not one of them. Broken skills like these are part of the reason that is the way it is.

Entropy.4732:

Confusion was not a win button. It was a complex condition that was woven into the core of the Mesmer class. There are 5 different traits that alter and compliment the use of it. Any fool could get pink numbers, but to really use confusion well required skill, precision, and balance. And it was one of the only counters to zerg blobs. When confusion was nerfed into the dirt because of forum QQ’ing by inexperienced WvW players we lost a central condition to the game.

As per the OP, I agree that we need a buff to confusion or a reworking of it. It’s almost nonexistent in WvW now. On a rare occasion I’ll see confusion for a millisecond but it has no real teeth and is only a dim, flickering shadow of it’s former glory. Anet has to either give Mesmer new traits to replace the useless confusion traits, add 20% more damage, or completely rework the concept of confusion.

If there was a reworking, here’s what I would want:

Confusion no longer does any damage. Instead, it literally confuses the opponent by swapping abilities in their hotbar. You hit your cleanse ability, but it’s actually your attack button, although the icon hasn’t changed. And it stacks in duration. All randomized. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Or confusion turns on friendly fire for your targets and turns allies names red, making them vulnerable.

Both of your suggestions would destroy part of the design of this game as well as would be no fun at all to play against. It wouldn’t even be close to balanced.

I think the fact that they are reigning confusion in to be just another condition is fair, but if that’s the case then the potential damage should be more easily stackable or the skills the are on should be improved. This is likely exactly what will happen with retal as well.

LOL, the community can post endlessly about the confusion nerf and how it needs to be reversed but apparently has nothing to say about individually balancing all confusion skills back upwards.

Sounds like alot of people just want their win button back.

If you are really concerned come up with ideas on how to balance it again. Like adding more stacks on SOME of the skills, higher durations, lower cooldowns, faster channels, better base damage, etc. Don’t just sit there and complain.

I’ll give a good example: Confusing Images should channel faster, doing it’s damage in 2 seconds but spread it over 3 hits instead of 5. This should apply 6 stacks of confusion instead of 5 and the current total base damage over those 3 hits. The cooldown should also decrease to 12 seconds.

That’s an example of a suggestion to help skills radically affected by the change.

magom.3275:

GW2 is a game of team cooperation against multiple foes, be in open pve, be in dungeons, be in WvW and even in SPvP. The main problem with the traps (Needle trap and Tripwire to be more specific) is the 1 sigle target activation/aplication, that make both of it very lackluster in this game.

I belive the firt step that Anet must do with Needle trap and Tripwire is make both hit at least 3 targets. After that we can see if those traps need more love or not.

Shadow trap, well, i dont know what to do whit that trap, some people love it, many hate it (including me), so no ideas for that.

Ambush trap is fine rigth now.

Also, thieves need a trait for use traps at range, just like ranger´s traps or necros´s wells.
Master Trapper need something more besides the 20% of faster recharge, maybe fuse together Master Trapper and Corrosive Traps in 1 trait, and then create the aoe trap trait that i just suggested will work fine.

This is all true, but Thief is bent alot more towards single target and the exact kind of trapper that Ranger is has already been done. Also, only one of the traps would be useful at all in an AOE and it’s posion.

I was attempting to make traps a bit more useful vs a single target and groups both, because to put traps on their bar a thief must give up some very good utility skills. Either you limit their mobility or they risk setting off the trap for a second time. With reduced recharge and a possibility of multiple activations (with an ICD of a few seconds per activation) per trap this could be something that could be done fairly often.

After all, even AOE these traps will PALE in comparison to the Ranger traps. They must go in a different direction to be more useful.

In an effort to make them more useful I’ve come up with a few changes to traps and Smoke Screen. Trapper should be a viable option as a build. Smoke Screen should be a viable support ability. Hopefully this achieves that in balanced fashion.

Traps:

All traps need a bit of a buff. Give them the ability to trigger up to twice, with an ICD between first and second trigger. Make this require the master trapper trait (20% faster cooldown). Additional changes below.

Poison Trap: Cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
Ambush: Cooldown reduced from 35 second to 30 seconds.
Shadow Trap: instead of a second activation Shadow trap gains 5 seconds of cripple and weakness with master trapper

Smoke Screen: Why is this dropped at your feet?

Make it ground targeted.
Make it an area of effect, similar in size to swirling winds. (400 radius)
Enemies within are blinded every 3 seconds.
Increase recharge to 40 seconds.

Change the animation: Thief throws a bomb, grenade, or vial looking object at target location. This throw has approx the same travel time as Engineer Grenades. When it reach the target location the projectile smashes/explodes and the animation from Black Powder Shot (only 400 radius) appears.

I don’t want the condition confusion buffed again. My thought on the state of confusion are here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Confusion-The-truth-on-confusion-post-nerf/first#post1932497

However, now that confusion is balanced I DO think some of the skills that were heavily using it, and thus balanced around it, could use some improvement. I think that thee skills each should see a balance pass and things like base damage, cooldowns, amounts of confusion applied, or confusion duration should see a buff. A good example of this is Cry of Frustration. This shatter is now much lighter damage than Mind Wrack.

Seeing as confusion is still underwhelming in PVE even at it’s full power I do not think this would imbalance PVE if done properly. So please give a few buffs to some of the confusion skills to raise them back to a better level of usefulness.

Edit: If you guys can come up with ideas for confusion skills buffing that sound reasonably balanced I’ll make another thread in a week or so with them all in the original post. Remember Engineer uses confusion to, as does a single warrior trait.

Atrophied.8725:

Give the guards the same ability the molten protectors have. Invulnerability shield to any NPC (NOT PLAYER) within their radius for 30 seconds, 30s cooldown, guards are subject to pull/push/launch effects, Yaks have “Unstoppable” – same as risen abominations. This guarantees you have to kill the guards first.

I think that would make it too difficult to kill the yaks. The changes are intended to add additional worth to T2 upgrades and make the caravan guards actually make a difference against players. They are not intended to be frustrating or give “free” stretches of travel to the yak Caravan. Your change also does not allow a proper amount of counterplay for a variety of weapons, leaving specs and combos completely out in the cold.

Supply camp upgrades can be expensive because camps flip pretty often. T2 upgrades are particularly bad because you pay alot more and honestly get alot less out of them. Dolyaks are also far too easy to kill as of currently. I know they are intended to be easily solo’d, but you can make them a bit beefier via upgrades while still allowing that to happen.

So my idea is 2 fold.

1. To take out a Dolyak with NPC guards you must kill both the guards and the Dolyak. As long as the guards are up the Dolyak will respawn after 30 seconds. If you kill the dolyak first both guards become enraged and gain fury + 5 stacks of might for 20 seconds. Under no circumstance will the guards despawn on their own.

There is play at work here. Killing the dolyak immediately provoke the guards but stops its forward progress. Killing the guards means the dolyak continues to move forwards.

2. Purchasing the T2 upgrades will also each increase the health of the Dolyak by 25%. Thus with both Tier 2 upgrades the Dolyak has 50% more hp total. The goal of this change: Upgrades matter more and Dolyaks can be made to survive long enough for people to properly defend them.

Lone Dolyak: still be completely soloable by anything.

Dolyak with Caravan Guards: would now take 1-2 people and take a significant amount longer to take out since you have to kill both guards as well instead of spiking a yak in 5-10 seconds.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Water fields already were nerfed, in a sideways fashion. Blast finish heals had an unlimited target cap like warrior shouts and a few others a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, back then elementalists could blast finish every dodge with no cooldown in every attunement. Talk about spike healing…..

But, no, don’t nerf them further. Spike aoe dps and CC is their counter, or siege. Play and counterplay should be encouraged, not just dps racing.

Yes, they were nerfed back then because it was becoming a common tactic for people to turtle and it was effective vs nearly every tactic because of AOE caps. There were specific ways to counter it, but even those ways could be defeated with proper counter play. That wasn’t just an imbalance, it was completely game breaking and broke the mechanics placed on the entire rest of the game.

On the contrary there isn’t really counter play if done right. The water fields have a cast time, however so do all AOE’s. Even more against those AOE’s nearly all AOE’s are damage over a duration and not spike.

By the time the water fields are even visible and the AOE casts started the blasts will already be about to happen. The team using it has the further advantage of knowing it is about to be placed for a much quicker reaction time.

Ilesyt.7084:

Because you’re trying to cripple the organised group so they can’t charge back in before the loads of downed players have been ressed by the blob of over 9000 players.
Also this would be more advantageous to the blob as they would just have to pass through the waterfield to get the imba regen because they fail to stack properly.

Actually if Elementalists are doing their job those loads of downed players should be crushed very quickly. One of the things that Staff Ele excels at is killiing downed players. Our AOE DPS is really good, but it’s partially avoidable, however downed players cannot avoid the DPS. Once the initial clash has happened and people go downed everywhere you should be focusing a good part of your attention on killing the clusters of downed. It also does a great service to your team in the form of rallies!!

If everyone is doing their job and they are still rezzing people faster than you can kill them? You chose a bad battle, you should be choosing a new location to fight them because the current location is a poor choice. Even with full spiked water fields the conflict you describe is one that will likely get your group killed even if it’s through attrition by losing 1 man at a time until you get rolled.

The hard limit to being able to hit bigger ORGANIZED zergs is not the speed which you can re-engage, but whether you can kill them fast enough. If you cannot inflict the required amount of damage within the initial push or two you will lose, healing up a little better will not change that at all. The current heavy front line is only useful because not only do they get insane surviability, but they also keep respectable damage that is dealt in cleaves and AOE’s, of which a large amount of this is also CC. Between the front line CC and the ele CC there is alot of CC going around and the biggest thing all that CC is doing is stopping people from avoiding damage.

I believe everyone that has been in an organized group has seen the difference between hitting a large enemy group and reaping them like wheat, and hitting a large enemy group and them rolling around and making a big fight of it. The difference is nearly always the CC quotient keeping them in the DPS that kills them.

So your effectiveness vs the normal unorganized zerg blob shouldn’t really change much. They are dying to everything else you do, not your spike heal bombs. Those are only truly important vs another organized group.

Also a note: The DPS required to wipe a group obviously rises with the size of the group in slightly greater than a linear fashion. However it’s also heavily affected by thing such as distance to the nearest WP or Tower/Keep, or other enemy forces in an area. So the location of a battle and the timing is extremely important when battling larger groups.

Barabajagal.6147:

Your arguments are based on numbers and theory that bear no relation to the reality of gameplay. You claim to play a staff ele, and want to nerf your own class? Seems a little suspect to me if I’m honest.

I play all classes, Ele is my main. Currently in WvW there are some grave imbalances in certain professions and spec’s. It’s not class wide, it’s just specific builds that reap so much more than other builds. Which is why both Warriors and Guardians will see select builds toned down even as others are improved.

Staff Ele’s are in an interesting spot. I feel extremely effective in WvW, but not specifically overpowered. But it’s close honestly. The amount of AOE CC and AOE damage that Ele is capable of far exceeds any other profession at range. If they make some small down tweaks to Staff ele In that area I would not be surprised or upset. People are worried about small scale staff Ele, but that’s really not the purpose of that weapon for us at all. If anything Ele needs buffed it’s Scepter and a few select mainhand dagger skills. Well, and conjured weapons + a couple utility skills of course.

I don’t see water fields as a nerf to my own class but rather a nerf to something that affects my own class. Reality is it would be a bigger indirect nerf to the heavies that are currently dominating the WvW game. I don’t want heavies nerfed into oblivion, but currently myriad factors combine to make them not have any good and realistic counters. With high toughness, high vitality, plentiful CC, and massive amounts of condition removal it’s difficult to really deal with them in a group setting when backed up by water fields.

Since the result achieved is from many different angles, so to does the balancing of it need to come from many angles so no single aspect is destroyed by the nerf hammer. Hammer/horn shout builds will be nerfed no doubt. Hopefully only in WvW where they are the issue. Runes of the Soldier will likely get some sort of short Cooldown.

Honestly though, ultimately after those types of changes take place Staff Ele will still be in exactly the same place of usefulness. Water Fields would still be loved and used, I would still have all the CC and AOE I do now. But maybe some other spec’s could be used for some of the other parts of the group instead of the current status quo.

Thrumdi.9216:

Anet nerfed Retaliation simply because there was too much of it WvW as a result of Light Fields + Blast = AoE Retaliation.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Water Fields get the same treatment at some point.

Quite true. A % return would be better I think though considering it hurts some attacks ridiculously disproportionately.

Would people stop suggesting that people are looking for a new game and insinuating this game will die due to a temporary issue.? This is a game without subscriptions, the rules are slightly different here haha.

There is literally no penalty for taking a break and then coming back once whatever change is bothering you is dealt with. Whereas in other games you’d have to be paying for nothing or go through the quit/resub hassle.

DevonCarver.5370:

To be a little clearer. The fixes to arrow carts will be coming quickly. We are already putting those in and testing them. Those should bring them more in line with what we expect them to be.

I strongly recommend placing a limit on their ability to stack damage in a single area if that is possible on a technical level. The damage of 1-3 arrow carts hurts with current numbers and is pretty punishing. However 3+ arrow carts on a single location is completely imbalanced amounts of damage.

This has always been the imbalance with arrow carts, only it took more of them to achieve this before. I love their increased power in small doses and it finally makes them the threat they should be, but the massive stacking of them borks everything even with the old numbers.

That is of course separate from their damage vs siege. Their damage vs siege and vs player should be handled separately if possible.

Raestloz.7134:

It’s nice to see someone who spread misinformation about “tankability” and run away with a smilie as if he’s actually right

Sort of like that guy who claimed he’s poor while earning $5 million a day and live in a penthouse in Dubai, then when pointed out, just laugh it off and blame others for “misinterpreting instead”

If this continues, I expect some new players reading this forum, see a “seasoned” player talking about “tankability” and assume ele can tank like Guardian

So If I were to counter-troll would it be considered bad or good and how easy or hard would it be?

Zajo.5946:

Supply taken from camps should give wxp – Supply taken from keep/towers shouldn’t.

There are situations where it is bad to take from a supply camp as well, for instance when trying to upgrade for supplying towers and keeps or help defend a supply camp you will be using and camping for awhile in a Keep siege when there are other easily available sources of supplies.

Just like everything else in WvW supplies are a nuanced and complicated thing.

Questions to all those who oppose this:

In my suggestion the Water Field heals the same overall or more. How does it destroy the ability of an organized group to gain better advantage of it for there to be counter-play and less spike healing that is difficult to stop?

Wouldn’t an organized group get even better results from this? For instance stacking a few boon sharing mesmers in a water field before a battle and getting them 10-20 seconds of regeneration and more group buffs then having them share it?

Wouldn’t boon corruption/stealing/stripping builds be a little more viable by being able to limit more of the healing out there with properly spec’d counter play?

My suggestion in this thread doesn’t lower the total healing but instead lowers the spike healing and possibly even raises slightly the overall healing. Considering the extremely negative reactions to this I believe it is obvious that the main use of water fields is AOE spike healing of large amounts. I

do not believe it is intended for water fields to be AOE spike healing at the level it’s at right now. Properly used water fields heal more than anything else in the game is capable of without any need of stats and absolutely eliminates the need for any support character specialized in healing. You would be much more effective focusing on other builds and just throwing down a water field.

This AOE spike healing further allows group composition that focuses on tankiness, boons, and condition removal primarily and dps secondarily. The sustainability hole that would be present in such a group is completely mitigated by the abuse of water fields. No doubt some of these builds will be tweaked/nerfed downwards at some time, but a reduction in the spike healing of the water field could reduce the need for such tweaks/nerfs.

This also only puts even more emphasis on the already strong hammer/horn/shout warrior and support guardian builds. Low CD blast finishers from Earth-shaker (10s) and might blow (5s) combined with water fields give significant healing in an area as well as significant damage and CC.

Ironically while some folks claim that water fields increase the skill ceiling and promote class diversity it does the exact opposite. Without the need to rely on actual specs for sustainability in fights people are allowed to focus on a few specific professions and spec’s.

The organizational skill of water field is also minimal. The elementalist places it on the heavies and calls it out. The heavies blast it. Occasionally a water field is asked for and it is placed. Nobody has to do anything even close to difficult at all. It’s when I say water field and you see it you use Earth Shaker or Mighty Blow. You are already grouped up in one spot together, the water field requires very very very little additional organization.

Raestloz.7134:

Like I said:
1) Definition of tankiness
2) Relative distance to enemies
3) How much damage we’re talking about
4) Whether you confused “tankability” and “survivability” or not.

I have initiated the “push forward” movement (I go forward and start chasing before my allies do) quite a few times, and survived, it is entirely possible for staff eles to survive while hanging out at the front lines. However, there is clear difference between “tanking” and “surviving”. The amount of health ele has simply isn’t enough to actually “tank” (as in, stand your ground and receive a helluva lot of damage to keep the enemies at bay), although it is enough to survive the battle, though heavily scathed (depending on your enemies and the availability of escape skills).

However, during a zerg vs zerg, survivability is less because of staff ele is good and more because of there are a lot more targets for enemies to attack, especially the melee guys.

Raestloz used semantics! It’s super effective! Ralathar got bored and left the bridge guarding creature alone.

Gab Superstar.4059:

But you still want to diminish the effectiveness of organization. For that reason alone this suggestion will be unpopular on the forums. What did you really expect posting here would accomplish?

I suppose you could view it like that. But if 20 people could coordinate and 1 shot 60 people you could also view that the same way. So apparently such points are relative to at least some degree.

I expect to throw the idea out there, provide reasons, and get shot down. But it was seen, it was heard, and it will be more abused. This will inevitably lead towards it’s balancing one way or another.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

Helpful to organized groups, yes. OP? No.

Prove it is OP, like with healing numbers and what not. I have a warrior, I can’t stack heal stat, would sooo kitten my warrior. I have used the burst and the leap, it helps but it has never seemed OP. I also don’t run with organized groups very often nor do I usually run a brust build, so maybe players who can enlighten with some facts (showing either point).

1.5k+ heals in AOE per pop (like 1.3k base wirh 0.2 scaling on healing power), I place down the healing rain and no less than 4 people immediately blast finisher it. That’s 7.5k healing per blast finisher. so you’ve easily got in excess of 6k healing going round to 5 separate people instant heal.

My personal healing rain (100 healing power lol) 1k+ per person (depends on how long people get to get regen from it) and 1k-2k per person from geyser depending on how many ticks they get. So a total of 10-15k possible healing from me, most likely going to get 10k out of it without full durations and targets. Ironically a single water blast finisher from me would net me 7.5 k healing to those in range instantly, so that thief with shortbow would outheal both of my healing spells with 2 blasts.

IF I had gotten alot of healing power (lets say 1,500) I could potentially heal for 2k-3k per person from geyser and 2k+ per healing rain for a total of 20k-25k total healing. But then again the water field blast scales almost as well with the blaster’s healing power haha, and none of it is regen.

Raestloz.7134:

Ralathar.7236:

Suggestion: Cut the direct heal from the water field in half and apply the remainder as regeneration. This will allow it to heal the same amount overall, yet have more counter play and reduce it’s burst healing potential.

How much heal does a water field deal?

Edit: Consolidated reply below

Tarkus.4109:

Meh, I don’t think its overpowered as there is so much area of denial in this game that will ruin your day if you rely upon water fields a little too much. Although there is a reason why we bring a mostly ele, hammer warrior and hammer guardian force onto the field – the survivability is insane, and the synergies in this game between CC and healing is really understated.

Not perhaps ironically it is those exact classes with insane survivability getting the most benefit out of this. The backline ele’s like me are taking relatively little damage. Heck to be fair I’m made out of wet tissue paper….that’s on fire!! I have no survivability at all haha, yet no issues staying alive with them wrecking shop up there.

As a note, with proper mobility and positioning the AOE factor is dramatically reduced for the front line guys. This leads to more of a rolling engagement instead of a head on engagement like pugs and the option to change directions or withdrawal is always open. Sometimes this means you sacrifice a dodge or two to achieve the better positioning again, but it certainly defeats that area of denial when your team is moving as a single unit and fluidly avoiding the AOEs.

As with enemy AoE’s healing AoE’s have an area of effect by definition – and so if you can force them out of their comfort zone by charging them or necro condi bombing (ala WoC’s) their water fields are effectively negated.

Problem is by the time the water field goes down it’s instantly being blasted. There isn’t time to counter. You would literally have to predict it ahead of time to even try. especially in the larger fights with any lag.

I just think that there is a definite problem when 80-90% of the non-self healing is being provided by a combo field. I mean this game isn’t a trinity, or isn’t supposed to be anyhows, but for a combo field to be providing your main source of healing seems a little off still and it’s spike healing to boot.

It also completely marginalizes the other fields.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

Helpful to organized groups, yes. OP? No.

Prove it is OP, like with healing numbers and what not. I have a warrior, I can’t stack heal stat, would sooo kitten my warrior. I have used the burst and the leap, it helps but it has never seemed OP. I also don’t run with organized groups very often nor do I usually run a brust build, so maybe players who can enlighten with some facts (showing either point).

Roughly 1.5k heals in AOE per pop, I place down the healing rain and no less than 4 people immediately blast finisher it. I mean literally everyone that has a blast finisher is trained to immediately smash the water field. That’s 7.5k healing per blast finisher. so you’ve easily got in excess of 6k healing going round to 5 separate people instant heal. This only gets larger as the group gets bigger and healing of course goes to those with damage first.

Done as an “out of combat” group heal while still considered in combat it does very well. Done in the middle of the enemy zerg all of those blast finishers are also doing area damage and with the plethora of warriors, stunning people without stability.

The regen change would just be to meter the healing out instead of allowing it to endlessly stack. Adrenaline for example isn’t a very hard limit on blast finishers. Neither is initiative.

CuRtoKy.8576:

Uhhh what. The enemy has water fields too. That suggestion wouldn’t work because you would just have more people blasting it and getting the heal anyhow.

Static field is stronger since it doesn’t take have a 5 AoE limit. “AoE mitigation” is stronger than water fields. Running as a zerg you will in generally take less damage since AoE is capped. I don’t get the point of this where there are a lot of stronger things/mechanics in WvW. WvW groups benefit the most from team utility, fields, damage, and CC. This is why Hammer warriors, guardians, mesmers, necros, and elementalist are valued compared to other professions like Engi or Ranger. In a zerg they just give more. It isn’t that water field needs to be changed but rather WvW needs to be more interesting and dynamic rather than a Zerg fight being the best due to AoE mitigation and getting easy wxp + loot compared to other alternatives.

Static Fields are technically stronger and are absolutely beast vs pugs and disorganized groups, but vs good groups stability will be flying around like candy, especially at the start of combat. I find Frozen Ground, unsteady ground, and shockwave is a much more reliable opener and leaves static field up for when the stabilities have the chance to wear off…if they don’t have enough guardians to keep a really high uptime on it that is. Also makes them blow some of the condition removal or eat alot of damage. AOE CC is really the primary job of the staff ele even more than damage I find. Our damage is great, but the CC doesn’t cap at 5 and enables the TEAM to do more damage, not just me.

I of course vary the amount of CC and damage I throw out by need and situation.

Rayya.2591:

water fields are easy to counter:
Guardian shelter in middle of the field
guardian walls in middle of the zerg
mesmer area pull
poison fields
2/3 fear /stomp… etc
they are good for organized against unorganized zerg , and tactics should be promoted not banished

I think somebody missed the point of the high guardian and warrior presence if you think that you will stop a water field with conditions and CC. Everything you just mentioned is easily prevented by those two professions doing the job that is half of the reason they are there: Condition removal and stability. Also keep in mind that the very water field you are trying to stop is healing rain which is also pulsing condition removal.

You might stop a group like that once or twice if they are not used to a group trying to mess with it like that. But after that they will lol and make sure to stability and condition cleanse when it comes time to heal.

Kitten, as an Ele I will run armor of earth specifically for critical moments like that if I feel it is warranted. My utilities are fluid things that adjust to my opponents. They are not set in stone like alot of people think their utilities are.

Vena.8436:

Ralathar.7236:

Honestly hills lord room with properly setup arrow carts and 20-30 defenders should be able to hold out vs nearly any size force. Even both other servers alternating rushing.

You can build AC out and to the side of the lord’s room which cannot be targeted from the inside because of the length of the tunnel. You can also put a balista on the tunnel which cannot be reached by the Altar balista, and just drop exploding shots inside to thin out numbers.

If you can reach them with arrow carts they can reach you. You cannot out range an arrow cart with an arrow cart unless one person has masteries and another does not. By the same token the range extension will extend how far the inner arrow carts are a threat as well as the ones that get built under the bridge.

As it is, you cannot get people back into hills lord room once they die because of how its set up.

All depends on the class attempting to get back inside, or the group. A couple front runners with CC and invulnerability will at the very least get the rest in. Also keep in mind the waypoint timers. Just as well people camping the bridge are very vulnerable to mesmer pulls and jittery bridge lag.

Taking hills from any decent defenders is dependent on them screwing up and allowing you to do anything. Oh, and the guardian staff attack hitting through walls.

graverr.6473:

So this thread basicly means : Strategy?Organization?

HOW DARE THEY !?

NERF!

Red Herring.

One could say the same about the proper use of arrow carts, but those are blatantly imbalanced once you get more than 2 arrow carts up currently. While an organized group could undoubtedly use arrow carts better than an unorganized group that does not mean the carts themselves are balanced.

Doomdesire.9365:

I do think it’s a bit contradicing when you say an unorganized group can quickly do it, because it actually takes some organization with pugs. I can’t tell you how many times PUGS will place down wrong fields of not stack and we end up losing half of them when we regroup.

I never said this. Please quote the part you believe says this and I will explain because unorganized pugs do not take proper advantage of water fields. They do not stack, they stack in aoes, they contaminate the water fields, they overlap them, etc.

Ok I of course knew this was coming so lets deal with this in turns:

Fallacy #1: Water Fields aids the smaller group.

This is false. Water Fields actually aid the larger group more. Water Fields however DO aid the more organized group more. This is part of why smaller organized groups can tear apart zergs 3 times their size. They would still be able to do this, they just wouldn’t be able to spike heal their entire group to full. I say this from experience.

Fallacy #2: Poison will stop them!!

No poison will not stop this because hammer warriors and guardians are present. These are core classes to the organized group and the group is built around them. Both of them will laugh and remove your poison right before using their blast finishers on the water field. Warriors will actually make the poison into a boon. Hammer/sword/horn warriors with soldiers runes, shouts, and the traited horns stack ridiculously well.

Fallacy #3 I hate healing

I love healing actually. I have a couple healing based characters, including my engineer that just got a nice buff with the healing turret. Problem is that the current iteration of water field is completely out of balance with the rest of the healing in the game and is game-breakingly strong when used by an organized group. Again I regularly run as part of an organized group such as this and dropping the water fields is a very important part of my job as staff ele.

Fallacy #4 This will constrict build diversity.

Actually current organized groups are built with water fields in mind. This is why Warriors, Guardians, and Elementalists are the 3 most important classes to have. You only need a few mesmers. Warriors and Guardians provide excellent CC as well as being extremely tanky. Both also come with great support and condition removal. The clutch here is that both are also packing their on call spammable blast finishers. Their damage is nothing to sneeze at either. Elementalists provide AOE damage, CC, and very importantly water fields on call at range.

All classes help, but you essentially cannot get enough of these 3 once you have half a dozen or so warriors and Guardians to comprise your heavy front line.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Yes, this will be an unpopular suggestion on these forums.

That being said, you seem to represent the zerging part of our community who think that the role personal skill and organization plays in WvW should be diminished, and as such you might get Arena Net to actually nerf water fields, since in effect you represent the largest part of WvW players.

Actually I regularly run in these type of organized groups. I know the ins and outs and I also know that this change will not stop us from ripping apart the enemy. Our organization and team work causes that. This Water Field nonesense is just additional icing on top of that which allows us to fully heal and re-engage in a matter of seconds.

We regularly handle groups up to 3 times our size. Beyond that you still have good success if you stay mobile, but their ability to keep coming starts to outstrip your ability to kill them fast enough and 5 man revives or corpse rushing will overpower you.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Suggestion: Kill them while they’re attempting to heal.

This sounds well and good but it takes us less than 10 seconds to retreat slightly, fully heal, then re-engage. The retreat is also covered by control effects such as frozen ground if there is any danger of pursuit (part of my job) and front runners get utterly demolished. Placing the water fields, calling them out, and making sure I alternate with others so as not to get over-laps is also part of my job btw. We are very organized.

Also keep in mind that the entire heavy melee line stay grouped together rolling through combat and water fields are periodically being dropped on them and called out mid combat, causing these heals to be entirely un-preventable.

This will be an unpopular suggestion, but in their current state Water Fields are overpowered. They are currently the single fastest way to heal a zerg in short order and are way stronger than the other fields by far. They also completely change the face of how WvW combat is done with their presence.

It is common place for an organized group to run into a battle, kill a good amount, retreat, place a water field, and then everyone uses their blast finishers and the entire zerg is healed to full. Then re-engage. Likewise a well placed water field mid battle can completely heal all the melee inside when called out in advance with organization.

I LOVE this on a tactical side, and it does make my staff elementalist feel even more important. But from a balance side of things this is definitely not balanced and does not share the same design philosophy on the power of the rest of the healing in the game.

Suggestion: Cut the direct heal from the water field in half and apply the remainder as regeneration. This will allow it to heal the same amount overall, yet have more counter play and reduce it’s burst healing potential.

1. Warriors. Survivability built. (Hammer/sword/horn warriors running soldier runes and shouts) Totally OP in WvW. I mean it’s really bad, I’m not kidding. Huge amounts of CC built into the weapon as well as on call blast finishers for water fields, super tanky to form the core of the front line, and the condition removal and conversion possible with a handful as part of your zerg is just insane.

2. Guardians Survivability (Team Stability and boons, support damage, lines of warding shares front line with warriors)

3. Staff Ele (Combo fields, Tons of AOE CC, Big AOE damage, biggest long range AOE’s for siege clearing)

4. Mesmer (Portal, Vail, feedback, null field, chaos fields, basically everything glamor, extra blinds and confusion are just bonus, time warp)

5. Necro (Properly spec’d the blindness + chill combo to the enemy zerg is murderously effective, also provides good condition damage provided it’s not cured)

6. Thief (Spammable blast finisher on short bow, finishing downed enemies, roaming and scouting)

7. Ranger (Ranger’s are not bad. They are not, not at all. They just don’t have the 1-2 slelect semi-OP zerg builds the other classes have. Like the OPness of the thief spamming clusterbomb into water fields.)

Honestly hills lord room with properly setup arrow carts and 20-30 defenders should be able to hold out vs nearly any size force. Even both other servers alternating rushing.

Chills, immobilizes, knockbacks, cripples, reflections, lines of warding and sanctuaries, boon stripping , etc + arrow carts + aoe damage should all be concentrated on lord room hallways. Nobody should get through that kill box unless the defenders are bad. This was true before the arrow cart buff. It is doubly true now. Even a single staff ele can stop a zerg long enough for the pre-buff arrow carts and AOE damage to drop them, much less if other people help them CC.

Getting through the outer and inner gates is the easy part lol.

If anything repairing needs a bigger reward like a separate event bonus for repairing the tower when it is not under attack as well.

I have seen all of this happen many a time before the addition. This won’t change anything. I have also seen people NOT repair a tower or keep with full supply that is no longer under attack just as often.

But most often of all I see the zerg running off to capture things for their karma train and letting their other towers, even T3 towers, get captured.

So, why is it a threat to give the poor people who dedicate their time towards repairing walls for much lesser rewards than everyone else such a problem? That person could easily just as big a liability to their side in any other number of selfish ways. Like coasting with that zerg taking the other side of the map while all their territory near their keep gets taken? I’ve even seen those groups use the supply at the towers and keeps to continue their Karma train offensive.

Lets put it this way, confusion pre-nerf would do maybe 3k-5k damage on that Ranger, Ele, or Engineer for skill use. Retal can do over 12k. Confusion was nerfed.

Odds of this being nerfed = 100%.

You do not think that Guild Wars 2 is as buggy and flawed as WOW at release. I’ll say it.

List the top 10 biggest bugs and Guild Wars 2 release and put your money where your mouth is.

Chaosky.5276:

Dat One with Fire.

So worth its place as a master trait, amirite?

It’d be worth it if it also made Flame Barrier affect ranged attacks.

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

20-30 ppl skilled ppl can kill 60 zerg even without ac’s, there are a lot of options how to conquer something other way than just smashing gate with 60 ppl and 10 golem, if zerg cant figure out how to repel few ppl behind ac digged in tower then as i said they must use brains a liitle bit more ..
there is one thing .. if its fight fair you doing something wrong ..balance is if you can counter one thing with another.
If can scare 50 ppl from tower with 3 behind siege I call it balance.

20-30 organized people can beat a bad 40-60 pugs. 20-30 organized people cannot beat 40-60 organized players without an extreme situational advantage unless the other group is just plain caught with their pants completely down.

If 20-30regularly hold a tower or win an open field fight against the 60 with no siege advantage then the 60 is just bad. In that case it’s not a fair comparison at all.

Gab Superstar.4059:

No. Having half your team on Arrow Carts in an attempt to even scratch the enemy was never realistic for smaller groups taking on zergs.

This change is good and doesn’t need any immediate attention from the developers.

You don’t read well do you? I was with my guild the other day and we killed around 50 with 15-20 of us and 3 arrow carts. This is fine because if they played smart they could have easily killed our arrow carts before moving in and died because they tried to mindlessly zerg it. The arrow cartds

However more than 2-3 arrow carts on the same location is more than trying to counter anything, it’s liquefying anything it hits. This is plainly not balanced. In certain places such as hills lord room there is no ability to counter siege them.

Even if you do say to counter siege them however, you’ve just turned the game into a battle of trebs, not arrow carts. It’ll be all trebbing and counter-trebbing and you’ll never even get to use your precious little arrow carts (I love them too :P) because people will learn and they won’t move in anymore until your supply is zerod and your ac’s are cleared.

It also has the potential to cause other naughty ittle metas, like even more PVdoor, larger golem rushes (if even a few defenders react in time current golems will die), alot more focus mesmers so they can chain pull people off of arrow carts and then walls, and extremely slow boring gameplay (from one extreme to the other).

Admittedly my Elementalist is glass cannon. But I’ve been downed by casting 1 meteor shower on a zerg outside a gate before. No I do not believe a buff that can easily be stacked by certain classes as well as using blast finishers in light fields should be able to 100% down a glass cannon from a single cast.

Go ahead and tell me again how hard it is to get area retal with a few guardians and a few thieves with shortbows.

This is not a big problem atm as not alot of groups do it, but as balancing continues it will become the meta at some point and it will be nerfed if it isn’t balanced before then.

Heijincks.9267:

Actually, the range is the biggest factor in the arrow cart’s effectiveness than their damage alone. The damage can be mitigated by dodges. The range is much harder to counter.

If you are worried about catas I would say buff cata range a little.

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

defenders finaly got something against mindless 60+ zergs if they now where to build them and how to use them, 50 target cap is good as ist still hard kill anyone in such a mass of hostiles as they can instantly fully heal with combos and ressurect downed .. 2-3 target limit at ac is just ridiculous ..
if zerg cant cap something because of 2-3 acs maybe they should think a little bit more

I’ve been on both sides. 2-3 of the current ac’s on a single location is enough to vaporize rams and golems and enough to deal very heavy damage to inc enemy zergs.

AC’s SHOULD be able to eat rams and golems and force a slower wall take to give defenders time to react. However they shouldn’t kill zergs by themselves. 2-3 AC’s supported by 20-30 people can however kill that 60 man zerg. If you expect any lower numbers than that to hold vs a zerg then you are not talking any sort of balance at all.

Kaleban.9834:

Ralathar.7236:

If you don’t understand that then you don’t understand group composition in WvW. If you are not a WvW player that is fine. If you are however you should go hug your all your bunkers because obviously you don’t realize how much they do to keep you alive.

You claimed you tanked zergs on your Staff Ele. You implied 1vX on a Staff build. Then you claim its all done from within a zerg of your own, or at least fighting with said team “on the front line.”

Do you understand how making sensational claims, then backing up and trying to pin the blame for your disinformation on others makes your argument look?

Actually that quote is entirely accurate on a hills keep defense. I was quite literally the only person far forwards and the combination of my DPS (put the in combat), CC skills (keep them slowed and immob’d), sheer damage absorption , reflection, and avoidance held the doorway for 30 minutes. Other people stopped trying to hold my position because they got vaped or pulled and then vaped. Eventually they did manage to kill me when i got a little too ballsy and misplayed. Hills was lost within 3 minutes after that.

Nonetheless I was not speaking of that because that’s not how WvW works. I didn’t think anyone in here would be kitten enough to think that I literally fully tanked full zergs by myself in a 20 vs 20 confrontation. You proved me wrong with your eagerness to spin what I said at the cost of your own credibility lol.

Note Tanking implies team mates in and of itself. You do not TANK for yourself. You tank for team mates. You can BE a tank solo. But you cannot tank for yourself.

If you really want to make arrow carts give the defenders a chance with smaller amounts of people and not make massed arrow carts rule WvW you need to make one change.

Limit the amount of arrow carts that can hit a single area to 2-3. Personally I’d say 2 is as 2 is roughly equivalent to 4-6 from before in terms of value and usefulness even if the DPS is only just double.

What makes arrow carts so devastating is the ability of so many of them to concentrate fire on a single area. Think hills keep and the doorway. If you allowed only 2 to hit a single location you could still do very high damage to one spot with current carts, but it wouldn’t let you make fields of insta death. Sure you could make many arrow carts and cover larger amounts of territory but that takes alot more coordination and allows you to push up enough to deal with them bit by bit.

This idea keeps them useful open field, just like the ballista. It keeps them useful on both offense and defense. But it limits how much DPS they can do to a group of people in any one spot, which is the main concern.

NOTE: I personally agree with the damage increase on arrow carts when there are 1-2 arrow carts. They were ignorable by any not terrible groups before. But en masse they have always been incredibly powerful and this change only makes massed arrow carts that much worse without a limit on stacking the AOE’s.

Kaleban.9834:

Ralathar.7236:

Again, this is not from Idle speculation. I’ve been there on my auramancer in fights exceeding 20 members from both sides. PVE of course you can kite melee like a boss and avoid ranged damage just as well.

If you’re in a fight with 19 other people on your side, how exactly are you “staff tanking?” This situation is basically safety in numbers.

If you don’t understand that then you don’t understand group composition in WvW. If you are not a WvW player that is fine. If you are however you should go hug your all your bunkers because obviously you don’t realize how much they do to keep you alive.

maddoctor.2738:

The devs already mentioned in the SotG that Staff is powerful in WvW, how about discussing it’s usefulness anywhere else for a change? Where even mobs in PVE won’t stay in AoE for more than one tick, try to use your amazing Staff Aoe on the Dredge Miningsuit or the Archdiviner, that would be so awesome.

The staff is quite useful on normal mobs and vets in dungeons and general dungeon running. It just isn’t good for bosses unless they have alot of adds that need to be killed. In those cases I switch to my Scepter/Dagger. Specific example would be wiping the waves of dredge super quick with staff then switching to scepter/dagger for ice elemental/mining suit.

While it’s true we do not have the weapon swap of many other classes, nevertheless it’s rather easy to make sure you are using the appropriate weapons for a boss fight. I’d wager alot of classes that have weapon swap similarly switch weapons for boss fights. Even though some melee weapons allow you to deal with both single target and multiple targets thanks to cleave, there are also enemies in this game you do not want to melee.

LordByron.8369:

Ralathar.7236:

Staff can do both damage and utility equally well. .

Attack speed makes impossible to hit thieves and mesmers (but aslo any strafing profession you can just sidestep Attacks….or slowly walk out of aoes….even standing in some without taking any damage):
Aoe are so slow that never hit anything

DPS is utterly bad unless you use conjured weapons that are a bad versions of other professions weapons (just roll other professions if you like them).

So no in real game staff and scepter can t hit things THUS cannot dps.
They can support and CC (CC almost completely negated in PvE) but NOT deal damage…as every ele weapon.

As a staff ele you are not aiming to kill thieves or mesmers in zerg vs zerg. Waste of your time that could be more effectively spent elsewhere. Instead you slaughter everyone else. Thieves and mesmers won’t do kitten without their front liners. Backliners are tasty tasty food for your AOE prowess.

Used effectively your AOE’s provide 3 functions:

1. Anyone that stays in them or is forced to stay in them dies horrible deaths very quickly. Your CC combined with your allies CC forces them very often with coordinated groups.

2. Area denial. Placed properly coordinating with your side the enemy team cannot properly and effectively engage or retaliate without eating horrific damage.

3. If properly placed AOE’s will divide and scatter an enemy zerg.

I don’t know where you get this “no damage” myth from. Meteor Shower itself of course does large damage but combining flame burst, glyph of storms, ice bow, eruption, and Ice spike results in massive damage either concentrated or spread out. Glyph is normally doing 600+ per hit and is just got majorly buffed, flame burst is doing similar in smaller burst radius. Eruption does 1,000 + around 3,500 bleed, Ice spike has been known to hit for 2-3k. Ice bow SHREDS.

I’ve never had any combat where I laid 2-3 AOEs in the same area and enemies in that area didn’t go down if they did not immediately leave it. People are pretty good at running from meteor shower but they normally don’t notice they have been herded or cut off with eruption/ice spike, typically ignore the glyph of storms, and are too slow to avoid most of the damage from ice bow.