The biggest problem with thief is that it initially attracted a lot of players who liked the rambo “teleport around the map and destroy people in duels” playstyle. The thief now occupies a far more strategy role, which is to do clutch bursts, resses, stomps, and blinds/interrupts in teamfights while also rotating around the map extremely quickly to mess up the enemy team’s rotations.
A thief that plays this new role well is devastating to the other team. But a thief that just wants to roam around the map trying to decap in 1v1 fights is not going to be very effective in conquest (still works decently well in WvW, however).
What sucks is that the thief has kind of been pidgeonholed into this role. However, as a matter of balance you can’t have a strong dueling build with the level of mobility + disengages + stealth that a thief has (which is far more than mesmer). Ideally, A.net would buff the other weapon sets/combos (outside d/p + sb) so that thief ends up getting a less mobile but far more effective dueling or bruiser-type build. It looks like A.net is working on making P/P a viable alternative to shortbow (still a long way to go here…), which is a good step in the right direction.
A.net would also need to provide thief better condi cleanse outside of stealth. Escapist’s Absolution on Daredevil is insanely good, but I don’t think the non-stealth condi cleanse traits should be limited to Daredevil. (I’m not counting the acrobatics adept trait which you have no control over).
A lesser but still noticeable issue behind a lot of thief complaints is that a lot of thief players relied too heavily on stealth and never developed their mechanical skills like timing interrupts, blinds, and dodges. Due to a number of reasons, the “stealth, burst, retreat & repeat” strategy doesn’t work anymore. This means the thief needs to be spot on with his interrupts, blinds, and dodges to survive. This means knowing what your opponent’s skills are so you know what to blind/dodge/interrupt, rather than just random-dodging until your reveal debuff is gone so you can restealth. A thief who knows how to do these things has an advantage over most mesmer builds (especially the portal-PU build used in conquest) while a thief who doesn’t will just get instagibbed.
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I think OP exclusively runs a PU condi mesmer… which gets wrecked by any necro build that takes condi transfers.
To the OP, I’d highly recommend you create a Reaper and play a bunch of games with it. Fighting against a build you don’t understand well is like playing the game blindfolded. Everything feels OP when you’re permablind =p
It seems like the main problem is when you have 2 (or more) chronomancers who are running wells + alacrity-on-well. The high uptime on alacrity further increases their ability to place more wells, giving even more alacrity.
So it seems like a simple tweak to help “fix” the issue (if there is one) would be to make the adept trait only give alacrity to the mesmer who places the well, and not to his teammates. If the mesmer wants to provide alacrity to his team, he can take the well that’s designed specifically for that purpose. He’s also got iAvenger.
Aside from the multiple mesmer well stacking situation, the build seems vulnerable to conditions. You get condi cleanse on the heal well, but that’s on a 30s CD (18s CD if you maintain perma alacrity), so heavy condi pressure still works well.
I’ve been running a very similar build (dif sigils) but have generally found it to be really strong against most builds, but with a very high skill ceiling. Conditions are definitely the weak point. And a condi version of this build might be even stronger.
Overall, I’d say it’s still too early to tell whether a build will be OP or not. A lot of builds seem really strong until you figure them out. Considering OP didn’t even know what build Supcutie was running, I think we’re still very much in the stage where you’re still internalize your opponent’s cooldowns and learning the tells/counters.
For example, knocking the mesmer out of his heal well will cut the heal in half and also remove the cleansing effect. Of course, to do this you’ll need to bait out his defensive skills first (BF, shield4, distortion, precog). Making sure you don’t hit his Shield4 will prevent him from getting a second block, which can allow you to land a follow-up burst. Getting a feeling for when to camp the continuum split beacon, or timing a bomb on the beacon right as it is about to expire can be an instawin.
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With WHAO, it’s pretty easy to get perma swiftness/regen/fury if you’re spamming the skill off CD, which isn’t too crazy compared to how many boons other classes can keep up. Maintaining high uptime on any of the other boons (especially quickness) requires pretty large sacrifices. But obviously it’s a bit too early to tell how strong this is.
If you want to maintain perma-quickness, you have to give up BW (taunt), which is HUGE, as well as spam pet-swap and heal off cooldown, which makes you extremely vulnerable to counterplay. (Although the quickness does take the WHAO cast time down to 0.5s). And if you want perma-protection, you need to sacrifice a utility for Guard and then spam Guard + WHAO constantly off cooldown — which obviously means potentially wasting heals and also messes with pet management. Not saying these builds are necessarily bad, but I think people are being too hasty in calling the builds OP, and they’re overlooking a lot of the tradeoffs.
And, as others have mentioned, boonstrips are a particularly hard counter to WHAO because the ranger relies on refreshing long-CD boons, rather than constantly applying new boons through their skills. As a mesmer (the OP’s main class), a single solid shatter combo + GS3 will will pretty much nullify the WHAO boonshare.
And to the OP, Mesmers are still very strong — the PU nerf was justified and something many mesmer players were calling for. You’re grossly overexaggerating the nerf.
I’ll say it again.
If you lose to a thief 1v1 on any class you are significantly worse than that thief player.
As for the whole mobility vs 1v1 ability debate. Look thief gave up its team fighting ability for the mobility it has. The fact now that the 1v1 ability is gone should be reversed.
I’m sure a lot of ppl will try to shout down my PoV and that’s ok. It won’t work due to them having absolutely zero facts to counter me but they can voice their opinion.
They don’t have to shout you down, they only need to ask you to prove what you say in the first place. You have yet to offer any proof that 1v1 with “equal skill” that a thief will lose.
Here’s a nice video from Sindrener. I would assume anyone with an MMR capable of being put in a match up with players of Sindrener’s level certainly doesn’t need to L2P, especially when they’re in the WvW guild he is/was in. Also Katru did an amazing job.
Don’t get me wrong, some classes/builds thief cannot 1v1 at all but it’s not helpless against all classes. The discussion in the vid is nice to.
Sinderer, Levin and Toker play with best teams out there. Not everyone has such luxury. Thief needs a good team to actually have any impact on match. Try to pull that with pugs in your average daily yoloq. You know what happend to Levin when he did pugquest and had crappy team? He couldn’t do anything. Period.
I mean by that logic every class should be balanced around top 3 teams and trust me you wouldn’t be facerolling on mesmers right now and talking soo all mighty if Anet actually balanced mesmers around Frostys or Heleths skill level.
Firstly that video is not all with oRNG, the first few where he 1v1 a mesmer which is what I was asked to provide. Proof a thief can 1v1 other classes successfully and if you read the comments on the vid they estimate thief vs mesmer is 50/50.
Secondly, were any mesmers, you know the ones that are competing with the same thief role carrying any teams? That’s the only way you can make a good “thief so bad in pug quest” argument. You said in a post that was deleted Levin faced a team with a very experience DD ele. Comparing the two of them is a rediculous thing to even begin to try and is insulting to everyone’s intelligence so don’t start with it.
As for your Helseth comment, he did say after the mirror blade nerd Mesmer was balanced, go figure.
1. Sinderer was better, mes shouldn’t lose to thief atm. Period.
2. I queue with Frosty frequently, he does carry pugs we get. Also, i am glad you follow all my posts, i assume i should thank you for mods visits.
How is it ridicilous? Please tell me~
3. Helseth mains mesmer and is known for being rather subjective, yeah we should totally believe every word he says.
- really depends on the mesmer’s build. A decent thief should not have any 1v1 problems vs. a mesmer running the meta tournament build (Dom/Duel/Chaos w/ portal). It’s seriously a L2P issue if you’re losing 1v1s to that.
A typical solopug PU mes with MOD is about 50/50 and just boils down to cooldown management and baiting the MODs. Note that taking out portal removes a lot of the support that the mesmer offers to his team.
A full on mantra dueling mes (either dom/duel/insp or duel/chaos/insp) should not lose to a thief unless he gets hugely outplayed.
Pre-patch thieves were able to 1v1 some classes – were they really that OP? No. But you were rewarded if you played well. Right now it is not the case. Playing well means to not engage any combat.
Why are thieves not allowed to be in pre-patch state?@ResJudicator.7916: thieves don’t want to be super rambo carry there problem rose when bruisers ended up having way too good moblity and pretty high dmg which put whole mobile glassy roamer in question. Either those classes (hello eles, wars and co.) need some dmg/moblity nerfs or thieves need some defensive/dmg buffing(also once again where do mesmers fit in this whole “+1/must suck in 1v1” logic????).
Idc which way but atm the allocation of risk/reward is waaaayy too uneven and trying to justify it with +1 “role” is total horse crap propaganda from uneducated (or) non-thief players.And just as side note: having 2 of any class (even mesmers, which some teams ran in tourneys) is fine and actually increases winning chances in some cases; having 2 thieves on team is absolutely terrible and any additional thief just increases losing chances in extreme exponential rates -> THIS just screams that there is something very wrong with class design.
Anet had such a great opportunity to finally give a thief a bruiser build with team support (see staff monk) instead they just nerfed acro to give acro 2.0….
Prepatch, thieves still had unfavorable 1v1 matchups vs. cele ele, engie, and shoutbow (which made up like 3/5 to 4/5 of the team). Engie could practically just shotgun nades at his feet whenever the thief went in for a burst. Thieves had a favorable matchup against mesmer, but few teams ran mesmer.
Postpatch, thieves still have unfavorable 1v1 matchups vs. most of the meta builds. And they still have a favorable matchup against portal mesmer (although it takes a little longer to down the mesmer than before due to PU and Blinding-On-Shatter). The meta builds have changed, but the number of favorable/unfavorable 1v1 matchups for thief is largely the same.
I also don’t agree that a good thief should avoid combat entirely — I assume you were exaggerating. Avoiding 1v1s is not the same as avoiding combat altogether. Thieves still have very strong burst damage, and can reliably apply a stun while stripping stab, which makes them great at helping a team quickly focus down a target. The auto-stealth on res is also huge.
Finally, I already addressed your question about where mesmers fit in. They have a greater impact than thieves in a fight, but are far less mobile than what SB5 allows. Portal allows them to make some big mobility plays, but it is on a long CD. And thief has a favorable matchup vs portal mesmer anyway.
As for 1v1 potential, most of the meta builds can still take/hold a point vs portal mesmer.
Again, you seem to be of the mindset that a thief can only decap uncontested points or down players that were already going to die, which is absolutely not the case. If it were, then I would agree that would truly be a terrible role. But the reality is that a good thief can contribute far more than that.
That said, I again agree that thief should be given a bruiser build that trades in mobility/stealth for more survivability. But the meta D/P build definitely doesn’t need more buffing.
Again, the reason why meta-D/P struggles vs. meta builds is because any build that gets countered by meta-D/P becomes unviable in Conquest and therefore falls out of the meta. As long as thief has the mobility and disengage potential it currently has, people are going to shy away from builds that lose to it.
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A big reason thieves are bad at 1v1 in Conquest is because the number one question everyone asks themselves when they make a build for SPVP is “Can this survive a thief 1v1?”
Every build that can’t defeat a thief 1v1 is pushed out of the meta solely because of that. A thief’s mobility is more than enough to chase down and kill anyone who can’t fight them off every single time they meet. If you can’t beat the thief in a straight fight they’ll farm you the entire match.
Speaking as someone who’s tried many, many times to get a zerker staff ele to work this is my experience. I can deal with just about anything with triple cantrips even as a glass cannon with the exception of being instantly downed by someone I didn’t see there.
So it stands to reason if thieves want more 1v1 power they’d need to lose their god-like mobility to compensate. Similar to how rangers are great at 1v1 but bring nothing else to a team that’s worth while. Hopefully Daredevil will work as a lower mobility 1v1 fighter once the expansion hits and thieves will get the playstyle they want.
This is exactly right.
There are plenty of builds that a thief can easily beat 1v1. If you think thief is the underdog in every single 1v1 matchup, then it’s definitely a L2P issue. The issue is that, in Conquest, practically no one is going to bring a build that gets hard-countered by thief. The reason is obvious: you can’t out-rotate or escape the thief, so your team would need to babysit you all game if you ran a class that loses to a thief 1v1.
The same isn’t true for the other classes. It isn’t gamebreaking to run a class that gets hardcountered by a burnguard, or a bunkerguard, or a cele sig necro, for example, because you can outrotate those builds to avoid unfavorable matchups. On the flip side, if you hardcounter the guard or necro, you’ll probably be able to chase him down and down him. If you hardcounter the thief, any decent thief will be able to port away and find a better opportunity.
Also, the thief’s role is far more than just decapping uncontested points and stealth-stacking. Levin and Toker certainly do far more than decap points. A thief can still deliver an instant single-target burst that hits about as hard as the mesmer burst, which can down a focused target much faster than just about any other meta build when played right. The thief can also rotate between fights to do this much faster and more frequently than anyone else.
I personally enjoy the role of rapidly appearing in fights and quickly end them for my team, getting off clutch resses/stomps/interrupts, and messing up the enemy team’s strategies and rotations by quickly decapping points. There’s a high skill ceiling for this role, both mechanically and strategically. And no other class can perform it quite as well, which is why every team runs a thief. Mesmers are definitely very strong, but their mobility/disengage skills are on a much longer cooldown (so they’re more about making a few big high-risk, high-reward plays rather than many smaller plays).
I feel like a lot of the thieves who complain want some sort of Rambo/Carry role where they can run around quickly wrecking people in 1v1s and then stealth/porting away when reinforcements arrive (i.e. WvW thieves). This would obviously be broken in PvP, and would probably cause everyone else to play even more bunkery classes (at which point we’ll go back to having thieves complain about how weak they are). This desire to play the Rambo/Carry role is where a good 90% of thief complaints are coming from.
That said, I wouldn’t mind the thief getting a build that trades in mobility and stealth for more of a brawler role. The problem is that it’s hard to incentivize the thief to give up shortbow. I think we’d have to dramatically improve the thief’s other ranged power options (i.e. p/p), and/or create more synergy between the non-bow weapon sets. (That and improving the acrobatics traitline for more non-stealth survivability).
To deal "devastating"* damage to training golems. (At least that’s what the livestream says).
*Devastating apparently means a few 300-400 dmg ticks.
Hopefully the new upcoming seasons fixes this. If they do make PvP lucrative, they should base the rewards on success in ranked play and not just farming hotjoin.
Yes! Pleasenerf the tanky D/D bruiser build slightly, and then figure out a way to buff scepter and staff builds so that ele has other competitive roles!
The moment you listed as berserker thieves as a counter to ele was the moment you lost your credibility as a good ele considering you hard counter them.
Wasn’t this you as an ele dueling Caed on a zerker thief? I think he won every fight. This was all pre-specialization patch, when ele sustain was higher but burns were less potent.
I also like to run through ring of fire repeatedly.
The main problem with swords is that the second attack in the AA chain has issues hitting moving targets when the revenant is also moving around (i.e. most pvp fights). This causes the Revenant to keep repeating the second attack in the AA chain until it either connects, or enough time has lapsed that the AA chain resets.
So in PvP fights, you end up with a lot of dead space where you’re not doing any damage from the AA if you and your opponent are both moving around. They need to make the second skill in the AA chain have better hit registration to get around this. One way would be to make the skill have almost 0 precast animation (but add extra time to the aftercast so that net DPS is the same), and make the projectile move much faster. Or just give it homing.
Burst damage being so high (which may be the bigger issue than toughness, to be completely honest) is causing an issue where defensive stats are less important, and Blocks/Blinds/Evades are greatly increased in value, which don’t scale, and thus are equally potent on high-damage builds. Overall, you will find Burst + secondary defenses greatly outweigh actual defensive stats, where you can not as easily make up for lacking damage through secondary effects, like you can for defenses.
That part I agree with: active defenses are generally far more important than passive ones. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, though. Speaking, personally, it makes the game more exciting.
There was a period back before the celestial meta where burst damage was so low that people didn’t even bother running DPS builds in tournaments. Instead, they ran CC classes that could knock a bunker off the point long enough to get a decap. Tournaments would usually end via time-out, with the winning team having something like 130 total points. There’d be one teamfight in mid that never went anywhere, and the game would be decided based on who’s decap engies did a better jot at far.
Also, just to be clear, it isn’t really accurate to say that precision and ferocity scale together. It’s more accurate to say that precision sets the boundaries in which ferocity benefits your damage. The most benefit you can get is 100% of your ferocity being converted to damage (if you have 100% crit chance). And a theoretical 0% crit chance would mean that ferocity wouldn’t affect your DPS at all.
I started a thread on this not too long ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Overloads-An-Analaysis-and-Suggested-Changes/first#post5340289
The overloads are literally a waste of time: you’re almost always better off going through your normal rotations than taking 5 seconds out to channel an overload. The only exception is that, theoretically, the fire overload might be worth it if you manage to use it on a fire field while standing inside someone’kitten box (to stack crazy burns via the whirl finisher).
Only thing Tempest has going for it is the Warhorn, specifically the synergy between Earth4 and Fire4. With a good team, you can maintain ridiculously high uptime on all the boons, including quickness.
There is no way that an AOE stunbreak (no stab) on a 45 second CD is going to contribute enough to your team that it’d be worth taking over another utility.
OP needs a math lesson.
Yes, the damage reduction from Toughness decreases with each successive stat point i.e. it has diminishing returns. However, the increase in time-to-die is linear. Each successive point of Toughness will increase how much total damage it takes to kill you by the same amount.
Using the formulas:
Damage = (weapon * power * coeff ) / Toughness
TimeToDie = HitPoints / DamageIf weapon, power, and coeff are constant, then only toughness is variable and increases as:
Damage = 1 / Toughness
Plug that into the other equation and you get:
TimeToDie = HitPoints / (1 / Toughness) = Hitpoints * Toughness
That’s a linear increase.
The math can be extended in terms of Feeocity, precision (which is something I didn’t feel like delving into the math for),
Well if you extend the math in terms of Ferosity and precision, shouldnt you also include stats like vitality and healing power (which will actually make the math ugly because its effectiveness depends on the skills you take etc.). After all those states also would increase the TimetoDie. Also keep in mind to keep the calculation fair we would have to assume that the sum of every stat distribution is equal (which in reality isnt, compare cele vs zerker etc.)
I think if we include every relevant stat the math becomes ugly rather quickly…
The difference between defensive stats and offensive ones is how they work together. Healing power and vitality, for example have additive benefits together where power, precision and Ferocity multiply together.
Healing power and vitality are NOT additive to toughness. The amount of effective HP you get per point of vitality increases as you increase your toughness.
To use a simple example, if one guy takes 50 damage per hit, then giving him an extra 100 hp would let him take two more hits. If another guy with higher toughness only takes 5 damage per hit, then giving him that same amount of extra hp would let him take 20 more hits. The same rationale applies to healing power.
Precision also isn’t really a bonus. It’s more accurate to think of precision as a limitation on ferocity. Ferocity affects your crit damage, and precision determines how frequently you crit. In other words, precision determines how frequently your damage is multiplied by your ferocity. The highest you can go is 100% crit chance, meaning that your ferocity applies with every attack. Going any higher than 100% crit chance doesn’t increase your damage.
You’re trying to explain the low time-to-kill in this game through math, but you’re focusing on the wrong variables. You should instead be looking at either the damage/healing coefficients on skills, the stat distribution on amulets, or the ratio at which points of precision are converted into additional crit chance, or ferocity to crit damage.
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just shows how dumb eles are atm, he mashes random buttons, doesn’t die and actually gets kills…. if i played like this on thief/ranger i would be dead 10 times in same fight
Is that sarcasm? You can literally spam 2 on thief or ranger and get kills….
please show me, play vs anything decent and spam 2…. oh and record it please i would love to see it
Is an opinion. Whatever I show you you’ll simply say they weren’t decent enough to win the argument.
I am not wasting anymore time with this. If you have played the game longer than a month and not just troll forums its pretty obvious which classes can spam one skill vs which take actual thought out combos. Video proof is hardly needed when you can go play the game.
Also no one decent loses to an ele that’s just faceroll-spamming skills. The whole point was that Grouch was also playing against hotjoin-level players.
So just to clarify things:
Toughness doesn’t have diminishing returns in terms of your effective HP (i.e. how much damage you can take before dying), which is what really matters. So we can disregard the OP’s math.
But OP’s overall point still has merit, which is that the power stat works with precision & ferocity to increase your damage more significantly than toughness, vit, and healing power work to mitigate it, so that overall TTK in this game is fairly low. I’m personally OK with a fast-paced, bursty meta, but I can understand that other people feel differently.
just shows how dumb eles are atm, he mashes random buttons, doesn’t die and actually gets kills…. if i played like this on thief/ranger i would be dead 10 times in same fight
Nah — with the people he was fighting against you’d probably be “instagibbing” everyone and there’d be another 100 more “Nerf Ranger Longbow Ranger” and “Nerf Thief” threads. And by “instagibbing” I mean actually taking 2-5 seconds to kill them but for whatever reason they can’t manage to react in that timeframe.
Back on topic: All the concerns people have been voicing about Tempest appear to be true.
Also, now that most of the mantra mesmer bandwagoners have either left the class or respecced to PU, I feel like tempest overlaods will be a bit safer, since the fear of interruption will be at least a little bit more manageable.
You’ll still have D/P thieves w/ headshot on a low CD and steal (which goes through stab). You have the meta warrior GS/Hammer build with plenty of CC. Cele sig necros with two fears, WH daze, and the RNG corruption fear if you pop stability. Engies have point blank shot and TK5 (they also have moa, but they’d probably save that to counter rampage or help a big cleave fight). These are pretty much all the classes I see in PvP besides mesmer, and even the PU mesmers run MoD.
Well, to counter the point of getting the overload effects for free, you kind of do. Related to your example, Necros don’t get Reaper cloak ontop of their Lich form, Reaper replaces Lich. Overloads don’t replace attunements though. You’re basically getting the option of Overloading for free. Ele doesn’t give anything up for Overload so I don’t think the analogy works.
I’d still prefer bigger traits that make using Overloads different or more utility to Overloads. Like what if you had 3 GM options that let you either 1) Altered Auras to give stability so you can use them as options to protect yourself during Overloads [or just general protection]; 2) Use Warhorn skills while Overloading; or 3) Gave your Overloads control options to support with CC overloads instead of damage overloads?
Or what other type of traits could alter Overloads that wouldn’t just make them cheap spammable skills you add into a rotation?
But you agree that going Tempest has opportunity costs. To take Tempest and have access to Overload, you have to give up other things. Obviously the ele and necro class mechanics are completely different, so the opportunity costs are going to be different and therefore no analogy will be perfect.
The point is that the core functionality of Overload is just being split up into minor traits that you’re forced to take anyway. We’d be in the exact same position we’re currently in if A.net had just said, “Let’s make Overload apply swiftness and protection whenever it’s used, and let’s not give Tempest any minor traits.”
So if you add to much to overload you may make tempest way to powerful. As things stand the only reason not to run as a tempest over the ele is losing a dmg line in a build. For the most part tempest line can replaces a def line for ele say earth or water. Unlike necro reaper’s the necro loses effects and ability by running that line where in ele’s tempest you only get an added effect of being able to overload.
So as things stand overloads are at worst a def tools to get you out of movement effects and an added protection / swiftness generator for the ele class. Also if done in earth its a soft stab that you did not have before.
If you were addressing my point about the minor traits, the point would be to have them add to other aspects of ele, rather than overload.
The opportunity cost of running tempest is losing one of the other ele lines. And the opportunity cost for using Overload is locking yourself out of the attunement for 15-20 seconds. It’s not just a free added effect.
If you were running fire/water/arcana, you might be able to justify tempest over fire, but it doesn’t look like a favorable trade right now for the reasons I’ve discussed in my first post. Which is why Tempest needs to offer more.
I definitely don’t see tempest replacing water, because it doesn’t offer effective healing or condi cleanse. Shout recharges are too slow for trooper rune synergy (you’d cleanse just about as many condis per 30s with one untraited cleansing fire). The 5s charging period for Overloads also hampers their defensive utility.
And yes, the earth overload offers another source of stab, but you won’t be able to do anything while the stab is up besides surf around. And it’s not a stunbreak and requires that you sit in earth for 5s ahead of time (in which case you haven’t been doing any damage).
Again, you can’t look at Overloads in a vacuum, you have to look at them in terms of opportunity cost: what are you giving up to spec into the Tempest tree? What are you giving up to spend time charging up an Overload, channeling the Overload, and then being locked out of the attunement?
On the topic of traits, I wanted to bring up a great point someone else made about how the tempest’s Master and Grandmaster Minors just affect the overload mechanic — they don’t do anything for the rest of the class: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Thoughts-on-the-Tempest-minor-traits
This is pretty lazy design, because they basically just separated out parts of the Overload mechanic and put them into minor traits that you’re forced to take if you want to use the mechanic. Specifically, the Tempest’s Master Minor gives Swiftness when overloading, and the GM Minor gives Protection when overloading. In other words, no matter what, you will always be getting swiftness and protection on an overload. So you might as well make it part of the skill’s core functionality, and then add in minor traits that actually affect the class as a whole. For example, some traits to increase in-combat mobility (which would flow well w/ the tempest theme) — like “Gain superspeed for 1s when you successfully evade an attack.”
For example, the Reaper’s Master Minor applies chill on fear, which affects all of the necro’s sources of fears and thus can be utilized by the class as a whole. The Reaper’s GM Minor makes chilled foes deal less damage and increases the length of chills, which again affects the class as a whole. To be sure, these traits definitely synergize with the Reaper, but they do more than merely alter the Reaper’s core functionality.
To put things in perspective, imagine if the Necro Reaper’s Master Minor just made your Shroud1 skill cleave, and the Necro Reaper’s GM Minor slightly increased the radius of your new Shroud2 skill. That’s basically how the Tempest’s current minors work.
Well at same time Reaper minor also gives us access to our new weapon and shouts. It looks as if you may have access to your shouts and warhorn with out specing tempest. Also the other minors do just build on the first by making it not a punishment for using fear as a melee and also reducing damage again as a melee (a melee with no reflect, aegis, block or damage immunities)
No, the Reaper minors synergize with the new shroud. They don’t just modify it the way the Tempest minors do. Applying chill on fear obviously helps reapers in the way you described, but it also helps other builds by increasing chill uptime (which slows your opponent’s CDs). Same with the 3rd Reaper minor — reducing your opponent’s damage when they have chill benefits the class as a whole (not just the specific reaper mechanic).
The better comparison would be if the 2nd Reaper minor simply made your Shroud1 skill cleave, and the 3rd Reaper minor just reduced the CD on your Shroud2 skill.
The tempest’s 2nd and 3rd minors just modify what the first minor does — nothing more. They might as well be made baseline as part of singularity, and better minors added in that can be applied to the class as a whole.
For example, it’d be neat if the minor traits improved the tempest’s in-combat mobility, which would synergize with overloads but also work with the ele class as a whole. One potential trait would be “When you successfully evade or blind an attack, gain superspeed for 2 seconds.”
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
This is actually pretty huge.
It’s standard for the Minor Adept to just give access to the spec’s new mechanic. However, Chronomancer, Reaper, and Dragonhunter’s Master and GM minors all add something to the class as a whole, rather than just further defining the new class mechanic.
For example, Chrono’s 2d minor gives alacrity-on-interrupt, while the 3rd minor gives perma 25% movespeed and reduction to impairing conditions. These bonuses work completely separate from the new Shatter5 mechanic.
Reaper’s 2d minor gives chill on fear, and 3rd minor improves chill duration and makes chilled enemies do less dmg. These bonuses synergize with the new Shroud, but they also work completely separately, too, because necro has many other sources of chills.
Dragonhunter’s 2d minor makes it so blocking an attack maxes out your justice virtue, and the 3rd minor makes you deal more damage to enemies beyond a certain range. These also work independent of the DH’s spears virtue and longbow (although the 3rd minor obviously synergizes with the longbow).
As you pointed out, the Tempest minors just stack on to the class mechanic. They offer absolutely nothing to the rest of the class. It’d be like if the Reaper’s 2d minor gave access to Shroud skills 2+3, and the Reaper’s 3rd minor gave access to Shroud skills 4+5. Or if the chronomancer’s 2d minor let you increase the duration of Shatter5 by having more clones, while the 3rd minor let you pop Shatter5 early.
To be fair, some of the problem was probably Karl just trying to showcase certain skills rather rather than actually trying to be effective. So I wouldn’t read too much into the Svanir fight.
For example, the Warhorn Earth5 skill would be effective vs Svanir due to the pulsing blind. The tidal wave skill and the air vortex skills would be useful for knocking him behind one of the pillars (in the real map) to make it harder for the enemy to get a steal off.
The air overload sure did look worthless, though.
With queue times hovering between 5-10 minutes (sometimes even longer, although usually I give up by then), it sure would be nice if we could do stuff like duel in an arena, craft, etc.
There’s only so many structures in the Heart of the Mists that I can attempt to climb before boredom drives me out.
Could we at least try letting players queue from outside HOTM again, and see how many leavers/afks/etc. we get? I understand it was bad before, but then A.net introduced the “Ready Up” screen and the giant blaring horn sound. The Ready Up screen alone will already filter out anyone who would have been AFK due to inattentiveness (of course the intentional trolls would still get through).
Yes, there are a million threads on this already. Now there are a million and one. Please make it happen =)
I like how people complain about air and fire , but dont complain about leeching, geomancy , doom, energy … All of the sigils used are passive bullkitten not just air/fire and provide no active gameplay outside of swapping a weapon or gearing for crit chance. The whole concept is just stupid , the only thing it does it open up a little bit of build diversity, build diversity which should already be core to the game and not have to use OP sigils for anet’s horrible lack of build diversity in the 1st place.
Glad they were stealth nerfed, this passive garbage is just silly and carried way too many classes mainly thief.
Leeching and Doom have plenty of counterplay. You see the buff icon appear when your opponent swaps weapons, and if you dodge his next attack then the effect is wasted.
Energy has counterplay, too. You already count your opponent’s dodges. Just add +1 when he swaps to the weaponset w/ energy and play around that.
i find it interesting how the general consensus seems to be:
a) Tempest doesn’t offer anything new
b) don’t force me to change my old habit of rotating through elements and skills as fast as possible.those two sentiments seem to be diametrically opposed.
my opinion is that overloads are designed for those us who physically CAN’T rotate through all our elements and skills as fast as a top tier competitive D/D player. i don’t have the coordination to rapidly press so many buttons so quickly without making mistakes. i’m not a robot. overloads give ME something, not just the top tier PVP minority.
overloads lower the skill floor a little bit. elementalist were always harder to play well than warrior, ranger, etc, because the other classes weren’t as complicated. other classes’ rotations are basicaly, “use weapon a for range, use weapon b in melee” while elementalist rotations consist of “wall of text” that get real confusing real fast.
overloads allow ME to to keep up in PvE. since YOU are evade tanking the boss with your “Wall of text” rotation, i can camp a single attunement and overload for more damage than i would be able to with my slow reflexes, and therefore i can contribute more to a fight.
and honestly, i think lowering the skill floor for elementalist is more important than raising the skill ceiling right now… mainly because the top skilled pleyers tend to raise the ceiling on their own all the time anyway…
I hear what you’re saying Forgotten, and it makes sense.
But I think you might be overlooking one important thing: none of my proposed suggestions would make Tempest any less viable for you. We can raise the skill ceiling on Overload without also raising the skill floor. By balancing Overload so that it is worth using for someone who plays ele to its full potential, the skill would become even more powerful for your personal playstyle. In other words, my changes would help you contribute more to the fight. And, more importantly for the game, it would mean that eles who use Overload in PvP aren’t automatically contributing less to the fight than the current meta ele build.
I’d also like to point out that you already have a very high-damage rotation available in PvE that requires only a few keypresses: camp staff and pretty much just alternate between Fire1 and Fire2 (with Fire5 for larger targets), while using arcane blast/wave off cooldown (optional). Here’s a guide on it that was put together by one of the top PvE guilds (or so I hear, I don’t really follow PvE): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first#post3436719. The skill floor can’t get much lower than this.
And again, my suggested changes to Overload would easily streamline into the above rotation: just replace some of the Fire1 auto attacks with the overload, and try to use Overload on a lava font for the burning whirl finisher.
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
Agreed. The better change would have been to increase the CD between mantra recharges, so if you burn your mantras too quickly, you’re still stuck with a long CD. That way, there is a balancing act between burning your mantras too quickly (in which case you’re stuck with a long CD), and holding them too long (in which case you’re wasting potential recharge time).
With the current revert, you’re best off burning your mantras as quickly as possible to start the recharge process. (I.E. just interrupt the first two autoattacks for the power block dmg).
Also, the fact that CS + MOD gives you an instant ranged AOE 1.25s stun still hasn’t changed, which is really what made mesmer burst crazy strong. The current mantra change just makes it so mesmers who manage to whiff both their first 2-3 MODs will be punished. Those that don’t will still be able to get off super easy bursts with little room for counterplay.
DT won’t bait a dodge against anyone who has a clue. Even a crippled opponent can just stroll out of it. That leaves you with gale on a traited ~34s CD as your only bait skill. (Or, if you’re playing yolo S/D, then you get Earthquake + Updraft). Tying phoenix to those CDs gives you a net DPS that is way lower than what other zerker classes are capable of.
Again, try killing a bruiser class as fresh air, and then try again as mes or thief. Depending on the bruiser build/player, it might not be easy on any of those classes, but it’s a helluva lot more doable on the thief/mes because they have both burst and the sustained damage. Fresh air ele just has the burst, which gives your opponent a lot of breathing room between bursts.
Otherwise, I generally agree with what you’re saying about needing to bait dodges. The issue isn’t that. The problem as I see it is twofold. First, it’s simply inevitable that sometimes your opponent will be able to negate your phoenix. Either because they have more dodges/stunbreaks than you have baits, or because some of your stuff is on CD. When that happens, your net DPS drops so low you might as well be playing a cele ele. Mesmers, thieves, and mediguards don’t have such drastic valleys and peaks in their DPS.
Second, the very act of syncing up your phoenix with either lightning flash, or one of your dodge-bait skills like gale, further lowers your effective DPS because those skills have a long CD.
As a general rule, I think you have to know all the other builds pretty well on any burst class. Thieves need to know which key skills to blind, the timing on dodges, etc. Mesmers need to know animations well to reliably land interrupts instead of wasting them on the aftercast animations (which don’t proc interrupts), and they also need to know how other builds work well enough to know which CDs to pop and when to pop them.
A minor change A.net could make would be to change One With Air so superspeed procs on evade, which gives zerker eles a skill-based repositioning ability.
It would be cool if they gave some form of stability through tempest traits, in order to make the overloads overall more viable, since the increased cooldown is enough of a cost. We’ve been talking so much about it, that it’d be shocking for them to ignore that as they tweak things.
But it would also be shocking of them to ignore our years long plight of actually getting a good elite skill, and yet they gave us rebound which only makes other elites better, nothing more.
Rebound was basically an acknowledgment that our elites are so bad we might as well sacrifice our elite slot to reduce the cooldowns of our teammates’ elites..
Fresh Air lacks sustained damage. Your opponent can survive way longer against fresh air than he could against every meta zerker build as long he dodges your phoenix.
IMO, that’s one of the main problems with fresh air. It can wreck certain zerker specs because you can frontload a lot of instant damage in the hopes of a 100-0. But against any build with some sustain, it will take you forever to get a down if you miss just one phoenix. Mesmers and thieves don’t have this problem. Even if you dodge the mesmer’s initial shatter combo, iZerker, mirrorblade on 6s CD, and even the GS1 autoattack do enough damage to down someone.
Case in point: You can kill a bruiser ele as a mesmer or thief. As a fresh air spec, a decent F/W/A bruiser ele can survive almost indefinitely. (Ofc an E/W/A ele could probably survive forever in any 1v1 against any zerker).
All eles have for reliable damage are the fresh air procs (which, combined with Air1, basically equal the autoattack DPS of other zerker classes). Adding phoenix to that frankly isn’t enough to be threatening to non-zerker builds that know how to dodge / manage defensive CDs.
The other issue with fresh air is a lack of disengage potential, which is really what let’s thieves and mesmers shine in that role. Rather than giving zerker ele the same levels of stealth as thief/mes (which would not be thematically fitting), I think it’d make sense to improve zerker ele mobility substantially so that they can disengage that way.
Scepter air1 also needs to do more damage. It barely outdamages healing signet…
Five More Seconds…
I have a lot of respect for Phantaram, but he also used to maintain that fresh air was incredibly OP. Then I watch him play fresh air in his streams and struggle against the same players he normally destroys when he’s running cele. I think he’s a very optimistic person when it comes to new builds =)
For example, one issue with using air/fire as a cleave is that a lot of teams run guardian for res, who will automatically put up their knockback bubble when they start the res, which will interrupt your overload. Not to mention that you’ll only be able to overload if you were already sitting in fire/air, otherwise by the time you can channel it the guy will already be up. (Or, if he’s not, then that means your team was already providing enough cleave that your contribution wouldn’t have been a gamechanger either way).
And the problem with using earth when being focused is (1) you’ll have to have been in earth for 5s already; and (2) channeling earth overload means you can’t dodge, which means you’ll be eating everything that comes your way.
The warhorn skills and the shouts are entirely different topics. I’m cautiously optimistic about warhorn, and agree that the shouts suck compared to cantrips (CDs are way too long for what they offer).
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
As others have noted, ele is lacking a viable burst spec in high-level play. The main culprits are:
(1) The lack of sustained damage between each burst (Scepter Air1+2 barely outdamages healing signet on a maurauder ele vs. valk war). This means that if you don’t 100-0 the guy, you might as well leave. Mesmers and thieves can continue to add on substantial pressure.
(2) Lack of disengage for survivability. Mesmers and thieves have this via blinks and stealth. Giving ele a large number of blinks and stealths obviously would not fit the theme of the class. However, you could instead give them higher mobility (like the old RtL, or doing more with superspeed).
So here are my suggestions for how you could rework the overloads to make them worthwhile:
1) General: The amount of time you have to spend in one attunement to unlock the overload needs to be removed altogether. The whole “charge-up” theme of the temepst is already presented through the long channel times on each of the overloads, you don’t have to slap on a punitive attunement-camping requirement as well. Nothing is more punishing to an ele than requiring them to sit around in one attunement — this is why chill wrecks eles so hard.
Removing the 5s-attunement-camping requirement also opens up the possibility for combos, such as magnetic grasp into fire overload. This creates more room for interesting plays and teamwork.
2) Fire Overload: Reduce the “charge-up” time by 2 seconds, and up the damage so it provides the same cumulative effect over the 2.5s-period as it did over the kitten -period. (I.E.: same might, same burning, same damage). 2.5 seconds is more than enough time for even the slowest player to react.
For reference, churning earth has a 3.25 second cast time. Inferno currently takes longer to cast than churning earth. Sure, you do damage while casting it, but that damage is spread out over those 4.5 seconds and is low relative to what you’d be doing with your usual rotations. (See, for example, the livestream demo vs. heavy golem).
In terms of counterplay potential, any skill above a ~2s cast time already offers the maximum amount of counterplay in the sense that even beginner-level PvPers will be able to interrupt or dodge it. (For example, cone of cold has a 2.25s cast time, and it is impossible to not interrupt that skill).
3) Air Overload: Keep the 4.75s charge-up time, but make it a 900-unit, ranged target AOE with 240 radius. While charging up, lightning bolts gradually increase in intensity in the target area over the first 2s (to alert players that a bigger storm is about to hit). After the first 2s of channel time, the storm is at full power (i.e. full damage). Once it is fully charged, the storm lingers for a few more seconds (like it currently does). Making this skill a ranged attack helps to differentiate it from inferno, and it also opens up the tempest spec to non-frontline builds.
Additionally, in order to make the skill competitive against the default D/X rotations, it needs to either do substantially more damage or provide added utility (such as short dazes, occasional blinds, etc.) Remember, if the ele wasn’t sitting out for 5s to channel this storm, he’d be on the point providing aoe damage, burning, protection, healing, and condi cleansing to his team.
3) Water Overload: Increase the healing on this skill and have it clear more condis (or, to make it more worthwhile, convert condis to boons). That way, the water overload is more of a panic button that offers a burst heal + condi cleanse at the cost of sustained healing (b/c you’ll be subsequently locked out of water).
This skill is in clear need of upgrading because it’s so obviously outperformed by simply hopping in and out of water attunement every ~10-13s or so.
4) Earth Overload: During channeling, it should apply 1s immob (rather than 3s cripple) in a reduced area of effect. That way, you can use this skill to help set up bursts for your teammates (in return of putting yourself in the line of fire). Upon finishing, the skill does a knockdown instead of an immobilize.
The pulsing immobilize is really strong, but remember that you’ll be locking yourself out of earth afterwards (which means locking yourself out of AOE protection, the EA blast finisher, and, if you’re running focus, two extremely powerful skills). Also, keep in mind that during this whole 5-second period, you are doing 0 damage and are offering yourself up to be a non-dodging punching bag. Protection helps some, but an ele can still be bursted with protection up.
Basically, the earth overload needs to provide far more effect during the 5s channel time. Remember: during those whole 5 seconds, you could have been putting out damage, burning, healing, might, and protection on point. Instead, you’re currently just surfing around just pulsing some protection and cripple while you soak up AOE cleave damage.
In sum, the current overloads simply don’t justify their opportunity costs. They’re bad for the same reason tornado is a terrible elite: you’re giving up all the offensive pressure and the support that your regular D/X rotation provides in return for something that isn’t nearly as flexible or productive.
The problem with overloads right now is that a competent D/X ele will put out more AOE damage, AOE burning, AOE healing, AOE protection, AOE might, and AOE swiftness going through the default rotations than using ANY of the overloads. In other words, it is almost never worthwhile to use the overloads in their current iteration.
For reference (in case any of the devs don’t play ele much), the “default” D/D celestial rotation is something like this: Fire3, Fire2, Fire5, Fire4, Earth-EA, Earth4, Earth3, Earth2 w/ animation cancel from Earth3-chain, Water3, [insert other water skills if additional healing or frost aura is needed], Air1 until fire is ready again. [For other hardcore ele players: Yes, there are other rotations, and yes you generally want to counter what your opponent is doing rather than repeating the same rotation constantly, but let’s keep it simple for now.]
Using this rotation, you can keep up ~15 might stacks for your team. You’ll get about 3k healing and an AOE condi cleanse every ~12-13s just from healing ripple + water-EA. You’ll also get another ~1.5k from soothing mist + regen. And you’ll keep up about 40% uptime on AOE protection and swiftness for your team. Keep this in mind, because this is what you’re potentially giving up to sit in one attunement for an extra ~5s to perform an “Overload” and then to lock yourself out of that attunement for ~12-20s (depending on traits). Also, keep in mind that when you’re going through your default ele rotations, you are able to dodge to avoid key attacks and can adjust on the fly to use other skills as needed. When you overload, you’re a sitting duck. The reward from doing an overload should also factor in this level of risk.
Now let’s compare the above to what each of the overloads gives you:
- The fire overload, as shown in the dev livestream, is barely enough to take out a heavy golem in a celestial build. In fact, the golem only died at the end because it stands in the residual inferno for the entire duration. That damage is frankly pathetic. However, the fact that this one is a whirl finisher gives it some redeeming potential. You could in theory stack up a ton of burn stacks if you stand right on top of someone in a fire field while channeling this. You could also leech a fair amount of life if you stood in a dark field on top of someone, etc.
- The air overload is a lower-damage version of the fire overload without the whirl effect. For a demonstration of it’s “devastating” damage potential, look at how well it performed in the livestream against Svanir. (Note that a cele build just using the default rotations would have killed Svanir before Karl got through his second overload attempt).
- The water overload heals for less than one water rotation. It potentially cleanses more condis, but you’ll be clearing fewer condis in the long run. It also leaves you vulnerable the whole time you’re channeling it, which means you will probably take even more damage than it heals.
- The earth overload has the longest (5s) channel of them all, but at least it comes with a break bar. The skill seems great on paper, but so far I think it’s only real use will be for kiting/fleeing.
It grants 1s pulsing protection during the channel, but your overall AOE protection uptime will actually be lower, b/c the overload locks you out of your earth attunement. The protection gain from using the skill is also offset by the fact that you won’t be able to dodge, so you’re kind of just a punching bag.
The earth overload also dramatically lowers your damage output since you’re just surfing around on a rock for 5s (which btw looks awesome).
None of these overloads are worth the risk/reward, and oftentimes they’re a net loss over the default rotation you’d be going through.
[Suggestions in next post]
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
IMO the only benefit of having Mirror Blade bounce 4 times was in PvE where you have to tag mobs (and that is what mesmer is awful at and needs a buff [even outside chronomancer spec]). But hey, it’s E-SPORTS so I guess that extra random boon bounce was really breaking the PvP balance!
I’d rather they balance around PvP than around my ability to tag mobs… wouldn’t you?
Besides, you still have mantra of pain + GS3 + sword cleave + point blank AOE shatters for tagging. GS1 is also pretty good at tagging if you stowcancel. All of those options were better than mirror blade even before the nerf, because MB has a long cast time and flight time, and it could bounce to your melee teammates so the tagging was unreliable.
Any decent ele can solo melt either of the Forest NPCs, either zerker or celestial. That goes for just about every class.
The tempest overloads are just awful for damage compared to what a competent ele can do with the default rotations. They’re bad for the same reason tornado is bad: you’re almost always better off going through your default D/X rotations (which grant might, healing, protection and swiftness to allies while damaging and burning enemies) than sitting around in tornado doing a little bit of CC and damage.
Same deal with the overloads. You’ll put out more of everything doing the usual D/F rotations than you currently get from any of the overloads.
Hopefully A.net will adjust both the numbers and the functionality of the overloads. Otherwise, they’ll mostly just be gimmicks to enrage your team.
Well, they fixed the Blinding Dissipation bug. They didn’t fix CS, but reduced the burst on mirror blade and removed the background recharge on mantras. The change to mirror blade sounds good in that it will reduce the burst potential by a fair amount.
The changes to mantra recharge might just push more mesmers to play PU, though, so they can camp stealth to reset the mantra cooldowns.
The mirror blade nerf is fine. It did way too much damage for a 6-second cooldown anyway. The damage from two hits at point blank is on par with the #2 skills that many other classes have. Plus, it’s still unblockable and a decent might generator.
The changes to mantra cooldowns will have the biggest effect for the typical lockdown/shatter build, imo.
omfg. Yes, as a mesmer, I totally agree that Confounding Suggestions and Blinding Dissipation need some treeks. However, these have been covered a million times in a million different posts. People are so stupid sometimes.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein
Einstein never actually said that. The quote (which isn’t even accurate) has been variously misattributed to him, Ben Franklin, and Mark Twain.
I agree with the rest of what you wrote, though =)
The counter is to bait out the MOD, or stunbreak/port/block/invuln/weakness the follow-up burst and then counterburst. Rampage war is probably the worst counter to mesmer, since he can just moa the rampage (or blink away).
Best counters is still a well played D/P thief, who can time his blinds & mug (for weakness application + interrupt). But it’s closer to a 50/50 fight now, rather than the 90/10 it used to be.
Thieves never lost their job. They’re just not the only ones who are capable of doing it anymore.
as much as i can’t stand mesmers atm i don’t think those suggestions are good
what needs to happen is:
- shatter blind shouldn’t go through evades/dodge
- confounding suggestions should only stun when you actually interrupt something and should have decent ICD
- possibly move CS to other trait line so it has to compete with other good traits so mesmers can’t have all good things in 1
- mantras shouldn’t recharge in background as fast (arguably)
- passive phantasm 15% buff needs to be a trait again
- PU may need some adjustments in numbersThis guy gets it. And tone down shatter damage a bit.
+1, although if you made CS an “on-interrupt” trait then you could keep it where it is in all other respects (no need to increase ICD or move it around).
Increasing mantra CD isn’t a bad idea either, now that mantras recharge in the background (which imo was a good change, intended or not).
Mesmer burst was always nasty, the big change was that the guaranteed instant-cast stun from CS+MOD now makes the burst very difficult to avoid.
I’m of two minds on PU. As much as I hate the trait, mesmers who go Dom/Duel/Chaos end up with 0 condi removal, which is a pretty glaring weakness. A burnguard should have no trouble vs Dom/Duel/Chaos, since one JI + PF is enough to kill. And weakness pretty much shuts down their burst.
The Inspiration mantra mesmer is a lot more resilient, but is also a lot easier to focus down due to lack of stealth and reliance on charging mantras. Also, if you increase the CD on mantra recharge, that’d shave this build down too.