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Sagat, you completely misread what I wrote, and in doing so ended up supporting my own point. I wrote that A.net should change shadow rejuv to discourage stealth camping.
And you replied by saying that my suggestion will have the “opposite” effect because, as you eloquently put it, my change will cause thieves to be more aggressive instead of camping stealth:
It’s actually opposite if they follow your proposition you will have thieves not giving a breathing period after assault and having more burst efficiency. Thief usually get the first hit and usually are bursty power or condi so revealed and stealth up time bonus are “lengthy” in design to control us. If I start an encounter put him to 70% take a hit staying in stealth longer for more recovery instead of instant heal so I can attack again gives him time to counter play. … You’re lucky the forum doesn’t have a -1 option.
Re-read the above posts carefully. Your example supports what I wrote. You’re literally arguing against yourself.
Also, if the thief has the upper hand after his opening burst, he’s not going to camp stealth no matter what happens to Shadow Rejuv. If you’re camping stealth when you already have the upper hand, then you’re playing thief wrong. So in any event, your basic assumptions about thief gameplay are off.
In a pvp perspective, the SA buffs are not going to be a problem at all (cause you know you posted in the pvp forum so you should be thinking about pvp). If a thief takes SA he is going to screw his team over because he won’t be able to cap points effectively as he will constantly be losing caps he’s trying to defend because he’s trying to spam stealth. Only place these changes will actually have any effect on is wvw roaming (in which case this will have a large effect) but that’s for a different forum section.
Nothing to see here, just people complaining about things they don’t understand.
Current panic strike thief is 6-0-2-0-6.
Panic strike thief is one of the strongest meta builds currently.
After HoT, current meta build will have more ini, more regen, less damage while stealthed, more damage ( executioner).
Sir, you’ve no idea what you’re talking about.
This. Too many bad thief players defending SA right now, who don’t even know how thieves work and haven’t understood the HOT changes.
The buffs to SA are a straight-up buff to the meta panic strike build. You don’t have to give anything up for the bonus traits. It’s completely illogical to say that buffing a top-tier meta Conquest build is going to make it worse at Conquest.
The weakness with panic strike thief was that it was a mechanically skill-intensive build with little room for error. The HOT changes reduce these downsides by giving panic strike a huge survivability buff.
But the main issue is just that shadow rejuv is a terrible trait that promotes terrible gameplay. I’m OK with giving steal a stealth + blast finisher from the newly merged SA master trait, and having improvisation potentially recharge your heal skill now that all heal skills have a category. But shadow rejuv is just crazy dumb. At least change it to heal-on-stealth, so that it rewards thieves who are good at slipping in and out of stealth, rather than thieves who just camp stealth whenever things go downhill.
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It makes no sense that A.net labeled “on-clone-death” traits as “harmful to gameplay” in the Ready Up and then decided to buff permastealth/reset crutch traits.
A.net should just delete these traits and insert ones that don’t reward camping in stealth whenever you mess up.
An alternative solution would be to make shadow rejuv heal a fixed amount of health upon entering stealth, so SA thieves are encouraged to keep hopping in and out of stealth, which opens up counterplay.
…
Yes you can be a super tank on ele, and arguably this has been made even easier…and so what? There won’t be any more cele super tanky bruiser, you won’t be able to stack might as easily, you won’t have as much healing power to boost SoR.Yes you can still be tanky…and so what?. They removed healing power…no more 276 SoR, do you understand?.
Yes you can tank dmg, trigger frost aura, elementasl shielding…whatever…then what?
You have no enough freaking healing power to recover, do you understand?Yes you go now in game and buff yourself to 9000 toughness(random number), you then absorb that 10k hit like nothing…then what? You can’t recover for it, you’ll go down in 4-kittens anyway, so your 9000 toughness serves no purpose, you have nothing to back it up.
Right now a cele bruiser can recover indefinitely while being tanky, do you understand?
If you read the above posts more carefully, you’ll see that you aren’t disagreeing with anything I’ve actually written. You’re misreading what I’ve written and then arguing against your own misinterpretations.
You’re logic re: sustain is also fundamentally confused. Sustain is a function of both healing and defense. This means that nerfing healing while buffing defense doesn’t necessarily result in a survivability nerf, unless you literally nerf healing to 0 health per second (which obviously isn’t happening). So you’re completely wrong about that.
As a really basic, simplified example: if you can heal 100 HP/sec, and your combination of armor/dodges/etc. is high enough that you only receive on average 100 Dmg/sec, then you could sustain indefinitely. If we nerf your healing to 50 HP/sec, but increase your defenses so you only receive on average 50 Dmg/sec, then you can still sustain indefinitely.
In any event, I think you basically understand the point:
Supreme.3164
This is not a matter of nerf of buff, I don’t know why you’re so hung up on geomancer defense, yes Everybody understand that the trait is a passive defensive trait.You keep saying that this trait alone will make eles even more tanky than now with a more passive playstyle, if you take a look at other professions..you’d see that they won’t be that much harder to play either( especially engi and warrior).
Yes you can be a super tank on ele, and arguably this has been made even easier…and so what?
Right! The changes are making the ele more passive. You’re apparently totally happy about that, which is fine. I’m not going to attack your preferences.
But not everyone shares your preferences. The fact that you think some other classes will be equally passive is irrelevant. Many of the posters in this thread enjoyed playing Ele because it was on average a more active class compared to, say, many warrior builds (but definitely not all warrior builds). And as you now recognize, these changes make ele more similar to warrior in terms of passive defense, which makes the class less fun for people who prefer the more active playstyle.
(Also, engie is a very active class, so I’m not sure where you’re coming from . . . unless you’re running turrets. And the HOT changes are making engie even more active — we should have a similar playstyle change for ele).
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You’re assuming that geomancer defense will make up for the loss in direct healing, you’re assuming that ele survivability will be easier to achieve….you’re assuming and you have no numbers.
You don’t know by how much the dmg in game overall will increase and neither by how much the loss in vitality and healing will affect the ele, so I don’t see how you state that ele sustain will increase, or rather become worst for the opponent to deal with.
To put this in numbers:
If a 5k dmg source reachs an ele with current dmg reduction of 33%+500 healing, then the total dmg received in the end will, let’s say, 2k with the current level of HP, which is 18k HP, the dmg can be easily overshadowedAfter the changes that dmg source will increase ( zerker stats increase, professions able to stack several dmg traits : thieves-mesmer-war) while the ele healing will be reduced by more than half, vitality will decrease by 20% more or less and only dmg reduction will increase by 20%
At this stage it is safe to assume that more than everything the survival will remain more or less the same, because in terms of numbers I don’t see how it’s possible for that 20% alone to make up for loss in healing and vitality against increased dmg, therefore I don’t see how the situation could potentially get worst as you seem to imply
Maybe it’s a language barrier, but I feel like we might be speaking past each other.
I’m not assuming anything, I was using your own assumptions about survivability. You’re the one throwing in numbers — I’m just going along with it because there’s no point arguing specific numbers at this early stage.
You wrote:
Supreme.3164:
There is a drop in passive sustain, now hoping that geomancer defense remains as it is ( it could still be nerfed mind you), then the oveall survivability of the ele will remain mostly the same…..but it won’t increase in terms of passive play ( this also because you can’t hope to use Stone heart passively)
(Underlining added for clarity)
So I used your own assumptions when I replied:
ResJudicator.7916:
So they decrease sustain via healing — which was semi-passive — and increase sustain via geomancer defense and soothing ice, which is pure passive. I don’t get how you go from there to saying that the overall survivability of ele will stay the same but won’t increase in terms of passive play.
I’m structuring my argument around your assumptions in order to be constructive. Otherwise, we’d just be arguing about who’s assumptions are right. Your latest post makes the following assumption:
At this stage it is safe to assume that more than everything the survival will remain more or less the same
This assumption again perfectly supports my point, which I’ll repeat again for clarity:
ResJudicator.7916
So they decrease sustain via healing — which was semi-passive — and increase sustain via geomancer defense and soothing ice, which is pure passive. I don’t get how you go from there to saying that the overall survivability of ele will stay the same but won’t increase in terms of passive play.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what assumptions you want to use. The whole active vs. passive trait discussion is separate from whether the changes end up being a net buff or nerf to sustain. Because, as you now recognize, we don’t know how the numbers will pan out. As I stated in one of my previous responses:
Also, separate from the whole “is this a nerf or a buff” discussion — which will change drastically depending on what the ICD for Soothing Ice is set to — the proposed HOT changes are reducing the fun, active traits that ele has, and adding in more passive traits.
So you can see that I’m not making any of my own assumptions about whether the ele is getting a net nerf or buff. It doesn’t matter.
The issue pretty much boils down to this: would you rather play a build that rewards careful positioning and timing on dodges and attunement swaps? Or would you rather play a build that has built-in passive damage reduction? At this point, no one knows which build will be stronger b/c we don’t know how the numbers will pan out. But just in terms of fun, which playstyle would you prefer? (This is a gross oversimplification, but it gets the point across)
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I think ele will become more harder to play because the room for error will decrease in size, I believe that healing/sustain is the biggest contributor to ele sustain, all of which will be greatly reduced once the changes kick in.
I use numbers to formulate opinions, and the numbers are these:
-Current d/d ele: SoR 276 + regen healing at 1500 + 18K Hp ( 300 healing power/vitality + 30% boon duration)
-Future d/d ele: SoR 232 +regen healing at 900 + 15k HP (boon duration for now gone, no more 300 healing/vitality)
There is a drop in passive sustain, now hoping that geomancer defense remains as it is ( it could still be nerfed mind you), then the oveall survivability of the ele will remain mostly the same…..but it won’t increase in terms of passive play ( this also because you can’t hope to use Stone heart passively)
So they decrease sustain via healing — which was semi-passive — and increase sustain via geomancer defense and soothing ice, which is pure passive. I don’t get how you go from there to saying that the overall survivability of ele will stay the same but won’t increase in terms of passive play.
At least you can CC and apply poison to reduce healing. Unless you’re a ranged class, there’s nothing to be done about geo defense or soothing ice. You’re right that the stone heart trait isn’t purely passive, but it definitely isn’t more active than the current ele playstyle.
What do you currently do when you know you’re about to eat a burst that, for whatever reason, you can’t avoid? You pop earth for protection or pop an aura for protection.
What will you do with the new build? You pop earth for stone heart, or pop an aura for protection. The same in terms of active vs. passive. Except now you also just eat the burst at -20% dmg from Geo Defense, and hope that the first crit procs soothing ice + elemental shielding, so you get another ~43% dmg reduction for doing nothing -- the definition of passive.
one with air was always the same way – superspeed when attuning to air. nobody took it because 1s was not useful enough so what they did with it now is pretty good.
Again, my suggestion was to make One With Air trigger when you evade an attack, not when you attune to air, and to make it a Minor to replace Zephyr’s Speed. It’s completely different from the old One With Air that no one took.
An “on successful dodge” trigger can potentially occur more frequently, but requires more skill to pull off. The trigger also fits with the theme of the trait: dodge an attack, and you get a temporary burst of speed to reposition yourself. The nerf to duration is to compensate for the trait being made a minor.
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You forget they’re removing the stats from the trait lines, no more healing power and vitality from going 30 water, no more 30% boon duration from going 30 arcana and celestial is getting nerfed by 10%.
Between the buffs and nerfs, I think the 10% overal nerf will remain, assuming the remaining stats will come from buffed runes then we’re looking at a cele ele with :
-15k Hp
-1.3k toughness
-300+ healing power = SoR healing for 230 Hp for second, respect to 276 like nowRest would depends on rune set that you chose, but as base I don’t see the current cele ele make a return, want a tanky or power cele? Well any of the two won’t have huge sustain with SoR alone so you won’t be face tanking anything in the end.
You can’t facetank anything with toughness/protection alone and that will be the case with the upcoming changes, by the way facetanking for me means to simply eat all dmg you receive without flinching and that something not even current cele ele can really do at 100%
I think you misinterpreted my post, or maybe I wasn’t clear. You suggested earlier that these changes would make ele require more skill to play. I explained why that’s not the case.
For example, you specifically stated that your duels with a D/D ele (presumably a bruiser ele) would last indefinitely even if the other ele ate 5-6 burning speeds (i.e. “facetanking”). You then suggested that this won’t be the case with the HOT changes. I’m explaining to you that even with the HOT changes to ele traits, you’ll still run into the problem you described because of geo defense and soothing ice. The only difference now is the ele bruiser playstyle will become even more passive.
Edit: For your convenience, here’s the post I was referring to:
Look I’m an ele main and I have been fighting my fair share of d/d eles who survive solely because of the trait set up, if you go tank you should be allowed to survive yes….but not survive indefinitely regardless of the number of mistakes you do.
Between 2 eles if one takes 5-6 burning speed in his face, the match should end already, it shouldn’t go one forever because the skill difference has already been established, one waste dodges because he can, the other save his dodges, the latter should be rewarded with victory
Again, the point is that the new traits won’t prevent what you just described from happening. If anything, it’ll make it worse because there’s even less counterplay to a trait that passively reduces damage and a trait that procs frost aura when crit.
In your latest response, you’re saying that eles can’t literally sit still and eat every single attack thrown at them. Of course they can’t. I know you were exaggerating when you said an ele could eat 5-6 burning speeds in a row. My use of the word “facetanking” was also hyperbolic. But its an appropriate way to describe a build that revolves around getting hit to proc auras + protection (either via soothing ice or flame barrier w/ ele shielding) while also relying on geo defense’s passive 20% dmg reduction.
Next, your point about A.net nerfing celestial stats — which we’re already aware of because the devs made a post about it — has nothing to do with whether changes to ele bruiser traits will make ele more or less skill-based. The playstyle will remain the same regardless of the amulet stats. The only difference is how effective the overall build would be. If celestial turns out to be a bad choice stat-wise, maybe bruiser eles will go back to valkyrie or cleric. Either way, the trait changes favor a more passive playstyle.
Also, if you watched the Ready Up, A.net didn’t say they’re removing boon duration and condi duration. They indicated that they haven’t figured out what they plan on doing with those stats yet. So any speculation about how those stats will play out is a bit premature.
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To lose “perma” is vigor is not a problem at all….because it should have not be allowed in the first place.
Look I’m an ele main and I have been fighting my fair share of d/d eles who survive solely because of the trait set up, if you go tank you should be allowed to survive yes….but not survive indefinitely regardless of the number of mistakes you do.
Between 2 eles if one takes 5-6 burning speed in his face, the match should end already, it shouldn’t go one forever because the skill difference has already been established, one waste dodges because he can, the other save his dodges, the latter should be rewarded with victory
If this would be allowed then the would be no point for any player to try and attempt to improve himself.
I believe this is what Anet think also, reason why feline grace was nerfed, so unskilled thieves can’t survive by simply dodging ghosts
Er, just to be clear, D/D eles will not lose perma vigor because they can still go earth/water/arcana. And the reason your D/D vs D/D ele duels go on forever is because both of you chose to play a bunkery-spec. A fresh air d/f zerker ele can take out a celestial d/d ele pretty quickly.
Glass ele builds will still want vigor for the same reason mesmers and acro thieves want vigor — they need to avoid damage to survive. In any event, most glass ele builds will still have to go arcana because it offers the most reliable access to fury, so they’ll be picking up arcana anyway.
The idea that bruiser D/D eles will suddenly require skill to play well seems wildly incorrect to me.
Due to the new water/earth traits & synergies, bruiser celestial eles will become way more tanky. On top of that, all of their tankiness will become passive.
Currently, a d/d ele needs to time his earth attune and usage of auras to gain and maintain protection. With the proposed HOT changes, the ele will just facetank damage with a passive 20% damage reduction and passively triggered frost auras (which grant more protection), and elemental contingency passively triggering more buffs.
Also, eles can take written in stone to be able to spam their heal signet every 16s (which works out to more HPS than evasive arcana), without having to burn a dodge (but at least it is interruptible). Or heart of stone to just be immune to crits while in earth.
All this means that “bruiser” D/D ele builds (like the current celestial D/D build) will still be able to recover from a lot of mistakes — just like every other bruiser build. All the proposed HOT do is make the build even easier to play.
Also, separate from the whole “is this a nerf or a buff” discussion — which will change drastically depending on what the ICD for Soothing Ice is set to — the proposed HOT changes are reducing the fun, active traits that ele has, and adding in more passive traits. Timing evasive arcana and elemental attunement, and placing your dodge rolls correctly, in order to best benefit your teammates was fun. Air-dodge-rolling to blind a downed body to give your ally a safestomp was an interesting mechanic. Being able to just passively soak more damage doesn’t seem fun to me. I might as well just play a warrior in that case.
So separate from all the “nerf/buff” discussions, I would love if A.net retooled some of the traits to be more skill-based. Here are some examples:
Make “One With Air” a minor trait and make it trigger only when you successfully dodge an attack while in air (with a 1s duration or so). So when you dodge an attack, you get to briefly reposition yourself.
Make air training give you a stacking dmg boost and CD reduction (for air skills) each time you cause an enemy to miss via blind or dodge.
Give the fire adept minor trait a more active trigger for applying flame aura, such as a chance to trigger when you damage an enemy that is suffering from burning.
You are listing attributes to professions that need to have, quite literally, all tree’s maxed to obtain. Thief stealth burst and evades? Last I checked it’s one (acrobat) or the other(executioner/panic strike). Guard having long duration/consistent ones along with burst also doesn’t exist since you need to pick one or the other.
These are just some examples of classes NEEDING to have every line maxed out (which is impossible) whereas the Elementalist obtains CC, Sustain, Pressure and boon application within 3 lines.
What? He’s just describing the current meta panic strike build. 6 Deadly Arts, 2 Shadow Arts, 6 Trickery. With the new specialization system, that will be 6 Deadly Arts, 6 Shadow Arts, 6 Trickery. The build won’t lose anything. It picks up a free 5% dagger damage because dagger training is becoming baseline. It also picks up improved shadow arts traits for significantly better sustain and disengage. Oh yeah, improvisation will now have a chance to instantly recharge healing skills.
And if you look at shatter mesmers, the master and grandmaster traits they used to take in the illusion line (elasticity and IP) are being made baseline. That’s huge! You can go Dom/Dueling/Chaos now to get the benefits of both shatter and interrupt, which I actually support because of the high skill ceiling. But it’s another counter to what you just described.
Your whole argument about having to max out traitlines is inapplicable to the new specialization system. Every class will need to choose 3 specs, which will be fully maxed out. If you’re suggesting that eles can get access to everything with just 3 traitlines, then you need to take another look at the above posts and the ready up preview.
With regards to the Evasive Arcana v. Elemental Attunement issue, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that the Ele is the only class whose class mechanic doesn’t actually confer an inherent advantage (or at least not a large one). All attunements do at baseline is to give eles access to more weapon skills, and the ele’s weapon skills have all been balanced around this (i.e. slightly toned down).
In comparison, shatters give mesmers 4 additional skills which, with IP baseline, are now pretty strong even without any traits. Death shroud gives necros more skills + a second HP bar. Etc.
Making elemental attunement baseline makes the ele attunement swapping actually do something valuable as a baseline, which helps establish some parity in this regard.
I don’t see the problem, the ele was always supposed to be jack of all trades and master of none, you can’t expect ele to be superior to a specialized build when ele can fill decently any role at any given time.
With ele you can 1vs1, support and hold point..all with the same build,the shout warrior mostly has no stunbreakers and does not excel in 1vs1 like an ele can.
A fare trade off
Ele fresh air is an incredibly specialized role. It’s taking a huge hit, both in absolute terms and relative to other roaming burst classes.
The ele “bruiser” role is getting an overall passive survivability buff.
So the problem is that what’s actually going to happen is the opposite of what you’re saying.
Well, I definitely don’t agree with Zephyr’s speed being good, it’s pretty worthless. I would like too see some change there, too.
Also, they did say that Soothing Ice will have lower duration.
Keep in mind, I didn’t expressly say they are good, I simply said they are fine as they are. Could they use a slight boost? Sure
Are they absolutely worthess? NoAnd on Soothing Ice, I can’t stress enough how broken it would be to give a player a Frost Aura every 10s, no matter the duration. This is potentially an AoE Frost Aura + 3s Protection + 5s Fury + 5s Swiftness, every 10s. Any sort of Aura effect with that low of an ICD like this would be way too strong.
To get that synergy, you’d have to go air/water/earth. So you’d completely give up on Arcana, which means:
- No Renewing Stamina (for vigor),
- No Elemental Attunement,
- No Elemental Contingency, and
- No Fury-On-Attunement.
So the Soothing Ice synergy actually ends up with LESS overall AOE protection and swiftness uptime than arcana (bc elemental attunement is ~6.5s of each every 9s), and in return it gives a little bit more AOE fury uptime (but it wouldn’t be on-demand fury). Soothing Ice also requires you to be crit every 10s to ensure maximum uptime. So the on-aura effect synergy isn’t too OP considering what you’re giving up.
The frost aura itself is very strong, though, because it chills attackers and gives an additional +10% damage resist. That would have to be balanced duration-wise. I think the better course of action is to make it a GM trait (with current duration) so it competes with powerful auras. Or at least a master trait (with reduced duration) so it competes with soothing disruption (your other source of vigor + regen).
Overall the ele takes a buff to passive defense with geo defense (earth GM minor), and with soothing ice (water adept minor) + elemental shielding (earth minor). In return, ele gives up active defense (choosing between elemental attunement or evasive arcana).
Fresh air eles take a huge hit to damage due to air mastery being nerfed to +10% crit damage (rather than +10% pure damage), and bolt to the heart being moved to GM major. The air adept minor trait is still complete garbage. Some people are saying that Fresh Air ele can now be a lot more tanky by going air/earth/water, but I don’t think that’d actually work out. You’d give up fury-on-attune, which is absolutely crucial to fresh air ele (less crits = less sigil procs & fresh air procs & less air mastery damage). You’d also give up vigor and elemental attunement (which gives more protection than the current soothing ice + elemental shielding synergy). In return, you get a passive 20% dmg reduction within 600 range (worse than protection), stone heart(?) (doesn’t synergize with fresh air since you don’t want to camp earth), and lower earth CD (which is helpful, but probably not worth the above sacrifices).
It seems kinda weird that mesmer (IP), ranger (RtW), and engineer (grenadier’s 3 grenades) had GM traits made baseline because they were considered integral or too powerful. In comparison ele instead has a master trait bumped up to grandmaster, so you’re basically asking the ele to eliminate one (or both) of his core traits.
I think the new changes pidgeonhole ele into a more passive bruiser build. You’re making D/D eles choose between evasive arcana or elemental attunement, both of which are active, fun traits to use. In return, you give them passive buffs to survivability via elemental contingency, soothing ice, and geo defense. Overall, it’ll probably work out to a net survivability buff, but I wish the buffs rewarded active play instead. (Give us some powerful “on successful evade” and “on successful blind/block” traits!).
Some suggestions:
- Make “One With Air” a minor trait, and make it trigger on “Successful Evade,” with a duration of 1s. (Dodge an attack => get to reposition yourself). Zephyr’s Speed is 100% worthless. Add new air adept that converts power to precision or something.
- Make elemental attunement baseline, but nerf the boon uptime, or make it self-only. Make lingering elements restore elemental attunement to current functionality.
- Soothing Ice is probably strong enough to be a master or GM trait, especially given how well it synergizes with Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding. I’d swap it with bountiful power. So now you can choose between giving yourself more auras, or being able to give allies auras via powerful auras, or cleansing water.
- Revert air training damage nerf.
- Flame barrier (fire adept minor) should just give you a fire aura on attune, or give you a fire aura when you apply burning. The 20% chance on hit is too random and basically requires that you camp around in fire.
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you will go 06660 with fresh air with maybe energy sigil instead of fire to make up for the vigour.
shielding in earth, reduced earth cooldown for 40s cd invul and the no crit trait.
the minor gm trait is a perm 20% damage reduction, with stone heart it makes up for elemental attunement pretty well.soothing ice in water, cleansing wave and either cleansing water (scep 3 in water gives regen) or the new 2% dmg per boon trait depending on how many boons you have with this build.
one with air (is 3s now instead of 1s) which will be huge for kiting, tempest defense which is a counter burst and very good against sleight of hand steal, and fresh air ofc.
the build will lose damage, that’s for sure, but gains a lot more survivability. idk if i like it or not, will have to test.
So you give up fury-on-attune, which is a HUGE DPS loss. Especially if you factor in the nerf to air mastery so that it’s +10% crit damage rather than +10% pure damage. No fury = fewer crits = fewer sigil procs & less dmg from air mastery.
You could still get fury with Zephyr’s Boon and facetanking hits with Soothing Ice, but that only gives you 50% fury uptime, is purely passive so you have no control over it, and it relies on you taking hits, which is completely counter to how FA works. Scepter blinds, focus reflects/blocks/obsidian are all designed to avoid taking hits.
Zephyr’s Boon also competes with One With Air, so you’d give up fury completely if you went with the temporary superspeed. S/F Fresh Air will pretty much be limited to taking out other yolo glass-cannon players. Everyone else will just have to dodge phoenix and they’ll then be able to facetank the rest of the damage.
In return for giving up all that damage, and giving up vigor, swiftness-on-attune, and protection-on-attune (~60% uptime), you can get reduced CD on earth skills and stone heart. (You also get protection when hit (Soothing Ice + Elemental Shielding) at currently a 30% uptime, but that’s worse than elemental attunement.) Stone heart doesn’t synergize well with fresh air because the idea is to pop into earth for the protection + use key skills, then immediately pop back into air. And if you want to kite via One With Air, you’d need to pop back into air anyway.
All the other classes’ zerker builds got significant increases to both damage AND survivability. For example, IP and illusionary elasticity was made baseline for mesmers, and halting strike was merged with power block. Dagger training made baseline for thieves, and the current meta panic strike build doesn’t have to give up anything, but gets free and improved SA skills for survivability. And the ranger’s read the wind trait essentially made baseline. Mesmers and power rangers had build-defining GM traits made baseline — which is actually great, but the same should have been done for fresh air ele.
Fresh Air was definitely viable, but slightly less optimal than panic strike thief or shatter mesmer. All it needed was a slight bump in disengage potential and a slight increase to the sustained pressure. Instead, it takes a huge hit to damage in return for a passive, net increase to its face-tanking potential, which means you might as well just play a bruiser.
Also, the new ele skills in general seem very passive, which is unfortunate. I think the new spec system might be a net buff to BRUISER eles (not Fresh Air, that’s for sure), but a lot of the trait synergies revolve around letting you just facetank damage more easily.
I think a lot of people originally gravitated towards ele for the more active playstyle, and a lot of that active play revolved around swapping attunements at the right times to proc fury and defensive boons and maximizing usage of evasive arcana. Those two skills also had clear drawbacks that you had to balance: you can swap to earth for the protection, but you’ll lock yourself out of your current attunement for ~9s; you can dodge roll and swap to water to heal a teammate, but you’ll burn a dodge and lock yourself out of your current attunement.
The “auramancer” direction that eles are going in just revolves around getting hit to proc various defensive effects, and reducing the amount of damage you take via Geo Defense. As a separate issue of whether or not these changes are a net buff, I think they definitely nerf some of the “fun” factor of eles for me.
I would personally appreciate it if eles also had some powerful trait effects that were tied to things like “successfully blind an attack” or “successfully evade an attack.” Also, EA should just be baseline the way Illusionary Persona was made baseline. Then nerf the protection uptime from EA.
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What ppl seem to be missing that you no longer need to go into Arcana at all. So we may see the 6 air 6 earth 6 water d/d dream! My money is on 4 air 6 earth 6 water 2 ar just for the vigor on crits.
That’s unfortunately incorrect. You now have to choose 3 and only 3 specializations (i.e. traitlines). So you can go fire/water/air, for example, or fire/water/earth. Each traitline will be maxed out.
What you can’t do is allocate trait points to more than three trees. You won’t be able to go 0-4-6-6-2, or 2-6-6-2-2, for example.
If we’re talking about condi necro, that will probably depend on how A.net handles the +condi duration stat.
Don’t forget that improvisation will also be able to recharge thief heals, since the heals will now be tricks/deception/whatever.
A lot of people are saying that you don’t need to go arcana now. That’s probably true. But keep in mind what you’re losing if you drop arcana:
- No more permavigor, which was a huge part of ele survivability.
- No more permafury. The only way to get fury now will be to activate an aura with zephyr’s boon (which will require going into air). This might actually be a pretty huge DPS loss, since a lot of fresh air play revolves around not getting hit (swirling winds, reflect, obsidian flesh, etc.), which means you won’t get much benefit from the “when crit: gain frost aura” trait. You can trait for fire auras when attuning to fire, but that will just give you ~50% fury uptime and it won’t sync up with Fresh Air double-lightning burst. (It also means you’d have to drop either water or earth, which hurts your defense a lot).
- No elemental attunement, which gives you the on-demand protection (and maintains ~60% protection uptime by itself). Also removes the on-demand swiftness (unless you run staff or take glyph heal).
You can see that scepter zerker fresh air probably gets hit the hardest if you skip arcana, due to issues with fury generation. This problem is compounded by the fact that air mastery is getting nerfed to apply +10% crit dmg rather than +10% overall dmg (so a lower precision drops your DPS even more than before).
Brawler eles can probably skip arcana altogether and just rely on soaking hits, and wearing people down with attrition. And the new synergies between fire/air/water/earth will allow for some pretty nasty brawler builds. A.net obviously wants auramancer to be a thing, and I can see it being the new attrition build, esp. now that burning will stack in intensity.
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Ele celestial brawler builds probably got a net buff due to geo defense and the frost aura on hit trait synergizing with elemental shielding, as well as burning stacking in intensity. But it’s definitely a buff that was counterbalanced by a substantial nerf from moving elemental attunement to GM. If you ignore arcana, then you give up on the permavigor, which is a huge survivability nerf.
Ele fresh air looks like it might have taken a hit in terms of DPS: nerf to air mastery dmg and can’t take bolt to the heart anymore. It will probably become more survivable due to the water+earth tree synergies, but at that point I feel like you might as well play a brawler/attrition build.
Also, if you skip arcana, you lose out on the permavigor, which is pretty huge.
You’ll also lose out on permafury. The only other way to get fury will be via Zephyr’s Boon, which you’ll want to combo with either the water adept “on crit: gain frost aura” trait, or the fire line. If you go with water, you’ll have to rely on being hit with crits to generate fury, which doesn’t synergize well with a fresh air zerker build. If you go with fire and fresh air, then you’ll only be able to get 50% fury uptime, and the fury gain won’t sync up with the double-lightning-strike. The loss of fury hurts extra hard due to Air Mastery being nerfed from +10% damage to +10% crit damage.
Other classes’ zerker builds appear to have gotten substantial buffs to offense and/or defense, without giving up much if anything:
Power ranger can now get all the longbow bonuses (+range, +velocity, +attack speed, and piercing) in addition to more damage modifiers. Decoupling traits from stats means that they can go into wilderness survival for dmg bonuses + survivability traits, rather than skirmishing.
Panic strike D/P thief gets the bonus dagger damage trait as baseline, on top of the crazy survivability from being able to max out shadow art for free (currently, they just take shadow’s embrace). This results in -50% dmg reduction in stealth, ~390hps in stealth + bonus initiative regen in stealth (shadow rejuv), steal applies aoe stealth and aoe blinds (master trait). Buff to improv = double ectoplasm, and has a chance to instantly recharge your heal skill for even more survivability. Or can take executioner as part of build now. They’ve literally given up nothing.
Both shatter and interrupt mesmers benefit from a lot of their key traits being merged and IP becoming baseline. A lot of the new mesmer traits are mechanically pretty neat, though, so no complaints here.
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Your complaint makes no sense. Pre-patch mesmers took Illusion for deceptive evasion. And according to you, post-patch mesmers will all take Illusion for deceptive evasion. There’s no difference. You don’t have trait points anymore, so now it’s just about choosing which 3 trees you want to use.
I assume they’ll tweak the numbers, especially on bolt to the heart. Although I have a hard time seeing it compete with either fresh air or lightning rod unless both the bonus damage and trigger points are substantially improved.
Making eles choose between evasive arcana and elemental attunement does sound like a pretty big nerf. I think the motivating fear was water/earth/arcana celestial eles becoming too strong, but I think that fear is mitigated by all the damage buffs the other classes are getting (either via improved damage/condi traits, or improved CD baseline effects and traits).
Yeah we’ll see about that when the changes roll out, clearly the reason why d/d cele is favored over glass cannon scepter ele is just a playstyle preference, not the fact ele drops down faster than a prom dress under group focus fire let alone a single thief sneezing at them after an engineer/necro has casually softened up with aoe.
The current fresh air ele cannot use fresh air-stone heart and cleansing water while keeping a 10s CD attunement recharge.
The current fresh air hasn’t got the chance to use tempest defense and combo it with elemental shielding, and he hasn’t got geomancer defense….and definitely hasn’t got stop drop and roll in adept
But above everything, the current ele is forced to go 30 arcana to reduce attunement recharge..and that’s all gone
Fresh air didn’t need 30 arcana to begin with — 0/6/0/4/4 and 6/6/0/0/2 were both viable. In any event, if you give up the arcana line, you lose out on one of FA’s main sources of fury (on attunement swap), as well as Protection on earth-attunement (from elemental attunement), and vigor (renewing stamina).
You can make up for the loss of fury by going Air/Earth/Water to get synergy going with Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, and the new Soothing Ice adept that gives frost aura on being crit (which is way better than your recommendation of stop, drop, and roll), although that synergy conflicts a bit with stone heart (immune to crits while in earth). Your recommendation of tempest defense also gives up the +dmg from air, which doesn’t seem worth it (esp. now that air mastery also reduces recharge on your air skills). You also lose out on bolt to the heart since it competes with fresh air.
So overall, your new build loses 10% – 30% dmg, vigor, elemental attunement, and perma-fury. In return, you possibly get an overall increase to survivability with the new geomancer’s defense, cleansing water, and geomancer’s alacrity (lower obsidian flesh CD and reflect CD).
Obviously it’s too early to debate whether or not the tradeoff is worth it. The point is that there is a clear tradeoff. The Thief’s SA buffs, on the other hand, map perfectly onto the meta panic strike build — no sacrifices necessary. It’s just a straight up buff to the thief’s disengage ability.
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“Even with the buffs to other classes”.
You wrote that after seeing 3 classes. You have no idea how it all balances out. Wait until you have the full picture and then discuss.
We’ve already seen the ele changes, so we can at least compare against fresh air ele. Once they go over the changes to the other classes, feel free to chime in.
Note that I never claimed that thieves would for sure be OP, I made it pretty clear in my post that I was speculating.
It will be the new engie spec that uses shouts to control all the flying turrets.
Shout #1 “Protect Me” — Causes your turrets to knock back and damage enemies .
Shout #2 “Sic ’Em” — Causes your turrets to knock back and damage enemies.
Shout #3 “Guard” — Causes your turrets to knock back and damage enemies.
Shout #4 “Stand Your Ground” — Causes turrets to knock back and damage enemies.
You get the idea.
I know SA thieves aren’t really a thing in PvP, but HOT will now let panic strike thieves max out SA for free (every class gets 3 GM traits now). This means panic strike builds can now pick up shadow rejuv for free, rather than just taking shadow’s embrace, and also take one of the new master traits.
From today’s Ready Up, Shadow Rejuv now restores initiative in addition to health while stealthed. (They merged Patience into Shadow Rejuv). Furthermore, the one of the SA minor traits now gives you 50% damage reduction while stealthed. So stealthed thieves now have 50% dmg resist, increased initiative regen, AND a healing signet.
But wait, there’s more! One of the new SA master traits combines the “Blind on stealth” with “stealth on steal” traits, so now everytime you steal, you gain stealth and do an AOE blind.
This means that, even you interrupt a thief’s BP+HS combo and catch the thief without any stunbreaks, the thief can just use steal to immediately blind you + go into stealth (for hp + regen upgrade) + gain 50% damage reduction + [all the usual trickery tree bonuses: mug dmg+heal, daze, boon steal, thrill of crime buffs].
Does this seem a little over the top to anyone? Forcing a thief to burn his CCs and then interrupting his stealth was one of the few ways for mesmers to take out thieves. And phoenix-bombing thieves while they were in stealth was pretty key for fresh air eles.
Even with the buffs to other classes, the proposed overall changes to shadow arts seem like they’ll put panic strike thieves even more over the top when fighting other zerker specs.
The only reason Shadow Arts was not “viable” in PvP was because thieves needed either Deadly Arts or Crit Strikes for damage, and because Sleight of Hand was too good. So there wasn’t any room for Shadow Arts in the competitive builds. But with HOT’s new trait system, this will no longer be the case.
Edit: Just to clarify, A.net said in the Ready Up that they’re sharing their proposed buffs/nerfs/changes ahead of time so that we can discuss them. So I don’t think it’s out of line to start discussing how some of these changes might play out, even though they haven’t actually been implemented yet.
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Using your above player-skill distribution, there really isn’t any way to create a “fair” matchup. If you balance the MMRs on each team, then we run into the problem you described. But if we give the high MMR player more of the better teammates, then it becomes unfair for the other team.
I think the only way to fix this would be to reduce the maximum MMR variance allowed in games, such that a “10” would never be in the same match as a “1,” but would only queue with 7+’s. But that leads to longer queue times unless we increase the PvP population.
Not a bug.
Sounds like you got hit with the 15pt Air minor trait (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Electric_Discharge), which can fire behind the Elementalist. The discharge then procced a superior sigil of fire, which shows up as a flame blast in your combat log. (The Staff fire3 flame burst skill does negligible power damage).
I know you’re trolling, but I’m not sure you’re familiar with fresh air builds if you think they go full defense. The whole build is defined by putting 6 pts into air (precision/ferocity). Even the tankiest variant puts at most 4 pts into water, which offers less defense than an interrupt mesmer putting 6 into chaos for CI.
Fresh air SF is viable (but not optimal) in sPvP. The only real issue with the build is that, while the burst is extreme, the sustained damage is actually not great for a zerker build compared to the defense you give up. So fresh air potentially ends up taking longer than D/D cele to down certain tanky builds.
Only real problem I’ve encountered running fresh air in WvW (either 06026 or 66002 yolo) is the skill lag. Fresh air is extremely unforgiving, and WvW lag can really mess you up. At least for me, sometimes in WvW my skills don’t go off when I press the corresponding hotkey. Having phoenix or stone flesh not activate at the precise moment you want it to often means the difference between victory or defeat.
In contrast, most of the other WvW roaming builds are extremely forgiving and don’t suffer nearly as much from lag: PU mesmer clones continue to attack no matter what the player is doing, warriors are naturally tanky + often have the passive endure pain proc to cover up mistakes, most thief builds can reset fights at will, etc.
But if you aren’t experiencing these lag issues in WvW, then fresh air works fairly well there. You can wreck PD condi thieves, which many other builds struggle against.
Clearly this guy has studies Sun Tzu, and you have not :p
…
You engaged, you were forced to retreat, you’ve been utterly frustrated. He knew his approach going into it and you played right into him. He was in control the entire time, and you didn’t find a suitable counter to achieve your own goal.
To be fair, it sounds like the other mesmer was the one that was constantly retreating, so I’m not sure he was doing any “outplaying.”
To the OP, there are a number of players who run very easy-to-use, survival-oriented builds and play extremely conservatively. As a general rule, their entire playstyle/build is set up so that they don’t die unless they get ganked or completely kitten . The flip side is that they generally can’t accomplish anything besides troll you because their damage is low. When you fight them in the open field with no objectives or goals in mind besides to kill them, you’re playing into their one and only strength.
My advice would be to ignore those players in casual roaming fights, and instead focus on taking some objective to help your team. People running those builds generally won’t be able to stop you from killing a yak or capping a supply camp because their builds rely on constantly running away and resetting the fight (and more often than not, the players running those builds are awful skill-wise). Once you’ve accomplished your objective, then move on and continue to ignore him. Now it’s the other guy who ends up being useless.
Alternatively, you can roam with a small team. Those survival-based builds are also extremely selfish, and their efficacy is limited in teamfights.
Any decent Thief with offhand dagger completely shuts down phantasm builds. Blind on CnD off of phantasms for upwards of 5k damage, usually one-shotting the phantasm, followed by consistent 6k+ Backstabs. Or simply switch to shortbow and Cluster Bomb for complete phantasm shutdown and AoE damage pressure on the Mesmer.
I find interrupt is more versatile and overall effective, though it requires more skill/experience, but it’s only really heavily countered by Acro Thieves.
This is based on WvW. In PvP, with the lower stats and variety, it’s a different situation.
You can also include interrupt skills in a phantasm build.
I’d recommend Ogre over Scholars, just cause you’ll lose the Scholar’s bonus in one hit (or less if your opponent has retal).
Any tankier mesmer build will wreck thieves, you’ll just be less useful in a teamfight. Fighting thieves is trivial with a nonzerker phantasm build.
For what it’s worth, there was a 1v1 tournament not too long ago that had some solid players in it, and the winner played a phantasm mantra build w/ knights ammy. The fights weren’t even close. Just keep summoning phantasms and kiting, while each cast of your mantra heal clears condis and provides healing.
I think anything phantasm-based works best for dueling as mesmer, because you can focus on kiting and staying alive while your phantasms apply strong passive pressure.
My advice would be to go for Powerful Auras and Elemental Shielding. You can keep up near perma-protection for yourself, and decent protection uptime for your party. Let the staff eles and warriors take over the AOE condi cleansing for a change!
Using frost aura on the initial engage will cut down the damage you and your party receives by almost half (10% from frost aura, 33% from protection).
Does your power P/D build usually destroy eles, or were your duels at the end vs. Belch an anomaly?
My only issue when I play lockdown mesmer is that, if your opponent has stability up, you need to first strip it before you can fully utilize the build. And stripping the stability can take some time, especially if your opponent has multiple boons (which is common). This really cuts down on your ability to +1 a fight and quickly down a target.
Overall, lockdown mesmer shuts down certain builds/classes really hard (especially necros and shatter mesmers), but seems to do really poorly against classes that have good access to stability or high sustain (to survive the two MoD uses).
Based on this, I think shatter ends up being slightly more versatile. Lockdown trades some of this versatility for the ability to complete wreck certain builds.
What builds are these that have enough stability to cause a genuine problem for CI? CI lockdown builds have as good boon removal kittenter does (CD’s on shatter withstanding). As far as CS is concerned, there’s no trouble waiting out stability if you dont have boon removal.
A sustain class can sustain for a while, but fair enough given they’re build for sustain. Regardless, it’s only a matter of time, then the rupts come down and the sustain classes take a dirt nap. I’ve had no significant problem with them with zero boon removal.
I’m primarily thinking about hambow wars (balanced stance) and D/D ele (armor of earth).
I’m not saying you can’t strip stability, and the first thing I’ll do is set up a multi-clone mindwrack + GS3 to strip the stab. And of course, you can also just wait out the stability. The problem is that each of these methods adds another 6-7 seconds before you can really start to get the pressure going, and it also gives away your presence.
When I’m running a pure glass roaming build, I generally want to end fights much faster when I’m +1ing. Until stability is gone, lockdown plays like a slightly suboptimal phantasm/shatter build (speaking objectively, in terms of trait allocation).
In contrast, when I’m +1ing with shatter, I feel like I can heavily pressure (and even instagib) the above builds (especially D/D ele) as soon as I join the fight. There’s no need to strip stability for shatter to be fully effective. (This is from the perspective of Conquest, rather than duels or WvW where timing becomes less of an issue).
Again, I’m not knocking lockdown — I definitely enjoy the playstyle, and agree that it outperforms shatter in a lot of other situations. I just find it to be less versatile because of the requirement that you first strip stability before the build can pressure as hard kittenter.
Also, about sustain fights, I’m not sure that’s where lockdown excels either (unless you spec for a primarily phantasm-focused build with interrupts on the side). I’m thinking primarily 4/4/6. My reasoning is that, once MoD runs out, you’re stuck with weapon-skill interrupts, which are all telegraphed. Sustain classes are more likely to last through those two MoD charges. For example, when I’m playing a D/D ele, I feel like I usually win vs lockdown mesmer even if the lockdown mesmer nails every interrupt, just because the D/D ele can LOS, heal up, and resume the fight without worrying about further MoDs.
I find lockdown works best against other glass builds, as well as necros just because necro skills (including their main condi clears) take so long to cast.
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If your two roaming buddies are terrible it won’t matter much how good you are, the enemy is just going to constantly rally off your wife’s bearbow ranger. I’d focus on finding easy and survivable builds for them to use (stealth trapper ranger, P/D condi thief, etc.) and then coming up with a build that complements theirs. Running a full-stealth team is extremely effective and easy to roam with. One player on venomshare P/D, one on stealth-trapper ranger, and you playing power thief w/ panic strike and sleight of hand.
Between panic strike and shared devourer + basi venom, you’ll be able to lock down targets easily. The combination of high power and high condi damage will hurt a lot. And your wife’s newness to the game won’t really hurt you guys, because she’ll be passively stealthing everytime she drops a trap (and a ranger specced with condi gear is fairly tanky as is).
Not every class can spam immunes dodges or blinds for 20s. I agree that lich form is too strong right now. Compared with all the other transformation skill like tornado, rampage, tomes, etc it is op. They should reduce the direct dmg of spamming 1 and make people use more the other 4 skills. The cooldown could also be reduced it spamming 1 was not so broken.
Last I checked, every class can walk indefinitely, which is all that’s necessary to avoid Lich Form attacks.
Other options include using Line of Sight, throwing up a reflect (2-3 reflected shots will down the Necro himself), boon strip and CCing the glowing pinata… It is very much counterable. Two of the methods are even usable regardless of your build.
From the current meta how many are running reflects? Mesmer a short duration one and who else? Walk away is not a really “counter” in conquest mode. How many have boon strips? only 3 out of 8 professions.
Of course power necros overall are not op but Lich form is broken. Too much rewarding for spamming 1. Imagine if elementalists had a skill like that as elite.
Fresh air ele wrecks lich form. Earth4 reflects the lich’s projectiles, air4 destroys them in an aoe, and earth5 destroys them if they hit you. Fresh air ele may not be in the meta at the top-top level, but it’s still viable in most games where you’re going to see a power necro.
Regarding some of the other posts — the lich can autoattack even if he’s not facing you, so running behind him and/or immobilizing him will do nothing. I can go lich form, start running away from you while hitting 1, and my attacks will fly backwards through my body and hit you.
I think if you’re far enough away from the lich, you can juke the attacks by shuffling left and right. I recall the juking only working at range, although I might be wrong about this.
Also, since you brought up mesmer, the easy counter for mesmers is to just moa the lich.
My only issue when I play lockdown mesmer is that, if your opponent has stability up, you need to first strip it before you can fully utilize the build. And stripping the stability can take some time, especially if your opponent has multiple boons (which is common). This really cuts down on your ability to +1 a fight and quickly down a target.
Overall, lockdown mesmer shuts down certain builds/classes really hard (especially necros and shatter mesmers), but seems to do really poorly against classes that have good access to stability or high sustain (to survive the two MoD uses).
Based on this, I think shatter ends up being slightly more versatile. Lockdown trades some of this versatility for the ability to complete wreck certain builds.
Seems like it just passively rewards more braindead passive builds, although I’d be fine with adding it in PvE.
It’d be neat if there was a sigil that granted fury and might to companions (i.e. phantasms) when you successfully land an interrupt or something, though.
Here’s my perspective, coming from someone who spends a fair amount of time playing both classes (divided into D/D Ele vs. the three main mesmer builds I play — CI, MtD, and meta shatter, and then S/F ele vs. those 3 mesmer builds). I don’t find staff ele to be particularly effective vs either of the mesmer power builds, so I don’t really address it here.
D/D Ele (standard meta build) vs:
CI Mesmer: I expect to win or draw, mostly due to the ability to sustain. I just have to be careful about not getting interrupted while in water. I usually play defensively until the mesmer has exhausted his MoD charges. (Even while playing defensively, the burning and passive poison procs end up doing a solid amount of damage). Once the MoD charges are gone, it’s pretty easy to avoid the mesmer’s weapon-based interrupt skills, and constantly running through the mesmer frequently messes up some of the directional skills like Pistol5 or Greatsword5.
The only way the fight gets remotely challenging is if the terrain allows for a lot of kiting, and the CI mesmer traits for phantasm fury. Then the CI mesmer can usually maintain distance by interrupting the gap-closers while the phantasms whittle away my health.
vs Condi Mesmer: Depends on the specific build, but a 0/6/0/2/6 MtD build w/ harmonious mantra and cleanse-on-heal varies from stupid easy to stupid hard, depending on how big of a battlefield we have to work with. One of the main issues is that the D/D ele really needs to keep moving, so torment stacks hurt a ton. Additionally, D/D ele skills are all AOE splash, so it’s easy to self-stack a bunch of confusion from the 25pt minor trait in dueling. I basically just try to pressure the mesmer as hard as I can and never let up, while dodging shatters and the scepter2 counterattack. A lot of the fight boils down to how well I’ve dodged.
Shatter mesmer: I generally expect to win these fights fairly easily unless the other mesmer is really good. The main issue for the mesmer is that it usually takes about 2 bursts in a row for me to go down. If he whiffs one — or if there’s room for LOS abuse, I’ll probably be able to heal back to full.
The harder matchups occur when the mesmer runs S/X + GS or Staff. A mesmer who knows how to take advantage of the S3 clone’s double-leap can make S3 really hard to dodge, which then leads into a really nasty burst.
And, of course, double-ranged can be nasty if the battlefield has a lot of Z-axis kiting opportunities.
S/F Fresh air ele:
CI mesmer: I expect to have a slight advantage in a straight fight, without LOS juking. The fight basically boils down to whether or not I can burst the mesmer down before my blocks run out. All of the ele’s scepter autoattacks are interrupt fodder, so once I run out of blocks I’m screwed. That said, stone flesh and arcane shield usually gives me enough time to kill the mesmer. If I also take armor of earth, then the fight becomes a lot easier. Blind also works really well when the mesmer is running sword, because it is a lot harder for the mesmer to clear the blind when I’m at range.
The fight becomes a lot harder (and potentially unwinnable) if there’s a lot of room for LOSing, in which case the mesmer can summon phantasms and then just run around a pillar or something.
Condi mes: I can usually burst down the condi mes before going down myself. The focus skills really help reduce the incoming damage from clones via projectile hate, condi clear on earth4, and invuln on earth5 which is basically a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Shatter mes: I find this fight to be about 50/50 vs a good shatter mesmer. We’re both capable of instagibbing the other. I can block bursts via stone flesh and arcane shield. The mesmer can avoid bursts through stealth, distortion, and kiting and/or sword2. The fight usually turns on crits, sigil procs, and good dodging. My goal is usually to rely on air bursts early in the fight while I dodge the initial greatsword opener, then do a quick phoenix + lightning flash + airburst when it looks like the mesmer is vulnerable.
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Haha. My issue is that I love the action-combat style of GW2, and don’t find MOBAs (if that’s what you were inferring) interesting at all. I’ll see about trying an interrupt Mesmer. I do remember playing it at one point a while back and enjoying it at the time.
I was actually referring to FPS and RTS games. I personally find MOBAs to be 90% teamwork over individual skill once you get above a minimum threshold.
Interrupt mesmer I think has gotten stronger with the AOE buff to MoD.
You might enjoy 6/6/0/0/2 fresh air ele and Interrupt mesmer. Both can be powerful, but require a lot of active and reactive play, as well as general game knowledge (which you’ve hopefully gained playing all the other meta builds).
Even playing any of the meta builds at a higher level of competition will take skill. Necro’s core class mechanics may not be complicated, but surviving in a teamfight against good players takes a lot of awareness, map knowledge, and juking skills. So if you’re bored of literally everything, maybe try joining a PvP team and competing in the weeklies?
Otherwise, if you’re looking for some higher level of individual skill, then you might be in the wrong genre =)
Celestial is still optimal for 1v1 duels even factoring food. Btw celestial even not counting condi still more stats than normal stats. Mix stuff will just nerf you. With a mixed stat ele you wont be able to 1v1 outlast a celestial ele with the same skill lvl.
You are not trading dmg and survivability for only condi. You can mix as much as you want you will end up lacking in other are and end up having less survibability or less dmg than cele.
Example:
celestial ascended helmet 22*7 = 154 stats
other stat helmet = 47+34+34=115Even if you make 0 use of condi dmg (which is not the case) you still have more stat. You can mix in such a way you will have more healing power, thoughness, vit, crit dmg, ferocity, etc than celestial. You try to spread out with mix and lose stats and lack in other areas.
obs: talking purely about 1v1/small scale
Again, if you’re talking purely about 1v1 Obsidian Sanctum duels, then I agree. The reason there is that OS duels basically play out the same as sPvP duels (limited boundaries, general custom against resetting fights).
In every other WvW situation, having more overall stats isn’t worth the loss in power, toughness, and ferocity. You really can’t approach a WvW fight the same way you do an sPvP fight.
The full-cele build is optimal in sPvP because you have time to ramp up your damage (building up might, stacking poison + burning, etc.) due to the fact that the fights are all occurring on a small control point. Your opponent gives up cap progress whenever he leaves the point, so your ability to put out a consistent level of pressure w/in 300 range (that builds up over time due to might stacking) really wins out.
In WvW, the fights tend to be a lot more mobile, which diminishes your ability to stack might. When you drop an RoF, for example, your opponent is just going to back off. You can then either waste your earth dodge roll, water3, and earth4 to build might, or save those skills and forgo the might, in which case you’ll hit like a wet noodle in a full-cele build.
You also won’t be constantly hitting your enemy in WvW, because WvW fights usually end up with the enemy repeatedly disengaging (with no cap point to worry about). Instead of relying on a slow and steady buildup of pressure, you need a setup that let’s you severely punish someone when he makes a mistake to have a chance of downing him. I.E., you need to be able to do a lot of spike damage when your opponent puts himself in a vulnerable position. Simply counting on “outlasting” him through might stacking and passive damage simply isn’t as effective.
Also, another issue with full-celestial in WvW is that you won’t be quite as tanky as you’re used to in sPvP. Glass cannons in WvW can stack up way more power/prec/crit than the sPvP zerker amulet provides.
You can mix as much as you want you will end up lacking in other are and end up having less survibability or less dmg than cele.
Your original point was about going >FULL< celestial. That is what I was disagreeing with. It makes sense to mix some celestial pieces in to round out your stats, and I think I suggested as much in my earlier post.
edit cause I suck at quoting.
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
Zealot gear seems pretty interesting, and I must confess that I haven’t really tried it much. I tend to find that healing power in WvW roaming tends not to make much of a difference, just because people can stack damage up so high. I’d personally go for toughness over healing power. Also, if you’re running the meta D/D trait spread, you’re already getting +300healing from the water traitline.
The one exception is if you’re roaming with a bunch of thieves/mesmers, in which case you’re probably going to be taking almost all of the focus damage. In that case, I’d go for a mix of toughness, vitality, healing power, and precision (to maintain vigor through renewing stamina). Your goal is just to bait opponents into staying committed long enough for your teammates to ensure downs.
Full celestial ele is not optimal in WvW, even in 1v1s, because of the interaction of food buffs. The reason celestial ele is so powerful in sPvP is because (1) you maintain a LOT of pressure through high burning + poison uptime that let’s you outsustain your opponent; and (2) you have less control over your stat allocation; and
In WvW, almost every non-condi class will run lemongrass poultry for -40% condi duration, which means your burning and poison won’t last as long. To the point where it’s not even worth taking sigil of doom, which means your only real damage is coming from burning. On top of that, most of the builds you’ll be running against in WvW will have more condi clear (SA thieves, PU mesmers) so burning won’t stick nearly as long as it does against the meta builds you see in sPvP.
Unlike in sPvP, you generally can’t rely on out-sustaining your opponent in WvW because there’s no incentive for your opponent to stay in a losing fight. Most people will just back off and reset, with nothing lost. Or, during your 2-3 minute long fight, your opponent’s teammates come in and force you to retreat.
Against condi builds, you definitely need a lot more power damage to quickly take them down before their condis wear you down.
With full celestial, you’re basically trading burst damage and survivability for a moderate increase to burning damage. Not worth it.
Another reason celestial is less useful in WvW is that, unlike in sPvP, you have a lot of control over how you allocate stat points in WvW. I would recommend a focus primarily on zerker/knight/soldier (adjust between tankiness<—->damage depending on how good you are at avoiding damage, what kind of builds your teammates run and how good they are at peeling for you, what kind of role you want to play for your team, etc.). Don’t get me wrong — it definitely makes sense to take a few pieces of celestial as needed to round out the stat spread you’re aiming for. But going full celestial is almost never a good idea for WvW unless you’re doing no food/oil duels in Obsidian Sanctum or something.
The best way to deal with condis is to dodge the big condi-applying attacks, like Deathshroud2, Signet of Spite, Weakening Shroud, Shrapnel Nades, Prybar, etc. You shouldn’t expect to avoid/negate all condi damage (just like no one expects to avoid all power damage). Certain condi builds, like terrormancer with full life force, will have the upper hand vs D/D unless you specifically spec to beat them.
I’d strongly recommend taking Sig of Restoration over Ether Renewal for D/D. You get a lot more healing out of SoR because D/D is very skill-spammy. Also, you need to worry about covering your SoR against interrupts against competent players. If you insist on using SoR, you can move the 20 pts from fire to earth. Taking stone splinters will even out the loss in damage from power (pretty much all your D/D skills require that you be w/in stone splinters range anyway). And then take the earth master trait that grants 2s AOE stability whenever you swap to earth, which you can use to cover ether renewal.
Otherwise, your stat spread is probably fine depending on playstyle. Celestial is less useful in WvW than in sPvP because everyone runs -40% condi duration food, so unless you focus on +condi duration, your burn uptime will be significantly lower.
As far as traits go, Spell Slinger is unecessary w/ D/D because you can maintain 20+ stacks of might by blasting your fire fields (also, take sigil of battle). I’d again consider shifting those points in fire to other traits. For example, taking cleansing water (gives more reliable condi cleanse than cleansing fire), and stone splinters (for the +dmg modifier, to make up for the loss of power from taking points out of fire). If you need more survivability, taking elemental shielding will give you near perma-protection if you consistently land your magnetic leap through ring of fire. But it sounds like you are mostly struggling with conditions, in which case I’d go w/ stone splinters to down the other guy faster.
Fighting against a condi class is all about killing the condi class before he whittles you down, and dodging the big condi-bombs so you have more time to whittle him down. You shouldn’t expect to be able to ignore a condi class forever, although in some cases it is certainly possible to build that way (at the cost of being way less effective vs. non-condi classes).