Guild Wars 2

Good changes to reduce the overall pressure that celestial classes can bring via targeted shaves to might. Anyone asking for celestial to be nerfed out of the meta needs to take a step back and think about overall game design for a second. The goal is to create a meaningful choice between different builds, not to force one build out of the meta so your favorite pet build can then dominate.

Celestial engie takes a bigger hit than ele from the might/battle changes, but still can put up strong offensive pressure through all the CCs and being able to stack multiple damaging conditions. D/D ele will have to rely more on actively stacking might by blasting ring of fire (which can be counter-played), and will have to work harder to maintain burning uptime (although a slight nerf to burning from ring of fire would have been good).

Not much done to address certain passives that seem slightly too strong (incendiary powder, sigil of air/fire combo), or the fact that certain builds have to rely on those passives to be competitive.

I like that the ele changes don’t really hurt fresh air builds (which don’t use sigil of battle and generally stack less might in PvP). Glad A.net didn’t listen to all the ppl asking for stupid across-the-board nerfs to sub-meta builds based on nerfing Elemental Attunement (protection/regen trait) and Renewing Stamina (vigor trait), which would make the sub-meta ele builds even less viable.

Narkodx.1472:

I think one of the main issues is if you do not play this game it is almost impossible to understand anything – Class mechanics

MOBA/FPS games do not have that problem IMO

Even if viewers don’t fully understand all the class mechanics, I think they can still enjoy watching a PvP match if they were able to understand the strategy and pacing of the game.

For example, I know almost nothing about the LoL heroes, yet I am able to enjoy watching LoL matches because it’s very easy to follow the fights and the team’s strategies. Conversely, many GW2 PvPers — who presumably understand the mechanics of the game — don’t seem to enjoy watching PvP matches (if the forum posts and viewer counts are any indication). One reason might be that they don’t perceive the strategy involved in the rotations and how teams work to force favorable matchups.

I think it’s an issue that could be resolved by adding different (easier to follow) game modes and adjusting respawn times.

Game modes -

In a conquest mode, where every second counts (b/c points are ticking), you’re not going to see a whole lot of downtime. Any time you spend regrouping is a sacrifice in points. Moreover, it’s harder to follow because there’s often a constant battle going on at two-three different points of the map (which are usually as far from each other as possible). The very nature of conquest discourages single, large group fights, because each team then runs the risk of losing the side points.

A related issue with Conquest is that the strategies involved there are based on rotations, which are generally not obvious to the average viewer. And shoutcasters generally don’t draw much attention to this point, probably because there’s not enough time to explain it all.

I can imagine other GW2 game modes where the fights are more concentrated, and the strategies and pacing are a lot more obvious to the casual viewer. For example, consider a “Guild Wars” type mode, where the objective is to breach the other team’s keep and kill their guild lord, and where respawn times are increased. There’d be positioning and a build-up to engage in the battlefield for control of siege weapons. The team that wins would advance on the other team’s keep and prepare to breach it, then there’d be a conflict at the point of entry, building up towards a fight at the lord’s room.

A true CTF-like game mode would also be pretty easy to follow, b/c you know where the combat will be focused ahead of time.

Respawn times —

If respawn times are too short, then the “build-up phase” between fights becomes a lot shorter — until at some point the fights just seem like a constant grind. For example, if everyone is running bunkers and the TTK is very long compared to the respawn time, then you can reach a situation where 2 players can hold a point indefinitely because when one player goes down, he can respawn and return to the fight before the other player goes down. The result is that the fight becomes less exciting, because it seems like neither side will ever be able to make any progress.

On the other hand, increasing respawn times too much would drastically increase the snowball effect of winning. This may make individual fights more exciting to watch (b/c the consequences of winning or losing are greater), but the overall match may be less exciting after a team fight b/c there’d literally be nothing going on except uncontested point-capping.

It doesn’t help that the optimal respawn time probably varies based on team comps and maps.

evilapprentice.6379:

Phantaram.1265:

The article has a lot of great points but here is what I think.

I think mesmer historically has only limited the meta by being so strong you should take 1 on each comp. They did not however limit other people from playing other builds by countering them.

Thief on the other hand has kept so many builds out of GW2’s competitive history it’s crazy. They counter a lot of builds that could have been and could still be taken but because thieves exist we’ll never see that kind of diversity. I will say that now more than ever though thieves are less limiting.

I don’t think people switched to celestial because of these classes though. Celestial is just really strong so people play it. Celestial classes still gets insta bursted by thief mesmer pretty easily.

Care to list a few of these builds that would be perfectly viable if thieves didn’t exist?

If I recall correctly (and it’s possible I’m mistaken), you’re primarily a mesmer player who’s made a career of requesting thief nerfs on the boards, so it’s hard to take anything you say without a grain of salt.

Phantaram is and pretty much has always been an ele player.

I think examples of builds that thief pushes out of the meta have already been listed:

Thief pushes Fresh Air ele out. In a 1v1 on beach, FA comes out ahead. But in an actual match, the thief’s superior mobility and disengage potential outweighs the FA’s ability to do a bigger initial burst.

Thief has also appears to be pushing shatter mesmer out, although a very small handful of mesmers continue to stick with it.

The reason thief pushes other glass specs out isn’t necessarily because thief would beat the other glass specs in 1v1. In fact, many glass specs have an advantage vs. thief in 1v1 on beach. What thief brings to the table is superior mobility and disengage, which mitigates their squishiness and amplifies their offensive power.

Slim.3024:

Chaith.8256:

Slim.3024:

Air burst + just one arcane deals more damage than backstab with zero counterplay and long range. In fact you can perform this combo (and add a second arcane) while being knocked down or stunned.

We are talking burst that surpasses stealstabs, has no positional requirement and can be performed at any time. If elementalists played fresh air today with 6/0/2/0/6 d/p thieves, they would destroy them.

What you say about being able to disengage better is obviously true. Mesmers and thieves have better tools for leaving a fight. DPS guardian and fresh air s/f elementalists do however have the tools for staying in the fight longer.

You seem to think very highly of Fresh Air Eles, and perhaps it’s true they have a fighting chance in 1v1s against Berserker professions. However, bringing Arcane abilities doesn’t happen anymore in PvP if they are seen (Besides Arcane Shield). The benefit of their guaranteed Air burst is far outweighed by the fact that they get blatently outmanoeuvred by hit and run tactics, and have no choice but to rotate through big cooldowns.

Not sure what qualify as big cooldowns for fresh air. I also don’t see why given an invul and a 3-hit block that deals massive damage would not allow for at least one arcane ability with the last utility slot reserved for lightning flash.

Fresh air is a lot stronger now since the signet buff and the air/fire sigil changes than most people remember. Also the fact that most builds actually do not have high burst damage (mesmers are rare, s/d isn’t s bursty and neither is d/p panic strike builds) helps the build as well.

I think Chaith is referring to the key defensive skills that FA runs. Arcane shield = 75s cooldown to block 3 attacks, expires after 5s (and Mesmer’s GS2 goes right through it). Obsidian flesh = 50s CD for 4s invuln. Those are your main defenses vs. thief and mes (since neither relies on projectiles for burst except mesmer w/ mirror blade, which is unblockable). Fresh air generally relies on popping those and then downing the other guy before invulns run out. All the thief/mes has to do is disengage for 5 seconds (port out, LOS, run beyond 900 range, etc.) then come back to burst, or wait until the ele has popped those skills vs. another player.

Fresh air ele also has more positional requirements than you seem to think. Even just cycling through the air burst requires that you maintain constant LOS (because you need to keep the arc lightning chain going through an attunement swap to proc a crit for fresh air). Ducking in and out of cover doesn’t work well. Ironically, this is the opposite of mes and thief, which benefit from and excel at LOS juking (more so thief).

Also, the air burst itself is not great sustained DPS. It’s ~850-900 tooltip dmg for each lightning discharge (~6 effective cooldown, since it takes time for the fresh air to proc), which is comparable to the autoattacks from most zerker classes. The point of the air burst is to supplement the scepter’s otherwise awful autoattack damage, which is why it’s about as dodgeable as a regular autoattack. To actually down someone as fresh air ele, you really need to combine a double air burst with a solid hit from phoenix, which is super easy to dodge outside of close range.

I think the reason for the current meta has little to do with thieves/mesmers. We have hybrid bunkers because a hybrid bunker will beat a full bunker in a fight, while still maintaining enough survivability to not be instagibbed by a burst class. A good thief/mes +1’ing a fight can still shut down a celestial engie/ele/war pretty quickly, though. Nerfing thief/mes would just cause teams to either run more hybrid bunkers, or to bring in other DPS builds like fresh air or power necro.

What thieves and mesmers do is push out all the other burst builds. Other burst builds, like fresh air ele and medi guard, start off strong when their (long) cooldowns are ready. However, once they pop their cooldowns, they have no way to disengage and will just be focused down. Thieves and mesmers are able to disengage and re-engage almost at will, which let’s them avoid this focus fire and do other productive stuff (such as back-capping or ranging) while waiting on cooldowns.

Slim.3024:

Chaith.8256:

And yes, thief does keep non-Guardian berserkers out of the meta due to their relentless gap closing ability, hard countering builds with an over-reliance on good positioning to protect themselves.

Thieves do have a great amount of gap closing abilities, but if we look at say a fresh air elementalist, they not only have the higher burst, which happens to be completely uncounterable, but they also have range and invulnerabilities.

Without points in acrobatics, thieves would be sitting ducks against a fresh air elementalist (blinds are useless against fresh air) and that is probably why thieves have migrated towards totally unpredictable evasion.

Fresh air ele only has higher burst if you add in a phoenix (20s CD) + lightning flash (40s CD). Otherwise, a full air burst by itself (as in air attune + lightning bolt) does less damage than a backstab. In fact, the damage that comes from Arc lightning + fresh air lightning bolts is pretty much comparable to just getting autoattacked by a ranger.

In a team fight scenario, it is not difficult for a thief who knows what he’s doing to jump and nearly instagib a fresh air ele, you just have to time the burst right so it happens after the ele has left fire. (Remember, the ele has to keep locking himself out of attunements to proc fresh air). In a 1v1 scenario, fresh air ele probably has the upper hand, but that makes sense b/c he lacks the thief’s mobility + ability to stealth open + ability to disengage.

The sheer number of disengages thieves and mesmers have make the other glass builds less viable in teamplay, because the other glass builds are much easier to focus and pressure down.

I think the fight boils down to three factors:

(1) Whether engie can interrupt ele’s mightstacking by CCing. A single overcharged shot when ele casts ring of fire will pretty much negate might stacking. And the two skills have the same CD.

(2) How good ele is at dodging prybar + chill grenades, especially if water attunement is on cooldown. If ele eats a prybar and chill while in water or just after leaving it, he’s probably going to lose the fight. Both skills are fairly telegraphed, though, and ele has vigor for plenty of dodges and one get-out-of-jail card with cleansing fire.

(3) Whether engie can catch ele w/ slick shoes while armor of earth is on cooldown.

Based on the above, I think the winner would depend on what level of skill we’re talking about here. If both players are just spamming skills off cooldown, then ele would probably win due to better sustain. At medium-high skill levels, engie probably comes out ahead due to playing around the ele’s reliance on water attunement for condi cleanse. At highest levels, I’m guessing ele has the slight advantage due to better vigor, which allows a good ele player to consistently dodge the important skills.

From an ele perspective, the only issue I have with the balance changes is that they also nerf non-meta builds. This has been a recurring theme of balance posts made by ppl who don’t play ele.

The meta fresh air ele build relies on access to renewing stamina (vigor) and elemental attunement (protection, regen, swiftness) due to lack of disengages and a high CD on its survivability skills — and even then it is ultimately overshadowed by thief/mes.

Nerfing these traits would push fresh air towards a more yolo 6/6/0/0/2 setup, which would be less fun for everyone (instagib or bust).

Nerfing the above traits in addition to healing coefficients would also render a true bunker ele (cleric/shaman) obsolete compared to a bunker guard.

Reducing burning uptime on dagger/dagger skills and fixing the lightning-whip trick are good changes that specifically target cele D/D. D/D cele relies on slowly outsustaining the opponent through constantly applying burning and poison, and building up might over time so that these condis hurt hard. The power damage portion of the build is in line with other classes given how easy it is to dodge burning speed and firegrab. Fixing the lightning whip trick is a no-brainer.

Simon.3794:

MrKrataus.6420:

Well, shoutwar basically win over cele ele at 1v1, over ingi without crate(if crate up u need to play like da kitteng god) but point will be decaped 100%, and over the rest, and bring more support skills in team fight, weakness ? Ye only one, no stab just one break stun and one fear, one chain c/c and you’re dead and its kitteng hard to land banner agains’t a good teef. Ele D/D is in a good spot in my war pov, but ingi slick shoes crate and rly hard to defeat even tho you should defeat them if u play like a top war.

Shout war does not win over ele.

I think whoever is defending the point would be the real “winner” here, because it would take ages for either player to kill the other assuming both are competent.

IMO, the current meta celestial ele and celestial rifle engie builds take way more skill to play than the previous meta builds (spirit ranger, hambow before adrenaline nerfs, dhuumfire necro). So I’m not sure I agree with the idea of celestial carrying bad/average players to the top of WTS and other tournaments.

That said, I agree with the idea of making games more interesting to watch, with room for “big plays.” But I think big game-changing plays need to come more from map design and game-mode mechanics. For example, a lot of the big “exciting” plays in tournament games right now revolve around clutch lord rushes or treb shots (and, if spirit watch is ever added, orb caps). These are things that viewers can see coming, and the risk/reward is very apparent.

I don’t think you’ll be able to create exciting big plays through balance changes alone. Watching two zerker thieves fight, for example, isn’t particularly exciting and mostly boils down to sigil procs.

Chaith.8256:

What can bunker versus the most amount of people for the longest?

Engi, Ele? What are you guys smoking.

It’s Guardian by a large margin. They just can’t have that ability and still 1v1 or 2v2 well.

This by a longshot. Ele and Engie are great at sustaining in a 1v1, but not under focus fire from multiple opponents.

Between engie and ele, engie does a better job at holding far point vs. multiple people between all the CCs, traited gear shield, and overall kiting ability. Ele is arguably stronger in a broader range of 1v1 matchups (you won’t get hardcountered by necros, usually), but the class relies on healing for survival, which doesn’t scale as well in outnumbered fights. Eles also get wrecked by chain CC, since they need to constantly be casting spells to benefit from signet of restoration.

Interesting that you rate celestial D/D ele and engie as easy-medium matchups. Are you talking about purely off-point 1v1 duels? Or do you also find them fairly easy to take out in tPvP? Not criticizing (since you almost certainly know way more than I do) — just curious.

Steal is an instant-cast ranged ability with no tell. You don’t dodge steal vs a competent thief, although even good thieves will occasionally whiff it.

The hard part beating D/D ele as thief is that you need to maintain constant, high pressure or the ele will heal up again, all the while dealing with burning + poison + power damage from the ele. It’s not too bad if all of the ele’s cantrips are on cooldown, but very difficult otherwise.

My experience playing panic strike d/p is that, in conquest, as a practical matter, the D/D ele has the upper hand when cooldowns are up.

However, the thief can have a strong upper hand if you’re willing to bait out cooldowns (specifically, armor of earth), then disengaging to reset. If you then get a clean re-engage with backstab + basi venom strip protection + land the chill after ele switches to water, you’re almost guaranteed to win. But doing this means you basically gave the ele the point for ~40 seconds which would count as a huge loss in tPvP even if you ultimately won the fight.

Suggestions about nerfing the bunker ele’s survivability are incredibly short-sighted and myopic. Bunker classes should have good survivability, and the bunker ele’s survivability is on par with other bunker builds (better in some situations, worse in others). Nerfing these traits will simply make non bunker eles even less viable (yes, non-bunker eles absolutely rely on vigor and elemental attunement).

The only issue is when bunkerish classes (including Rom’s shoutbow war and D/D ele) are able to put out high pressure, which happens through a combination of might stacking and high condition uptime. (Note: celestial engineer does NOT stack might outside of battle sigil, stop bringing up celengies and mightstacking). Either shave the mightstacking (which affects just about every build), or shave the condi application on those specific builds. For eles, this would mean reducing burning on drake’s breath and ring of fire.

Regarding celestial rifle engie, this is more the case of an all-around high-damage build that also has decent access to survivability through 16s gear shield + healing turret + hard and soft CCs. They absolutely melt to high condition pressure, though, so I’m not sure a nerf is needed — although it would be nice if necro was less of a hard counter, and thieves less of a free meal.

I’m wondering if it would be more productive to think about how one might buff scepter or DPS ele while nerfing D/D celestial/bunker ele. That way you have to think about how your suggestions affect the class as a whole.

Most people here seem to agree that DD celestial/bunker ele needs some shaving, the only real debate is over how to accomplish this without gimping the class as a whole.

Arken.3725:

I disagree Resjudicator, its primary tankiness comes not only from healing but having an insane amount of access to defensive boons and CC. Poison and focus fire effect everyone so I don’t think it’s a good argument against 1 specific profession. Specifying kiting for the Guardian profession is laughable, that’s never ever been the case for any spec a Guardian has run. The same could be said about mist-form for Elementalist’s in terms of even more dmg mitigation through a guaranteed invul.

Edit: To Chaith above, you actually never gave me a negative reaction to all of the changes proposed my friend. I concede to the argument against Cleansing Water.

Just to clarify, for the guardian I said kiting over line of warding. This means stepping over it on one side, then stepping back on the other side. It’s a pretty common strategy that is very effective vs. melee classes when they don’t have stab up. I don’t mean running around in a circle laying down chills.

You’re absolutely right that ele has more access to defensive boons than guardians. But the point still stands that the guardian’s high access to blocks is what makes the guardian better able to survive focus fire. Focus fire is the opposite of what you should be doing when a guardian has shelter up. As a side note, I didn’t say poison was a unique counter to ele’s, I just included it in my list of things that counter builds that rely on healing rather than blocking to survive.

As for your specific suggestions, I agree with lightning whip (obvious change) and shaving burning uptime (specifically Drake’s Breath).

Nerfing frost aura’s duration by ~30% seems completely needless, the skill is on a 40s CD which prevents it from being spammable, and D/D the eles’s overall CC options don’t outpace what engy, terrormancer, and hambow offer. The issue with D/D ele is the attrition damage that it puts out as a bunker class, not the CC it can bring. Nerfing the soft CC would also further impair any DPS builds, which would have to rely on CC rather than healing/boons to survive.

For the same reasons as above, increasing the CD on magnetic grasp also seems completely needless. CC is not what brings eles slightly over the top.

The changes to elemental shielding I don’t care strongly about either way, b/c earth’s embrace and stone splinters are both good alternatives, but all this change really would do is reduce build diversity. I also don’t think nerfing the tankiness traits is the way to go. A class that devotes all of its traits to defense should be able to be resilient, and even then, the ele is far from invincible (and can go down quite quickly to 2v1 fights).

I think it is critical to think about the ele profession as a whole, considering all of their different builds, and then think about what brings the celestial D/D build slightly over the top. To me, the difference is the high burning uptime that D/D offers combined with the ability to build up condi damage via celestial stats + might stacking. It’s probably better to start with shaving the burning, because changes to celestial + might would affect other classes.

Arken.3725:

That’s completely understandable. If you remember Elementalist’s at release, they were unkillable but didn’t nearly as much offensive pressure as they do now. And the example of being susceptible to focus-fire doesn’t just apply to Elementalist’s but rather every single profession. I believe it’s even less effective against the current state of Elementalist’s due to their high health/armor and overall dmg mitigation.

If you read the example I gave above about Bunker Guardian’s then it’s much easier to see why even if you took away their dmg overall, it still might be a bit too strong defensively.

The reason Bunker Elementalist is more susceptible than Bunker Guardian to focus fire is because the Elementalist’s tankiness primarily comes from healing, which does not scale with the number of opponents. In fact, the two counters to high healing are (1) poison and (2) focus fire. Guardians have less healing, but they make up for it with multiple blocks and kiting over line of warding, which scales much better vs multiple players. If a guardian is casting shelter, he’s going to be safe (barring unblinded magnet pull, basi+shortbow4, traited necro staff5) no matter how many people are hitting him.

All the ele really needs is a shave to burning uptime, which is where a good amount of the damage comes from once you learn to dodge burning speed. Then eles will either have to shift some defensive traits to offensive traits, or swap out some cantrips for offensive utilities such as arcane blast.

Separately, the offensive traits for ele could stand to be improved, combined with giving the Ele some better disengage potential in its air/fire master+gm traits. This means that offensive eles would be able to survive by disengaging (which means giving up the point), which would be a viable alternative to going full out bunker.

Relentliss.2170:

The Game Slayer.7632:

glock.6590:

Meh the only thing that is OP with ele is the healing. Its ridiculous that a cele ele can recover from 20% to full….

Let them have protection , might, vigor but nerf the healing . It takes me kittening 5 minutes to kill an ele and I’m a glass thief so yea…

Same problem with engi btw , healing turret needs to be nerfed or a longer cast time.

Shout healing warrior is also aids, way too much sustain.

I’m tiered of fighting cele classes for 10 mins.

So why aren’t you also complaining about guardians? (by the way, 20% to 100% is extremely over-exaggerated)

Guardians actually go from 20% to 100% all the time.

Yeah using their Heal Skill which can be interrupted and is on lengthy CD. DD ele does it using other skills and its a bit ridiculous. Soon as they shift into Water they become a Raid Boss.

Ele is completely OP atm with how much healing it has. I don’t even feel DD Ele is as strong as Staff Ele. I can kind of ignore a DD Ele as its damage is not huge… Staff Ele (unless its a zerker) is just as tanky and doing strong damage to a massive area. I can’t ignore them.

The person’s comment on Stats is 100% correct. Like thief, Ele has such low health that unless its OP in other areas it can not survive to be effective. Same with Necro but in reverse: if they ever improved their trait system they would be massively OP because of how much health they have.

Guardians don’t go to full from their heal skill. They go to full from altruistic healing and proper positioning for their skills.

The main difference in survivability between bunker ele (which is what 00266 is set up as) and bunker guard is that the ele relies more on healing while the guard relies more on blocks and CC. The bunker guardian’s defensive skills tend to scale better in group fights, which is why bunker guard is better at holding a node vs an outnumbered fight or against focus fire in a team fight. On the other hand, the ele can put out more pressure which is why they come out ahead in small-scale fights.

Reducing the burning from Drake’s Breath and fixing/reducing the lightning whip stow-cancelling should be a sufficient shave, in my opinion.

Against a competent opponent (i.e. one that doesn’t unnecessarily eat burning speed / fire grab), a lot of the damage as D/D ele comes from the burning, and most of that burning comes from Drake’s Breath. D/D’s other primary sources of burning have more room for counterplay and/or a higher opportunity cost:

- Evasive Arcana in fire (5s burning, but you have to dodge into your opponent, which uses up a dodge and may not necessarily put you in optimal positioning),
- Burning speed (usually just 1s-2s if you dash through them and they don’t dodge),
- Ring of fire (each time they walk — not dodge — through it, they get 5s of burning), and
- Cleansing Fire (3s, but you rarely want to waste this cantrip just for the burning effect).

Fixing stow-cancelling for lightning whip (and for mesmer GS1) is a nobrainer.

The above would be a slight shave to the D/D ele’s DPS (both single target and AOE), which is all that’s really needed. It would especially make thieves slightly more effective vs eles, since their main problem is dealing with the burning (they have enough dodges to avoid the rest of the skills). If further shaving is needed, then consider reducing the duration on Sigil of Battle for the reasons BlackBeard has mentioned.

My problem with many of the other changes, which Phantaram recognizes in his followup post, is that any nerfs to ele’s survivability would wreck all of the non-bunker ele builds, which have to rely on just a subset of the tanky traits to even survive.

Fresh air ele (in my experience) is just barely viable in higher level play due to lack of sustain and disengage, and any nerfs to Renewing Stamina or the water/earth attunement bonuses would kill the build, unless you upped its already high burst potential to compensate (in which case it would become even more of a yolo kamikaze build).

Also, I see absolutely 0 problems with thieves having difficulty shutting down a bunker build in a 1v1. Their mobility already gives them the ability to +1 fights around the map, or to rotate to more favorable matchups. A thief who +1s a fight vs a D/D ele can shut the D/D ele down pretty quickly if you time steal to strip their protection (ie after earth attune, which often comes after or right before water, so you can then land the chill for the win).

Very well written and thoughtful post. I definitely agree with prioritizing condis from those who have higher condi damage. Having vulnerability affect condis is an interesting idea, too, that probably wouldn’t hurt PvP much (if at all).

The most obvious solution in my mind is to revise the dungeons so that they’re more challenging. If bosses live longer than ~20 seconds, then the “front-loading” and “ramp-up” factors become negligible. A.net could give bosses more access to skills like endure pain, protection boons, high armor ratings, etc. that would significantly increase their lifespan vs pure power teams and favor a more balanced mix of power and condi.

Also, improving the ramp-up of condi damage across all game modes would probably destroy PvP balance:

(1) Traits that boost direct damage by a fixed percentage also affecting condi damage

A lot of PvP power and hybrid builds take dmg traits. Some celestial D/D eles run stone splinters (10% damage when you’re within 600 range of target, which is pretty much always) instead of elemental shielding. This works out to a 10% damage on their perma burning and high poison uptime (most builds take sigil of doom). Double-ranged shatter mesmers take compounding power (3% damage per clone up) and frequently apply confusion from shatters and other condis from staff AA. Meditation guardians take a ton of +damage passives and also maintain high burning uptime. A typical 2/6/0/0/6 thief would get something like a +45% damage increase to poison ticks.

(2) Buff to coefficients for condi skills

This just works out to a straight buff to hybrid and condi classes. Celestial D/D ele and rifle engie, which are already considered to be very strong, would become even stronger. Celestial rifle engie in particular would become a beast (they can maintain high bleeding/burning/poison uptime and decent confusion uptime).

(3) Reduce the duration of the stackable conditions like bleeding and torment that are inflicted by skills but increase the amount of stacks each skill iteration inflicts

This would make condi builds incredibly OP because it would reduce the window in which damaging condis could be cleansed and effectively increases the burst DPS of all condi builds. The reason why condi amulets in PvP give relatively high survivability compared to zerker amulet is because condi builds are supposed to have a ramp-up time on their damage.

I don’t see a disproportionate amount in soloequeue between R50-300ish. Maybe like 1 every other game?

I see far more medi guardians (not saying the build is OP, cause it isn’t), power rangers, and celestial or turret engies. I can pretty much count on there being one or two of these builds in every soloqueue game.

If you’re talking about teamqueue, the reason might be because a lot of teams want to try out Abjured’s comp?

Like most other good players have noted, the “problem” is with celestial + might on specs with good access to power and condi dmg (d/d ele, axe/sword+bow war, rifle engy, etc.).

All of the non-celestial ele builds are well balanced compared to their counterparts (fresh air vs. other zerker specs; staff bunker v. guardian bunker), which suggests that ele itself is not OP. Nerfing ele instead of celestial+might will likely weaken the other ele specs and pidgeonhole eles into D/D. We want more build diversity, not less.

The only slight shave that might make sense is to slightly reduce the radius on the water 15 minor (like you did with EA). That way, a double d/d ele at midfight will have a harder time providing all the AOE healing and condi clear.

When people say mediguard is a counter, I think they’re referring more to the fact that the mediguard will get a decap while you’re kiting. If you’re not required to stay on point, then it’s pretty easy to beat a mediguard through kiting until he burns his meditation CDs.

nirvana.8245:

^
….
What I do find gamebreaking about them is when they pick you out of a zerg and lock onto you. It seems to happen to me too often, im guessing because Im mithril rank and they are looking to kill the higher ranks in the group. And once they lock on your pretty much taking fast 2.5k+ autos from 2000 range on your heavy and your burning all your cooldowns just dealing with that damage. Pretty much a death sentence.

Easiest fix to this is to run to your teammates so they can bodyblock some of the shots for you (bonus points if you can find a teammate w/ reflects up, but not necessary). Most rangers don’t run the piercing arrows trait, because that trait competes with the +range trait at the master tier, and with the +arrowspeed/attackspeed trait at the GM tier.

In short, you’ll only get picked off if you’re out of position and out of defensive CDs, which I think is fair. A good DPS ele, thief, mes, etc. would have picked you off in that situation as well. It just feels annoying dying to rapid fire because you know all the ranger had to do was press #2.

Focus 5 (the skill that puts a bunch of blue shield-looking graphics up) is a large source of burst. It basically works like an arcane shield in reverse: it explodes after a set time for a very large burst, but does 0 damage if it breaks from absorbing hits. So is whirling wrath (which is pretty easy to spot), and GS2 and Smite conditions are strong hits, too.

I find that it’s pretty hard to dodge the initial teleport-burst (judge’s intervention), which can take out like 1/3 of my hp in a fresh air build. Smite condition is also hard to dodge b/c it’s a PBAOE instacast that hits kitten

a scepter build, what works for me is to maintain range as much as possible. DO NOT AUTOATTACK WHEN HE’S STANDING ON HIS GREATSWORD MARK, you’ll eat way more damage in retaliation than you can do with the scepter autoattacks. Keep kiting and laying down dps until he’s popped his meditations (his heals), then go in for the burst. Also, phoenix can hit him through his shelter.

With DD, you should be able to heal him. Kite and heal up after his initial teleport burst. Once you re-engage, try to find the sweet spot where he’s in range of your attacks but can’t reach you with his. Most of your attacks have slightly longer range, so you can get some free damage in this way. Weakness on Air2 helps a lot, as does maintaining cripple/chill/immobilize. If he makes the mistake of popping shelter while standing on one of his greatsword marks, you can interrupt the heal by casting schocking aura and running onto the mark (which will stun him).

If you’re DD and glassy, the fight will be pretty hard and a medi guard who manages his cooldowns properly will probably hardcounter you.

MOP seems to hit about as hard as GS3 (mind stab, or is it mind spike? I always get those skill names mixed up). The damage from MOP alone isn’t going to be enough to kill you — usually they need to land it in conjunction with a shatter (shatter builds) or after phantasms have whittled you down (phantasm builds). So if you manage to dodge the main shatter burst, you should be in a good position even though the mesmer landed his MOP (and now he’s down 1 charge).

I’d say keep up the pressure as you normally would on a mesmer, but you need to make sure to avoid his bursts (even more so than before). This includes close-range mirror blade, which hurts a lot due to bounces; mind wrack; etc. On the flip side, the mesmer has one less defensive utility to work with so he should be more vulnerable to your bursts, as well.

If he’s a non-glassy phantasm mesmer who’s also running mantras, you’ll have a much harder time. I think a non-glassy phantasm mesmer is probably one of the stronger 1v1 classes, and unless you also have a high-powered (or cheesy) dueling spec, you shouldn’t expect to win unless you significantly outplay him with LOS and interrupts. These guys are less common in tPvP because they offer less team utility, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of them solo-roaming in WvW.

You already show your WvW rank to your enemies via your nameplate (e.g., “Bronze Footman” or “Diamond Legend”). No need for finishers, as well.

Right now, unique finishers are the only thing sPvP has going for it. Rewarding finishers in WvW as well will just undermine that. Plus, as others have mentioned, ranking up in WvW is primarily done through zerging which takes next to no individual skill. In contrast, ranking up in sPvP is mostly through winning teamqueues or soloqueues (which is slower). (Zerging in hotjoins would take forever).

If the condi necro is allowed to kite, then he should not lose to a D/D ele in a straight up 1v1. Ele bursts are very well telegraphed, and most of their condi removal is tied to the initial swap to water (after which there’s a 10s delay on their condi cleansing, even higher if you land your DS2 or Staff3 chill).

The fight is a lot tougher when you need to stay on point, though.

Some general tips from my experience on both sides of the fight:

- As others have said, condibomb them after they attune to water (ideally, after they dodge in water).
- If they’re dumb enough to take ether renewal as DD, save a fear to interrupt the renewal.
- Maintain 900+ range as much as possible. Use cripples and chills to keep them at a distance. All of their damage requires them to come into medium/close range.
- Use your signet of spite while they’re CC’d from flesh golem or feared so that they can’t dodge it.
- If you interrupt their renewal or fear them right after they used water, following up with signet of spite is usually a guaranteed win.
- Save your dodges for burning speed, which is the bulk of their damage, and for updraft/earthquake, although they generally won’t get these CCs off if you’re kiting well.
- If you see them start to cast burning speed or earthquake when they’re obviously out of range, DODGE because they’re going to lightning flash onto you.
- Ideally save your weakness from DS5 or attuning to death shroud for when they’re chasing you with air autos. That will cut down their damage drastically.

I don’t run into many power rangers in soloqueue, unless I’ve been messing around with stupid builds and causing my ranking to nosedive. It’s probably like one power ranger every other game. And if I get queued against two rangers, it’s frequently a guaranteed win for our team. I still find a good thief/mes to be a bigger threat overall, because those two classes tend to bring more team support and are harder to 1v1 (at least for me).

The only issue with power ranger, which I think is all OP is really getting at, is that their burst is way easier to unload than every other burst class. Power rangers are basically a way for beginning players to get into playing the burst role. (Of course, good players will do it that much better — there’s definitely room for skilled plays on power ranger). They trade being able to easily burst from range for having a harder time supporting their team.

It’s kind of like how turret engie is a way for beginning players to learn the bunker role. The class trades team utility for ease of play, which becomes a progressively worse deal as the player gets better and gets matched up with and against better teams.

Jim Hunter.6821:

a t s e.9614:

I didint say the build was overpowered or had no counter. I said its a build that requires you to only press 1 button from 1500 range with no risk , no positioning whatsoever.

Please read the thread before commenting . Im not gonna repeat the same thing over and over.

Hate to break it to you but you are just flat out wrong. For the damage everyone is complaining about, the risk is being extremely glassy and having next to no condi removal.

The only way a glass cannon ranger can survive is by positioning themselves well and using well timed CC’s to keep distance between themselves and their opponents.

Please read every other thread on this same topic because everyone that actually knows the ranger class and their vulnerabilities is tired of repeating the same thing over and over.

I think ATSE’s point is that you need to view LB ranger in relation to the other zerker burst classes. All the zerker burst classes have to position themselves well and avoid getting condi-bombed, etc. But some of them have an easier time doing this than others. Fresh air ele handles conditions better via earth4 and cleansing wave. Ranger has an easier time positioning and lining up burst because of range, mobility/evades on off-hand, and less setup required for burst. Thief obviously has the best disengage potential.

I was thinking it would have a thicker line (i.e. a wider projectile), so players have more room for error.

Fresh air ele already has a similar skillshot component with Phoenix. If you want to maximize phoenix damage, you need to make sure that the phoenix flies past the opponent (this part is a straight line effect), explodes behind him (this part is AOE), and then flies past him on the return path (another straight line effect). If you only hit with the AOE portion, you lose out on about half the damage.

The new rapid fire (aka “true shot”) should be about as wide as the phoenix projectile (but without the aoe explosion at the end or the boomerang effect), but obviously travel a LOT faster. I.E., imagine having a much faster, longer-ranged phoenix that you have to hit someone with once to get the full rapid fire damage. I don’t think this would be impossible to land.

It’d be neat if rapid fire was changed to a skillshot. Have it do the same overall DPS, but with only one projectile (100% projectile finisher), a very small windup time, and you have to aim it (kind of like aiming whirlwind). You could rename it “true shot” or something, and make the arrow fly at an increased speed. Make the projectile a bit wider so lag doesn’t make it too unforgiving to use (i.e. you don’t need pinpoint accuracy to hit).

I think it’d make power ranger a lot more fun to play than what we have now. It’d be a buff to the very good rangers (who can now plink people in stealth, or line up piercing shots better if they opt for that trait). It’d be a nerf for the very bad players, and somewhat of a sidegrade for those in between who can kind of aim.

This change would also synergize well with the ranger’s many movement-impairing skills.

Dardamaniac.1295:

@Resjudicator
Saying that longbow power ranger doesnt require good positioning shows how little you know about longbow power rangers gameplay. There are some rangers that were trying to push that build into the meta before the 9/9 patch. The 1500 range means nothing for every class exept necros and guardian, dont overestimate it. Learn what a longbow does and you will be more ready to counter it. Most ppl dont know and they are confused

I played longbow power ranger prepatch and postpatch and know exactly what a longbow does, including most of the quirks. I didn’t even ask for ranger nerfs, so I’m not sure where your random personal attack came from.

What I was talking about, if you read my post carefully, is jumping in to +1 a fight and quickly unloading your burst to down the opponent. (For example, walking in on a 1v1 in progress at Windmill and quickly unloading your burst). Your only real requirements are to get in range and make sure you have direct line of sight (which, surprise surprise, is the bare minimum for nearly every other type of burst).

Of course if you want to sit at the outskirts and pewpewpew away, you still need to position yourself somewhere harder to reach (such as a ledge that can’t easily be shadowstep/blinked to). So yes, in that situation, you need to have the same positional awareness as every other glass cannon class.

I think it’s still too early to say whether power rangers are OP or not. They generally lack reliable access to stability, and they have limited condition removal unless they grab survival of the fittest (which means fewer points in skirmishing and therefore less damage).

Power rangers in tpvp right now feel like easier-to-play thieves. Both classes excel at +1’ing a fight to end it quickly. But while the thief has to position himself well and port into melee for a quick burst (which takes time to set up and places the thief at risk of getting 1-shot), the ranger can put out just as much damage from slightly over 1.5k range without any real positional or conditional requirements. This range advantage also makes it easier for power ranger to play between points. The main issue with power longbow really just seems to be how easy it is to burst with, rather than how powerful the class is overall.

If we compare power rangers to fresh air ele, rapid fire does about the same damage as two air-attune + lightning strike combos, but the ele will take at least twice as long (5s CD on fresh air) to cycle through air twice and has less survivability/mobility. Then again, fresh air ele can chain multiple skills together to achieve a larger overall burst (e.g. triple-hit phoenix + lightning flash + air burst), but that comes at a much longer cooldown of 40s (32 if you trait cantrip reduction).

On the other hand, fresh air ele and thief arguably bring more utility to their teams than a power ranger. (Ele can bring aoe daze via comet, aoe healing via trident, blinds, and might stacking; Thief can bring shadow refuge, boon stealing, guaranteed interrupts via sleight of hand, blast finisher spam, and good poison uptime).

And yes, as everyone has stated, you can evade/block a rapid fire if you see it coming, but that’s true for every other class’s burst (including backstabs if you saw the thief enter stealth and you aren’t completely new to the game). On the other hand, rapid fire is basically immune to aegis and blind (which only block one arrow, so I guess a ~10% reduction), while blind/aegis completely negate single-hit burst skills.

Reflection is definitely a hard counter to rapid fire, but most reflection skills have much longer cooldowns so the ranger can always just use barrage while the reflection is up. That said, it’s really fun to completely shut down bad rangers who don’t pay attention to reflect.

To clear up some basic misconceptions…

DPS = damage per second. That means if you do the same amount of damage in less time, your DPS increases. Rapid fire does the same damage as before, but now in almost half the time (44% faster). Therefore its DPS has increased.

As for whether power ranger overall is OP now or not, I think it’s still hard to tell. They generally lack stability and have limited condition removal unless they grab survival of the fittest (which means fewer points in skirmishing and therefore less damage).

Power rangers in tpvp right now feel like easier-to-play thieves. Both classes excel at joining a fight mid-battle and ending it quickly. But while the thief has to position himself well and port into melee for a quick burst (which takes time to set up and is places the thief at risk of getting 1-shot), the ranger can put out just as much damage from slightly over 1.5k range without any real positional or conditional requirements. The main issue with power longbow really just seems to be how easy it is to burst with, rather than how powerful the class is overall.

If we compare power rangers to fresh air ele, rapid fire does about the same damage as two air-attune + lightning strike combos, but the ele will take at least twice as long (5s CD on fresh air) to cycle through air twice and has less survivability/mobility. Then again, fresh air ele can chain multiple skills together to achieve a larger overall burst (e.g. triple-hit phoenix + lightning flash + air burst), but that comes at a much longer cooldown of 40s (32 if you trait cantrip reduction).

Fresh air ele and thief also arguably brings more utility to their teams than a power ranger. (Ele can bring aoe daze via comet, aoe healing via trident, blinds, and might stacking; Thief can bring shadow refuge, boon stealing, guaranteed interrupts via sleight of hand, and poison).

And yes, you can evade/block a rapid fire if you see it coming, but that’s true for every other class’s burst (including backstabs if you saw the thief enter stealth and you aren’t completely new to the game). On the other hand, rapid fire is basically immune to aegis and blind (which only block one arrow, so I guess a ~10% reduction), while blind/aegis completely negate single-hit burst skills.

Reflection is definitely a hard counter to rapid fire, but most reflection skills have much longer cooldowns so the ranger can always just use barrage while the reflection is up. That said, it’s really fun completely shutting down the crappier power rangers who don’t pay attention to reflect.

They could just reduce the cast time for Fire1 on Scepter so that it flows more smoothly with the other scepter weapon skills.

I logged onto the stream with low expectations, but I must say I’m pleasantly surprised. A lot of the matches have been closer than I expected, and I’m seeing some dif builds being used, like power engy. Obv GW2 pvp still has its fair share of problems, but I feel like this MLG is a huge improvement over PAX.

I just wanted to add that I’m watching the MLG stream right now, and I have to say that the shoutcasting this time is much better. I like that the shoutcasters are focusing on one player’s perspective for the duration of a fight, and then going to another player’s perspective once a new fight starts. It’s making it a lot easier for me to get a sense of what’s going on in a fight.

The shoutcasters are also giving better commentary, but it’s hard to really describe why. There’s a lot less filler “wow a lot of damage is going down” — it may be because the teams are less condi-focused now so there are more burst-plays to call out and less general spam.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

CntrlAltDefeat: Air ele has mediocre mobility. Slower than warrior, ranger, thief, engy w/ rocket boots. Faster than guardian, necro, mesmer. Not sure why you think a 40s lightning flash (900 range) and a 40s RtL (1.2k) range puts you above the warrior’s 20s GS rush (1.2k range) + 10s GS whirlwind (450 range). In 40 seconds, the warrior covers more than twice the distance. The two are not even close.

Nice fight. Good thing he never interrupted your ether renewal =)

Perplexity runes need an ICD on the 6/6 bonus, and the condi duration needs to be decreased. It doesn’t matter whether or not my opponents bring condi removal because I can stack confusion on them faster than they can remove. As long as they’re attacking me (even autoattacks), there’s something for me to interrupt and drop another stack of long-lasting confusion. Heck, they stack confusion even when they attack me, due to the 4/6 bonus. What the runeset actually does is boost my survivability by a ton, because my opponent needs to slow his attacks down a lot to avoid having one of his skills interrupted.

It’s easy to think you’re outplaying your opponent because you’re interrupting his skills, but the fact of the matter is that interrupting is stupidly easy to do, since even autoattacks can be interrupted.

Again, the original point of the post was that damage can be roughly separated into two groups:

(1) “Passive” damage: This is damage that you’re usually guaranteed to get off, either because it is spammable or super easy to land or whatever. This includes autoattacks, instabursts, phantasm attacks, necro scepter and staff 2+3, etc.

(2) “Burst” damage: This is the damage that is harder to pull off because it is either telegraphed (dragon’s tooth), a skillshot with a longish CD (fire dash, engy’s flamethrower 2 double-hit, engy nades), or requires some special setup (shatter requires multiple clones, fire grab requires burning, backstab requires stealth+positioning, etc.)

All I’m suggesting is that a larger proportion of a player’s damage come from the skills in category #2. For example, having about 30-40% of your damage come from passive damage, and the remaining 60-70% come from the burst skills.

The fresh air ele’s burst still fits roughly in the above formula. As others have said, the airburst component, while being easy “passive” damage, actually only makes up about a third of the ele’s actual damage. The rest comes from the ele landing his burst skills.

From what I gather, the point of the videos was that he played all of the classes terribly, but was able to succeed on some but not others.

I don’t think that’s a good way to show ele’s problems, because the game shouldn’t be balanced around ppl who are playing every class poorly. I don’t care if a poorly played ele performs way worse than a poorly played thief. What I want is for a well-played ele to perform as well as a well-played guardian/thief/whatever. This thread doesn’t really address that issue imo.

But it was amusing watching him click stuff randomly =)

I’d be curious to see ele (any build) vs. valk warrior running the typical mace/shield + GS build.

It sounds like you have autotargeting turned on. Mesmers don’t need to face their target to summon a phantasm.

Vash.1920:

Mesmer is almost like a Warrior – a strong character for every kind of player – but with a good player these classes become awesome.

I also play warrior and i have to say that it is incredible what u can do with those classes – but i think, each class has their strong sides – so in my lifetime i was at least once beaten by every other class in this game.

perfectly played guard with the right specc can come to a draw
perfectly played nekro is aweful
perfectly played ingi is also hard kitten
perfectly played hunter also kinda nasty
perfectly played thief ….

each class can be dangerous the fact is just, the focus of the worlds players are always goes down to the actually meta of classes and rests there until these classes recieved a nerf. After that new classes become the “obviously strongest” classes, the world yells about nerf again – thats the never ending circulation of MMPORGs.

True colesy – the thing is, condi removal against a condi mesmer is almost useless – mesmer push ther conditions so fast and frequently that there is almost no difference if u clean it or just accept it. And of course some of them were not really good – but i wanted to show the potential of condition.

-all 4s bleed from duellist
-poison on weapon switch i have it on both sets CD < weaponswitch timer infight
-confusion on hit and from phantasms
-when they kill an illusion they recieve also conditions (weakness,vulnerability,bleed)
…

True, they should have cleand themselvs but, maybe they had cooldowns or just were in panic. I played solo Arena and i played Team Arena to make my comments based on facts and there was no difference between a WvW random prey and some rank 50+ players. They suffered and they died after there removes were out. Mesmer has so long and many stealths in a condition specc that it is easy to overbridge the time between new attacks. Especially with the defense possibilities.

-blurred frenzy 2s immun cd:12s
-decoy 3s cd:32s
-prestige 4s cd: 30s
-mass invis 6s cs: 90s
-bullet: stun 2s cd: 25s
-leap: all 9,5 s
-blink: cd 30s
….

Some player should create new defense tactics instead of using those from others or well known sPvP players. I see a lot of unused potential in some classes.
Warrior for example are also one of the strongest characters these times – i was asking for duellings to some rank 1-50 sPvP player and they all sufferd from stuns and died – even thief jumper builds couldn´t stand it. So – there are a lot of points where nerfs or at least diminishing returns should be implented but, sometimes u just have to switch your gameplay to counter the “unbeatable” classes.

so long..

Great video, and a refreshingly honest and accurate assessment of your build’s potential.

The reason for the discrepancy is because tPvP is not about 1v1s. It’s easy to down players in a 1v1 as thief, but winning a tPvP match as thief requires additional knowledge about which point to pressure, who to take out, when to engage, etc. It also requires requires more coordination, because thieves are not great at stomping (although they’re decent w/ shadowstep-stomps and stealth-stomps).

Also, in SoloQ, versatility tends to win out. You want a class that can fulfill multiple roles, like CC warriors or condi necros. Thieves are great at spiking down squishy targets and they can be built to assault far point very well — but you only need one thief to do that. The second is redundant.

Bumping for visibility. These runes are ridiculous. I can equip these runes on my warrior or interrupt thief and faceroll over people. The 6/6 bonus needs an ICD and a lower duration. The 4/6 bonus also needs a lower duration, or it should do something else like increase confusion damage.

ryston.7640:

Finally, the thing about a moba comparison is:
1) Positioning matters. More. Ok kitten LoL and summoner abilities. They encourage people to be bad and get away with it.
2) Less skill spam. Like, the conditions put on you matter, and removing them is a decision, not an auto tic. Sometimes. kitten tidehunter.
3) Mobas posess tempo. If a lane was a sword fight, each last hit is an efficient stroke, each botched roam is an exerted lunge. You wear your opponent into a disadvantage and then make a gambit for victory. A successful riposte on their part could be fatal.

I think GW2 certainly has the potential to be what you’re describing, so I think we may actually agree on the core point in this discussion.

As a side note, I think positioning is currently incredibly important in GW2, especially since there’s less room for individual player skill. At higher levels where everyone plays their class well, the team that rotates its players better is going to be the team that wins. The real difference is that being out of position in a MOBA usually means that you get ganked and die. Being out of position in GW2 means that your team gets outnumbered at a another node and loses it.