Guild Wars 2

uwo.8197:

The skill floor is below sea level.

This.

The skill “ceiling” is really low for the absurd amount of effectiveness. When is it balanced to have builds able to bring down bunker specs in less than 2 seconds from the damage inflicted by 3 connecting hits?

If you’re going to bunker a point, Signet of Restoration is where it’s at.

Try this build… I think you’ll find it much more effective at the point holding role.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhMmSbzR5gjDAkHvYCLDFh4RRxM6A;ToAA1U1YqRUjtGXNyaGfc+YWA

Hey ANet, to compensate for some of the weaknesses of the elementalist have y’all tried removing major trait gating for the class to see how it would stack up? I know there’s some major issues that you feel arise from not having trait gates, but I’m just curious to see how your internal testers would fair against various classes without the division of adept, master, and grandmaster for the major traits of the elementalist class.

The OP’s suggestion is to fundamentally change the way the elementalist is played, giving players the option to build for stance dancing instead of making it required to play the class well.

I’m against a drastic change like this to the way the class plays. Here’s one reason why…

It’s simply not feasible to make the elementalist viable in a two spec build without making the stance dance option OP. Even if you somehow balance the numbers for stance dancing to be just as viable as 30/30 into two attunements you’re limiting viable specs to 30/30/10 splits or 30 arcana/X splits. Honestly though, it’s not possible to balance the numbers, because the skills are not designed to support that… meaning the skills would have to be replaced or redesigned. Plus there’s the insane amount of time it will take to roll out such a massive fundamental change in a balanced manner.

I’d much rather see incremental improvements to the elementalist to make more builds viable and make it a little more casual player friendly.

OP has a fair point about limited content from two perspectives, quantity and diversity.

That said, I’m pretty sure both players and ANet are okay with getting over 70 good hours of gameplay for $60. Not all players obviously and not all ANet staff either, but overall it sounds like a pretty decent trade considering other games provide 20-40 hours depending on the genre and game.

I agree with dynamite that general content of PvE is boring. I’m an altoholic and can rarely bring myself to play my alts, because I find the level process very dull as well as the hearts and events that allow leveling. The content is lacking, hearts and events are the same exact concepts dressed up slightly differently; it’s like home decor, a living room is a living regardless of how you furnish it. Interacting with objects to fill a yellow bar is still the same concept whether it’s turning on a machine or getting rid of spike traps.

/signed

Fix needs to include collision detection for the target only, if no collision detected keep moving forward. You should never not be moving while in RtL unless you’re running the skill into a non-targetable object.

Fix should also include a detonate function, which would cancel the skill. This is in case RtL gets “juked”, so you don’t end up flying way past your target if you don’t want to.

It is pretty OP. Most thieves I’ve seen that fight using this or other burst combos play strictly hit and run. They run in burn their combo and escape with stealth. Having bunker builds with roaming spike builds is probably the easiest strategy to get a lot of effectiveness out of. The thief is really good at roaming and spiking due to their burst, stealth, and mobility. They just roam around looking for squishies or other people engaged and spike down enemies their allies are in combat with.

From what I’ve seen and experienced 2 Bunker oriented and 2 Roaming oriented builds with a 5th build being whatever suits your group of 5 is the only viable way to do PvP currently.

His point is that not verifiable is often the result of the rarity of an occurrence due to the difficulty of reproducing it. Many times this is true, many times it’s not.

Tomcat I completely agree with you on the point that the wrong audience is favored by the legendary system. Those that utilize bots, hacks, and exploits are favored due to the fact that coin is the most efficient way to obtain the precursor items. Those that know how to make money in markets are also favored, but their wealth must be accepted because of having the trading post.

The people that should be favored for obtaining any reward are those that experience and overcome new (to them) content, utilized coordinated teamwork, and display superb skill.

The issue lies in that the most efficient way to obtain precursors is through utilizing large amounts of coin to obtain many weapons. I would like to see coin removed as an efficient means to obtaining a precursor, which means the way to obtain precursors would have to change.

I would love to be able to do everything instant cast, ArenaNet please help me out with this!!! I’d make it worth your while!!!

Problem 5
Poor enemy/event scaling. Scaling only seems to be raw numbers, which is not very interesting. More health or damage being available to enemies does very little to change the challenge presented. New mechanics, additional “interesting” enemies, additional objectives, etc are more interesting ways to add challenge.

Problem 6
Rewards are poor. For the majority of challenging content in general PvE, there are very low end rewards. There really should be middle of the road token token rewards similar to Explorable Mode Dungeons for at least rares, if not exotic common skin items. Where can players work towards a decent reward in PvE besides dungeons and 100% completing the level 70+ areas? Problem 7 makes problem 6 very visible.

Problem 7
Grind. Grind has a very counter nature to challenge. Grind is completing the same content over and over for efficient rewards. It’s understood that an MMO’s greatest adversary is player efficiency. Developers simply don’t want players to be able to experience content in an efficient manner because they can’t create content as quickly as players consume it. ANet has banned people for their own mistake and called those people exploiters (low karma cultural weapon, don’t even get me started on that), prioritized their time to close efficient farms (many of which were bugs), reduced rewards, implemented diminishing return systems, and implemented a significant gear grind as a treadmill for players. Even though the gear grind is not necessary players feel it is necessary to have the best gear, and it somewhat is necessary because it matters in WvW. That all said, it takes a long time to get the things you want in this game, and it is through repeating the same content, not experiencing new content or overcoming something that super challenging (which goes back to problem 3, where there is a lack in challenging content). From a character reward perspective Grind yields better rewards than completing challenging content. Problem 7 creates part of problem 6, ANet must keep rewards low in order allow problem 7 so that players walk the gear treadmill for a longer amount of time, which they are willing to do in order to get advantages in WvW and PvE.

Overall I think ANet has done an excellent job, minus banning people for spending their karma on cheap cultural weapons that was due to ArenaNet’s own mistake. I didn’t take part in that, but looking back it really bugs me, but it’s all water under the bridge especially since it didn’t affect me. Good job ANet, I hope you’re already addressing the problems outlined above as well as others unmentioned. Keep up the good work and thanks for making a AAA game.

PvE lacks challenging content. Let’s be clear here, in PvE there is challenging content. There are multiple problems that exist with the majority of PvE content that result in player boredom, I just want to highlight some of the biggest issues, and y’all can discuss them.

I also want to add that this is a great game, and it has a lot more growing pains to deal with that a game following the traditional MMO model because we’ve not seen this type of model previously. As time goes on the game will be refined, more ideas will be implemented, things will be fixed, and the game will get better.

Problem 1
Areas within the world map take incredibly long amounts of time to traverse (if you have waypoints and money though it’s not an issue). That’s not a bad thing by itself, because when a player is in “exploration mode” it’s great to see the world, however it does become an issue when combined with other problems. This means it takes a long time to get back and forth between the challenging parts of PvE. Problem 1 gets a higher visibility due to problem 2. Problem 1 also gives problem 2 higher visibility.

Problem 2
At higher character levels it costs a lot of coin to fast travel. This means people are less incentivized to travel quickly between challenging content, which means the other options are to travel for free yet very slowly or simply not do other challenging content. Free travel requires long runs and in some cases lots of loading time traveling to PvP > LA > Nearest Home City to desired zone > Running to desired zone. This combination of high level (not character level) issues prevent people from quickly experiencing challenging content back to back. I’m going to sneak in a suggestion besides identifying the problem here, make cities free to waypoint to and make waypoint costs based on the distance from the home city nearest to the desired waypoint.

Problem 3
Zones don’t have user friendly difficulty indicators on the map, besides dungeon icons, mostly because there simply isn’t much challenging content on a map; though Jumping puzzles don’t have a map identifier and should, unless designated as “hidden” in which case ppl should be able to unhide it after discovery. Even if challenging content is displayed in a user friendly manner via UI or map, the open world concept will cause many others to flock to there as well, which is problem 4. And problem 4 wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for problem 5, which is enemy/event scaling. Problem 3 is very significant, as it relates to the quality/amount of content that exists to give players a challenge.

Problem 4
The world is open, which is not actually a problem. The problem is that people are good at problem solving, and like the skritt, people in mass quantities can overcome problems. Zergs steamroll events, and high health pools don’t increase difficulty, only time. Poor enemy/event scaling (problem 5) make problem 4 very visible.

For anyone who does not understand Field of View (FoV), I have an experiment for you to try.
Steps…
1. Run GW2 in windowed mode.
2. Line up the left or right edge of your camera view with the middle of any NPC so that they are somewhat cut off.
3. Squash only the height of your window some. Notice that more of the NPC becomes visible.
4. Squash the height of your window more. Notice even more of the NPC becomes visible if not the entire thing. That is increasing Field of View.

Adjusting FoV is similar to holding your hands up and facing them out next to your eyes, then pivoting your hands outward away from your eyes and inward towards your eyes to increase or decease what you see with your peripheral vision. Increasing the FoV is similar pivoting your hands away from your eyes so that you can see more.

I’m finding the majority of Orr content to be pretty easy solo, and I run an elementalist which is supposedly considered a lesser profession.

I find most of PvE mind numbingly dull. I have a hard time playing alts, because of slow leveling and no challenge. I literally am getting 1 of my alts up 1 level per day via daily achievements, because it seems to the most efficient way to level and I’m the type of person who wants to get to the hard content as quickly as possible, since that’s what holds my attention. It’s a lot harder for me play the majority of PvE than EM Dungeons are difficult.

I agree, change the tool tip to rally. However, I think all revival type skills should actually revive, not rally.

The situations where it makes sense to have a “res” slot skill are few and far between. Especially, when Rallying is usually easier to trigger via kills than wasting a slot on a skill for it. The Mesmer’s Illusion of Life skill I find especially useless, given your choice is to kill rally an ally or use a skill to have the player help rally themself while out of downstate.

The skills are barely useful regardless of res on down or res on defeated, but res on defeated is at least more useful.

Anyone saying they “Tank” either means they are able to hold enemy for around a dozen seconds before backing off or they are simply trolling using the trinity definition of tank. Between the CCs, regen, protection, and vigor from an Aura D/D build, eles can hold aggro fairly well.

I find story mode dungeons simple to run through with D/D. Explorable mode dungeons I haven’t had much chance to go through, have only done the three paths for AC. I did all of my post level 50 personal story with D/D. I’ve been running solo through Orr running D/D to try and 100% the areas. D/D is very capable, there’s only a few situations where it doesn’t make sense to be close range, but those situations apply to any other profession as well not just ele.

Kreit.4709:

You don’t need to be full tank. I played bigger part of game in hybrid build/gear always with D/D (staff only for dungeons and WvW). Pow/pre armor/accessory with toughness runes (and later toughness/vitality, like dolyak). At 60 level you can buy knight gear (pow/pre/tough) and spec traits more offensive. This way you can get good damage and survivability. And earth armor is your best friend for killing packs with AoE. At 80 lvl if you don’t want knight, buy at least valkyrie gear and combine with berserker acccessory. Just keep crit chance close to 40%.
I’ve tried to play in condition tank build, but it’s to slow and boring for me.

There are tons of skills have push back, knockdown, stun, cripple, and some that give you invulnerability. Just learn how to use your attunements and you’ll be good.

2 huge CD skills from 20 in D/D is not tons. I don’t count auras, it’s bad CC skills which requires to recieve hit for activation. And frozen burst… hydromancer signet is better.

I went through the story mode largely on D/D as well. I only use staff when it’s suicidal to play close range, which is really only when I don’t know how an enemy behaves and they do large amounts of close range damage.

I find there to be plenty of CC on D/D, not as much as staff, but still plenty. I’d count Shocking Aura, but not Frost Aura. There’s Earthquake, Updraft, Shocking Aura, Frozen Burst, and Churning Earth + Lightning Flash. Churning Earth obviously relies on a teleport to make the cripple defensive.

The above is more than enough for me, but thathat said there’s also other Slot skills. you can grab Glyph of Storms and use it while in Earth attunement to create an area where you won’t take melee damage. There’s two signets (Earth and Water), good for single targets only though. Lightning hammer has Static Field, and AoE blind with Thunderclap.

Masternewbz.4953:

Still waiting for people to show an elementalist using D/D in arah dungeon EM.
Farming faster than a warrior/guardian.
1v1’ing with staff… or at least us give as a freaking weapon swap so we instead of running like chickens we can 1v1 with D/D or S/D.
We go glass cannon and our DMG is laughable, along with our Tankiness wich is zero if you go glass cannon.
If you go full tanky , you tank less than others and your damage is laughable. it tickles.
we are lacking, alot.
To give you an idea on PVE a warrior can kill a monster with 3 hits auto attack.

I have a question. Why do you think the elementalist has to be as good as every other profession in the game at everything? If the ele was as good in 1v1 as the mesmer with every one of its weapon sets, if it were as good at the EM dungeons as Guardians with every one of it’s weapon sets, if it were as good at WvW as the elementalist using a staff (lol) with every one of its weapon sets… don’t you think that would make it overpowered and effectively the best class in the game?

It sounds to me like you want every weapon combination of the ele to be as effective as any profession doing anything else in the game. That’s simply not feasible, because weapon skills are different, profession mechanics are different.

The elementalist is certainly capable of doing anything you ask well, but it doesn’t have to be as good at everything as every other profession.

From level 68+ white items I’ve been able to salvage tier 6 fine mats with mystic salvage kits, probably due to the 25% rare mat bonus.

This weekend I’ve been having quite a drought, salvaging 20+ whites for 0 tier 6 mats. Has anyone salvaged a tier 6 fine mat from a white level 68+ item this weekend? I’m just worried there was a ninja update or something I missed.

Here’s my 2 cents. I’d love a FoV slider, so I’d feel better about playing Full Screen. I play the game in windowed mode and squish the window specifically due to the small FoV. Ironically I get a better FPS by squishing my window, but the game is taking up about 33% less screen space. It’d be nice to have at least have an FoV slider so I could still play in Full Screen mode.

I have to admit the official ANet response facilitated through Jon Peters sounds pretty weak. They would have been better served stating it’s an issue they’ll look into after camera smoothing. If they’re really worried about PvP, they should implement a fixed FoV for it.

@Aaron
Try Mesmer, it’s more challenging than Guardian. Mesmer has similar requirements to being effective as it is compared to the ele. The difference is obviously the class mechanic, which both need to utilize heavily in order to be effective.

Masternewbz.4953:

DreadShinobi.4751:

Masternewbz.4953:

they are underpowered. They suck in dungeons , they have to use staff as only viable build.

They underperform in PVE, they are fun in WvW …

WvW is the only thing they are good at, cuz of massive AOE dmg and healing, good escaping habilities … and they can hide in the crowd

No. Bad troll.

so u go D/D in a dungeon? do arah with D/D and show me

I use D/D in dungeons. There are times where I’ll swap staff to staff when more CC is required and close combat isn’t feasible, but I don’t encounter those situations frequently.

It depends on the build. Scepter is lackluster in PvE. Dagger/Staff are both very good in PvE.

Staff plays best when you can act as support. Running with a group or using the two Elemental Glyphs helps with that.

Daggers are what I enjoy most, they’re close combat with lots of AoE damage and can provide good defense/support when mixed with Aura traits.

No, I don’t utilize map chat. That would be helpful to do.

I just find it surprising that tonight I uncovered probably 90% of a map (Snowden Drifts I think it’s called) and only came across 4 events, 1 of which I couldn’t do bcs it was a champion I am unable to solo.

I’m leveling up my mesmer. I’ve been going through the level 15-25 areas recently. The past few days I’ve been trying to complete my daily achievements as they’re basically a guaranteed level up. Unfortunately in 2 hour playing sessions I’m struggling with finding Dynamic Events to complete. We only need to do 5 for the daily, but it’s a challenge to even find that many. Perhaps I just don’t know how to trigger events, and I certainly don’t know where the trigger locations are unless I see an orange starburst orb over someone’s head.

I found 3 events in my last play session (2 hours) and thought, “Okay, since I can’t find a more in this map, I’ll go to a starting area where events are probably triggering more.” Turns out after about 30 minutes I could only find 1 event. I didn’t want to play anymore, so I didn’t finish my daily. I spent more coin that I wanted to on waypoints in those areas just looking for events. Is anyone else having trouble finding events in early level areas?

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Honestly, it’s not a surprise that the OP facerolled. Ironically, the gaming community has been getting and better at video games over the years, so the curve needed in order to please the medium core gamers keeps on rising for toughness. Games where simple health/damage don’t really cut it anymore – so it comes to coming up with unique tough mechanics in order to succeed.

This

Player skill transfers between games, because games are designed with similar mechanics. In Guild Wars 2 if you have an adaptive mindset it’s not difficult to learn and understand what mechanics to utilize and when in the game.

I’m in favor of more challenge. I’d like to see the challenge implemented at a “high level” – meaning new and enhanced models for doing events, such that combat is still prevalent, but thinking strategically is important as well.

For example, we have Big Boss (big bosses should be less static and move around the world a lot more by the way). Big boss has a pretty devestating attack, that requires a couple second charge. To prevent big devastating attack, you have to deal a certain amount of damage to a certain portion of big bosses body OR you have to hit him with X amount of CCs to burn out his defiance to interrupt him OR both could work.

Example 2, we have Mega Monster. Mega Monster, is powered by a couple power sources. In order to deal damage to Mega Monster, you have to destroy said power sources. Said power sources get repaired after a short time, and you must bring them down again to hurt Mega Monster.

Just an example each for offensive and defensive high level battle models. For all I know some of this may exist in EM Dungeons, as I haven’t done them all, but EM Dungeons have been the best challenges in PvE I’ve seen.

Would people like to know what the quote I see is?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.

Does that Quote say nerf?

Do people know what happens when people start falsely interpreting and raging throughout the forums about what Devs say without a valid reason to be upset? Devs stop gifting us information, and for good reason. What incentive is their to gift us more information outside of official blogs and patch notes when people are just spreading wrong information and going to find reasons to rage? I see less than 0 incentive.

Try to cool it people, and get information from the source.

@Virri.1789
D/D Aura builds are Glorious

Tarkaroshe.8370:

How does NOT using a frequently cycling ability reduce the ele’s effectiveness? I find that constant attunement swapping is both a right royal pain in the butt and gives very little reward in a solo PVE situation.

Your findings are your own and apply to you being effective.

Players who utilize frequent attunement swapping are simply dishing out more powerful effects. Skill 1 is weak. Skills 2-5 are much stronger.

Elementalist players who know all 20 skills in their weapon/attunement matrix and can effeciently swap between attunements hitting their damage oriented skills on cool down deal the dps most efficiently.

Furthermore players who know their 20 skills and can properly identify when to use their crowd control skills are the most efficiently at damage mitigation.

That’s what it comes down to, and the challenging fast pace combo based effectiveness is what people love about the profession.

After testing in the Mists with 916 power. It’s pretty clear several people are making numbers up for Dragon’s Claw and Lightning Whip.

The tool tip for dragon’s claw states each projectile deals 126 damage.
The tool tip for lightning whip states lightning whip’s damage is 235.

Arithmetic shows…
126*3=378 (Dragon’s Claw)
235*2=470 (Lightning Whip)

Actual testing on a medium armor dummy shows…
Dragon’s Claw consistently hitting for around 160 per projectile (3)
Lightning Whip consistently hitting for around 300 per hit (2)

Further Analysis using numbers identified
Net Single Target Damage
Dragon’s Claw – 160 * 3 = 480
Lightning Whip – 300 * 2 = 600
Percent damage Lightning Whip has over Dragon’s Claw – 25%

Net Three Target Damage
Dragon’s Claw – 160 * 3 = 480
Lightning Whip – 300 * 2 * 3 = 1800
Percent damage Lightning Whip has over Dragon’s Claw – 375%

Now that it’s clear that the numbers hold a significant favor for Lightning Whip, let’s be clear that this is a low priority issue in the grand scheme of Dagger balance on an Elementalist. Skill 1 should be used infrequently regardless of attunement in order to maximize the ele’s effectiveness. At some point ANet should address this, but it’s not an immediate issue of significance.

Feel free to provide suggestions on whatever y’all think ANet should do to bridge the gap, but don’t expect a quick turn-around for the resolution.

JonPeters.5630:

Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cutoff. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out. Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection. Looking at the numbers this morning, we believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we’ll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted.

Be sure it is communicated to whomever is responsible for this work that it is most valuable to focus their analysis on the 3 areas of orr, as there are no hearts to distract players. They’d also find more valuable data if they could filter it to players who have 100% completed the 3 Orrian areas, as their time obviously is most likely to be spent on dynamic events. Implementing changes around such data will result in the least impact to farmers.

Not a fan of the suggestion in the OP. I enjoy the Attunement System. I see no issue with the system other than being locked into one range, which can be compensated for by adjusting skills.

The system is not an “issue”, the problems people are seeing are 1) ele’s have the lowest health and lowest armor without compensation in the effectiveness of their skills, 2) ele’s have very high impact skill bugs, 3) ele’s are a challenging class to play effectively due to high value effects being split among the four attunements.

Are ele’s hard to play? Yes, they are challenging to play compared to other classes.

Are ele’s effective in PvE? Yes, they are effective. Especially in the areas of Mobility, AoE, and CC.

Are ele’s effective in PvP? Yes, but compared to the easy of use other professions provide ele’s fall short because they are a challenging profession to play.

Do ele’s need Buffs? Maybe, but first they need bug fixes to see how effective they are when bug free. ArenaNet could also tone down/nerf the effectiveness of other easy to use mechanics (Heartseeker, Pistol Whip, Kill Shot, etc.) of other professions to bring them in line with the elementalist.

Mods suggested I post these questions from my thread in Dynamic Events here…

“I pose these question to ArenaNet about rewards for Dynamic Event (DE) rewards.
Why do you have the diminishing returns (DR) system for Karma impacting players across multiple maps?
Is one of your goals with Karma DR to simply slow the rate players, who are actually at their machine playing, receive karma?
How do you want for people to play DEs in order to not be effected by DR systems?”

Lol, I just glanced through the License Agreement and when looking for the word responsible it’s always saying “you”. There’s literally one time where it applies to NC Soft and that’s if they break terms, kind of hard to break terms when none exist.

Sweet, thanks for pointing that out

Mytheos.7205:

@SiNiquity Are you trolling?

Anet doesnt owe us, its paying cutomers, anything?

What planet do you live on?

Why is it we have to stop and say oh yeah that is right, we are paying customers, we do deserve something for the money and support we give.

Paid and Paying customers are two different things. If they had a sub-based model I’d agree they owe people explanation, but they don’t have that. ArenaNet might have a responsibility to ensure the game is accessible, but the payment model is not service based even though they technically are providing a service. They have a huge out in that their game is the same price as any other game that’s not a service. Unless it’s in the EULA that ANet is responsible for something, I know of no commonly known laws saying ANet has to do those things that people are demanding in this thread.

Anyone know where the GW2 EULA is? I can’t find it on the main site.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en

I pose these question to ArenaNet about rewards for Dynamic Event (DE) rewards.

Why do you have the diminishing returns (DR) system for Karma impacting players across multiple maps?

Is one of your goals with Karma DR to simply slow the rate players, who are actually at their machine playing, receive karma?

How do you want for people to play DEs in order to not be effected by DR systems?

If that’s really an issue then go with the option that gives players multiple sub-events to take part in, but all sub-events are required for the event to fully succeed and design it so it’s not feasible for players to take part in more than one sub-event at a time.

Depending on the success/failure of each sub-event have different scenarios that can play out.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

That doesn’t matter. They only have to take a few minutes out of their precious time and treat their customers right. I don’t know why anybody wants to argue against this. Are people against being treated like paying customers instead of garbage?

They’ve already stated what they’re doing. They’re letting the Meta develop before they go in making significant changes. You can not like what they’re doing, but they’ve communicated it. This was in the last week I believe, and I think it came from a Jon Peters post.

@Everyone else raging
If you pay attention to everything they’re doing instead of just looking at the elementalist, you’ll see that they are trimming down the effectiveness of other classes down to where the ele is. Bringing everything down to an equal playing field instead up pushing things up to an equal playing field reduces the risk of OP builds existing. It also means that as more of the playerbase becomes familiar with how to utilize classes effectively ANet can start to add power creep via updates and expansions to create some more interesting complexity in combat. Buffs will eventually role out. Starting with nerfs and bug fixes is the right move, even if it isn’t the bug fixes you want for the class. They’ll get to them. You have a right to complain about the bugs, just chill out a bit and give ANet useful information instead of useless rage. If you want more communication about specific topics, go to the suggestion forum and propose ANet offer a high level list of things they’re looking into.

I was thinking a Master Major trait, which is asking a lot for only 1 of 20 skills. Not sure how it would render the other attunements obsolete when the class is designed to combo between attunements. You’ll still want to play the class the exact same, the difference is you’re Burning Retreat or Flamewall becomes a more effective tool to utilize and would be worth kiting around. Increasing the DPS on the skills is simpler solution, but I’m all about “Flare”.

Gaius.2781:

@Shockwave:
You have a point.

Let’s be about this systematically. Within the Guild Wars 2 Elementalist Canono, fire does:

• Vigor
• Might
• Burning
• Damage

Currently, Flame Wall doesn’t do much damage. One option is to increase that damage.

Another option: Fear. I don’t know about you, but were I confronted by a wall of fire, I’d be terrified. But it would have to be under certain circumstances (like a combo).

So thinking this through… we want a damage skill to make the enemy run away from the damage?

Not saying fear isn’t more useful than the damage, just counter productive to the skill’s purpose which is area control via out dps’ing opponents. Fear is area control via making a character move in a direction away from the fear source.

I wouldn’t go down that road, but if we did we’d then have to figure out what the actual fear source is. Is it the caster or the field? If it’s the field the caster can potentially move an enemy in whatever direction he/she chooses, so having the caster as the fear source is more balanced. Due to conflict of balance and weird mechanic of having line fire fields inflict fear, I’m again not wanting to go down that path.

I prefer an arcane flame concept that I’ve suggested previously where line flame fields inflict conditions from all attunements for a very short duration. I think a trait, which can easily be recategorized to adept, master, or grandmaster and potentially be moved between two trait lines Fire Magic and Arcana for balancing is the best solution for making linear fire fields meaningful in combat. Changing the Flames from red to purple when traited for visibility would be important as well for balance.

There are of course numerous other solutions. I happen to prefer mine, because I feel like it’s easy to balance due to trait flexibility and I feel like it fits the elementalist well.

Yo, people raging and demanding “transparency”, attention please.

Y’all should check every other profession sub forum and look for ANet responses. Tell us all how many you find in regard to profession specific balance responses.

What you’ll find is probably none by the devs and general PR statements from the CC mods stating ArenaNet is looking into skill fixes and balance for all professions.

So, y’all can demand, whine, complain, and claim entitlement all you want. Is that going to change the generic “We’re letting the Meta develop initially” response from the devs or the “Devs are aware of issues” responses from the CC’s? My opinion is no. ANet’s communicated what they’re doing, not the specifics because they haven’t commited to specifics yet. So take a chill pill and try some more constructive lines of thought.

Gaius.2781:

@Shockwave:
Fire fields provide a lot more than burning.

If combo’d, fire fields provide Area Might (3 stacks of it), Flame Shield (which, I feel, should provide Vigor), and Burning Bolts. You can get a lot out of them besides Burning.

I understand what you’re asking: you want Fire to provide conditions besides Burning.

My only counter-arguments are as follows:

• Other conditions are provided by other attunements (Air = Weakness, Blind; Earth = Crippled, Bleed; Ice = Vulnerable, Chilled). Fire is already our best DPS, for single targets AND groups — if you provide conditions, too, what incentive is there to swap attunements at all?
• Fire is pretty generous with boons, namely Vigor (provided by Phoenix and Heat Wave), Might (which is provided within Fire fields), and Fury (when attuning to Fire).

Yeah, it sucks that Fire can’t do everything. At the same time, it’s kinda GOOD that Fire can’t do everything. =)

I should clarify, I just want the line fire fields to do more. They can still be used for combo fields yes, but the bonuses from fire fields are damage only and I only use the line fire fields as an after thought due to the feasible of gaining meaningful damage from those two skills (Burning Retreat and FlameWall).

Ring of Fire and Lava Font are fine as far as I’m concerned, as the first you’ll trigger at 2-3 blast finishers plus a leap finisher in easily and the seconds main purpose is significant raw damage with a bonus of being a fire field.

Burning Retreat and Flamewall don’t provide much value as they exist now. The first is a an extra dodge, but you’re using staff so the potential damage boons don’t go very far and the second is just ground targeted without the dodge.

D/F is awkward in general and Flamewall doesn’t really make sense with that weapon set. S/F really only gets benefit out of Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix, which is something but not much.

It’s my opinion that the line fire fields are comparatively ineffective to other skills, and I would find it interesting to allow them to inflict weakness, vulnerability, and cripple on top of burning for 2 seconds each second someone is in one of those fields. If something like that comes via traits, I’d also like to see line fire fields be remodeled as purple. Again just my opinion, based on all the above and then some.

Gaius.2781:

Flamewall – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

I understand WHY you made this suggestion (in a word, Flame Wall does nothing but provide a combo field and an insignificant amount of damage), but I don’t feel your suggestion is on the money. Vulnerability seems to be the purview of ice; likewise, Weakness seems to be an Air thing. Cripple is more Earth (in fact, Unsteady Ground is a wall that cripples — it would be rather redundant, yes?).

I’d at least like to see a Trait in Arcana or Fire Magic for making fire fields deal burning, weakness, vulnerability, and cripple. As it stands, ele have a lot of skills for fire fields, but they can largely be ignored as burning only stacks in durations then can be purged once the field dies.

Here’s some things I’d like to see.

Dagger
Burning Speed – Self triggering combo field of fire and leap to create a fire aura. Allows d/d ele’s to trigger aura traits for combo chains without first putting water or air on cool down.

Fire Grab – Lower recharge, maybe ~35 seconds.

Frost Aura – Lower recharge, maybe 30-35 seconds.

Shocking Aura – Higher recharge, 30 seconds

Ride the Lightning – Sub-skill to “detonate”

Focus
Flamewall – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

Fire Shield – Reduce recharge to 20 seconds. Applies Retaliation (for skill only not combo fields + finishers)

Freezing Gust – Tweak the numbers for an upkeep time of 25%, don’t drop the recharge lower than 20 seconds.

Magnetic Wave – nerf it a bit, several things to pick from.

Obsidian Flesh – Make the invulnerability real, so that duration over time doesn’t deal damage. Deny all sources of damage.

Scepter
Dragon’s Tooth – Faster drop

Phoenix – Reduce recharge to 15 seconds.

Shatterstone – Reduce detonations to 1.5 seconds. Add 2 second chill. Increase recharge to 4 seconds.

Arc Lightning – Inflict weakness for 2 seconds each hit during Stage 2 damage, and Vulnerability for 4 seconds each hit during Stage 3.

Staff
Burning Retreat – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

Lightning Surge – Add Weakness

OP has a very valid point about dagger/dagger. You’re locked into close range combat and that’s not viable in numerous situations. It’s an issue that needs addressed, among numerous other in game issues. I would dislike an ANet response of “Don’t use d/d in PvP,” but we know they want d/d to be a valid option for the ele and the same for any other weapon set.

The solution to the d/d range lock is not to allow for mid-combat weapon swapping however. There are 3 solutions that make sense without impacting overall balance.

1) Increased survivability within d/d
2) Creating or adding ranged functionalities to d/d skills
3) A combination of the above two

The important thing is that balance be maintained whatever the changes are, and the above solutions mitigate risk for creating an imbalance.

Don’t know the situation, but if there’s enough chaos you might only be seeing 1 ele of many that are performing a group Arcane Wave spike.

Fyi, my intended meaning for “High Level Issue” was not literally in regard to character levels, but that kind of fits indirectly. My intended meaning was Issue present due to the game’s design model. Hurray for dual meanings!