Story quality aside (I happen to like, most everything I’ve seen so far), I have a major beef with “My Story”; actually, I guess I have a double beef (mmm, burgers…).
There’s all this time spent on decisions related to my character and some choices in game as well that I get to make in regard to my story. Awesome stuff.
I do the story and story mode dungeons (not totally done with either yet), I find it compelling and enjoyable; w00t, this is a happy guy.
Story mode dungeons are repeatable, awesome. Story and Story mode dungeons give pretty good rewards, double awesome.
Negative Nancy time…
Story isn’t repeatable (barring creating a new identical character minus the name). This guy is sad, but word around the water cooler is ANet’s looking into resolving this. Sweet.
Story mode dungeons have “rewards?” when completed more than once? Word around the water cooler about this is that there’s a bug preventing rewards from being what they’re desired to be. That’s unfortunate, but even when fixed what’s the incentive for me to go back and help someone with a story mode dungeon?
Don’t know what the hope of diminishing rewards are for repeating content, but in my mind I have a conversation that goes something like this…
Me: “Hey, I want to do Sorrow’s Embrace story mode. It’s cool, I give it a ‘Thumbs Up’ and the rewards were decent the first time through.”
Reward System: “Ooooh, you kinda did that one yesterday. So, I’m going to have to charge you X amount of coin when you complete it. Don’t worry, it’s going to a charity for the orphanage you saved.”
So, if story mode doesn’t provide rewards worth the time, what’s my incentive? The goodness of my heart doesn’t work with everyone for some reason… just kidding world, I love every one of you equally ( <.< >.> <.<).
This isn’t just a double beef with Repeating Story Mode or Explorable Mode dungeons though. I guess it’s a triple. For content in general what’s my incentive to go through an area with a buddy and 100% with him when I have it done already? Besides the goodness of my heart. What’s my incentive to be in any area besides the four areas that are level 70+? Is every area besides the four 70+ areas going to end up with a diminished population when everyone gets to the point that they want “shineys” and they can only get them by getting things that can only be found or are most lucrative in the level 70+ areas?
tl;dr
There’s 3 issues I’m bringing attention to.
1) The idea of “My Story” is supposed to be strong, yet it’s not repeatable. -Fix in the works?
2) Dungeons’ story modes aren’t worth the time compared to other activities (so people are less likely to appreciate the connections between the stories or help others through story mode).
3) Incentive to revisit content in general? Helping someone else only goes so far with it consumes your time and you’re compensation is minimal. Eventually people will want items that can only be obtained in level 70+ zones or at least are most lucrative in those zones.
Played out Conversation with ANet
Me: Issues known?
Anet: Yes.
Me: Cool, thought so.
Me again: Timeframe and actions to resolve?
ANet: In the works
Me: Not communicating much information, so as not to commit?
ANet: Yes.
Me: Cool, thought so. Good talk.
Chain’s are solid, cycle’s are consistent. Those are some nice qualities to Dynamic Events. The flip side of those is that DE’s are linear and quickly repetitive. I think it’s worth investigating multipath DE’s. Why? Choice, people like it. You know it, I know it.
I’d like to see events where players have to perform multiple objects simultaneously different consequences. Say we have two positions to capture, but only the resources to hold one. People do their thing and try to capture one of the places. The first place that get’s captured gets held, but later (when there’s more reinforcements) on there’s an event to try and capture the other.
Another example. Lets say there’s something time sensitive, destroying 3 “magical” capacitors at roughly the same time, because they repair each other or face the wrath of some kind of consequence… powerful evil magical creature, saving a town from a giant magical weapon firing or it has to be rebuilt, an asuran gate opens allowing reinforcements to push back the pact… you know normal magical fantasy stuff.
Let’s start to see the Evolution of the Dynamic Event (I know it’s been one month and I’m already saying “show me more” even when I’m not finished with anything other than having a char at max level, but hey I have high expectations). Good start with the linear and cyclical stuff. Pictures start with basic shapes, now that you have the basics start making some “masterworks” (zing); oh and doing all that other important stuff too like bug fixes, exploit closing, profession balance, holiday events, working on expansions, rolling out free content, and new features…
yeah…
Good luck with all that, but definitely focus on evolving DE’s too.
Thanks!
Thank you this is excellent info. We would like dungeons to be legit hard enough to take closer to 45 mins but if we can’t accomplish that goal we can look at the speed clear times from non exploiters and easily adjust the system. The goal is that hardcore farmers don’t even see this thing but only exploiters. We will keep working towards that goal.
Jon
Forewarning – this is a rant and it’s not directed at Jon Peters specifically. It’s a rant that comes from the focus on the negative consequences for players coming from changes made by the ANet team.
The solution I automatically assume y’all will do is time sinks without challenge. For example, slowing down the rate at which npcs run, placing multiple small gaps of time in between progression triggers, and worst of all (in my opinion) simply increasing the health of enemies so it takes longer to bring them down. Changes such as these do not test skill (or hardly any problem solving ability), they test patience.
This is the opinion of my cynical side, but I feel like with the many changes I’ve seen, the focus of the ANet team has been more on how to slow player progression than create challenges. Fixing exploits I understand; that’s good, so do it. I think everyone in the world understands that more time spent does not mean greater accomplishment. I and many people besides myself have a different view, the more time saved, the more efficiently something can be done, the more rewarding completing a task is.
Additionally the more complicated the challenge the greater the sense of accomplishment that comes with overcoming the challenge. Spending more time than desired, does not add the sense of accomplishment (at least not for me), it adds to the sacrifice of spending that time in other ways. Time consuming does not equal challenging. Do I want to have my cake and eat it too? Yeah, I do. But I want it to be challenging to reach my cake, not incredibly time consuming.
I saw someone on facebook say something in a way that really drove a point home for me… “The [end game gear] seem[s] more like a reward for full time farmers than they do for their (ANet’s) actual players.”
What a way to point out an obvious truth.
— Rant over
I fully understand there is a balance that must be achieved between time and rewards for an MMO to successfully retain players. Obviously ANet is making money off box sales and gem purchases, so one of their primary goals has to be keeping coin out of the economy to create incentive for players to give ANet money on getting coin. You can’t buy to win in this game, but you can certainly buy to horizontally progress. While I don’t like it, it’s what is ultimately going to give us more content via free updates and expansions. So ANet, Whenever NC Soft get’s off your rear about wanting money back from you, please switch your focus from time sinks for the sake of player’s time to a focus of challenges that people sink their time into.
ANet you’re awesome, Jon Peters you’re pretty cool by proxy, thanks for the awesome game.
Much love
Pretty sure it’s 9 seconds, just like every other weapon swap sigil
I think what Xhaiden meant, and I agree with him here, is that the elementalist has plenty of “filler” skills. We are a combo class, and that’s fun, but when our combos translate to skill a: deal 100 damage -> skill b: deal 100 damage -> skill c: deal 100 damage, and then we see another profession click a single skill and deal 400 damage, then I question, what’s the point?
So far, our “combo style” is a novelty. It’s a really interesting playstyle, but the elementalists are full of boring or same-y skills. Elementalists are (are they?) supposed to chain skills in unpredictable ways, but in reality, you have one or two optimal means to burst, and several defensive skills you use whe you need to use them. That’s it.
A mesmer is more of chaining unpredictable skills at this moment, because you never know how they’ll shatter their clones. An elementalist with low HP will go to water, and you know they’re going to heal themselves while chilling you out for a while. And you know they’ll go to water, when their HP starts to get down enough. An elementalist will disable you out for a couple of seconds, and you know they’re going to take advantage of the moment to chain a very predictable burst.
Elementalist is an interesting profession in theory, but in practise it’s all about playing keyboard piano to time out defensive skills to survive, while trying to milk out a little bit of damage inbetween.
When we look at other professions, all their weapon skills feel so tight. They all feel important, and there’s a degree of strategy behind each of them. Although it’s easy to understand why elementalists’ skills are simpler, they also have several uninspired, more-of-the-same or even poor skills at their disposal. It’s kinda messy.
I don’t find too much compelling about these points. You can say you know what an ele will do based on it’s attunement, but it’s also true you know what any other profession is going to do based on its weapon sets. A dagger thief is going to get up close to use heart seeker, a great sword warrior is going to get up close to land hundred blades, a staff mesmer is going to keep distance and stand in chaos storm and armor when approched. You also know what an ele is going to do based on it’s weapon and attunement. When you’ve played enough, there’s really nothing that is “unpredictable”.
There’s no surprise that when someone is low on health they are going to use the tools at their disposal to help them survive. I fully expect CC’s and survival skills to be used by anyone with low health, otherwise they go down. You know a guardian is going to burn it’s virtues and use it’s heal when it’s low on health, just like you know a thief is going to stealth and heal when it’s low on health.
I feel like the piano generalization can be applied to all professions, just slower songs.
What I keep seeing behind the text, is a want for people to feel more effective as an ele. Like people are seeking buffs. I’d like some buffs too, but I don’t want the class to be OP. I just want them all to have fairly equal viability. The ele may not be as viable as other professions even when played at a high level and it’d be nice to be able to get more out of some of its skills, but I have no issue with the class’ design.
It’s not “harder” to balance more skills, it simply requires more time to do so. What makes the ele hard to balance is it’s access to 10 more weapon skills at a time than most other professions, and that isn’t necessarily even harder as one can simply tweak the numbers to make the skills “weaker” as was observed between BWE2 and launch. There aren’t significant issues with attunements, it gets overblown. Everything can be made to feel more relevant by simply tweaking skill damage, recharge, activation, duration, boon, or condition effects.
The numerous ele skills in my opinion are just as interesting as skills of other professions minus the effectiveness, however more effectiveness can be gained from them by how they are used in combination.
If the numbers of the elementalists skills were on par with some other professions this conversation wouldn’t be happening, instead there’d be talk about how OP ele’s are.
It is spamming though. Because the key to our DPS is to dump out our DPS skills as fast as possible. The fact they have different coloured visual effects doesn’t change much. Hell many of them can’t even be bothered to do anything except damage. They are redundant. So they need to be spammed out as fast as possible to achieve overall dps. Attunements do not lock out long enough to break the chain. You go in, you hit the keys as fast as possible. You follow the same pattern over and over. Breaking it mainly only when the situation calls for it such as when you need to heal. But because Elementalist is automatically in trouble if anything notices it, even this takes on a rotational pattern. I don’t choose when to use Updraft, I NEED to use it or I’m in trouble. I don’t choose when to use Earthquake, I NEED to use it or I’m in trouble.
See what I’m getting at?
Its a rhythm. You’re twitch gaming. I can play the class just fine, but lets be honest, its twitchier than Thief. Its balls to the wall muscle memory. It’d be different if every skill under a given attunement had an attunement specific secondary effect.
But they don’t. So they are effectively redundant buttons. Hence the problem. Why have 20 weapon skills if 10 of them are the same with a different colour particle effect. Why have 20 weapon skills when 8 are mechanically identical.
This is what my problem is with the current system. It’s effectively an inefficient game design. Attunements are…bloated. It probably looked awesome on paper but when it came around to it they had to try and think up 60 unique weapon skills. That ain’t happening. They ran out of ideas around the 20 mark.
It needs to either be streamlined down, or properly fleshed. I suggest streamlining down. But if they can somehow figure out a way to properly flesh it out, that would be fine too.
The same about any other class’ damage skills, “use on recharge”. That’s the most efficient way to utilize a damage skill, use on recharge and land the hit. The ele has 20 weapon skills instead of 5, it makes sense they they have more to use on recharge. Seems like your complaint is that it takes more work using the ele to be as good as other classes, which is true imo, but the challenge is what so many people like. The play style of the ele combo based, it’s a combo class, people like that. You don’t prefer it, which is fine.
You don’t need to use updraft updraft if you’re in trouble and you’re not in trouble if you don’t use earthquake. What you need to do is avoid damage. Updraft and Earthquake are two options, dodging is another option, kiting is another option, burning speed is another option, RtL is another option, blinding flash is an option, the various staff controls are options, auras are options, various utility skills are numerous options, and utilizing spec’ed trait bonuses are options too. Which option you choose should be dependent upon what will help you bring down the enemy more quickly. If you’re d/d and fire is coming off cool down then it makes sense to use updraft and chain into burning speed, otherwise it might make more sense to use dodge and trip and evasive arcana effect (which is the type of thing you are asking for, as you mentioned to some extent what you want already exists). Maybe you’re running scepter and out of energy so it makes more sense to save earthquake for a damage spike, so you trigger some swiftness and kite for a couple of seconds, while while waiting for your fire spike.
I don’t know what your definition of “twitchy” is or why there would be a problem with “twitchy” gameplay. You have to have “muscle memory” to play any fast paced game video game or irl, so not sure what that’s supposed to mean. To me “twitchy” sounds like fast and reactive, which I like. But you mentioned exactly what I said, going with you’re suggestion (which again already exists through various mechanics) would be different. Different’s not bad, it’s just different. Push your desire for a focus on mechanics of that sort to a new profession, but not the elementalist, which I and many other people enjoy.
You’re exaggerating the extent and amount of similarities between skills. Drake’s Breath and Cone of Cold are the same in terms of particle effects, but they are still different and that’s really the only example I can give you. Even if you have issue with similar skills it doesn’t mean ANet can’t keep attunements the way they are and change the mechanics of a skill. They haven’t run out of ideas for skills, and if they have I’m sure they’d be happy to ask and we’d remind them of the hundreds of skills they can use as inspiration from GW1.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Skills#Skill_quantity
@Xhaiden.3891
What you see as spamming I see as rapidly casting skills based on my ever changing situation. I make a decision with the majority of my casts, I am not every time going through a premeditated rotation. Cool downs already exist, what you request is slowing the class down allowing more time to think between casts, but I don’t prefer that or I’d pick most of the other classes.
I think you should get the idea of “spamming” out of your mind, because that’s not how to play the class effectively, and I think it’s why you feel the way you do about attunements. From my perspective I am making very quick frequent decisions based on what I am seeing in combat. Adjusting dps downward on rapidly casting professions is necessary, remember the GW1 Mesmer with MoI before the nerfs to MoI and fast casting? Mesmers had fast casting, which meant they could rapidly cast damage skills to bring targets down, this I would agree was spamming, because there were only 8 skills available on the bar and you were literally chaining a premeditated spike all the time. There’s a lot more to being effective with the elementalist than utilizing a premeditated combination of skills, which isn’t exactly problematic in this game given those types of things are much easier to avoid.
I understand you believe that your suggested changes are more meaningful, but I don’t think so. I think it’s just different, because well it’s different. I find the attunements and weapon skills very meaningful in their current state. You have 4 tool kits available at a time and are locked out temporarily after changing your kit. Within each kit you have skills with recharges. Because the skills are designed in a way that it doesn’t make sense to use your recharge skills then swap attunements and rinse and repeat, players have to be mindful of what they use. I find that to be very meaningful.
@Xhaiden.3891
Your opinion on attunements and weapon swaps is your own.
Currently with the system in place 1 button does already have 4 different effects. That would not change with your suggestion. The only differences are that you wish for the function of weapon skills to be the same regardless of attunement, but yield different effects. You also want skills to be on recharge throughout all attunements.
At this point you are asking for a complete class overhaul in the first month of the game, which is fine to ask for. It’s not going to happen, but what does it hurt to ask? I would request that the devs ignore your request, because I thoroughly enjoy the way the elementalist plays. That is my opinion.
I disagree that thoughtful play inadequate as an elementalist. I think it requires more thought than any other class given a lot of the playerbase complains how difficult it is to be as effective as other classes. I like the class requiring me to have quick reflexes and think very quickly and thoroughly, it’s a challenge I enjoy. Your suggestion would effectively divide the number of weapon skills available in combat by 4, so it is true that combination casting would be greatly reduced. However, I like combination casts and I don’t see it as spam, because I am able to think through each skill I am using as I cast rapidly.
I also believe attunements being similar to weapon swapping is very meaningful. I compare it other professions swapping weapons, which I feel is also very meaningful. I don’t now what additional meaning could come from applying the suggestions provided above, I feel like there is less meaning, because the only difference is effects available as opposed to different functions and mechanics.
Elementalist Traits can be overhauled for weapons with the current function of attunements. It actually already does somewhat, in arcana specifically there are at least 3 weapon specific traits I can think of.
I don’t believe attunements would be improved with the suggestions, I think they would just be different. I think your suggestions are a VERY good option for the Dervish if they ever implement that (Earth Prayers, Wind Prayers, and Mysticism and such) , but not the elementalist. I think too many people like the way it plays to change it that drastically. But I’d be behind you 100% if you were to push ANet towards bringing back the Dervish with a system similar to what you are suggesting.
The D/D build I run
Stats (using all masterwork gear)…
Power – 916 + 550
Precision – 916 + 498
Toughness – 916 + 493
Vitality – 916 + 356
Condition Damage – 308
Critical Hit Damage – 14%
Healing Power – 255
Traits…
Fire – 10 | VI
Air – 10 | I
Earth – 10 | V
Water – 10 | V
Arcana – 30 | V | VI | XI
There’s just something about trait 5s and 1s I guess, and a random 10 in there too.
It’s an aura based build. You get protection in 3/4 attunements on swap assuming the aura is recharged in Water or Air. You can also Magnetic grasp through a fire field to get Fire Aura. With Fury up I have a 48% chance to crit. With the 30% increase to boon duration fury from attunement swapping and tripping an aura fury stays up for 10 seconds at a time. I run Sigils of Battle and Earth, triggering bleeds and might. The high crit rate with Arcana VI will keep vigor on you most of the time allowing for more dodge rolling. I like to stick with Arcane Blast, and Lightning Flash. I leave the other utility up in the air depending on situation. The elite I run is Glyph of Elementals.
Tips for running D/D…
Added:
I’m so amused by the major traits that I’ve decided to name this Build “Viivvv Vixi” in honor of the roman numerals that it is comprised of.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Of the two I’d suggest Cantrips, because the bonuses from those seem more useful to me. Also, I don’t know if this is ANet irony, cantrips make it so you can’t trip (be knocked down, stunned, hard cc’ed in general) as they are stun breakers, which I find useful.
Their class mechanics involved huge pools of energy and ‘exhaustion’ which temporarily lost you max energy for some of the more powerful spells.
Whoh, whoh buddy. It’s called overcast now, gotta keep up with the times.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Overcast
Firstly, I suggest reading up a bit on the ele to get to know the skills (all of them) and understand it at a basic level. There’s a lot of ele bashing in regard to pvp, but since you’re focus is PvE ignore it.
Yesterday my ele reached 80, I’ve got a lot I can say about my experiences. Firstly, the class is a combination class (not talking combo fields specifically fyi, just combo’s in general). Experiment with skills and see how they play together, for example the skill Phoenix can hit foes 3 times by itself and you can simultaneously land a Dragon’s Tooth if cast before Phoenix, additionally these skills are blast finishers so if you threw down a combo field you’ll trigger a combo twice.
You’ll want to quickly learn attunement swapping, and get used to having 2-3 attunements on cool down. This is important because it adds to the combos you can do, for example using the offhand dagger you can lay down a ring of fire then swap to earth and use earthquake and churning earth in the ring of fire to trigger two area might twice giving you and others 6 stacks of might. Another example with the staff is using frozen ground to slow enemies then swapping to fire and laying down a lava font that they can’t get out of.
Experiment, learn your skills, understand the mechanics and it’ll be fun. It’s a lot to take in, but entertaining for those who enjoy complex combat.
For the first 20 or so levels you should have a healthy focus on power, as it shines early on. As you progress in level you’ll find it’s best to have a balanced spread of stats. For the elementalist specifically, it’s hard to go wrong with shaman armor and emerald accessories in PvE. If things start to get too tough to where you’re getting downed a lot even while effectively dodging attacks, check up on your gear level.
I’ve found a balanced stat spread works best for me, but it may be slightly different for you. I played mostly solo. In combat try to use the big damage skills on recharge, and supplement that with condition damage. Make sure to apply burning when recharged, apply some bleeding. If you find yourself using your skill 1 more than once or twice it’s time to swap attunements and use more skills. Seriously, avoid using skill 1 regardless of attunement. It’s sometimes useful to spam a skill a bit, but you’ll be far more effective if you pick and choose skills 2 through 4 and keep swapping attunements.
I wouldn’t worry at all about extra crit damage while leveling, but it’s not bad to have. While leveling I think it’s best to have a healthy balanced spread between the 4 primary stats. Once you get to the higher levels and have a good grasp of how to play the class you can probably spread stats how you like. Here’s my stats at level 80 with all masterwork (green) gear and 10/10/10/10/30 into traits…
Power – 916 + 550
Precision – 916 + 498
Toughness – 916 + 493
Vitality – 916 + 356
Condition Damage – 308
Critical Hit Damage – 14%
Healing Power – 255
tl;dr
Attunement swap! Attunement swap! Attunement swap! Use skill 1 fairly infrequently, pick and choose skills 2-4 and swap attunements picking other 2-4 skills. Use power early on (like the first 20 levels). Balance out the primary stats mid level, (Healthy Balanced spread if I haven’t said it enough). Once your at a higher level and understand the class you can play around with stats.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
in Elementalist
Posted by: Shockwave.1230
Scepter/Dagger
Dagger/Dagger
Staff
Those are the three weapon sets I am comfortable with. The focus has been more difficult for me to grasp, but I feel like I can get a lot out of it if I try to play with it more, but but I’ve tried it out for less than 2 hours and my ele has 125 hours of being logged in on.
Builds are only part of the game. A build will only compensate for bad gameplay to some extent. The elementalist is the most unforgiving class to bad play out the the three I’ve spent significant time on. Those three being the ele, mesmer, and guardian. The guardian is definitely the most forgiving out of those three.
I’ll speak some to PvE and Dungeons. I’m not a “pro-player” but I don’t have a tough time dealing damage or staying alive through 74 levels. In general PvE the only challenging enemies for me are Champions (enemies with Gold trim in the UI). Anything with a silver trim or lower is not difficult for me. In dungeons, story mode is a cinch. Gold trimmed and taking on too many silver trimmed enemies both can be a challenge occasionally when messing up positioning. Explorable mode is challenging when it hasn’t been experienced previously. After everyone knows how to succeed in each area it’s pretty much rinse and repeat.
What makes me successful PvE and Dungeons? Starting with the obvious, there’s reducing power barriers by upgrading my gear every 5 levels. I am fairly good at dodging, and fairly good at positioning myself in general. These couple of things alone make me effective regardless of profression, because I’m alive and able to res people and deal damage (even though I may not be dealing a significant amount of damage potential on profs I’m not very familiar with) as opposed to being dead on the ground. Again those things are useful for any class in the game.
What makes me succeed as an elementalist? Attunement swapping, knowing what the 60 elementalist weapon skills are and how their mechanics behave, using slot skills that suit my situaiton, utilizing traits that synergize well with how I am playing and knowing what skills are useful to chain together.
I’m talking about a bunch of high level stuff and haven’t really said much that will actually be beneficial to anyone, so I’ll get into some details.
In general I have 2 attunements always on cooldown, and it’s not odd for me have all three that I’m not attuned to on recharge. I hardly utilize my skill 1, except with scepter earth because of bleed stacking. I try to keep all of my damage skills on cool down and will choose which control’s to apply based on situation while keeping 1 in reserve as a just in case.
I’d rather not explain things any more granularly because it will require too much time and more walls of text, but if you’d like to see the elementalist played well look for streams or youtube videos.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Renown Hearts (RH’s)
They’re a neat new concept. A nice slight change-up form traditional questing. While similar to solo quests, group participation is an option for those who haven’t completed them, which is nice. The difference from traditional quests for those who don’t know is there’s not a “quest giver” to start them, they’re just always available to progress until complete.
RH’s are all presented as the same exact things. Fill this progress by doing these various things. There’s good and bad to this presentation. The good is that there are multiple ways to fill the progress bar. The bad is that ultimately you’re doing these things to fill a progress bar.
The idea of the progress bar for RH’s needs to be scrapped. It’s simple to understand, great, but it takes so much away from actually caring about the tasks that fill the progress bar. The progress bar concept feels very grindy. If ArenaNet really loves their progress bar though, a better design of the RH’s would be to have a progress for each type of contribution, and present the RHs as bulleted list with a progress bar for each bullet. I still don’t like that or the idea of a progress bar, because (again) it feels grindy.
I think the best way to present the RH’s is to simply to provide a bulleted list of the things that need done in a particular area (completely hide progress) and put something like a checkbox on the UI so people can see if a task is empty or has a check. Then you’ll know if it’s done or not. RHs wouldn’t be complete until each task is done.
“How will I know how much of something I need to do?” That’s the natural question to ask. You don’t, because, knowing your progress won’t matter. Why won’t knowing your progress matter? Because the number of times and contribution to hidden progress wouldn’t be designed as a grind. It’d be reasonable. There’s really no reason to have players repeat something more than 5 times, it just gets repetitive. It’s also a nice little surprise when a player is alerted a task is complete without an indication of progress.
Keeping numbers for task completion completely hidden and low in combination with players knowing that the number of repetitions will be low due to previously experiencing this, will result in players feeling less grind. More importantly it provides players with a better opportunity to pay attention to content and enjoy it, because they don’t just know and feel like they have to get a yellow bar from 0% to 100%.
Let’s do an example of an RH with the format presented. We’ll use “Help Farmer Diah”.
<3
Help Diah by watering corn, stomping wurm mounds, feeding cattle, and defending the fields.
Imagine the “ [ ] “ as a checkbox, which would be checked when the task was done. Completely hidden behind the scenes would be small numbers, for example 4, 4, 3, 5 respectively for each task listed above. I also mentioned ArenaNet could have progress bars per task, but I think that would end up resulting in a grindy feel and them feeling incentivized to add too many repetitions (which in my mind is 6 or more). In several cases it may make sense to allow hearts to be completed by only doing a couple of the total available tasks listed, but I think it makes sense to have completion based on all of them, as they aren’t repeatable and ANet wouldn’t want anyone forever missing out on part of the game’s content.
I doubt we see any of these improvements to hearts until an expansion, but for the sake of making the game better, polished, and refined one can hope to see them rolled out with a content update at some point.
Tl;dr of Renown Hearts
Progress bars feel grindy, but multiple progress bars per task could possibly work. RH Tasks should be bulleted for readability in the UI. A better RH format is progress being task based, this increases game content players are exposed to. Use low quantity (1-5) task repetitions that are completely hidden to avoid grindy feel.
just turn off auto-targeting? gg
I have it off because it bugs me. However, there are people who use it.
If past behavior can predict future behavior, Arenanet won’t just straight buff a class.
They will buff a skill here or there and nerf other skills into the ground.
Idk. Remember the Ritualist, Assassin, Necro, Elementalist, Mesmer and Dervish from Guild Wars?
in Elementalist
Posted by: Shockwave.1230
Traits.
I believe the tooltips are quite self explanatory. I’ll point out a few things though.
Arcane Power: Windborne dagger which gives you 15% more movement speed with daggers (Again, I like this because of the shoddy out of combat run speed) can be substituted with something else if run speed isn’t something you’re concerned with, Renewing Stamina might be nice if you dodge alot. I don’t really have the need to.
Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding, these add boons when applying an Aura, with daggers you got two auras, one in Water attunment and one in Air attunment. I got those two on “auto attack” which means they trigger as soon as I drop into that attunment and keep triggering once they go off cooldown (if still in that attunment)
They’re also nice when you want to travel faster, as Zephyr’s Boon adds swiftness when applying an aura. You can keep this buff going indefinetly by switching back and forth.As for gear. I’m ofcourse level 80. But I’ve got Power/Precision/Critical Damage in my armor pieces and Power/Vitality/Critical Damage in my Jewelry. But anything really will do, it doesn’t focus much on one thing or another, but I like crits so that’s what I went for.
Still fiddling around with Runes at the moment though. But Vitality and/or Toughness wouldn’t be a bad bet considering how squishy elementalists are, but not necessary unless you get into a bind.For Sigils I like Sigil of Battle, which gives might when you switch weapons. (Attunments count as weapon swaps). For the 2nd one I’m still undecided and will have to test out a few I got my eye on at the moment. Currently running with Sigil of Luck, which gives magic find when you kill something. But that’s not really usefull in a combat setting.
Anyways. beeing low level you obviously can’t get all of these trait points yet.
I can help you choose a few things to start with, but then I’m gonna need to know your level.(Had to put this in two posts, was appearently way too long)
You mean, the weapon switching sigils actually do something for elementalists??!!!!!!!!
mind = blown. I wish that was in the description. Though I guess I have come to expect incredibly bad descriptions in GW2.
Wow, I have never tested this and assumed Engineers and Elementalists were just sol when it came to these sigils. I’ll have to test this, and see if there’s some way to get it to work on engineers, I wonder if it works on conjure weapons too? And maybe tomes or anything that changes your weapons bar. I have a new task for tomorrow.
Exactly. And to anyone who thinks that if the ele gets a buff then the already “good” players will have an outstanding advantage, you. are. wrong. Every player will have an outstanding advantage if they are highly skilled with their class, but it does NOT mean that nobody else should be capable of playing it.
I think this.
While it is true highly skilled players have an advantage over less skilled players that does not mean buffing the ele so that the average player using an ele is on par with the average player using a warrior wouldn’t give skilled players using elementalists and even greater advantage than skill players not using an elementalist.
What the average player is seeking from the elementalist is simplification (so it’s more on par with other professions), but its class mechanics are not simple. Buffing does allow players to use the ele in a more simplified manner, because they don’t have to swap attunements as much to be effective. That is a solution, but that alone is not the right solution because of the imbalance it would likely create at higher degrees of skilled play. The other solution would be to change the profession mechanic and simplify it, but I don’t want to see that.
There’s another option, and that’s for players to use the class as designed and frequently swap attunements. A slight buff in some cases would be nice, but more importantly I feel it’s necessary to educate players on how to play the profession, which is a big reason I’m posting so much in the Ele sub-forum.
This came up due to a discussion about Ride the Lightning, but I feel this is applicable to all gap closing skills be it Savage Leap, Lightning Leap, Swoop, etc.
In what situations is having gap closers affected by auto-targeting useful? The answer is simple, situations where the players has no target and wants to use a gap closer.
Now how often are there multiple enemy encounters? Very frequently. Does autotargeting sometimes result in the wrong target being chosen from the players perspective? Yes. Is this a big deal for most skills? Not always. Is this a big deal for gap closing skill? I think it always is, because not only is my skill on cooldown, but my positioning is now wrong, so it’s a double whammy.
Does the negative effect of an undesired auto-target warrant disassociating gap closing skills from the auto-target feature? I don’t know the answer for the majority of the playerbase, so we’ll see what people say in the thread, but for me and people I’ve discussed it with, it seems like a good idea to at least have another check box to unbind gap closers from auto-targeting.
I just turn autotarget off, it’s a crutch anyway. The downside to having the game make choices for you is that sometimes it makes the wrong choices
This.
But I get what the OP is saying, it’d be nice to have auto-target behave in a different manner, but I think the solution in RtL’s case is to make this skill unaffected by autotarget. It honestly doesn’t make sense to have a skill used primarily for it’s mobility auto-target, I think that’s true for any gap closer. If someone want’s to use a gap closing skill to get to a target, they player will designate that target his/herself then use the skill.
I think it’s suggestion time for me.
the profession is stuck into one range.
True statement for non-scepter/dagger weapon sets, and even running scepter dagger inclined to stay in closer range when dealing your heavy damage then back off until fire recharges, making the heavy damage very telegraphed.
It’d be nice to see some more things to overcome being very “one ranged”.
in Elementalist
Posted by: Shockwave.1230
Leveling an ele requires the same thing as any other class. Learn the class and play content. I’m guessing you’re asking how to learn the class more so that what content to play in order to level up fastest.
It’s widely agreed upon that investing trait points into power early on is very effective. After level 30 though, the usefulness diminishes. It’s probably worth keeping 10 points in fire to get the Internal Fire trait and utilizing the extra power going forward, but specing for Arcana and survival seems to yield better results in my experience.
Arcana is important from after level 20. I put 10 into it through level 30 making sure to grab Elemental Attunement. Then spent my next 5 points on Soothing Mist at level 35. I went back to Acana from 35-45 and utilized Blasting Staff, or Vigorous Scepter depending on my weapon. I put 5 points into earth for the bonus toughness, and after that I’ve been investing mostly into water and earth for the defensive bonuses, because damage is fine on my ele, and what really makes me effective is utilizing all attunments.
I’ve been saying it in a lot of threads, but it’s true. Learn to swap attunements to meets the needs of the situation for an encounter. Even though you trait for specific attunements and feel incentivized to stay in that attunement keep swaping them, you’ll roll back around to that attunement eventually.
Learning what all of your weapon skills do and in what situations to use them in is very important. It’s difficult to teach this through explanation and even video doesn’t do it justice, learning this from experience will create many “ah-ha!” moments.
The most important thing is to know all of your weapon skills, because it is required that they all be utilized to maximize effectiveness.
I personally think that part of your issue is that you prefer a focus offhand. Focus is good, don’t get me wrong, but dagger offhand is superior in all around usefulness (imo, but definitely so for PvE) and for damage especially. The biggest reason being dagger offhand has significantly more AoE.
Combo your skills, and I don’t exactly mean combo fields and finishers but that’s part of it. My personal favorite combo to use involves scepter/dagger. I use Ride the Lightning > Updraft (At the same time I Burn my Lightning Strike and Blinding Flash if they’re off cool down bcs they’re instant cast and will be recharged by the time I get back to air) > Dragon’s Tooth > Ring of Fire > Phoenix (At the same time I use Arcane Blast if it’s off cool down to get 6 stacks of might from Blast Finishers in Ring of Fire) > Fire Grab.
Staff is actually really good, even for solo play. Take Elemental Glyphs to absorb damage and get foes to stand in AoEs. You can also perma maintain swiftness with windbourne speed, glyph of elemental harmony, and elemental attunement. Blasting staff makes the staff way more effective.
Really, mastering the elementalist and being good with it just comes down to knowing all the skills, traits, and a lot about the game’s mechanics. Then the player has to understand when to use what and execute quickly. One of the biggest things is setting up your mouse/keyboard controls to minimize time between casts.
There’s a lot to tell about the class, but really if you can learn all the skills and mechanics then swap attunements and adapt you’ll be well on your way.
in Elementalist
Posted by: Shockwave.1230
To play the ele effectively, you have to swap attunements frequently. I agree that specializing into one trait line incentivizes players to stay in one attunement, but that will result in diminished effectiveness from the class.
Effective play on the ele requires being effective at utilizing slows, other crowd controls, kiting, dodges, combos, and damage. It’s comparison to the other classes, it’s probably the most difficult to be effective with. That doesn’t mean it’s not effective when played with a high degree of skill.
Comparing professions naturally without traits, the ele has access to more synergy than any other profession. Now, because it is expected that as an effective ele you’ll be swapping attunements, what people should be doing is grabbing traits for the mechanics that they want to stand out more. Additionally if players want the kind of synergy created by using skills as exampled in the necro build above, you’ll have to spec more heavily into Arcana for traits such as Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana, or Elemental Suge. However I’d only recommend Elemental Attunement.
It’s correct to assess that trait synergy specifically is lackluster compared to other professions, but synergy naturally exists heavily within the ele’s profession mechanic and skills which can’t be said about other professions, because those only 10 to work with as opposed to the ele’s 20.
I find the OP’s issue surprising. I find that the ele can do more than other classes. In dungeons I prefer staff, and the amount of control skills on the staff that can be used to mitigate damage is pretty absurd. There’s Frozen Ground, Gust, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, and Shock Wave. That’s just control from the staff. There’s also Geyser and Healing Rain for healing allies, and those are water fields which can be used with Blast Finishers to create additional AoE healing, anyone every spammed Lightning Hammer 1 in a healing Rain? Additionally with the Staff you can permanently maintain swiftness with Windbourne Speed, Glyph of Elemental Harmony, and Elemental Attunement (the Arcana V trait).
I don’t see how people are saying Traits lack synergy or effectiveness. 5 points into the earth line nearly raises your armor 1 class giving 130 toughness at level 80. Elemental Attunement lets you give boons to yourself and your allies every 8-18 seconds (Arcana dependent). Rock Solid allows an ele to give Stability to allies for 2-2.6 seconds every 8-18 seconds (Arcana dependent). Healing Ripple is nice, so is Cleansing Wave. The 20% reduced recharge times are worth grabbing. There’s good traits, they’re there.
Then there’s the Control available from the Conjure Weapons Lightning Hammer, Frost Bow, and Earth Shield… Wind Blast, another Static Field, Frost Fan, Deep Freeze (amazing), Crippling Shield, Magnetic Surge, and Magnetic Shield. Plus Lightning Hammer’s 3rd attack in its chain is an AoE Blind, and Earth Shield’s got a 5 second invincibility. Oh and Conjure weapons are also created for allies, which can be picked up just to put the powerful skills on recharged then dropped to go back to a weapon set.
These conversations seem to arise because the Elementalist requires players to play more towards the high end of the skill cap to be effective, in fact the ele probably requires the most skill out of all the professions to be effective with. However, just because it requires a high degree of skill to be effective doesn’t mean it’s less effective than other professions when played skillfully. This just results in less people being effective with the profession. If the ele gets significant buffs to allow more of the player base to be effective by swapping attunements less and allowing players to be effective by being less adaptive then it’ll become one of the most used professions by skilled players who are very good at swapping attunements and adapting.
Making the Elementalist “better” requires walking a very fine line, because it can’t outshine all the other professions when played with at a high level of skill.
in Elementalist
Posted by: Shockwave.1230
I’ve played nearly every profession to at least 10, and it just seems that elementalists have more weakness or at least more glaring ones then others. Ranged attackers mean almost certain death if I get more then one. My defense is just so super low when I can’t kite it’s not funny. I’m even rolling with toughness whenever I can get it, and the added toughness signet. I still end up losing a ton of health quick.
I just don’t see the logic in the profession at all. It’s like the purposely designed it so nobody on the planet can be perfectly happy with any weapon. Every single weapon combo has at least one element that just completely blows.
Try swapping attunements frequently and learning the various situations in which the numerous skills are useful. All the attunements can’t be really good with minimal weaknesses or the ele would be OP. If you swap attunements more depending on the situation you can switch strength’s and weaknesses to suit your needs for a particular point in time of an encounter. Ele’s are very unforgiving compared to other professions, they’re not as easy to play but they are very effective when used with a high degree of mastery.
Given that combat is designed in a way to prevent permanent health upkeep, the dagger off-hand is simply the better choice. Not being able to stay alive forever in combat means you need to take out your opponent before they take you out. The dagger has more control, which is better in combat than survival skills. It also has a better “oh-crap” button than obsidian flesh in ride the lightning, which can not only be used to save yourself from combat but also to be very mobile on a map. Dagger outshines Focus in more frequently encountered scenarios, plain and simple. Compared to the dagger, the focus’ usefulness seems very niche. I’d rather take a staff than a main-hand with a focus.
The dagger has more control than the focus? Laughable, absolutely laughable. Comet and Gale have the same lock-out time as Earthquake and Updraft. Magnetic Wave and Swirling Winds provide an entire 9 seconds of projectile immunity for yourself and 6 for your entire party.
Comparing Ride the Lightning to Obsidian Flesh is even more ludicrous, as Ride the Lightning will terminate in no time if your target is anywhere near you, nor does it make you immune to damage, though I will say it makes for a better escape. But being able to stay in a fight for 4 seconds of invulnerability is amazing. Freezing Gust is probably 5 times better than Frost Aura since you don’t have to get hit for it to be useful. Obviously, the primary downside of the focus is the Fire skills, which everyone agrees on, but I would argue that Flame Wall is better in some regards (such as Might stacking with combos) than Ring of Fire due to it’s longer duration.
With proper use of evasive rolls, focus skills, and utility skills, I have no trouble maintaining high health in almost any fight. The condition removal from Magentic Wave is 3 times better than Cleansing Wave for personal use, though you do lose the extremely weak heal on an extremely long cooldown. I will say that the Dagger is obviously better for offensively oriented builds due to Fire Grab and Churning Earth, but in terms of keeping the Elementalist alive, not even the staff can compare to the focus.
Comet is decent, it’s a ranged daze with mid ranged recharge. Gale is decent, it’s a ranged KD but has a long recharge. Earthquake and Updraft are better. They’re both AoE, and even though they’re not ranged RtL overcomes that as do main hand dagger skills.
Projectiles are only 1 of multiple forms of damage. Magnetic wave is absolutely good for condition removal and it’s good for reflecting projectiles, and it is a better skill than cleansing wave. It’s a good skill, but that doesn’t make up for everything the focus lacks. Swirling winds definitely does grant projectile Immunity, but that’s all it does and that’s niche. While the offhand dagger doesn’t have anything comparable to projectile immunities the offhand dagger skills are just plain useful in more situations. Projectile immunity is great in some situations, but it’s not always useful.
Ride the Lightning is a better skill than Obsidian flesh, because of it’s recharge and mobility. Those are why it’s a better “Oh crap” button, but Obsidian Flesh is certainly better in “Oh crap” situations while you’re cc’ed. One of RtL’s uses happens to be survivability, but it’s mobility is useful for more than just that. Obsidian Flesh can nearly be replicated with Mist Form, RtL’s level of mobility and it’s usefulness is a tier of it’s own.
It’s great that you can stay alive for a long time in combat, but any challenging encounter in PvE or any 2 good PvPers going at each other will result in unsustainable combat as long as damage focus stays on the same player. After a short while a player has to retreat from drawn out combat in order to sustain health otherwise they’ll go down. Granted some builds can be specced without a focus on damage, and in those situations even glass cannons can stay alive against those opponents, but when I do comparisons and call one thing better than another it’s not situationally unless I designate so. I measure how good something is based on it’s overall usefulness, and the dagger offhand is definitely all around better than the focus.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Use all of your attunements. Comparatively to other professions the elementalist is one of the most unforgiving when limiting the use of the options available to you. It’s not simple to play and more difficult to master than the other professions. Check out video of people playing the ele on twitch.tv or youtube. You’ll see how they frequently are changing attunements to meet the needs of a situation as encounters play out.
Given that combat is designed in a way to prevent permanent health upkeep, the dagger off-hand is simply the better choice. Not being able to stay alive forever in combat means you need to take out your opponent before they take you out. The dagger has more control, which is better in combat than survival skills. It also has a better “oh-crap” button than obsidian flesh in ride the lightning, which can not only be used to save yourself from combat but also to be very mobile on a map. Dagger outshines Focus in more frequently encountered scenarios, plain and simple. Compared to the dagger, the focus’ usefulness seems very niche. I’d rather take a staff than a main-hand with a focus.
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