Guild Wars 2

Fungalfoot.7213:

I won’t argue that stealth isn’t broken because it is but overall thieves really aren’t that great. The reason why thieves have to rely on these cheap tactics is because it’s the only way they can accomplish anything. Remove it from them and you pretty much destroy the entire class.

Is it a poorly designed class then? Yes, I’d argue so. That said, until ArenaNet gets around to remaking thieves I can’t help but think that any drastical nerfs to them would be uncalled for. I get that it’s frustrating and unfair and I’m definitely not trying to play the role of thief apologist here but after trying their other options myself I fully understand why they rely on this cheese.

Thanks for your understanding! I also agree with you that it’s broken, and if we nerf it without compensation, it sucks for thieves. Thieves are forced to play burst because their sustaining options aren’t that good. There are a few options to tone down the toxic insta gib from stealth:

1) reduce the damage, but add a minor cc condition to it, for example Cripple.
2) reduce the damage, but make it regenerate 2 initiatives on hit
3) reduce the damage greatly, and add multiple stacks of bleeding instead.

The point is to make it much less likely to use the cheap tactics of insta-gib from stealth.

Black Teagan.9215:

Thieves, who want to do 13k dmg with BS in pvp, must play a fullzerkerbuild and need 20 might stacks. When they do this, then is this a “all or nothing” maneuver, die or dodge and kill them.

PS: A complete useless traitline, and very many broken coremechanics are toxic too, but nobody cares about it.

No, it’s not all or nothing. The thief have plenty of initiatives left to stealth, teleport away. It’s only for glass fresh air ele that it’s real all or nothing. After the burst, the glass ele skills are mostly on 40 seconds cool down, and mostly useless, while after stealth + backstab, the thief still have plenty of options open.

Again, thief is not an ordinary glass cannon. It has way too much advantage. Insta gib from stealth is toxic.

Saying it’s a glass cannon complaining about another glass cannon is missing the point.

The point is: insta-gib from stealth is toxic. It’s the same thing for fresh air ele, although you can at least see the ele coming. 13k backstab from stealth is toxic. A thief is not a normal glass cannon. It’s a glass cannon with constant access to stealth and teleport. It has way too much advantage.

Honestly, if you can master it, try a bunker engi. You can be extremely annoying to the other team (partly the reason why I play it). If you like a more laid back gameplay, try a bunker guardian. It doesn’t fall behind engi by much.

Guardians are being replaced by bunker engis in high level team queue. The next meta will be bunker engi meta. Two decap bunker engi stay on a point can fight 2vs3 for a while and the other team can’t cap at all due to the amount of knock back/heal/blocks/invul.

I rather have a bunker knock back engi in my team than a bunker guardian now. If the enemy dps is great enough to kill a bunker engi, it’s easy enough for them to kill the guardian too. Beside that, engi has a lot of knockbacks, which buy time for them to wait for blocks/invul/heal to cooldown

If they have the skill to time an attack within that 300ms after you already evaded their attack, then it’s all good. Thieves are now one step closer to be more skill based, and not spam evade to win. You don’t spam evade anymore, you time it right. I like it.

Thorn.7963:

Justin ODell.9517:

Thorn.7963:

Which I assume is also why PVPers aren’t allowed to freely change their skins now without having to get charges now.

You apply skins to weapons and armor, after you apply it you can still keep them in your inventory and swap them for free.

Thats true, I didn’t think about that, but that now means I have to spend a lot of bank space or character space holding different item skins if I’m someone who likes to swap skins when I feel like it.

I liked having the huge storage I could put everything I had and could swap with whenever I wanted.

If the game had free skin changes like DCUO or LOTRO this wouldn’t be an issue, but why should we have to pay for it?

Dude, TBH with you, I think it’s fine. They don’t charge monthly subscription fee, and they need to make a living. Most of the thing in pvp is free already, except for cosmetics (and the new traits/amulets). You can’t have your cake and eat it too. For hardcore pvp players like us, we already have a good percentage of our wardrobe filled. Cosmetics is what keeping GW2 free for everyone.

I’m for one agree that they can charge a little small fee for cosmetics and keep the game free for most people.

You guys scare me, now I don’t want to log into the game anymore. Gotta wait for the hot fixes.

Fanta.8049:

Sunshine.5014:

Ele is so OP.

I got my hambow imba crit build to soloq and hammer an ele. He attuned to earth and I can’t crit! While I’m astounded by that imba-ness, the ele disappeared leaving me in shock. 5 seconds later he came back, so I was like Pin Down, and w t diamond skin. Then the Ele one shot me in 20 seconds with burning and Fire Grab. So imba! Much power! Many crits! Please nerf!!!

P.S: please nerf rtl and LF. Ele’s HP is too high, it can’t have more mobility, or else my hambow warrior can’t chase it around

Ah.. uh … sir ,Stone Heart and Diamond Skin CAN’T work together …. they both GM traits …

You totally missed the point of this thread. I recommend you read from the start again.

Ele is so OP.

I got my hambow imba crit build to soloq and hammer an ele. He attuned to earth and I can’t crit! While I’m astounded by that imba-ness, the ele disappeared leaving me in shock. 5 seconds later he came back, so I was like Pin Down, and w t diamond skin. Then the Ele one shot me in 20 seconds with burning and Fire Grab. So imba! Much power! Many crits! Please nerf!!!

P.S: please nerf rtl and LF. Ele’s HP is too high, it can’t have more mobility, or else my hambow warrior can’t chase it around

Wow. Can’t believe no one says decap engi yet?

a t s e.9614:

Decear.7089:

My friend testing his backstab on my glass ele build:
http://i.imgur.com/gm9iVsh.jpg

24k? wtf… that was at launch or what lol the highest I ever done was 14k in spvp.

For a thief, you can do better in spvp. Ele actually has pretty average damage in spvp. Look at what a warrior can do in one shot too. We shouldn’t complain about ele damage. That skill has a 45 seconds cooldown and a tiny hitbox (about half the cleave size of a backstab, and a huge delay before cast).

Branden Gee.2150:

Some work was done to address this issue. Once the feature patch is released you will need to play a few matches in order for the achievement rank to match parity with your actual rank.

I love this person already. More programmers talking on the forums, and less “coordinators” talking please! Programmers like Branden, Evan, and Justin talk to the point, not just pr craps.

I totally disagree. In fact, the tactics for GW2 is pretty simple. What made GW2 fail at esport was because of the bad balance, and the 6 months per patch balancing approach.

Shockwave.1230:

• Guild Wars 2 has a lot of systems players need to understand in order to create an effective attribute setup.

LoL has a lot of systems players need to understand: multiple modes, multiple traits, builds, strategies. I’m just pulling up a random page for a random hero below. In short, it’s even more complicated (and people love it).
http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/taric-support-why-gems-are-truly-outrageous-march-update-243829

Shockwave.1230:

• While you’re crafting your attribute setup you must also consider what weapons play to those strengths.

In LoL, while you’re picking a champion, you also must consider which masteries to use, which runes table to use, which summoners skills to pick. Then in game, you must consider which items to buy, etc… Picking a weapon in gw2 locks in the spells, which you can think of is just similar to picking a different champion in LoL. And LoL has way more champions than gw2 has with the weapons per class.

Shockwave.1230:

• Additionally you need to consider what 5 slot skills play to the strengths of your attribute setup.

Considering how many skills/items combo you need to learn for LoL, you’re not making a good case that gw2 is more complex. In fact, most of the slot skills people use are pretty standard, and unchanged for a while. Think about a warrior without Berserker Stance? Even a newbie knows that. It’s more of a false choice rather than complexity. Want to be OP? There is only one or two choices. Don’t want to be OP? Then you should know what you are doing already.

Moreover, you don’t have to level up skill in gw2 pvp. In LoL, you even have to plan which skill to level up first depends on the situation.

Shockwave.1230:

• You also need to figure out what traits make the most sense in your build. You must also consider the impact trait lines have on attributes.

The masteries table and runes table in LoL is pretty complex too. Guess what, that’s esport! Why? because they only allow masteries/runes to change your power by around 15% of the original one. That maintains good balance while allowing hardcore people to tinker and find their best builds. A complex trait systems is what we want. What we don’t want is to get killed in 2 hits, or to attack a bunker for 5 minutes and they don’t die. Both of that are too extreme.

Shockwave.1230:

• Finally you have to figure out what runes and sigils make the most sense to run.

Tbh, I love the runes and sigils system in gw2. Sure, there are certainly some OP ones that I don’t like; however, it’s a pretty good system. The stats points given are low enough that it doesn’t significantly change the build, while offering a lot more customization options. In the next patch, they removes part of the customization already, so you can just put on one rune.

Shockwave.1230:

Is Guild Wars 2 PvP too complicated to be consumable by the the mass esport audience?

A strong no. Worst case, just google a guide and copy it. How is it more complicated than LoL, which is one of the most successful esport game?

No, it won’t work with Lingering Elements. There was a dev post (I believe it’s Jon Sharp) about this where he said Lingering Elements would be too OP if it work for anything other than the 5 points traits. So yah, it will only work with the 5 points traits in each line.

I must admit that today I got trolled. So sad. Should have got it when OP said warrior has not much conditions cleansing.

8.5/10

a t s e.9614:

BlackBeard.2873:

a t s e.9614:

Thieves are fine, they fit their role of being a steatlhy assassin while being a total scrub in team fights .

Yea, if only shortbow 1 did a ton of damage, or there were on-demand poison for downed bodies, or there tons of ports that allowed the thief to over-extend into the backline without being punished, or steal could prevent almost any stomp, or shadow-refuge could secure almost any res, or thief could share 5-7 boons aoe by using 1 skill (like steal for instance)….If only….

if only the thief could tank AOE in a team fight like some others classes

/facepalm

The people who complain about conditions being weak are the people who blow all their conditions in the first few seconds of the fight; the enemy cleanse it; then they cry because they don’t have anything left.

You want to maximize uptime, not just throw a bunch at your opponents.

Yes, it does have an icd of 5 seconds per target. Just do a test on the nondestructable golem in PvP lobby and see.

GoEP problem is not with the proc chance, but with the 5s ICD. They should remove the ICD and make GoEP has 15% proc.

Arcane Precision also has an ICD last time I tested, that’s why, together with the 10% proc, it’s borderline nonexistent.

Ele is fun to play, but I think it would be much more fun if the animation is faster. Staff ele wastes a lot of time just for useless animation.

I agree with this. Just make rank number goes up. To me, rank doesn’t mean a lot, but to some people, it’s the only thing they have to show how dedicated they are to the game. Just let them have it; there is no harm doing so anyway (since finishers stop at rank 80)

Oh no!!! You exposes my build!! :P

I was waiting for the patch to arrive first before posting about it, out of the fear that it might become another fotm and people will call for ele nerfs again.

The only difference is that I use divinity runes and have less toughness.

Nevertheless, thank you for sharing the video.

P.S: to people who doubt if this works in PvP, yes it does. I’ve won a lot of team queue with this (of course, not always)

clint.5681:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/What-new-stat-combination-would-you-like/3518753

We definitely had this convo about what stat combos we would like and changing the stat distribution between amulets and jewels. I meant to post this in reply to Allie a while ago ( Been Busy celebrating UDs loss) since she brought up a random thread to support her claims.

And that made me sad because my thread was not supporting removing jewels at all. Instead, it was supporting reducing customization range (the big stats gap between bunkers and zerkers) .

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

It is confusing for me to see this kind of mixed messaging. A ton of people agreed in that thread that there are too many moving parts in this game to balance it well enough. Now you guys are in here saying that removing jewels equates to dumbing the game down.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

TL;DR: customization range is different from number of customizations. People agreed in the thread that they wanted more customizations, with smaller customization range. What ANet gives them now is fewer number of customizations, with big customization range.

Hello Allie, I’m the OP of the thread you linked, and I want to reply to your question. But first, let me thank you for listening to players. I know a lot of us appreciate it.

Now, back to this thread, I’m actually confused why you’re confused. The devs seems to misread my post, so let me make it clear again:

I suggest you to reduce the customizable range. For example, an Amulet that gives 1700+ stats to something that gives less than 500 stats points. That will bring the bunker and berserker closer together, and still keep the customizable items that people love.

You keep the customizable range, and remove the customizable items, which is exactly the opposite of the suggestion in the post.

I think it’s my fault that I didn’t make it clear enough in my post? (Although I remember I wrote exactly that, reduce the stats points range). I hope this post make it more clear.

P.S: FWIW, I don’t like that we remove the jewels out of the amulets, since my main build right now has a different jewel slot (Soldier + Cleric).

Edit: added a TL;DR. I guess Allie and I, we misunderstood the definition of customization range, and it’s partly my fault.

Malediktus.9250:

Low customization would make the game boring. There are reasons why I find games like League of Legends completly terrible.

It’s a fallacy to think that customization equals choices.
League of Legends has a smaller range of customization; however, the users are given a tons of choices on which hero they can play, which items order they will buy, which traits/talents they pick.

GW2 has a much wider range of customizations; however, people are forced to use an extreme build for each class. A thief is forced to play zerker to be effective. An ele is forced to either go extreme glassy, or extreme bunker. A ranger is forced to play spirits if he or she wants to play in high end tournaments.

It’s false choices GW2 is offering its players. More customization doesn’t mean more choices. It’s much better to have a smaller range of customizable stats, and allow the games to be better balanced. In addition, as I’ve mentioned, smaller stats difference also means that the player can make a choice to play the way he or she likes, sacrificing a little bit of power (like 10%—and still can be effective).

WoW. About a dozens of post, and none of you mention that this build is weak to condition damage?

That was my first post about it in the ele forums. Instead, you all focus on how bad the opponent is. This build will have tons of trouble within the current meta right now. Watch it again, and you will notice Azilyi didn’t fight any condi player at all.

Now that being said, I don’t mean to trash Azilyi’s work. I respect his effort in putting up the tutorials, and to share his knowledge. I just want to point out that you guys, instead of trying to criticize the video at its face value, just showed how arrogant you are.

It’s a shame.

/rant

Agree, they should grey out the HP that will be reduced from condition damage.

WarriorKcLocal.6728:

Sunshine.5014:

Obvious easy fixes for this game:
- A ready button. Game doesn’t start until everyone press Ready. Returns people to the lobby if fewer than 10 people press ready in 30 seconds.
- Play a sound when the dialog pops up.

Medium term fixes:
- A test realm
- A report button that works. Each 5 reports count as a dishonor.

Changes that can get more revenues for ANet:
- A gem store item that makes all the enemy displayed as Human on your screen.
- An announcer soundpack
- A new tab that people can save their build and allows to switch builds when out of combat.

yes, no, yes. the report button would be problematic because if all 5 of your team members report a single person on the other team you essentially break the team. Please for the love of god take asura out of spvp. not being able to see a small animation breaks the game. VERY UNBALANCED.

I see that you agree with the principle, and disagree with the number. It’s an easy fix then, just make it 7 reports from the same match counts as a dishonor. Does it change your vote from a no to a yes?

Hi Azilyi, do you have footage of this build playing vs a condition build? I notice that you didn’t fight a condition class in the video.

Obvious easy fixes for this game:

• A ready button. Game doesn’t start until everyone press Ready. Returns people to the lobby if fewer than 10 people press ready in 30 seconds.
• Play a sound when the dialog pops up.

Medium term fixes:

• A report button that works. Each 7 reports from the same match count as a dishonor.
• Grey out the HP bar portion to display how much future condition damage will take.
• A test realm

Changes that can get more revenues for ANet:

• A gem store item that makes all the enemy displayed as Human on your screen.
• An announcer soundpack
• A new tab that people can save their build and allows to switch builds when out of combat.

Plug: if you like this suggestion, check out my other one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Root-Problem-or-How-to-Balance-PvP/first#post3633033

P.S: this is likely will be my last suggestion for gw2. I hope it get some response from the dev. Frankly, they did a good job with this game, especially the server side programmers. The combat is one of the best for MMO. The PvE side has excellent dynamic story. I love this game; but the balancing issues is draining my patience (and I’m sure I’m not the only one). ANet needs a fundamental overhaul on how it does balancing. It’s a sad fact that although you may do a lot of things right, customers will leave just because of a bad issue (in their eyes). It’s like you have a great restaurant with world class cuisines, but you serve the customers with broken chairs everyday. Some will learn to sit on the table and enjoy the food; some will lose patience and leave.

Maybe try something new, instead of following the old process that has been proven doesn’t work?
http://blog.codinghorror.com/complaint-driven-development/

oZii.2864:

KarsaiB.9475:

No, no, no, no. Bring back our old sustain and we’ll be just as equally broken as we used to a year ago. Even more than a year ago.

We don’t need our sustain to be buffed. We need an overall damage reduction across all classes in tpvp (especially looking at thief and necro), including ourselves.
Also, nerf the ability that warrior has to stand on a node while keeping opponents at bay and unable to contest without eating 1000000 aoes.
>>> /need other game modes.

“winky face @Allie”

You say we like you play ele but don’t know about its nerf history.

You won’t be broken like before because you can’t ether renewal in mist form anymore. Signet of restoration had a bug that healed to much with evasive arcana dodges in earth.
RTL was bugged and you could go 1500 range and reset easy.

Unless Anet decides to revert bugs which I doubt the actual intended sustain was fine.

Those where the problems the intended healing was fine. You think SOR old levels really would make ele op without the above changes that happened?

Maybe next time, show them this?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/How-would-you-balance-eles/first#post3632228

Just got off the chat with Hiba. He said he would add a section on “Effective Suicidal Ele” if fewer than five people enrolled in the summer camp mains an Ele.

JonSnow, are you happy now?

This thread should be closed. We got our answer. Typical answer.

I wrote several constructive posts, for example:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Root-Problem-or-How-to-Balance-PvP/first#post3633033

It never gets any dev response. Well, if you can get them to notice it, it would be great; however, at this point I wouldn’t get my hope high.

ANet engineering team is great. Developing a stable backend that can serve real time combat like GW2 is not a small feat. Nevertheless, the management and internal politics kill this game. Balance is a much more important issue for PvP than PvE, but they put the balance team inside the PvE team, and Tyler can only “talk” to the balance team. It’s pretty sad.

It’s meant to be. They all round down, stun, conditions, even boons.

In the live stream on Feb 14, 2014, the devs showed us three matches from top tiers players, and the team with Ele always lost. They had pretty good strategy, but they lost all the team fights (watch it if you like). Basically we don’t see Lys, the ele often, and when we see him, he’s mostly lying on the ground waiting for a rez. He pulled up some good insta-kill, but since the cooldown was long, his contribution to team fight was pretty… limited; and they lost (multiple times) despite having Caed.

Comments?

Coolest pose ever!

Why don’t we nerf the OP auto attack instead? It’s an auto attack. Look at Ele’s auto attack.

Can we get a reply from ANet here?

I think a lot of us agree that it benefits GW2 greatly to have a shorter balancing cycle.

Rangers have more players because of the spirit rangers flavor of the month. The amount of ele players has been on decline for a while…. Well, just vote guys. Lets see how it goes.

1. Ele
2. Guardian
3. Warrior

Let’s look at the context first. I’m gonna list the nerfs/changes that brought ele down:

Evasive Arcana nerfed:

• radius reduced to 180
• effectiveness with healing attribute reduced by 50%
• no longer break knockback (yes, that’s the little known fact people didn’t know. EA was OP because of this). <—- Ele didn’t need much stability because of this. After it is fixed, Ele shows their true weakness to crowd controls.

Healing nerfed:

• Signet of Restoration nerfed 18%. This is planed to be reverted… in a few months.
• Cleaning Water now has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. This makes Ele critically vulnerable against conditions meta. <—- this took away the main way Ele can deal with conditions.
• Healing Ripple nerfed 50%. The number of targets reduced from infinite to 5. <—- this, together with EA heal nerfed, are why Ele is no longer the immortal bunker.

Ride the Lightning nerfed:

• increased recharge from 15 to 40 seconds if blocked/evaded. <—- A lot of people complain about this, but I don’t think it’s as significant as the survivability nerfed mentioned above.
• reduced range from 1550 to 1200

Magnetic Wave nerfed:

• from unblockable to blockable
• [minor] has two casts now, but the immobilized duration is the same, which means ele loses out on time.

Cantrips nerfed:

• Cleansing Fire: no longer stun break <—- this is big, after the nerf, Ele struggles to play in the meta because Ele doesn’t have a lot of stability. Ele depends on stun break to deal with stuns/fears/knock)
• Lightning Flash: no longer a stun break, add a little bit damage <—- same above, ANet removed the stunbreaks without giving Ele anymore stability to compensate for it.
• Mist Form: now still get damage from conditions.

Auras nerfed:

• Shocking aura boons duration was halved. It was bugged before and granted double boons duration. <—- this is a bug fix, but it reduced bunker Ele damage significantly because the fury duration is reduced.

Bountiful Power nerfed:

• damage increase per boon reduced from 2% to 1%. Which means on a d/d Ele, damage is reduced on average 6%. <—- another big damage nerf

Mist/Vapor form nerfed:

• no longer contest point
• no longer be able to cast any spell <—- how I hate this. I haven’t used mist form again since. It’s a self stun for 3 seconds now.

Fresh Air nerfed:

• recharge increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds
• Sunspot, Electric Discharge, and Earthen Blast no longer trigger when changing attunements while out of combat. This means you must use another skill to get you into combat before you can use them.

Arcane Wave nerfed:

• [minor] number of target reduced from 6 to 5

Swirling Winds nerfed:

• [minor] no longer destroy unblockable missiles.
  =========

I’m sure I missed other things too. Just have a quick look at the nerfs, and you can see exactly why Ele struggles so much in the current meta:

The current meta is about:

• crowd controls (stun/fear/engi knockback): Ele cantrips got nerfed badly, and without more stability, it’s obvious they can’t handle the meta.
• conditions: Without using the healing skill, Ele can only remove 1 condition per 3 seconds now. If we look at the rate of how fast a Necro/Engi can apply conditions to us, we can see that it’s too slow. Their attempt to add Diamond Skin is… misguided.
• bunkers (warrior/guardians/MM necro/spirit rangers/engi): with its damage got nerfed (except the fresh air build), d/d Ele can hardly kill any competent bunkers anymore. Especially when its auto attack can’t even kill an AFK healing signet warrior in 5 minutes.

Beside that the old enemy: thief, is still pretty strong. With all the healing nerf, Ele can hardly survive a thief burst anymore, since after the burst, the Ele can’t heal back up unless spec’ed full cleric.
=======

If you are one of the people who thinks “Nothing has changed, why did Ele become so bad?” I urged you to read the list of nerfs again. It’s really significant. The buffs ANet gave to glyphs, conjures, etc… are not enough to help Ele coming back.

I work in the industry too, and I also agree it would be a simple fix. No, not as simple as a 2 lines CL, but something an average engineer can code in less than a morning, with tests. I read a blog post from their engineers a while ago, and they are competent. The problem is the release process; it’s been killing this game slowly.

Please help us get their attention:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Root-Problem-or-How-to-Balance-PvP/first#post3585299

I’m glad that people agree the balance patches should be decoupled from the big features patches. I listened to the feedback and adjusted the suggested time frame to 2 weeks.

Please help this thread get ANet’s attention!

So, after the news that they “will fix” the Healing Signet in May, I think this suggestion is even more agreeable. They must decouple balance fixes from big features patches.

Please stream Ele! (something beside the fresh air build would be best)