(edited by Swagg.9236)
Dagger off-hand
[Ride the Lightning]
- Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
- Recharge reduction on hit reduced from 50% to 33%.
[Updraft]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 0
- Recharge: 35 seconds
- Gain swiftness and evade backwards on a gust of wind that cripples and blinds adjacent foes. After 1 second, this gust launches foes at its location, then vanishes.
- Swiftness: 10 seconds
- Blind: 3 seconds
- Cripple: 3 seconds
- Launch: 200
- Launch delay: 1 second
- Radius: 180
- Evasion: 1 second
- Skill now creates a small AoE circle that uses a shrunken [Sandstorm] (180 radius) animation on activation and lasts for 1 second.
- Base evasion distance increased from 180(?) to 240 range.
Staff
[Lava Font]
- Tool-tip added: Delay: 1 second.
[Flame Burst]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ¼ second
- Recharge: 10 seconds
- Conjure an orb of flame at target location. After 1 second, the orb explodes, damaging and burning nearby foes.
- Delay: 1 second
- Damage: 65 (0.2)
- Burning: 5 seconds
- Radius: 180
- Range: 1200
[Ice Spike]
- Tool-tip added: Delay: 2 seconds.
- Now inflicts 1½ seconds of immobilize if it strikes a chilled foe.
[Lightning Surge]
- A ring of electricity appears around the target during the casting period.
- Cast-time reduced from 1½ seconds to 1¼ seconds.
[Gust]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ½ second
- Recharge: 30 seconds
- Channel a gust of wind that strikes foes two times in rapid succession. The first gust strike rips up to 2 boons from foes that it hits. The second gust strike knocks back foes.
- Boons removed: 2
- Knock-back: 400
- Range: 600
- [Healing Breeze] cone.
- Hits up to 5 targets.
[Windborne Speed]
- Now also grants Super Speed for 2 seconds.
[Static Field]
- Now also removes up to 1 boon from foes that it hits.
[Eruption]
- Tool-tip added: Delay: 3 seconds.
[Unsteady Ground]
- Now uses the same hit-detection as Guardian [Line of Warding].
- As it stands, casting a [Line of Warding] over top of an enemy will immediately knock that enemy off of its area. This is not the case with [Unsteady Ground] and the two should be normalized.
[Shockwave]
- Cast-time reduced from ¾ to ½ second.
- Bleed stacks changed from 1 stack for 20 seconds to 3 stacks for 12 seconds.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
ELEMENTALIST CHANGES
Scepter main-hand
[Lightning Strike] – named changed to Lightning Bolt (to diminish combat log confusion)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 0
- Recharge: 6 seconds
- Strike foes at the target location with a lightning bolt.
- Damage: 403 (1.2)
- Delay: 1 second
- Radius: 120
- Range: 900
- Now creates a red circle on the ground.
- [Lightning Strike]’s original functionality remains the same for passive triggers such as swapping to Air Attunement with 15 into Air Magic or the RNG proc on Runes of Air (6/6).
[Flamestrike]
- Now uses a projectile: bolt of orange fire that uses the Elementalist [Chain Lightning] projectile pathing and speed.
[Dragon’s Tooth]
- Now uses ground-targeting.
- Damage reduced from 756 (2.25) to 686 (2.25).
- Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds
[Phoenix]
- Cast-time increased from ¼ to ¾ second.
- This skill’s audio cue now also plays when the player first begins casting it in addition to when the projectile explodes and turns around.
- Now creates a red circle on the ground where the Phoenix projectile is targeted to explode and turn around back towards the caster.
[Shatterstone]
- Damage increased from 252 to 302 (0.9).
- Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds
- Now counts as an Ice Field (Duration: 2 seconds).
[Water Trident]
- Casting animation increased in size by 50%.
- Now counts as a Blast Finisher.
- Now, if this skill combos with a Frost Field, it also inflicts vulnerability (8 stacks; 10 seconds) and chill (2 seconds) with shattering ice shards.
- Vulnerability and chill radius: 180 (same radius as the skill itself).
- Uses a [Frozen Burst] animation.
- Now, if this skill combos with a Fire Field, it also blinds (5 seconds) and burns (3 seconds) nearby foes with a hot blast of steam.
- Blind and burn radius: 180 (same radius as the skill itself).
- Uses a 1-second-long [Boil] animation.
Focus off-hand
[Flamewall]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ½ second
- Recharge: 30 seconds
- Create a wall of flame at target area that damages and burns foes.
- Damage: 179 (0.5)
- Burning: 2 seconds
- Duration: 8 seconds
- Now chains into another skill: [Breath of Fire].
[Breath of Fire]
- Cast-time: 2¾ seconds
- While you channel this skill, foes cannot cross your Flamewall.
- While this skill is active, the Flamewall riles into a tall wall of fire that acts similarly to the Guardian [Line of Warding].
- This chain skill normally remains active for 8 seconds. This chain skill remains active for 10 seconds if the player is using the Persisting Flames (Fire Magic – XI).
[Fire Shield]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ½ second
- Recharge: 35 seconds
- Whirl in place, striking adjacent foes with flames and gaining a Fire Shield. If you combo this skill within a fire field, you gain aegis and create a [Lava Font] at your location.
- Damage (2x): 258 (1.3)
- Fire Shield duration: 5 seconds
- Aegis: 5 seconds
- Combo Finisher: Whirl
- Range: 180
- Uses the Warrior [Cyclone Axe] animation.
[Freezing Gust]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 3¾ seconds
- Recharge: 40 seconds
- Conjure gusts of freezing wind over target area that inflict chill and vulnerability. If a gust strikes a foe with more than 10 stacks of vulnerability, it immobilizes that foe.
- Damage per gust: 159 (1.0)
- Gust radius: 180
- Chill: 1 second
- Vulnerability (3): 7 seconds
- Immobilize: 1 second
- Duration: 4 seconds
- Radius: 360
- Range: 1200
- This skill functions similarly to [Meteor Shower] in how it produces the wind gusts.
- Wind gusts are circular whirls of air, they produce red circles and they have a 1-second delay period upon appearing before they deal damage and their effects.
- Level 1 channel: 4 gusts
- Level 2 channel: 8 gusts
- Level 3 channel: 12 gusts
[Comet]
- Now uses ground-targeting.
- Damage increased from 239 to 386 (1.0).
- Now stuns (2 seconds) if it strikes a chilled foe.
[Gale]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 1½ seconds
- Recharge: 40 seconds
- Channel a cone of biting wind in front of you that blinds and cripples foes before knocking them down.
- Damage (4x): 320 (0.5)
- Blind (4): 1 second
- Cripple (4): 1 second
- Knock-down: 2 seconds
- Range: 600
- This skill hits up to 3 targets.
- The final damage tick is the tick that inflicts knock-down.
- [Healing Breeze] cone
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Staff
[Mark of Blood]
- Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
- Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
- Added delay: 1 second
- Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a red mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.
[Chilblains]
- Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
- Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
- Added delay: 1 second
- Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a blue mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.
[Putrid Mark]
- Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
- Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
- Added delay: 1 second
- Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a green mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.
[Reaper’s Mark]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
- Recharge: 35 seconds
- Etch a mark into the ground at target location to trigger later. The longer you charge this skill, the more powerful it becomes.
- ¾ second channel: Damage: 92 (0.25); Fear: ½ second; Radius: 120
- 1½ second channel: Damage: 211 (0.5); Fear: 1 second; Radius: 180
- Full channel: Damage: 318 (1.0); Fear: 1 second; Radius: 240
- Range: 1200
- While this skill does not display a red circle while channeling, its symbol is present on the ground and glows a violent, bright green.
- After this skill finishes channeling, the mark appears on the ground with a red circle indicating its size according to how long it was channeled.
- This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Reaper’s Wrath].
[Reaper’s Wrath]
- Cast-time: 1 second
- Trigger your Reaper’s Mark.
- The mark’s edges glow bright green when this skill is being activated.
[Signet of Spite]
- Cast-time increased from ¾ to 1 second.
- Active ability now uses a projectile: gold-tinted [Life Blast].
Traits
Dhuumfire (Spite – XI)
- Now, when this trait activates, it summons an invulnerable reaper NPC near the side of the Necromancer (possibly using the same summon detection as [Phantasmal Warlock]. This reaper then attacks the Necromancer’s current target with an orange-tinted [Life Blast] projectile. The projectile deals no damage, but does inflict the burning described in the trait. The reaper dies/vanishes after shooting the projectile.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Short-term balance changes. These are for the sake of immediate skill balance and would require the least work.
NEW TOOL-TIP: Delay
- Delay represents how long a skill takes affect after the initial cast-time is completed. Several skills already have delay periods. Adding such a tool-tip to those skills would make it clearer how they work and legitimize the mechanic’s presence in-game. Furthermore, adding delays and visual cues to instant-activation skills that are already instant-activation and/or ranged skills that don’t use projectiles would make them more fair in terms of game-play by providing more counter-playability to opponents.
NECROMANCER CHANGES
Axe main-hand
[Rending Claws]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ½ second
- Cast out a whirling blade that inflicts vulnerability and returns to you.
- Damage: 179 (0.75)
- Vulnerability (1): 7 seconds
- Range: 900
- Bright green-tinted [Vapor Blade] animation.
[Ghastly Claws]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 3 seconds
- Recharge: 12 seconds
- Channel a cone of biting energy that slashes foes in a quick flurry of strikes. You gain life force with each strike.
- Damage (9x): 945 (2.5)
- Duration: 3 seconds
- Strikes per second: 3
- Life Force per strike: 2%
- Range: 600
- Strikes up to 5 foes.
Focus off-hand
[Spinal Shivers]
- Now uses a projectile: bright blue-tinted [Ray of Judgment].
Scepter main-hand
[Blood Curse]
- Now uses a projectile: green-tinted [Ether Bolt].
[Rending Curse]
- Now uses a projectile: green-tinted [Ether Bolt].
[Putrid Curse]
- Cast-time increased from ½ second to 1 second.
[Grasping Dead]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 0
- Recharge: 10 seconds
- Raise skeletal hands from the ground to cripple foes at the target location.
- Damage: 235 (0.7)
- Cripple: 5 seconds
- Bleeding (3): 5 seconds
- Delay: 1 second
- Duration: 2 seconds
- Radius: 240
- Range: 900
- Uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while activating another skill).
- For the first second, nothing happens. [Grasping Dead] produces a red circle with skeletal hands dotting the ground after the cast. After one second, the animated arms that perform the grabbing animation trigger once. These arms signal the damage and condition effects.
[Feast of Corruption]
- Foes targeted by [Feast of Corruption] are surrounded by a bright green ring during the cast-time period. The ring bursts upon cast-animation completion.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
FACTORS THAT BALANCE RANGED COMBAT IN GW2:
Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed to have players read their opponent’s skill cues. To this effect, ANet has designed several manners of reading an opponent such as:
- Instant-cast
- Post-cast delay
- Red circle
- Projectile
- On-caster visual cue
- Projectile that can be blocked, reflected or destroyed
- Gap-closer skill in which the enemy has to run to leap to a target
However, despite these various cues, there are a many slew of skills in GW2 that forego 2 or more of the above balancing principles. These skills should be looked at critically and probably nerfed or functionally changed in order to bring them into line with how combat should appear in-game. Giving certain weapon sets or play-styles free hits for certain skill usage in a game where the “holy trinity” is absent is asking for trouble. Overpowered ranged skills need to be culled in this game and wrangled back into obedience governed by the balancing principles listed above.
A STATEMENT ON THE EXISTENCE OF “ENERGY” IN GW2
People say that GW2 has no energy system. While there is no concrete resource system in place in GW2 (aside from Initiative which we see with the Thief), there is a resource that governs whether or not a player can use a skill: cast-time.
Having a lot of skills available to a player is fine so long as some of the more powerful skills are limited in scope by the amount of time that a player has to invest to those skills in order to get the most out of them. A fine example is [Meteor Shower]. Firm but fair, [Meteor Shower] can inflict devastating amounts of damage, but with a 3¾-second long channel for maximum effect, the elementalist really needs to either pop some sort of damage mitigation skill or position him/herself properly while using while also aiming the AoE properly. [Meteor Shower] is not something that you can just shoot off mid-fight just because it happens to be off cool-down. That’s the “mana” limitation. Time limits its viability as a skill despite there being no mana to govern its on-the-spot usage. Not only does an Elementalist need to channel the skill for a good 1 to 1½ seconds before a single meteor even begins to fall, [Meteor Shower] is a very lack-luster skill if not channeled to its full extent because of its nature as a charge-up skill. The longer that an Elementalist channels [Meteor Shower], the more meteors actually fall.
There should be many more skills like [Meteor Shower]. In fact, [Churning Earth] used to use a charge-up mechanic but this was changed after Beta Weekend Event 1 without any explanation. Charge-up mechanics and long cast-times are the true key to balancing skills that have no post-cast effect delays. Having longer cast-times on many powerful skills could help clear up the generally messy combat that players often encounter in PvP and also cull the general tendency to spam skills on cool-down (or whenever you have enough initiative) which really is the biggest plague on GW2 PvP.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Maybe you should try to get the point of my post, it actually wasn’t about this exact change at all….. Also, I’m playing staff ele, it really didn’t touch my rotations at all, but I know what are our D/D colleagues are talking about, and feel their pain. D/D got smashed a lot already, there’s no need to destroy the weapon set completely with changes like this….
It’s just another example of ignoring Elementalists core issues, nothing more, nothing less……
No, I understood the point of your post. However, your comparison between what happened to [Arcane Wave] and some patch somehow making [Lava Font] target akin to [Dragon’s Tooth] is moot because [Arcane Wave] can still be used as part of a raw damage burst rotation in the same manner as that it was prior to this patch. Turning a free ground-targeted skill into a PBAoE or a skill that targets directly on top of an enemy is enough to destroy that skill’s original functionality, but going in the opposite direction is nothing but an improvement in that that skill can now be used as a PBAoE as well as a ranged bomb (since it has no minimum range factor).
This change doesn’t destroy anything. It is truly a “learn to play” situation that we’re dealing with here.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
To all the guys defending A. Wave change:
I’m giving up in this case, just don’t cry when Anet unintentionally do some more “unintentional” changes like they do all the time, without even writing them to patch notes etc.
I’m curious about your reaction when something crazy like changing lava font to be targetted directly on target (like DT is) or anything similar to that happen….If you don’t understand, this is more about trying to prevent unannounced/unintentional changes to happen, not a fight over a single skill mechanic, got it?
All I’m seeing is a lot of people upset that they have to readjust how they play spammy burst rotations. With this change, the original function of [Arcane Wave] remains intact if you use it with proper timing and aim, but it now also opens up a lot of other options for chase and ranged support/damage.
When you say something like making [Lava Font] into an on-target skill, you’re talking about destroying that skill’s integrity because it’s a skill that typically needs to lead a target in order to hit because of its (balanced and fine) post-cast delay. [Arcane Wave] is instant-cast, without a post-cast delay and with an enormous AoE. One barely needs to think at all when using it if using it as part of a raw damage rotation. Making it a ranged ground-targeting skill didn’t disrupt its original use at all; it only expanded its potential usage in combat.
It comes down to this:
- Are you close to your target?
- If yes, cast [Arcane Wave] on your target.
- If no, are you planning on [Lightning Flash]ing to your target?
- If yes, cast [Arcane Wave] on your target prior to [Lightning Flash] so your cursor doesn’t have to move as much.
- If no, just cast [Arcane Wave] on your target anyway because it’s stupid good damage for free at range.
Cast [Arcane Wave] on your target. It’s that simple.
Oh, and turn on fast-cast ground-targeting.
Can you start BS, finish the moving portion of the skill, Flash to target, Move mouse back and cast wave, and then have BS explode? Against the thief that you need to keep a finger on blind for while turning to make sure you can keep eyes on the guardian to clickrideupdraft if he starts casting from the book?
Just cast [Arcane Wave] before [Lightning Flash] then. It’s all instant-cast, no post-cast delay, AoE damage so one shouldn’t have difficulty landing the skills if you just spam in the proper order. It’s just takes a bit of practice.
And seriously, turn on fast-cast ground targeting if you’re still using the default.
OK, OK. Everyone. I found your problem:
Turn on fast-cast ground-targeting with the AoE indicator. I didn’t even think about this until someone told me about it because I really can’t understand why someone would play with the default.
1: Burning speed to ring of fire is terrible and mindblowingly kittenty. It’s as much a noobtrap as RTL to Updraft. You lose the 1s burn from BS for Fire grab if you have a setup, and if you don’t have a setup you’re guaranteed to see a dodge come out post BS.
After going in on some of the Heart of the Mists NPCs with that combo, I now realize that. [Burning Speed] is dodge bait enough. Using [Ring of Fire] directly after it is just asking for wasted damage. This, however, has no bearing how whether or not [Arcane Wave] is worse off or not than it was prior to this patch, so your comment is irrelevant.
2: People are talking about stringing things onto BS because you need to either setup or engage with the skill anyways. Its not going to be dodged some of the time, its dodged every single time. As such, taking advantage of the cc/immob/suprise that you’re using to land it is critical.
OK, this one I have to say that using [Arcane Wave] is obnoxiously easy in conjunction with [Burning Speed]. I had no issues whatsoever not only hitting with both of the skills at the same time but also successfully blasting the fire field left by [Burning Speed] for might. I seriously cannot understand how people are complaining about this change. It’s entirely possible to just use the skill as the old PBAoE format, but now it has range in case somebody is fleeing or dodges one of your melee attacks and moves out to mid-range.
3: Flash to Wave is a completely terrible execute. It has no advantage over anything else against low health foes. Its much better as an engage to front load damage. I have no idea why you bring this up as some sort of utility that everybody used, because nobody did, and after the change even if you wanted to you might as well just wave first instead of snapping from flash to wave as you describe.
I’ve already said that the technique is wonkier after the patch. I never said that I kept using it. Also, front-loading damage is overrated if you know that someone has plenty of healing combined with possible invulnerabilities, stun-breaks or stealth. Playing this game in a controlled manner is often much more effective than pressing every button possible on enemy sight (except maybe in PvE).
4: Saying that arcanes should have aftercast to make them more readable is just nonsensical, and i’m gonna let you rethink that one yourself.
Post-cast delays, not after-cast; similar to [Lava Font]. It’s much more balanced that way. Right now, dodging an arcane ability is a complete craps shoot because no one can really see it coming. It’s legitimately unfair and contrary to how GW2 was supposedly designed as a game (emphasis on reading an enemy’s attack and reacting to it). However, most players are just used to using overpowered skills so asking for balance is often jarring.
5: The entire burst opening for D/D is instant and should happen within a frame of BS finishing. Nobody cares if you can wave after BS, because that delays the might until after all of your damage.
If you’re referring to [Arcane Wave] somehow ruining this opener, I’ve already described that one can very easily still still accomplish that.
It’s, really, really hard not to say l2p at this point. I’m serious. This change is literally a l2p moment. [Arcane Wave] is nothing but stronger now and people are complaining because they just can’t mash buttons exactly like they could before despite that fact even though one can still use [Arcane Wave] in the exact same fashion as it was used prior to its recent change.
PvP
D/D – Mid/Melee-range frontline spiker
S/D – Ranged backstab
D/F – Mid/Melee-range DPS support; bunker
S/F – Ranged DPS support; roaming point support
Staff – Ranged DPS support; roaming point support
Because staff elementalist is the most thought-provoking play-style in this game. It’s an attrition class with wind-up spike DPS capabilities. It’s amazing for team-play and almost every weapon skill outside of auto-attacks requires premeditation, timing and aim. It has a lot of options for controlling opponents as well as supporting allies.
Staff elementalist is by far the best designed weapon skill set in this game.
You guys can go ahead. I’m having a literal blast on my staff ele in pvp.
Let’s imagine an alternate reality where arcane wave was already ranged and, after this patch, they made it a PBAoE spell instead.
Everyone would complain about it and ask for a revert too.
In the end, people are complaining because it’s something new, it’s out of their confort zone, it demands them to adapt, and not everyone reacts well to that.
This. People just need to practice with it. It’s more powerful than ever and I can’t believe that people are crying for a revert because it’s slightly more difficult to do drive-bys with it.
Skillful? You don’t know what skillful is. Want an example?
In Legacy of the Foefire, while battling for Graveyard there was a zerker Necromancer on the ledge.
I used Grasping Earth to leap towards him, Updraft to knock him down off the ledge, then Ride the Lightning to quickly follow.
Now the Necromancer is now pinned against the wall. I used Burning Speed but because of the craziness behind me I couldn’t see the line and my cursor missed my Burning Speed, I hit the wall and completely missed the Necromancer. Now the Necromancer slipped away with only a sliver of health.
It’s not really bragging when you’re just talking about standard skill usage.
Prior to this update, I should have won, I did everything right and the Necromancer made a grave error of laying a bunch of wells, thinking it would protect him on the ledge. But no, I was punished all because I couldn’t see where to aim.
I’m not sure if you’re even talking about [Arcane Wave] anymore. If you are, you could have waited until he dodged away and then blasted him while he had that “sliver of health” left.
“Blowing the two skills together is a good way to waste damage.”
And that proves you are a noob Elementalist.
It proves that I’m a patient player that waits for opportunities. Also, by the sounds of your little story just above this quote, it sounds like you did what I had just warned you not to do (used the two skills together and wasted the damage). Just because you have a line up some skills properly does not mean that they are poorly designed. In fact, it means the opposite. Working damage onto an opponent by negotiating prerequisites like aiming, timing and possible post-cast delays while also perceiving openings an an opponent’s defense is a sign of skill. Pressing buttons super fast because they have instant effects is not skillful. Anyone can do that. Also anyone can dodge that.
“The 360 radius is enormous.”
Yet for the blast to take effect, your MOUSE be on the field, regardless of the finisher size.
Again, this is very easy to do. The radius is huge and finding an enemy with your cursor is not difficult when the AoE activates instantly and is 10 times wider than the model that you’re trying to hit. You just need a tiny smidgen of timing and finesse.
Mind you, my point about [Arcane Wave] being stronger than ever still stands. All your anecdotal evidence about “I can hit with it anymore because [Burning Speed] is hard” isn’t disproving anything. All I can say to you is to practice with the newly designed [Arcane Wave] and stop mashing every offensive attack key in rapid succession whenever you see an opponent.
What Elementalist uses Arcane Wave with Ring of Fire instead of Burning Speed? I know bad Elementalists do that all the time but the good ones prefer Burning Speed for a nice, viable hefty spike.
Your argument is suited for low tier PvP. Try again.
It’s still very possible to use [Arcane Wave] on yourself while you are flying along the [Burning Speed] path.
No. Not it’s not. It is incredibly hard to aim as you often have to be behind your character. Plus Burning Speed activates the direction of your character and not camera, which makes it easy to miss.
If you have a large character, it is even harder.Secondly, Ring of Fires 1/4th casting time allows the enemy to a dodge, especially when your opponent sees their health drop.
This change ruins competitive use of Arcane Wave completely.
You should really just practice it. The 360 radius is enormous. It’s really hard to miss with it. Even if it’s trailing behind you, you can still hit with it if you time it well enough. Try practicing with the [Fiery Greatsword] whirling attack skill together with [Burning Speed]. You can get a hang for it and the trick comes pretty quick. It comes down to snap cursoring over your target as you quickly approach it while using [Burning Speed] or [Fiery Whirl].
Furthermore, any player worth his salt that knows you’re there is going to probably dodge a [Burning Speed]. Blowing the two skills together is a good way to waste damage. The new [Arcane Wave] allows you to now have range on the guy even if he moves out of the way of your blast radius. If you want “skillful” [Arcane Wave] play, just wait until your target is out of a dodge frame and then blast away. It’s incredibly overpowered.
What Elementalist uses Arcane Wave with Ring of Fire instead of Burning Speed? I know bad Elementalists do that all the time but the good ones prefer Burning Speed for a nice, viable hefty spike.
Your argument is suited for low tier PvP. Try again.
What elementalist doesn’t immediately cast [Ring of Fire] directly after [Burning Speed] if given the opportunity? They’re effectively a single skill by the way most players use d/d.
Besides, like I said, you can still use [Arcane Wave] as a PBAoE, you just actually have to use a little finesse now. It’s still very possible to use [Arcane Wave] on yourself while you are flying along the [Burning Speed] path. My point still stands. This change in fact opens the door to more playability with [Arcane Wave] than ever before without destroying its old functionalities.
Also, Arcane skills have never been skillful. They’re insta-target, instant-activation, no post-cast delay, minimal cue, no red circle attacks. They are honestly paragons of bad skill design with regards to balance in this game.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
As a staff elementalist
Then you have no concept of how this affected arrays of existing builds.
No, I definitely understand how the change has warped a lot of play-styles. A typical finisher that I used to perform to finish fleeing enemies would be [Lightning Flash] into [Arcane Wave] (an unfair 4-6k damage that no one can ever see coming). It also worked well as a quick way to flash into a water field filled with allies for a fast extra blast finisher for healing. As of the last patch, performing the chase combo is a little weird because you have to cursor directly below yourself right after the [Lightning Flash]. Performing the healing blast finisher flash is sort of irrelevant now.
Based on this, I can understand how it probably feels a little wonky with a build that involves a lot of in-your-face play (dagger off-hand and dagger main-hand). Even so, it remains instant-cast without a post-cast delay period, which means that you can still activate it while performing other abilities. If anything, it became stronger in the last update because you can now use [Arcane Wave] as a ranged lead attack that nobody can see coming.
If you’re looking to blast on fields while moving about, let’s think about the kinds of weapon-based combo fields that a non-staff elementalist has:
- [Ring of Fire]
There you go. It’s a 240 radius (huge) and it’s a 1/4-second cast (nearly instant). Combined with the fact that dagger main-hand is often a lot of cleaving or body-directed damage, the new [Arcane Wave] shouldn’t really be too much of an impediment to play. The new [Arcane Wave] is far stronger than it was before, it opens up a lot of new doors, and to use it in the same way that one used it before this most recent patch (except underwater since its broken in that case) requires little more than a pinch of finesse or timing (something of which this game needs more).
In short:
- [Arcane Wave] is stronger than ever before.
- A ranged [Arcane Wave] opens a lot more doors for team-play and solo-play usage.
- Using [Arcane Wave] in the same way as it was used before this patch (PBAoE attack) is still very possible.
Actually, after having played with [Arcane Wave], I think that the change is really, really nice. As a staff elementalist, it’s really nice to be able to double blast a water field from safety for my allies on a point. I just wish that ANet would finally put post-cast delays on the offensive Arcane utilities, though. They’re incredibly overpowered as they are now.
Arcane skills are already broken as they are (instant-cast; no cue; no post-cast; guaranteed crit; high damage abilities). Giving something like [Arcane Wave] range is just asking for more trouble. It was fine before. In fact, it was overpowered before. Now it’s broken (balance-wise and literally when underwater).
Perma retaliation that heals. This skill needs to go.
It’s a real shame that it has the best active ability in this game to date attached to it. They finally introduce a supportive hex back into the game and its attached to one of the most overpowered passives to have ever existed. ANet, please go.
Are you implying that staff on necros is a good team support weapon?
Also you are wildly overplaying how powerful a “minefield” is. Most players run right through marks and it hardly slows them down.
You are wildly underplaying how powerful AoE chill, poison, regeneration, blast finishers and fear are. They only get stronger in team fights; they only get stronger when allies are nearby. This is why staff MM is so strong. You can spam this stuff on top of players and enter DS to further DPS, fear and snare while your minions just hit away. It’s enough to make anyone pop their defensive cool-downs and there’s almost no way to miss since all of the AoEs are large, without post-cast delays and the rest of the skills are just auto-targeted for you.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
- Use [Lightning Flash] preemptively to avoid damage.
- Even if you are stunned (poor form, friend), it’s still instant-activation and therefore can be used for quick maneuvers in emergencies.
- You can kill people with [Lightning Flash]. A critical hit does more damage than [Arcane Wave] when wearing full zerkers. It’s incredibly strong in pvp.
It’s not inferior, you’re just not using it properly. That said, it could probably use a cool-down reduction to 35 or 30 seconds.
Given the range on it (1200 range, seriously?? I know that new skills are good and they should shake things up, but a lot of these healing skills are just plain overpowered), it could be very strong in pvp. Chaining it with [Arcane Wave] would not only be substantial instant-cast damage (nonsense), but it would also inflict at least 2 seconds of immobilize to foes within a 360 radius of the elementalist.
If we’re talking [Meteor Shower] here, there’s no issue to an elementalist casting [Meteor Shower], following it up with a [Lightning Flash] mid-cast, swap to earth and then spamming [Arcane Brilliance] and [Arcane Wave] before walking out with [Magnetic Aura] or [Unsteady Ground] up while up to 5 foes in the shower sit immobilized for at least 2 seconds while having already taken high damage from the arcane skills and possibly even [Lightning Flash].
It’s pretty stupid. Even so, I don’t see many players taking [Arcane Brilliance] over [Ether Renewal] in pvp given the condition spam meta. The only people I could see taking it would maybe be s/d spikers because it’s just more spam fodder (because we needed more, right?).
You want attacks that can deal 50k damage when properly set up? Don’t look to Necro. Want abilities that 2-shot most players? Not Necros.
Spammable, easy-to-hit skills ruin good game-play. Working around delays and cues in order to bait enemies into your ranged attacks is the sign of skill. Right now the Necromancer skill ceiling is quite low. That’s what I’m trying to fix.
Staff is already easy to dodge.
No it is not. I already said that it’s effectively a beam attack. You don’t dodge full beam attacks. You eat most of it because you can’t reflect it and you can’t dodge for the entire duration. It’s just blurred damage and effects over a period of time so it forces a player to just sort of pick and choose randomly with defensive tactics instead of making calculated decisions. It doesn’t allow for proper counter-play.
The problem isn’t dodging staff, its knowing what to dodge. So again: make our casting animations better, because staff 2-4 animations are way too similar, and problem fixed,
This would still keep staff 2-4 as a beam attack. Beam attacks are annoying because you can’t mitigate them outright without blowing defensive cool-downs or a lot of dodges. The only way to truly make it fair would be to add a 1-second delay and then coloration to the marks themselves to identify which mark is which. All it would demand of necromancers in return is that they actually keep an open eye on their surroundings. Staff has a 1200 range. That’s a lot of room to start setting up a minefield for an opponent to cross on his way to you. It also doesn’t remove staff’s potential as a team-support weapon.
I think a real issue with the general attitude regarding balanced skills in this game is that most people tend to think about how a skill-set performs in a 1v1 environment. GW2 players really aren’t too keen on what is a good team-support weapon/play-style or why such a thing can be powerful when used properly.
Most Necros want to go back to where it was. We liked the challenge of actually having to outplay our opponents.
A lot of necromancer skills have always been imbalanced. We just have dhuumfire, torment, signet of spite and MM meta now so the situation has been exasperated.
From what I’m reading in this thread, nobody here really wants to be balanced.
And its not like I’m having to give back my big present. I’ve never played condi necro…
What you play has no bearing on this argument.
But you’re comparing things that are incomparable.
I corrected myself in my last post.
Skills with really easy to avoid animations have big effects. This is the MO of a lot of Ele skills; gigantic animations and effects requiring heavy setup to make it work, for the payoff of damage that Necros could never dream of. Compare things like Fire Grab, Meteor Shower, Dragon’s Tooth, Churning Earth, or even skills from other classes like Backstab, Killshot, 100b, etc. They all can give you absolutely massive payoff for skillful use, but on the other hand require a lot of traiting, setup, skill, or some combination.
And then you go on to “compare the imcomparable.”
The problem with necromancer skills is that they do a lot of damage when all chained together and spammed. This wouldn’t be an issue if they had cast-times or delays that prevented this. However, they really don’t. Furthermore, most popular ranged necromancer skills completely forego projectiles, making avoiding them an exercise in permanent line-of-sight or random dodging. This is bad design. In effect, the necromancer staff is one big beam attack channel. You hold your cursor over your target and spam 2-4.
What do we get for staff? 3 bleeds, (sorry, 2 because MoB is one of the strongest skills in the game) a poison field, a strong condi removal (that was stealth nerfed by Thor’s nerf hammer 4 months without a kitten word), and an AoE fear.
[Mark of Blood] has a 6-second base cool-down and also provides regeneration. AoE fear (fear in general) is the most broken thing in this game. [Putrid Mark] has a very strong 444 (1.2) base damage and can blast AoE weakness. [Chilblains] is chill and poison: an incredibly potent combo. Most importantly of all, each of these skills has a 3/4 second cast-time without any post-cast delay. This makes these skills very easy to spam, very easy to hit and very difficult to honestly see coming.
Staff necro, as it currently stands, is a long beam attack that inflicts, bleeding, poison, chill, strong damage, fear and weakness. That’s nonsense and it should be fixed. More importantly, you can set them up for long periods of time and have them off of recharge for when they are triggered. In effect this means that you get a free mine field/bomb and a beam attack for when they’ve exhausted a dodge or two already.
snip
Your entire argument is based off of false ideas, and as long as you stick to the idea that Staff eles are good, Necros have short cast times, and aren’t easy to dodge, everything you say is based on things that just aren’t true.
Staff ele isn’t good. Necros already have long cast times, plenty of after-animations, and if you don’t suck you can dodge anything you want.
The only thing we need is better cast animations on a few of our abilities that are too similar.
Rethink what you have just said because anecdotal “Staff ele isn’t good,” is not going to refute any of the points that I’ve made. My point stands: necromancers are overpowered because they have many ranged attacks that forego at least two of the following: cues, projectiles, and/or post-cast delay periods.
I can understand though. The whole situation with necromancer being overpowered is like someone being given a mansion in a house give-a-way, living in it for many months and then being told one day that the more quaint and average house down the street was actually the house that he was supposed to win. It’s difficult to go back even though it’s the correct thing to do.
You are great at outlining the advantages of marks, but I think you’re overlooking that all of our marks need to be aimed
Floating your cursor over your target and pressing a button isn’t really aiming if the bull’s eye is huge and there’s no projectile or delay. I’m not overlooking it at all. I’m saying that the action of leading a target into a delayed AoE is not difficult. A delay tied to several powerful necromancer AoE skills would simply mean that necros would have to think more about which AoE skills they use when and how they will stagger marks as someone attempts to approach them or a point.
and have to be triggered. So that means nothing on downed players or structures, and if they are laid pre-emptively they are ludicrously easy to dodge. This does assume that you do land them.
You’re missing the point. I’m talking about promoting active play that other players can actually see happening.
Moreover, you’re really down-playing the gravity of dodge-bait. You’re a necromancer. You get unfair fear mechanics. If someone rolled twice, over your marks you can fear them into oblivion and /laugh because it’s all instant-activation with range and no projectile. Even if they have a dodge, you can still do it because nobody can ever see it coming. Furthermore, necromancer marks begin recharging immediately once cast. It’s not hard to set up a mine field in preparation, use the mine field as dodge bait, and then start actively setting up another attrition path as soon as your mines go off.
Necromancer was designed as the attrition class after all. It’s just been poorly set up given all of its broken ranged mechanics.
I have played four toons to 80. When i think of “game-play crutches”, the Necro Staff is not in the conversation.
You basically want the staff for a necro to work the same as one of the worst of the 20 spells the elementist staff has, ignoring that 1) that spell is a fire field, 2) many spells on the ele staff aren’t bound to your ridiculous delay suggestion, and 3) there are several ele staff spells that are significantly better than any spell on a necro staff (and any other necro weapon, for that matter).
Alright, I apologize for that outburst. Let me try again, but this time I’ll refute your main point even though you haven’t refuted any of mine so far.
Sounds like a great suggestion. I’m looking forward to twice as many skills on my staff from now on, with lots of movement abilities, stuns, fire and water fields so both staffs are balanced and the same thing.
You don’t need them. Staff necro is fundamentally different than staff ele. I suppose I was wrong to use [Lava Font] as the lone comparison for these suggested changes because necro marks are not like [Lava Font]. [Lava Font] requires you to hold an enemy in that AoE for an extended period of time to get any real damage out of it. This is why there is so much CC on staff ele. Moreover, staff ele doesn’t really have a lot of high, sustained damage outside of fire attunement. It could be argued that most of a staff ele’s skills are often devoted to making sure that an enemy stays within fire attunement AoEs because those are the ones that are going to do the most damage the most consistently.
Necromancer staff doesn’t need to hold anyone inside of marks. Marks are one-shots. They blow up and throw everything that they have on their target. To this effect, you don’t need CC to make marks effective even if they had a delay. You just need to THINK about where to place them. If you anticipate someone’s movement, you can just place the mark where your opponent is going to go. Stagger out the AoEs instead of just vomiting them onto one point. Just because a ground-targeted AoE skill has a delay doesn’t mean that it forces you to cast it directly on top of an opponent so that they can just walk out of it before it comes into effect. That’s just being bad. Even so, that’s what necromancer staff marks are teaching players to do.
Futhermore, when placing large, delayed AoEs, if an opponent dodges through one, you got rid of one dodge. If an opponent dodges again, hey that’s 2 dodges down. You can throw down your fear mark or your chill mark now. The blood mark will come off cool-down shortly and you can use that again. This is calculated, attrition game-play. You have to make skill sacrifices to get your opponent to dance instead of kill you.
I’ll say it again: ranged skills (even just single target skills, much less AoEs) without projectiles, no post-cast delay and spammable cast-times are not flavor, they’re imbalanced. Necromancer has a lot of these skills. They need to be fixed.
As it stands, the way that necromancer staff marks work effectively makes them into projectiles that you can place on the ground for later use if you so choose. Tha’s actually a neat function, however in active use (no marks down; you just see someone in the distance), they simply turn into spammed ranged skills without projectiles (something that is already innately broken). Adding a [Lava Font]-style delay would fix that and it would make staff necromancer a lot more thought-based and team-oriented than it is now.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Here’s the kicker, though, necromancer gets a lot of these types of skills. Necromancer staff has effectively 4 [Lava Fonts] just sitting on the skill-bar.
Sounds like a great suggestion. I’m looking forward to twice as many skills on my staff from now on, with lots of movement abilities, stuns, fire and water fields so both staffs are balanced and the same thing.
You’re just used to having a game-play crutch. It’s not healthy.
I found this on reddit earlier today :
-Signet of Vampirism: Signet Passive: Siphon life from enemies that strike you. Signet Active: Mark an enemy. Allied players will steal life from that enemy.
ANet needs to stop making signets—especially healing signets. They clearly don’t understand the issue with passive abilities in this game. How is punishing a player for hitting his target 100% of the time balanced in any way?
Why not, instead of the Delay ‘feature’, just have the game program it so when Necro’s cast an AoE spell, enemies automatically are moved out of the radius.
Might be easier to program and will have the same effect.
[Lava Font] has a 1-second delay upon activation and it’s still very possible to hit mobile players at least once with it even in a 1v1 scenario.
Here’s the kicker, though, necromancer gets a lot of these types of skills. Necromancer staff has effectively 4 [Lava Fonts] just sitting on the skill-bar. By that, I mean that each AoE is substantially large (180 base radius), persist for a long period of time when activated and immediately deal damage when someone passes over them. Seeing that staff necromancer has 4 of these types of skills, it isn’t hard to imagine a necromancer controlling a battlefield with proper positioning and timed skill use. [Chilblains] is a 4-second base chill for crying out loud. That’s enormously strong on 20-second cool-down. Landing that skill should pretty much secure a players ability to land subsequent skills.
The goal with changing how staff marks work to be more in line with how [Lava Font] works is to move necromancer staff play away from “Spam skills on top of this guy,” to more a “Do you really want to walk there? You don’t want to walk there either,” sort of play-style. People really don’t seem to understand the importance or value of being able to control an opponent’s movements (even for a second), especially when in a team-play format. Skills don’t have to hit to have an impact on the battlefield. Since necro staff marks persist for so long even after their initial cast, they are prime candidates for this sort of play-style. However, implementing them without a delay removed the attrition from this attrition class’ weapon-set.
tl;dr: You can play with a delay on your AoEs, you just have to anticipate your opponent’s movements. It also removes ranged, AoE backstabs via projectile-less spam and makes everything more balanced for everyone.
Why not, instead of the Delay ‘feature’, just have the game program it so when Necro’s cast an AoE spell, enemies automatically are moved out of the radius.
Might be easier to program and will have the same effect.
[Lava Font] has a 1-second delay upon activation and it’s still very possible to hit mobile players at least once with it even in a 1v1 scenario.
Here’s the kicker, though, necromancer gets a lot of these types of skills. Necromancer staff has effectively 4 [Lava Fonts] just sitting on the skill-bar. By that, I mean that each AoE is substantially large (180 base radius), persist for a long period of time when activated and immediately deal damage when someone passes over them. Seeing that staff necromancer has 4 of these types of skills, it isn’t hard to imagine a necromancer controlling a battlefield with proper positioning and timed skill use. [Chilblains] is a 4-second base chill for crying out loud. That’s enormously strong on 20-second cool-down. Landing that skill should pretty much secure a players ability to land subsequent skills.
The goal with changing how staff marks work to be more in line with how [Lava Font] works is to move necromancer staff play away from “Spam skills on top of this guy,” to more a “Do you really want to walk there? You don’t want to walk there either,” sort of play-style. People really don’t seem to understand the importance or value of being able to control an opponent’s movements (even for a second), especially when in a team-play format. Skills don’t have to hit to have an impact on the battlefield. Since necro staff marks persist for so long even after their initial cast, they are prime candidates for this sort of play-style. However, implementing them without a delay removed the attrition from this attrition class’ weapon-set.
tl;dr: You can play with a delay on your AoEs, you just have to anticipate your opponent’s movements. It also removes ranged, AoE backstabs via projectile-less spam and makes everything more balanced for everyone.
And when was the last time a staff elementalist was seen in a serious sPvP environment? Never. The only people who play staff ele are for the giggles of being able to say “hey guys look, I’m using a staff in PvP!”.
Staff elementalist is very strong in an organized team format. Moreover, it is a well balanced weapon that has clear telegraphs and well-defined, delayed AoEs that not only make it fair for an opponent, but they also allow a staff elementalist to lock down areas with good AoE positioning and target leading. It’s an exercise in timing, forethought and positioning: something that the necromancer could use.
anyone can dodge staff marks with ease
If they’re already on the ground, yes.
same with most of what we cast.
That’s not necessarily true. A lot of powerful necromancer attacks forego the use of red circles, cast-times, and/or projectiles. That’s why they’re used so often.
If you get hit by a staff mark, its your own fault.
If it’s on the ground, sure, but if a staff necro sees you, they can just place the marks directly on top of you without thinking about it. Since you can’t dodge 5 times in a row and you have no way of telling which mark the necro is using based on cast animations, the whole event is pretty much a craps shoot. It’s not well telegraphed and it’s not well balanced.
The problems we have as a class being a bit too strong in PvP have 0 to do with our cast times, and everything to do with many of them being far too similar
As I’ve already detailed, there are several issues related to why necromancers are generally overpowered in the current meta-game. These reasons are primarily: ranged attacks without projectiles; ranged attacks that are instant-activation; ranged AoE attacks that have no post-cast delay and no red circles. There are a lot of necromancer skills with at least one or more of these properties which tend to make fighting a necro an exercise in random dodges or a CC-spam race because nothing coming from that necromancer is clearly telegraphed.
Man, I need a partner for this. Anyone willing to develop some crazy strats with a zerker staff elementalist?
The only thing that either of those skills truly need is respective cool-down reductions.
I’m just looking for a team with which I can actively communicate when doing pvp. Running a team-centric play-style in team queue without voice communication is just driving me up a wall, but having solo-joined into team queues over and over again for the past month, I’ve gotten many elementalist staff tricks down pat. I could bring a lot to a team if I could just communicate more readily with teammates.
Message or mail me in game at Renuut.
Healing Signet
- Passive healing reduced from 392 to 200.
- Now, when this skill activates, you gain protection and regeneration based on your adrenaline levels.
- Protection per adrenaline bar: 1½ seconds
- Regeneration per adrenaline bar: 3 seconds
So when you activate it you actualy heal less :O?I think im gonna have a neck leisure soon from all the noding for these riduculous,outrageous and terrible “sugestions”. Just stay out of the forums with this garbage already.
Protection is incredibly strong. Nine seconds of regeneration would cover almost half of the signet’s cool-down. This game needs to move away from relying on passive abilities. A change like this would put more pressure on using the active ability rather than the passive. Regenerating 200hp/s out of the gate would still be enough to make a difference in the opening exchanges of a pvp encounter. The player using [Healing Signet] would just be more inclined to use the active ability when hp gets starts dropping significantly instead of simply being allowed to face-tank everything.
So when you activate it you actualy heal less :O?
It’s like you actually forget that [Healing Signet] is a healing skill that actually grants the player a significant amount of health on use.
Almost all of these ideas are bad, except for a few that were ideas taken from other forum threads.
I didn’t take anything from anywhere.
You essentially want to add on a 1s aftercast to our abilities, despite them still having a full half-second cast time. Are people in PvP so brain-dead that they need 1.5 seconds to dodge an ability? kitten , you wanted to make Spinal Shivers, of all things EASIER to dodge?
I was thinking of rewording how I described that particular part. I wanted to make some of the necromancer staff marks function akin to [Lava Font]. That skill technically doesn’t have a cast-time, but it still has an activation-animation and after-cast. I guess what happens with [Lava Font] is that the AoE goes down immediately even though the player is still technically casting it. It’s a very good model for a powerful ranged AoE. This way, an enemy can see it coming, but it also isn’t (at all) impossible to land given its radius and simple target leading. Furthermore, even if someone dodges it, that’s one dodge removed from that enemy.
Looking at necromancer staff, the 4 marks available to the player there are in a way like 4 individual [Lava Font]s that can be stretched out across an area. This creates a long line of dodge bait/bite the bullet that will clearly be able to hit an opponent especially when coupled with proper target leading and dodge positioning on the part of the necromancer.
This also removes the potential of ranged backstabbing in team fights achieved by simply spamming necromancer staff skills on a point because there are bodies there and scoring free hits.
Readability =/= making every single auto attack more obvious than a boss insta kill mechanic.
Staff elementalist cues are more than obvious and yet it’s still very possible to hit and kill targets with them with proper positioning. It’s about anticipating an opponent’s move and making counter-moves to derail his decisions. These changes are meant to teach players to learn a skill that actually can be a deciding factor in a battle. As necromancers stand now, it’s a very face-rolly profession with fear, dhuumfire and instant-effect, projectile-less, ranged abilities often being major factors in how they win fights.
realy u want to make fear work like that??? U dont have any time to stack some stack of frightened , before u gonna do it war or thief gonna jump on you and u are dead
[Doom] is instant-activation. Instant-activation, ranged CC without a projectile is nonsense from a balance perspective. It turns pvp into a face-roll.
[Doom] also comes with a second health bar.
Warriors come with enough cast-times and blatant attack animations to allow you to see them coming. Cast CC preemptively instead of reactively when fighting warriors. Draw circles on the ground for thieves.
use a big move.
There aren’t many genuinely big moves left in this game. There is a lot of metagame damage tied to unavoidable passive abilities or instant/near-instant-activation abilities that ramp rotation speed up into a quick blur. Warrior (except for longbow), staff elementalist and maybe mesmer sword main-hand are the only truest exceptions to this rule. Mystery and dodge-counting slows combat down enough already.
This game doesn’t need a visual enemy endurance bar, it needs longer cast-times and/or delay periods for a lot of skills and passives.
The only change is a ‘visual trigger’.
Anyone who has played the game for a few months and is decently aware, knows exactly how fast endurance regens so can pretty much assuredly tell when someone is low->out.The only difference is complication.
No depth is involved.
At all.
No depth is truly involved, no, but that type of attitude does nothing but encourage the absurdly fast-paced metagame that we see right now. The current metagame is nothing but spamming skills as fast as possible and the only thing that is really countering that is the mystery of an enemy’s defensive capabilities. Dodges are heavily factored into that. By removing that, you’re simply encouraging more spammy metagame instead of a thoughtful use of skills.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Healing Signet
- Passive healing reduced from 392 to 200.
- Now, when this skill activates, you gain protection and regeneration based on your adrenaline levels.
- Protection per adrenaline bar: 1½ seconds
- Regeneration per adrenaline bar: 3 seconds
Don’t blow your entire rotation when you first see your enemy, or immobilize them first. The combat in this game is already too fast as it is in many cases, we don’t need an actual visual trigger to tell people to FIRE EVERYTHING.
Currently, voice chat in solo queue (when the other team isn’t using it) would be viewed as cheating by most people.
I find that pretty horrifying.
I play a charr warrior and I tried with a low lvl asuran a few weeks ago. My attack did hit the target a lot more because my move were harder to read. I think warrior might have been the first class they finished. They had more time to polish the animation which look neat but are too easy to read. You recognize a experienced player over a new one because they know how to read the warrior’s attacks.
I really wish the fix the slope issue with earthshakker. I conditioned myself about not using hammer F1 if I’m not on an even terrain.
I play staff elementalist. When I see a warrior with a longbow, I put up Magnetic Aura because 10/10 times they are going to just spam all buttons and they’ll end up rooting and burning and bleeding themselves because the way the longbow is designed, it’s not going to teach you to know any better aside from just spamming your skills. It’s a pyrrhic victory, though, since the healing signet just negates all of the damage. Truly, the whole set-up is forgiving players for being bad.
I just wish that this game had voice chat. All these times where I think that we’re losing just because I can’t relay information mid-combat or because nobody’s talking plans on where people are going in the beginning. It’s a complete craps shoot.
I was just wondering if there are any guilds or groups of people out there that tpvp regularly with voice chat. It’d be nice to play the game with some semblance of team coordination outside of what feel like fluke occurrences.
No E-sports here, only bad domination maps.
point was “outside of large scale battles”
staff is useless in small fight since slow cast/long animation/very easy dodge.
Staff is good against zerg in the middle of chaos; and as long as you hide in your own zerg.
This is thought from a WvW standpoint. WvW is inherently imbalanced because of the highly inflated stats and the wildly fluctuating player numbers in a given fight. It’s a much better idea to balance from a PvP perspective where the stats and numbers are more balanced. Besides, Elementalist staff is already a great 2v2 buddy and can hold its own in a 1v1 against some opponents if played well enough (even though it’s clearly not a 1v1 weapon).
Staff is honestly fine as it stands. The only thing that needs any re-working is [Gust].
People just don’t use it so I guess they don’t realize that [Lightning Surge] hits with the same base damage and damage coefficient as a meteor strike from [Meteor Shower]. It also has no projectile and you don’t have to aim it, making it very strong already. Lowering the cast-time to anything lower than 1 1/4 second would make it pretty broken unless you removed a lot of the damage, and that wouldn’t be great because it would take away a lot of the staff’s spike potential.
[Lava Font] is an incredibly balanced skill. It deals loads of AoE damage and can force an opponent to rethink how they move on a battlefield or pay for it dearly. Just lead your target if you want to hit something with it.
I guess that you could argue that [Chain Lightning] could maaaaaybe use a buff, but making it deal 20% more damage on the first strike and halving the cast-time is NOT the way to do it. It already hits for 1-1.2k in full pvp zerkers as it stands and making it activate 33% faster on top of giving it a flat damage buff would just make it completely broken. If anything, buff the subsequent shocks’ damage. That way it becomes a better tool with more enemies around.