Guild Wars 2

Ayestes.1273:

I’m continuing to be impressed with the pessimism. They aren’t going to radically change the way things work, changes are going to be slow and gradual. You can tell their biggest fear is creating something that is overpowered. I see nothing wrong with that stance.

There is no way a Dev will see a class like an Engineer main player will. This is completely understandable. These three in particular have to play all eight classes. Of course they aren’t going to know everything about every class. It’s their job to work on it yes, but they can’t spend all of their job playing each class 2 to 3 hours a day like many of us can. Are there are others that perhaps do? Maybe, but you can’t expect these three in high level positions to know every single little issue. They know what they can scrape up themselves and what other people tell them. Their sources of information are internal and external, and even then you have to take all the external discussion with quite the grain of salt. If they took some of the suggestions on these boards and just implemented them, we’d be the most overpowered class by a mile. I love the discussion on these boards, but even I can see (especially when it gets so pessimistic) how radical some of the ideas proposed are.

That seems like an oversight. ANet should honestly be able to have specialists who can comment on the shortcomings/overpowered aspects of a class. Futhermore, if a developer’s employees charged with managing its game’s classes don’t know/actively work to address the bugs and issues of those classes—are they really doing their jobs? All I get from the pace at which corrections and balances come with regards to SEVERAL classes that need them is that these employees are getting insufficient or unreliable information.

Ayestes.1273:

Low amounts of RNG are perfectly tolerable. Critical Hits for example are pretty commonly accepted.

I don’t even. Look, Critical Chance is nothing like the RNG of Elixirs. Critical Chance and Damage can be measured and oriented on an individual basis in order to ensure that they trigger reliably. Furthermore, all of the crit triggers have single effects that the player knows will occur if they do indeed activate. Even though you can trait for a chance at Cripple on crit (which is already a chance if your crit chance is not already 100%), it’s still reliable because you know that whenever that trigger does proc, you’re going to inflict Crippled.

Thrown Elixirs never have guarantees. You honestly don’t know what you’re going to get. It’d be like picking up a trait that grants you a 66% chance to inflict a Cripple on crit, and then ANet said, “Nooo, actually you can now inflict Cripple, Bleeding OR Poison with that trigger!” That RNG at the end completely undermines the point of taking that trait because you DON’T KNOW what you’re going to get anymore.

Alright, so you can come back at me and say that they’re tuning down RNG, fine. But I cannot let you get away with comparing Engie Elixir RNG mechanics and those governing Critical Hit chance and triggers like they’re even remotely similar.

Ayestes.1273:

I really think there is a way to balance kits in terms of direct damage and condition damage together. I do think there needs to be a lot of work across nearly the entire game in this area in terms of improving hybridization of the types especially in mandatory skills (like Downed State), but I do think hybridization is possible. An example is Grenade Kit for the Engineer. It works with condition damage builds and direct damage builds just fine. The condition builds gain damage cooldowns, while the direct damage builds gain damage cooldowns and another variant of auto-attack. If it’s possible to balance for one kit, I’m sure it’s possible to balance for all sorts weapons. I do wish this topic was brought up though, I’d like to hear the devs response to it.

I’m not so sure kits are supposed to be used for their 1 skills. Look at Elementalists. I play d/d Elementalist. Using any 1 skill is definitely a last resort option and it’s mostly just in order to proc critical hit triggers. It’s all about juggling between utility, CC and big impact skills.

Kits are pretty alright as they are right now in how they each bring a different fighting style out of the Engineer. They are Engineer attunements. If you homogenize them all (making them so you can operate with con damage or raw damage with all of them) it sort of undermines their entire point. Also, pistol is nerfed with damage because IT’S REALLY STRONG. You will almost never not have conditions on you during a fight with a pistol Engineer. That kind of capability automatically puts a timer on combat, and that sort of thing needs to be handled carefully. Also Confusion.

Aristio.2784:

fishybill.6908:

Aristio.2784:

15% damage buff across all skills.
Pistol getting 6 second bleed as a base auto-attack. Explosion bleeds for 4 seconds.

lol do you want us to be super heroes?

Yes.

The same way Elementalist, Mesmers, Thieves, Warriors, and Guardians do.

P.S. Sounds like you enjoy being the “underdog.” I enjoy being on par with other professions.

You don’t know how to play Engineer.

Nottix.7864:

What are some reasonable changes you would like to see for our class in the upcoming months?

1) Middle range class doesn’t work imo. Feels clunky. Everything else is either melee or range. I would love to ditch “rifle barrels” and make default range for rifle #1 and #2 1200, #3 900/400, #4 and #5 900.

I personally think that middle range works really well. However, the only way for it really function efficiently is for the profession working at a middle range to have multiple ways to escape damage and danger or undermine opponents while inflicting damage. The Engineer’s Gadgets are often really good for this, but the ones that could really turn the tables either don’t operate while stunned or have some REALLY negative effect in the end that could get you killed. On top of that, they almost all have outrageous cool-downs for things that are supposed to keep a player in the fight.

You can look at the suggestions about Gadgets that I have made in the link that I posted already, but it pretty much comes down to removing self-CC, giving them the ability to either break stun or be used while in stun without breaking it and lowering cool-downs. Then one could begin to see a Gadget Engie battle demon that could escape from a lot of crazy situations while still coming back to contribute to a fight. They sacrifice Kits and Elixirs for Gadgets but gain more CC and combat sustainability.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Suggested-Engineer-Skill-Changes/first#post1622621

That about covers it.

Slick Shoes + Rocket Boots

I still want Rocket Boots to change into a regular retreating leap that doesn’t CC you at the end, but as it is now, you can trigger Slick Shoes, then turn around and activate Rocket Boots, moving really quickly into/over/past a group of enemies in front of you and knocking everyone down that was in your line.

It may not be incredibly efficient or effective for yourself, but man is it hilarious—and honestly if you’re working well enough in a group, a 3-man enemy KD is strong. It’s often not terribly difficult to line up either since most people are durdling around each other, swinging for damage or on points in tight formations.

Goggles on!

Self CCs! Nerf-on Red!
Simply gadgets! Nerf-on Blue!
Flowering Prybars! Nerf-on Yellow!
Doki-doki buff hopes! Nerf-on Green!
Dynamic Elixirs! Nerf-on Black!

[Super Speed]ing down the road of justice!
[Rocket Kick] [Rocket Kick] [Rocket Kick] [Rocket Kick] [Rocket Kick]
Engineer Sentai: NERF-ONGER!

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeNBp1Suerg
(No, I’m not sure why it’s in Spanish, but it works as a source.)

Eccentric Duck.7510:

These changes seem reasonable, I think Gadgets as a whole need changes or buffs, simply because there is no reason to take them over kits/ elixirs at this current time.

I completely agree. The reason Gadgets are often set by the wayside is because they are just single skills. Elixirs are also single skills, but thanks to traits an Engineer can really benefit from taking 2 or 3 Elixir Utility Skills. Gadgets have no real traited benefit aside from a single 20% cool-down reduction trait. Therefore, they’re going to need lower cool-downs in order to be effective.

I sort of imagine a Gadget Engineer as some sort of uncatchable battle demon, breaking stuns and snares left and right while keeping in the fight through rapid movement, keen positioning and CC silliness. However, the current cool-downs on most gadgets prevent that sort of feel.

I guess if I had to suggest some Gadget-centric skill changes in addition to the ones I’ve already made (and since I have no more available characters in my OP):

Personal Battering Ram

• Cast time removed.
• Recharge reduced from 45 to 30 seconds.
• You can use this skill while disabled (does not break stun).

Launch Personal Battering Ram

• If you strike a foe that is disabled, you do double damage.

Zinwrath.2049:

Add flamethrower flamejet does incrased damage at 100-150 yards.

Flamethrower is very useful for proccing crit triggers due to its 10 hits in rapid succession. I’m not sure it really needs another damage buff—especially since you can pop Incendiary Ammo and get a good stream of 10% base damage boosted hits for at least one full channel.

Zinwrath.2049:

Remove slickshoes AE knockdown,…a stun breaker…maybe, but we already have a lot of access to these, maybe rework goggles to do something other than stun break and give it to slick shoes?

That knockdown is amazing. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. The only reason I’m suggesting that it have a stun-break effect or an on-stun trigger is because of how gimmicky and unwieldy the knockdown trigger can be sometimes and it often provides you no help in the case that you are disabled and someone starts throwing damage on you (especially from a distance).

Zinwrath.2049:

Also Napalm ball (flame turret) doesnt need to be a blast finisher.

You’re probably right. I just thought it needed more utility. I actually reworked the original suggestion into a Fire Field suggestion that would probably prove more useful and have a bigger impact on battle.

Zinwrath.2049:

And Rocket shoes just needs to be a knockback and not a knockdown. Then it’d be fine.

Rocket Boot’s retreating and Blast Finisher combo is very powerful. The only problem is that it CC’s you. I won’t go into trashing the logic of having something like Acid Bomb as a regular Kit Ability/Weapon Skill and then Rocket Boots (exact same thing but worse save for the stun-break aspect) as a UTILITY Skill, but the retreat is great for re-positioning, getting out of big damage areas or even just covering distance (the jumps I can pull off with Acid Bomb can be insanely useful and chaining Acid Bomb with Rocket Boots while under the effects of swiftness is something akin to Ride the Lightning speed except for the self-knockdown at the end). It doesn’t need a functionality change, just that the self-CC is removed and the movement is changed to a retreating leap so it can actually cover terrain gaps if you choose to use it that way (at the moment it’s simply a backward charge despite the fact that you’re bouncing across the ground like a skipping stone).

Goloith.6349:

More people need to read this idea.

I appreciate your support!

The chest piece is Charr cultural Tier 3 medium armor.

Creld.8702:

I like all of the proposed changes, with one exception.

Toolbelt skills don’t really need that much of an overhaul if they are buffed to be reliable. Cooldown reductions, making the effects more on par with each other, and making elixirs, if not controllable, at the very least predictable. (Possibly health based effect, since, if you’re throwing elixir s, there are not a whole lot of situations you would want stability or stealth interchangably. Rather, at high health you recieve stability and low heath you recieve stealth.) Making them completely controllable would be very nice, but it would cause a lot of elixir effects to be unused (very few people would choose stability over stealth, vigor is better than protection unless you have perma vigor, and people would choose either veil or wall of reflection on u, for stealth/stomps.)

If you’re referring to my third attachment, while I do agree that out of all of my suggestions that’s probably the one that is the most difficult to implement and probably the least important out of all of them, I do want to say that it’s not an overhaul. It’s very simple: the F1 slot can now hold a Weapon Kit and the F2 slot can now hold a Turret. The goal here was to work around some of the issues that ANet has drum up themselves with kit builds eating up Utility Slots and turrets being general pieces of garbage.

We only have 3 Utility Skill slots. Therefore, having a free space for a turret might incline some Engineers to use one and change up the metagame a bit. As for the Weapon Kits, having one as an F-skill (and therefore technically a tool-belt skill and not a Weapon Kit even though it functions as such), players could work around the stupid change to the Improved Kits trait while still making full use of two kits—or even three kits while still retaining a Utility Slot.

As for the Elixir Tool-belt Skill change: I realize that as of now some Elixir Tool-belt Skills would probably have certain effects see more play than others, but I don’t think it would be too imbalanced in any direction. However, if it were, it’s not difficult to simply buff/tweak certain iterations in order to make the choice a little more difficult or interesting. Let’s take Elixir B: one might think that “Let’s take fury 100% of the time” would probably be the typical response from an Engineer. However, that’s completely counting out group swiftness (great for map movement or maintaining your own speed), group retaliation (which can help swing chaotic fights) or group might (the single stack could maybe be buffed to 2 in order to make it more favorable).

Furthermore, do you really think everyone would take stealth over stability 100% of the time? Really? I think you’re discounting how huge GROUP stability can be in combat (completing channels despite CC, keeping ground, maintaining pushes, rezzing or stomping). It’s not terribly difficult to interrupt/predict someone trying to do something while in stealth unless all they’re doing is putting every skill into escaping (in which case, it gives you time to reset and negates their current combat threat).

NevirSayDie.6235:

I think most of these ideas are really good. I appreciate that you focused on reasonable changes rather than a huge re-work from the ground up. I think you might want to change the title of the thread, because “overhaul” is something that I don’t believe Anet is likely to do at this point.

Ah, good point. I don’t really know an appropriate title, but overhaul does seem a bit drastic compared to an in-depth re-tooling (pardon the pun) which is sort of what I seem to suggest with my post.

Alright, here’s a bump because I’m pulling out the big guns and pouring all of my ideas and infographics into this one thread.

Ranger is broken as it is. Making pets effective is going to take a LOT more than number games (which, unfortunately, has most often been the majority of what ANet has done with regards to balancing professions and skills). I’m just going to drop pic related here for consideration. All of the skill specifics aren’t really fixed ideas, I just think that there should be two modes for the Ranger as it is. If you really want to make the pet meaningful and effective on the field, you’ll need more than 1 F-skill (IT’S SERIOUSLY JUST ONE SKILL—IT’S EFFECTIVELY THE WARRIOR) to bring out a pet’s potential.

You would need an entire skill set to really maximize a pet’s presence. It’s seriously a second body for the Ranger. I can’t believe that no designer has taken advantage of that.

ItIsFinished.9462:

I think the best approach is to look at this from a logical stand point. We have to realize that our pet is 20-60% of our DPS, so it needs to be effective in its DPS distribution. So, logically, the pet needs to stay alive. Every situation will warrant a different method to managing your pet. So I propose a simple 4 choice config for our pets:

F2 click once ~ Attack/Single target mode
F2 click twice ~ Attack/Multiple target mode(aoe condition or boon)
F2 click thrice ~ Guard/Single target mode
F2 click fourth ~ Guard/Multiple target mode(aoe boon or condition)

F2 click fifth ~ Do not attack (currently implemented)

Basically, you can set your pet to be in 1 of 4 modes. Each pet would warrant specific skills depending on the pet and mode. So for example my Raven could have a whirlwind type aoe on Attack/Multiple target mode(aoe) that drops conditions and a Bear could have a boon type of aoe for the Attack/Multiple target mode(aoe) that way every pet could be used for every situation. I understand that would warrant quite a bit of work, but it would synergize the Ranger and their companions perfectly.

With that being said you wouldn’t have to change any UI elements. Just add a 5 mode toggle to F2. The 5th being a do not attack.

Edit:
I forgot to mention that when a pet is in a guard type stance there defense is raised so they can take more damage but at the same time they do less damage. And all pets have 4 types of attacks anyways, this would just allow the Ranger to proc those specific skills on demand instead of randomly.

Also this is good. Really good. It’s a little unwieldy (what if you wanted to switch from mode 1 all the way to 5 really quickly?), but it’s honestly the best one could do with the game engine as it is.

Rocket Kick → Smoke Vent → Blunderbuss → Air Blast → Net Shot → Jump Shot → Acid Bomb → Elixir F → Flame Blast → Flame Jet/Fumigate → just keep cycling through damage/dodges/CC

I don’t really have combos, more like sustained cycles.

ELITE SKILLS
Mortar

• Base range increased to 2000.
• Range when traited increased to 2400.

Elixir X

• Refer to Attachment 1.
• There is also the possibility of assigning 3 Elite Skills to the Engineer’s Utility Skill slots and then simply allowing the Engineer to choose only one or two of them and then the effects of Elixir X would end immediately. That kind of restriction would require duration buffs to the suggestions that I make in the infographic below.

RIFLE
Blunderbuss

• Range for maximum damage and Bleed stacks increased from 100 to 180.

Jump Shot

• Damage radius increased from 120 to 150.
• The Rifled Barrels trait now also reduces Jump Shot’s hang time. As it stands, the trait is almost more liability than help for the Rifle since it extends Jump Shot’s leap animation to an inconveniently long duration compared to what it is without the trait.

FLAMETHROWER
Smoke Vent

• Now part of a Chain Skill (Smoke Vent —> Phlogiston Discharge)
• Smoke Vent remains unchanged.

Phlogiston Discharge

• 0 second cast-time (instant cast)
• Further discharge oxidized residue, creating a Smoke Field at your location but increasing the skill’s recharge time by 50%.
  • Duration: 4 seconds
  • Radius: 180

Napalm

• Recharge reduced from 30 to 25 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 10 to 8 seconds.

TOOL KIT
Box of Nails

• Cast time reduced from 1 to ¼ second.
• Bleeding inflicted increased to 3 stacks.
  • As the skill does no direct damage, it justifies a buff to the Bleed damage (especially since the duration is a base of only 2 seconds). Honestly, the same could be said for Caltrops Mortar (Mortar skill 2) and Caltrops (the Thief Utility Skill).

UTILITIES
Rocket Shoes

• Activation no longer interrupts the player. Player simply jumps backwards 900 range. Animation and effect identical to Acid Bomb’s retreating leap.

Slick Shoes

• Now breaks Stun.
  • I would petition a slight cool-down reduction as well (something like from 60 down to 55 seconds), but as it was mentioned, this skill is strong and any further buff beyond the addition of stun-break might push it overboard.

Throw Mine

• Recharge increased from 18 to 25 seconds.
• Now removes 3 boons.

ALL ELIXIR TOOL-BELT SKILLS

• See Attachment 2
• I use Elixir U (pardon the MS Paint reproduction) as an example for the visual application of this idea. What I mean to say is that all tool-belt Elixirs as of now give the Engineer an RNG chance for some boon or effect. RNG IS BAD. Good skills in GW2 are good because when people use them, they expect a specific effect, and then receive THAT SPECIFIC EFFECT. Shocking Aura wouldn’t be NEARLY as good as it is now if it had a chance to stun, cripple, bleed or knock-back enemies with effects decided by a random number generator. It’s good BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES. IT STUNS PEOPLE 100% OF THE TIME.
• Tool-belt Elixirs should have predictable effects in order that they can have a constant and reliable impact on the flow of a battle. I propose that ANet split all of the possible effects of Thrown Elixirs up into unique iterations of the same skill that can be selected in the Tool-belt Skill slot.

TOOL-BELT SKILLS
Rocket Kick (Rocket Shoes tool-belt skill)

• Range increased from 300 to 600.

Incendiary Ammo (Flamethrower tool-belt skill)

• Recharge reduced from 60 to 30 seconds.
• Burning duration per attack reduced from 3 to 1½ seconds.

Super Speed (Slick Shoes tool-belt skill)

• Recharge reduced to from 45 to 40 seconds.
• Now removes Crippled, Chilled and Immobilized.

Shockwave (Thumper Turret tool-belt skill)

• Recharge reduced from 90 to 40 seconds.

Net Attack (Net Turret tool-belt skill)

• Recharge reduced from 60 to 30 seconds.

Napalm Bomb (Flame Turret tool-belt skill)

• Recharge reduced from 60 to 40 seconds.

Smoke Screen (Flame Turret overcharge)

• Now triggers instantly and generates the Smoke Field and initial Blind effect at the player’s location.

Cleansing Burst (Healing Turret overcharge)

• Now triggers instantly and applies its effects at the player’s location.

RE-WORKING THE PROFESSION SKILLS (F-SKILLS)
See attachment 3

• All skills slotted into the F-skills would still exclusively be considered Tool-belt Skills (all effects related to and triggered by Tool-Belt skills would still proc even if you slotted in a Weapon Kit or Turret).
• Turrets slotted as an F-skill lose their self-destruct skill (no place for it).
• Weapon Kits slotted as an F-skill lose their corresponding Tool-Belt Skill (no place for it).
• Due to Weapon Kits having no cool-down, there would need to be some work done to balance that with some of the “Generate this effect upon using a Tool-belt skill” traits and abilities unique to the Engineer.

You know, I was wondering how to set up my traits for my Engineer as I continue to level, but now I think I’m on the right path given the update. SWEET STARS ABOVE, I’m so happy that my Engineer can be Trickster Dante and now has the weight to really sway a battle.

I still wish that Rocket Boots didn’t CC the player on use and also that he Rifle’s Jump Shot had a slightly bigger radius and better response for the landing (the player seems to lag in the air for about 1/2 of a second before the stomp that gives everything a free opportunity to hit you since you can’t dodge roll). Those issues are pretty much forcing me to use Jump Shot only as an escape skill since jumping into someone could either miss them (the 120 range radius is like 2 steps at battle speed in any direction) or could easily lead to them simply taking the hit and then ruining me as I’m locked in the landing animation.

Also, the Rocket Kick should really have a 450-600 range.

There are just so many more issues right now, but honestly, this update was a pretty alright start.

wolfshirt.8459:

thats way too confusing.

if they wanted to changed the whole tool belt thing: just put a different engineer kit on F1, F2, F3, and F4 and let us have a ton of utility skills.

But then you’re removing the tool-belt skills entirely—some of which are honestly pretty good or could easily be improved into something of great use. Furthermore, if you put a kit on each F-skill, you would have the Elementalist. Not that the Elementalist isn’t a bad design (it’s honestly the best-designed class in the game), but the Engineer should have a little more flexibility than that.

I was fooling around with the idea of having F1 and F2 be for Weapon Kits and then F3 and F4 be for Turrets, but that discounted all of the tool-belt skills and also made trouble for the Med Kit healing skill (of which the Tool-Belt skill is the actual heal).

Engineers are supposed to be this versatile class that is unpredictable on the battlefield and can serve multiple roles. Well, in the process of trying to make that happen, ANet made the Engineer effectively a non-class through nerfs, RNG mechanics and design that really limited the Engineer’s survival and ability to contribute to a fight.

When we look at Engineer Utility Skills, it seems like there is always a kit (or two) stapled there. To this effect, the kits feel like a profession mechanic rather than a Utility Skill. With that in mind, I submit that Weapon Kits should in fact be part of the Engineer profession mechanic (the Tool-Belt).

On the topic of turrets, most Engineers don’t want to waste a Utility Skill slot to bring along a little pet that has moderate use on the battlefield if it isn’t accidentally stepped on or blows over in a strong wind (since that’s all it takes to destroy them). While I have more ideas on how Turrets could be improved, I think a safe place to start is by giving the Engineer a sort of freebie Turret option by reserving a slot for it, again, on the Tool-Belt bar.

This sort of flexible Tool-Belt bar that has a lot of options and not a lot of space is a way to give Engineers more options in the way that they build themselves and go about contributing to a battle. It’s also a task in management since if you slot a Weapon Kit and a Turret, you only have 2 slots left for Tool-Belt Skills.

This change would require some reworking of the Tools traitline, but I think that in the end, it would be for the best.

It’s a bit long-winded, but the visual aid for the idea should come first before the textual reasoning:

EDIT: All skills slotted into the Tool-Belt will still be considered Tool-Belt Skills with regards to trait triggers.

Well, I consolidated and tweaked all of my suggestions in the OP so have a bump.

On the word “under-used”:

Perhaps that wasn’t the right word. What I meant to say was more along the lines of “weapons that do too little or perform too reactively.” Typically, though, weapons that do that are normally the under-used weapons of a profession. However, in the Guardian’s case, it seems that, well, all of the off-hands play this way—which is sort of a travesty.

My defense for the Shield (Judgment and Wrath) skill changes is that Wrath is horribly reactive. Ask yourself the question, “When will I actually get to use Shield of Wrath’s destruction ability?” The answer is never if you’re using the skill actively while in combat. If you ever do trigger it, it’s because you popped it, waited 4 seconds on the fringe of a fight, then bolted in with a teleport skill in order to dish out a big pocket of damage. That’ll work once per fight—and only at the beginning of the fight, AND only if your opponent doesn’t ping you with 3 hits from long-range. It’s bad. The block is good, but it might as well just be that. A skill shouldn’t tempt players with a final ability that’ll never really be triggered in heated combat when it would actually be in handy the most.

People seem to think that the damage nerf would be an overall nerf, but I think they neglect the damage capacity of Retaliation—especially in heated combat. If you take enough hits, the damage from Retaliation could easily surpass Shield of Wrath’s original base damage.

Shield of Judgment is just lack-luster. I felt that it needed something more and so I borrowed from my idea for Shield of Wrath.

On the “Pulse” mechanic suggestion, that is actually a buff if nothing else. Instead of simply getting one big boon packet, you get several small packets. This sort of set-up removes a lot of issues with removal since—if you let a respective shield run out its duration—you would probably get your boon(s) renewed.

I will also be making suggestions for the Torch off-hand and Scepter main-hand as well in the future because, yes, they are rather and lack real utility that can truly sway combat.

SWORD (main-hand)
Flashing Blade

• Teleport no longer requires a target. If the teleport is activated without a target, the Guardian simply teleports 600 range forward in a straight line.

FOCUS (off-hand)
Ray of Judgment

• Recharge increased to 30 seconds.
• Channel a piercing ray at your foe that damages and inflicts blindness. Allies near you gain regeneration and cure conditions.
• Damage (3x): 100
• Blind: 2 seconds
• Regeneration: 1 second
• Duration: 1 second (Cast-time would probably end up equating to 1½ seconds)
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1,200
  • The radius effect (granting regeneration and curing a condition) triggers at your location.
  • The Regeneration and Cure Conditions effects trigger 3 times respectively (once for each attack).
  • The animation is actually a ray now and not some prissy bubble.

ALTERNATIVELY

Ray of Judgment

• Invoke a ray at target location. Foes are damaged and blinded. Allies gain regeneration and cure conditions.
• Damage (3x): 100
• Blind: 2 seconds
• Regeneration: 1 second
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Pulse: 1 second
• Radius: 240
• Range: 1,200
  • Ion Cannon beam animation ala Ray of Judgment in Guild Wars 1.

Shield of Wrath

• Channel a shield around yourself that blocks attacks and grants retaliation. Upon its final pulse, the shield damages nearby foes.
• Cast-time increased to 3½ seconds
• Damage: 300
• Retaliation: 1 second
• Pulse: 1 second
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Combo Finisher: Blast
  • By “Pulse,” the description means to say that the shield grants Retaliation every second while being actively channeled (a full channel will pulse retaliation 3 times).
  • This skill will block attacks so long as the Guardian continues to channel it (or until its duration expires).
  • The radius applies to the skill’s damage that occurs at the skill’s final pulse.
  • The blast finisher triggers at the beginning of the skill.

SHIELD (off-hand)
Shield of Judgment

• Changed to a skill-chain: Shield of Judgment—> Judge’s Ward
• Create a shielding wave in front of you that damages foes and grants protection to yourself and up to five nearby allies.
• Damage: 302
• Protection: 5 seconds
• Range: 600

Judge’s Ward

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Push back and weaken all foes in front of you with a wave of spiritual energy.
• Weakness: 5 seconds
• Knockback: 300
• Range: 600

Shield of Absorption

• The bubble no longer roots the caster or requires channeling in order to maintain it past the initial cast-time.

TORCH (off-hand)
Zealot’s Flame

• Recharge increased to 20 seconds
• Light yourself aflame and gain regeneration, might, swiftness, and you periodically burn up to three nearby foes.
• Burning: 1 second
• Self-burning: 3 seconds
• Regeneration: 5 seconds
• Might: 5 seconds (3 stacks)
• Swiftness: 8 seconds
• Pulse: 1 second
• Duration: 5 seconds
• Radius: 600
  • By “Pulse,” the description means to say that the skill will burn up to 3 enemies in a 600 range radius around the caster once every 1-second interval starting with the moment that the skill is first activated (the burning duration inflicted for each pulse is 1 second).
  • The self-burning only triggers once upon activating the skill.

Zealot’s Fire

• Immobilize and damage all nearby burning foes.
• Damage: 300
• Immobilize: 2 seconds
• Range: 240

Cleansing Flame

• Recharge increased to 20 seconds.
• Cast-time decreased to 2¼ seconds.
• Damage (5x): 1000 (skill only strikes 5 times now; still does the same amount of damage overall)
• The final attack removes up to 3 conditions from the caster (removal only triggers on the final attack tick, but regardless of whether or not it actually hits anything).

SCEPTER (main-hand)
Orb of Wrath

• Changed into a skill-chain: Orb of Wrath —> Orb of Fury --> Judge’s Insight

Orb of Wrath

• Cast-time removed
• Damage reduced to 80

Orb of Fury

• Fire a slow-moving orb at your foe.
• Cast-time: 0 seconds
• Damage: 80
• Range: 1,200

Judge’s Insight

• Smite your foe with a direct strike that inflicts vulnerability and grants you might.
• Cast-time: ½ seconds
• Damage: 150
• Might: 1 second
• Vulnerability: 3 seconds
• Range: 1,200

Smite

• Changed to a chain-skill: Castigate —> Smite --> Scourge
  • Skill-chain recharge increased to 8 seconds. Recharge only begins after the final skill in the chain is used (or if the player waits too long to use a subsequent skill in the chain).

Castigate

• Damage and cripple foes in the target area.
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Damage: 100
• Cripple: 2 seconds
• Radius: 240

Smite

• Cast-time removed
• Damage (8x): 835 (this skill now only hits 8 times)

Scourge

• Cast-time: 0 seconds
• Damage (8x): 835
  **Completely equivalent to Smite.

DieQuex.4096:

Incorrect terminology, my bad. Referring toward how using Shatterstone locks you into an animation for a bit despite not having a cast time. I would have less of an issue with skill’s delay if it were possible to continue casting spells immediately after using it. As things are atm you get better damage output ignoring the skill entirely while using water auto attacks until your desired attunement is off cd.

Obviously wouldn’t solve the issue of actually hitting an opponent with the spell but I feel a change of that nature would at least make it less burdensome.

Ah, I see. Well, I’d agree. I haven’t used scepter in so long that I guess I’ve forgotten some of its specific intricacies. Yeah, it should just be something you can use whenever without having to worry about it interrupting other skills.

DieQuex.4096:

I kind of like where you’re going with shatterstone but I also feel the cast time should be removed or lessened by a lot. As it stands there’s no point using it since it disrupts combat flow and lessens your damage output.

Shatterstone currently has no cast-time. That’s its greatest strength. It’s only weakness is that it will never affect anyone with half of a brain (even including some aggroed NPCs) because of its delayed effect. It would maybe be nice to see it have an effect the moment it spawns on the field, but given it’s incredibly low recharge, I feel like it would need to be nerfed in that department. The only problem there is that Shatterstone shines because it can be spammed all of the time, so I think that that sort of change would defeat the skill entirely.

Siv.4351:

Rock Barrier->Hurl needs some serious work done.

Dust Devil is great but a bit redundant since we already have an instant, no travel time blind from Lightning3.

Staff has cripple, dagger mainhand has cripple, scepter? nowhere.

I know some people don’t like ground-targeting gimmicks, but it was the only way I could think to really make a game-changer out of Dust Devil. I updated my suggestion to Rock Barrier —> Hurl as well.

lothefallen.7081:

I wish Water Scepter 2 snared foes…outside of the healing in the set when combined with dagger, this seems to be one of the weakest. Healing on Elementalists is getting a nerf isn’t it? I really wish there was more incentive to specialize into an element. Too much homogenization, not enough specialization. No one can truly say they are a water mage or an earth mage and i think that’s kinda sad. I know the mechanics don’t work like that, but i think they missed out on a lot of distinct variety by pretty much forcing players to swap attunements like A.D.D. They could have basically created 4 classes in one like in GW1 if the combat mechanics were deeper.

Water 2 sort of does snare foes in that it curtains off small areas at a time that players otherwise would venture into to sneak in close-range damage. I get what you mean, though. Water Scepter is probably the most lack-luster of the 4 elements. It would be nice if Water Trident left a water combo field for a moment after it splashed for the heal. That would at least be nice. They could adjust the healing accordingly to add in the feature. Or maybe they could make it a chain-skill that activated after you threw it. You could preemptively freeze the water field for a chill snare or something.

As for the homogenization of the elements for the class, the Elementalist of GW2 honestly plays no different than the Elementalist of GW1. In GW1, the whole point of running a particular element was because of specific skill chains and synergies that existed in that elemental attribute. You lined up certain skills of an element that all ran together and could be spammed or used effectively as a build. The GW2 Elementalist does this same exact thing, except that just opens up all of the elements to the player. The goal of the Elementalist in GW2 is to seek out combos and synergies in order to exploit them on the battlefield.

Being a GW1 player for several years, I can honestly say that I enjoy playing as an element-spitting Captain Planet more than I did sitting in one attunement in GW1, but now we’re getting into opinions so I’ll stop.

Bump because of slight updates to the suggestions above.

Nobody else?
4-5 skills have always been flavor and utility skills. I think it would be nice to see entire weapon sets devoted to damage or weapon sets that saw more support options.

Bump because of a little update. I do think that it’s best if Dragon’s Tooth is simply just a ground-targeted skill. I’m almost certain that it was in the betas (or at least one of them). However, if the skill is deemed too overpowered with that feature, then it could be nerfed/changed appropriately after the fact. Regardless, I think that it needs ground-targeting and an instant drop.

The way it is now is effectively useless. It’s even worse than Hundred Blades—which is only good in PvE alone simply because most NPCs are brain dead and stand in it. Dragon’s Tooth as it is now is like Hundred Blades with a ridiculous wind-up.

Shatterstone also suffers from the same problem to an extent, but it at least doesn’t have the drop time interval. That skill is fine aside from a simple reduction in the interval between skill cast and effect.

I typically run 0/25/20/10/15 with a d/focus set-up.
Just get boon-extending runes and go auramancer for the fury.
Magi/Knight armor with Berserker weapons/jewelry is normally what I run.

d/focus
Earth.
You have a snare, a leap, invulnerability, reflection and a condition clear. It’s amazing and it primes all of my other attunements instantly.

Elementalist Scepter main-hand is actually quite good. It’s only problem at the moment is its speed. It’s very slow. It’s too slow to be effective when faced with the damage output and utility that a dagger main-hand or even a staff can contribute to a battle. Therefore, I’m proposing some changes (keep in mind that most Elementalist skills have some after-cast delay so I have tailored the cast-time and damage suggestions to reflect that):

FIRE
Flamestrike

• Cast-time reduced from 1¼ to ¾ seconds.
• Damage reduced from 101 to 80.
• Burning duration reduced from 2 to 1½ seconds.

Dragon’s Tooth

• Dragon’s Tooth now uses ground-targeting.
• Upon fully casting Dragon’s Tooth, the tooth that manifests itself drops immediately.

WATER
Ice Shards

• Changed to a skill-chain: Ice Shard —> Ice Lance --> Glowing Ice

Ice Shard: Fire an ice shard at your foe.

• Cast-time: ½ seconds
• Damage: 100
• Range: 1,200
  —> Ice Lance: Launch a frozen lance at your foe that inflicts Bleeding.
• Cast-time: ½ seconds
• Damage: 100
• Bleeding (1 stack): 3 seconds
• Range: 1,200
  —> Glowing Ice: Fire a bolt of magical ice at your foe, granting yourself Vigor and inflicting Weakness.
• Cast-time: ¾ seconds
• Damage: 230
• Vigor: 1 second.
• Weakness: ¾ seconds.
• Range 1,200

Shatterstone

• Recharge increased from 2 to 5 seconds.
• Stacks of Vulnerability inflicted from the explosion increased from 4 to 5.
• On creation, Shatterstone’s AoE now creates a Frost Field. This Frost Field pulses once at creation and lasts 1 second. The pulse chills all enemies in its radius for ¾ seconds.
• This skill is now instant-cast (can be used simultaneously with other skills).

AIR
Arc Lightning

• Cast-time (channel) reduced from 3½ to 2¾ seconds.

EARTH
Stone Shards

• Cast-time reduced to ¾ seconds
• Damage reduced to 110.
• Bleeding remains at 3 stacks applied (1 per stone that successfully hits) but the respective durations of those Bleeding stacks is reduced from 6 seconds to 4½ seconds.

Rock Barrier

• Cast-time removed.
• Recharge increased from 15 to 20 seconds.

Hurl

• Is now a 5-part skill-chain.
• After activating Rock Barrier, the Elementalist has the opportunity to fire off each rock individually (up to 5 times—once for each rock).
• Each skill in the skill-chain that fires the floating rocks is called “Hurl.”
• Each “Hurl” has no cast-time (you can activate them without interrupting other skills).
• Each rock, if it hits, inflicts Weakness (1½ seconds), Cripple (1½ seconds) and does 120 base damage.

Dust Devil

• Cast-time increased to ½ second.
• Recharge increased from 15 to 20 seconds.
• Range reduced from 900 to 600.
• Now affects a 450 range knock-back on all nearby enemies in addition to inflicting blind (effectively a blind-inflicting version of the Mesmer Greatsword skill: Illusionary Wave).

LiquidLeopard.9823:

Just my 2 cents….I love the ranger. Love it love it! However…..
Usually run (20/25/15/0/5) or (20/30/0/0/20) btw

DPS for rangers without a pet is quite frankly low, in some cases against a high toughness target, embarrassingly so, and in many instances when your pet cannot be used due to agony, AoE or other effects, our damage is quite weak. I think with a simple fix of allowing us to control these guys a little more. (I understand the in and out control of pets), and manage it closely and it works well, but let’s be honest we have all had pets run in or get caught somewhere and they are 1 shotted in fractals. Pet gone? So is a LOT of your DPS.

-If I have a pet, let me tell it when to use it’s bleed, pounce, F1-F4 could be toggled to always run, never run but run on click/key bind, etc. In RL if I have a pet I can tell it to heel or bark, so if my pet could heal me or knock you over, why can’t I command it to do it on call?

-AoE mitigation or be able to assign talent points to pets for resistance (polar bear frost resist, or fire resist, or more vitality, toughness whatever. This way out pets could be used for different circumstances a raw DPS linx with even more DPS, or added toughness etc. but my bear could have more toughness as well as vitality. The list goes on…our damage is weaker than many other classes because of the pet, so make them more viable in different situations.

-(more for a fun thought off the top of my head rather than a need) Pet talents are scattered throughout the traits, why no put more pet in 1 tree and give us another, consolidate them? Rangers are the class I think lives off the land and is at one with nature. Pets bows and the weapons we have work well for it, but what about the ranger that wants a touch of stealth in lieu of a pet? not a must but it might lead to a bit more fun to make it a pet-less (or weak pet) class but they become a sniper type character, or use more of the nature magic use of spirits for healing or team support?

Our traps and 1 AoE heal are nice, but I think more group buffs or a way to support our team more would be a good trade off instead of adding damage to give us more desire to be included in high end fractals.

just some thoughts off the top of my head

I like your comment because towards the end it mainly conveys ideas relating to carving out a niche for the Ranger in combat. Niches are incredibly important in GW2 since there’s no trinity. Effectively, the class that delivers the most consistent, high damage wins out in GW2. Support is often overlooked. I was thinking of refining my idea again, and maybe the Ranger mode could do with another F-skill relating to GW1 Expertise skills ported into GW2.

Things like Distracting Shot, Incendiary Arrows (post-functionality change), Melandru’s Shot, ect—those sort of utilities are often what defined the GW1 Ranger and got him spots in groups. I think that the Ranger could use those or even just CC like a pull or push (for synergizing with traps or setting up combos) in order to better define what it does on the field as a class.

My main hope remains in pet-management and utilizing the pet’s positioning in the field to conduct mutual attacks and maneuvers with its Ranger. The end goal there is effectively: “Let’s make the Ranger the only profession that can have two active bodies in play at the same time.” I hope that in implementing a profession mechanic design that achieves that goal, that the Ranger would find its way into groups by utilizing its two bodies on the field.

Chopps.5047:

So…you’re going to slam the profession we love to play and then go on to say “don’t insult my terrible play, I don’t even play the class”. You don’t play the class, yet you’ll sit there and theorycraft up a couple hours worth of schematics about how it needs changed? I have 1010 hours on my ranger. Here’s my answer for you: play it more—practice before you speak.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. I guess I was just frustrated is all. I played Ranger a lot in GW1, and it had a definite role in the field. Moreover, when you ran with a pet, that pet actually mattered a lot to you. It wasn’t just some thing you threw away at trash mobs because you could or because it accidentally aggroed something.

About my play-time for Ranger: several hours was all I needed to determine a problem and begin seeking possible solutions. Again, I don’t mean to insult anyone here, I’m just saying that it didn’t take a lot for me to see how many possibilities and how many resources that the Ranger profession was letting slip through its fingers simply because it’s entire profession mechanic consisted in: “Attack this, pet!”, “Come back, pet!”, “Swap out, pet!”, and a species-specific pet skill on a long cool-down that, when experienced holistically, made the Ranger’s companions feel like slightly more competent Necromancer minion utilities than a well-thought-out and implemented profession mechanic.

My aim here is to not slam the Ranger. My aim is to address its designers’ shortcomings regarding the full utilization of all profession-specific resources available (mainly the pet’s extra body on the field—it’s pretty much entirely untapped, there are so few skills that synergize with its presence; and when they do, they do it poorly/in a shallow manner).

So many “Just manage your pets better” responses.

The point of the change isn’t so much that the current pet mechanic has really bad innate management capacities, but rather that those (very, very basic) management capacities are all that you really get when your pet is on the field. A pet is a second body on the field for the Ranger. I think that the current mechanic is a gratuitous waste of that resource. There should be more interplay between the pet and the Ranger with regards to both mutual positioning and active skill-use or attacks. You can’t do that with 3 out of the 4 F-skills being taken up by “Attack this guy!” “Stop attacking that guy!” and “I’m a Pokemon trainer!” You can argue that “Oh, hey, but I get 3 unique F-skills because I have 3 different pets!” but are you really going to reduce the entire pet mechanic to 3 straightforward and typically mediocre skills with long cool-downs?

Again, what a waste. You’re not thinking big enough.

In GW2, you simply just cannot develop a profession’s maximum capacity for complex play using a single F-skill. That’s why the Warrior is so straightforward (as is the Ranger at the moment). The only real way to deepen Ranger combat and make pets have a bigger impact on play is to introduce more skill variety and skills that directly play off of your pet’s positioning and are based on your chosen pet’s family.

Furthermore, I don’t even play Ranger. That is to say, I did, but I stopped after realizing how mentally shallow the pet mechanic is and thought to myself, “I could design something better.” At this point, the Ranger profession—given it’s actual number of profession mechanic skills that have a direct impact on combat—is literally just the Warrior profession with less damage and three NPCs that follow you around, do some damage and die a lot. My overall suggestion is mostly just changes that would make me want to play Ranger again. Nobody has to get offended or insult my Ranger play (especially because I don’t even play the class anymore).

Eh, I don’t really care that apparently there are some Ranger changes already chambered. Here’s this anyway.

It’s by no means complete, but here are some ideas that I just wanted to get out of me so I could sleep.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Swagg.9236:

Then I’ll go ahead and continue to make my point that, regardless of when the term “rez-rushing” was first coined, it remains this strawman term that has no purpose except to somehow stigmatize the idea of respawning in a game and continuing to contribute to that game as expected.

Anet is guilty of trying to use this worthless term to justify a bad dungeon mechanic.

Arena Net considered the cries of players saying how terrible it was that people Waypoint Zerged. You can see it in the post I linked in my previous post.

They made a decision as a Reaction to the player base.

The responsibility of these changes lies with us, the player base. That’s you. That’s me. I never personally asked for some of these changes, but then again I never stood against them either.

In the end, you’re going to have to live with it. Will it be modified? I think that there will be a few tweaks (possibly things like people who fall in lava during boss fights get teleported to a reachable platform so they could get ressed).

Are you Robert Hroda using an alt account?

Also-“-just going to have to live with it?” Are you not a player (unless you really are an ANet developer in disguise)? As a player—the one who invests time and money into this game—are you not entitled to determining how this game develops? I know I am. I’m voicing my concern for the path down which GW2 is treading. This dungeon change isn’t a matter of “Oh, just don’t die, you scrub.” It’s a matter of them literally undermining their own game-play designs in part of a prevailing effort to seemingly turn their backs on several of the forward-thinking philosophies present in Guild Wars 1 and the GW2 MMO Manifesto.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Should we stop posting suggestions? Certainly not, but I think flinging blame around because you’re angry about a change is irresponsible and immature. If you want change to happen, if you want to forward an agenda on these forums, you probably shouldn’t be flinging insults around.

I’m not flinging insults; I’m raising points. Whether you want to try to skirt around those with ad hominem arguments is your choice, but it won’t prove me wrong.

DigitalKirin.9714:

y not use yuor hed soemtimes?

Now who’s insulting whom?

Then I’ll go ahead and continue to make my point that, regardless of when the term “rez-rushing” was first coined, it remains this strawman term that has no purpose except to somehow stigmatize the idea of respawning in a game and continuing to contribute to that game as expected.

Anet is guilty of trying to use this worthless term to justify a bad dungeon mechanic.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Thank you Libertys Knight, I appreciate that.

I’d like to say this, given that the post Robert Hrouda made that Liberys linked is from Jan 28th, 2013. I don’t believe Robert Hrouda coined the term. In fact, I believe the player community coined the term, and choosing to say that Robert or Anet made the term so they could forward an agenda is Libelous.

I have 2 points.

1. Rez Rushing is synonymous with Waypoint Zerging.
There are many names that have been given to the act defined. Libertys’ post gives the definition, and I believe that “Res Zerging”, “Res Rushing”, “Waypoint Zerging”, “Corpse Running” etc. all mean the same thing.

2. People have been using this term since before Jan 28th.
Kuthos.9623 makes mention of both “Waypoint Zerging” and “Rez Zerging” in the same post mentioned here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Corpse-Running-Waypoints-and-Boss-Fights/first#post383027

As you can see, this post is 3 months old. I’m sure given a bit more digging, I could potentially find older posts relating to the same topic.

My point in making this post is that people are quick to judge and scapegoat. Before throwing accusations around, please consider carefully the veracity of your claims.

I personally think character-wise that Robert is a very communicative and helpful person who works for the good of the player base with the power he has been allotted by his position. Why crucify him for something he didn’t do?

u wot m8?

wookalar.8952:

Stigma.7869:

That is true rez rushing does make it seem like it’s the players doing something bad…

Not gearing properly, not bringing and using the right weapons/utilities, not learning the boss tells and not dodging properly are things players are doing badly.

I’m not debating how good the mechanics are, but all bosses are doable w/o ‘res-rushing’

I think you mean “respawning.”

Also your point is taken, and has been made already elsewhere several times. It holds true when you know what you’re doing in dungeons, but I can’t imagine how new players would feel playing this game and this stuff happening to them. It also makes dungeon running far more tedious and difficult than need be for parties that aren’t all level 80 warriors and guardians as per the dungeon meta-game at the moment.

You make the case that “not dying solves the problem.” It does to an extent. But never dying doesn’t remove the awful feature that is “no respawns if party is in combat.” That whole situation is like having a split in the foundation of your house and saying “Well, my house hasn’t collapsed yet so it isn’t a bad feature.” You are defending that bad foundation.

GW2 doesn’t need a hard rez feature. It worked fine without it. The only reason this thread exists is because of the “can’t respawn if team is in combat” feature that was added a few days ago.

Furthermore, GW1 had Scrolls of Resurrection. A resurrection CONSUMABLE. You could click it and rez all party members WITHIN EARSHOT. And they weren’t even difficult to acquire.

What GW2 needs is to remove the “no respawn in combat” dungeon feature, then reduce all “Resurrection utilities” to 1/4-3/4 second cast in PvE. They would only affect downed state (which takes 2 seconds to recover from if you have a player or two healing the downed person anyway) and would need that boosted resurrection time to justify someone taking them in place of another utility.

DancingPenguins.9875:

Who is to say which word is a buzzword which is not?

Which word is more replaceable? “Respawning” or “Rez-rushing?” They mean the same thing, but “Respawning” has existed for far longer than “Rez-rushing,” and “Rez-rushing” only has a negative connotation because Robert Hroda decided to use the term in a negative post in which he wagged his finger angrily at players that played the game (GW2) correctly and optimally. “Rez-rushing” literally has no meaning. It’s a thin, paper-mache cover of negativity that an ANet developer slipped over the otherwise neutral definition of the word “Respawning” and then marketed to the GW2 player base in order to justify his implementation of a terrible game-play feature.

Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you with a simple request:

Stop using the word “rez-rushing.” Forever. Never again (beyond this post).

“Rez-rushing” is a terrible buzz-word that means absolutely nothing. Do you know what normal people call “rez-rushing”? Respawning. “Respawning” is the word one uses when wanting to describe the action of coming back to life after dying in a multi-player format video game and then running back to the front lines. This isn’t a new concept.

The only reason that “Rez-rushing” as a term even exists is so a select few ANet developers can delude themselves into thinking that running to a fully dead ally in the midst of a boss fight or environmental death trap, kneeling by said ally and subjecting one’s self to certain death situations for 15-second intervals qualifies as “teamwork.” Moreover, apparently dying and sitting out of a boss fight because your teammates are smart enough not to kill themselves trying to resurrect a fully dead ally while there are 1 or 2-hit KO attacks flying about the area also qualifies as “teamwork” in the eyes of ArenaNet. In a game where raw, consistent damage is king (given that there is no trinity), developers decided on a whim that crippling a dungeon group’s ability to do damage should someone in that group die was a good idea.

It’s a 5-man team; not a 40-man raid where losing 2 or 3 people might not be that big of a deal, or getting some sort of spawn wave might actually have an impact on battle. You NEED all five people there constantly to be successful. Removing that just makes dungeons more artificially difficult, tedious and annoying.

ANet, it isn’t fun dying to a dungeon mob, and then not being able to respawn because your teammates can’t reach you and the NPC that’s following you decided to engage in a 5-minute melee with stray enemies, thus preventing your ability to respawn at a waypoint. It isn’t fun dying at a boss and then sitting out for the rest of the fight because your team can’t rez you, but can still kill the boss (it just takes an extra minute or two). Most importantly, subjecting yourself to resurrecting a dead ally doesn’t promote “teamwork.” It detracts from dungeon progress and gets other players killed. Furthermore, since it does nothing except expose players to lethal situations (i.e. “That incoming attack will kill you, but you’re just going to sit there and take it because you’re resurrecting someone.”) it technically promotes bad play since GW2 PvE is all about avoiding and mitigating the high damage that mobs do in high-level areas.

Therefore, please, to everyone here: don’t gratify ANet by using their stupid buzzword. Then, to ANet: remove the “feature” that denies one’s ability to respawn at a waypoint in dungeons if anyone in your party is in combat. It’s a horrendous idea and was poorly implemented. It does nothing but promote more grindy, artificially difficult play and is part of a prevailing, disappointing trend in your current game design philosophies that run completely in contrast to the goals that you described 2 years ago in your so-called “MMO Manifesto.”

1. You’re running the easiest dungeon in the game.

2. High HP bosses that telegraph attacks that hit for a gorrillion damage isn’t challenging. It’s boring because all you end up doing is having a maypole dance around him until he dies.

Arvid.3829:

Karl actually addressed this in november (glad you’re keeping up…):

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/PHEW/first#post610999

It’s funny how I sort of like to play an opposite style to this with my Necromancer. I would Dark Path a target, wait for it to hit, and the in the moment that I teleport I would Fear my target, then cancel death shroud and get a free dagger chain on it before casting a well and messing with it further with things like Dark Path and Spectral Grasp.

I guess it makes sense that way to allow for a cancel and then to do more stuff—but then why the cast time? I guess making it balanced with a cast time is fine, but if it didn’t have one, you could pull the “DS2-3/cancel into other skills” combo much more fluidly and not have to worry about accidentally interrupting your own combo.

So DS 2 is probably fine as it is? Just remove the cast time?

Rennoko.5731:

Instant would be completely uncharacteristic with the class in general (though awesome).

Maybe. Maybe. But it’s a gap-closer. There’s no option to not travel to your target. If that’s the case, why is it taking so blasted long for me to travel to my target? Either speed up that interval between casting and arrival at target (so I can start doing other things without worrying about interrupting myself with a delayed teleport), or split it into a chain skill that Chills a target and then gives you the option to move to that target.

Right now it’s so wishy-washy with its effect (and, yes, it is mostly just the speed of the projectile; if they removed that or even just sped it up, the skill would improve dramatically) that it’s really nothing but poor design.

Anyone else think this skill falls below lackluster? ANet could make the teleport instant, change the cast time to 2 1/2 seconds and the effect would end up being the same at ranges outside of 500. Most of the time, way too much happens in 2 1/2 seconds for something like a single gap closer to be really that useful.

This needs a buff: either—

• Make the cast and teleport instant (click the button and whoosh, you’re there at your target).
• Turn the skill into a Death Shroud Ride the Lightning that just moves you really fast until you crash into your target, splashing Chill all over the place on people (It could even the be same animation, just dyed differently to reflect that it’s a Death Shroud skill).

There doesn’t need to be a damage buff or anything, just a reduction in the time it takes between me activating this skill and me actually arriving in front of my intended target. Right now, this skill closes gaps slower than my grandma in combat boots. With Dark Path being the Necromancer’s only true gap-closer skill, this is beyond painful.

Sirendor.1394:

I like the idea, but how in gods name would you do all these possible switches in combat? Looks like it’s rather complex to me. If i’m right you say we should be able to do this:
-> Switch weapons (what we already have)
-> Additionally: Switch skill 4 and skill 5 for 4b and 5b.

I think combat would become a bit to complex if you have to take measure of all that.
This would mean you have 5 + 2 (weapon 1) + 5 + 2 (weapon 2) + 5(heal/toolbar/elite) + burst/f1/f2/f3 skills. That makes it 22 possible skills you can use in battle.
At the moment we have 5(weapon1) + 5(weapon2) + 5(toolbar) + 3(f1/2/3):18.

The elementalist on the other hand has 5+5+5+5 + 5: 25.
When your change goes through it would have 5+2+5+2+5+2+5+2+5: 33

A bit complex :P

The picture says “outside of combat.” You can’t swap your 4-5 skills during combat. That would be ridiculous.

The 4-5 slot skills would function as do Utility Skills now.

I actually made a post about this already:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Disappointments-Trait-Management/first#post1186258

Not to say that this topic doesn’t need more publicity, though. Mine’s also a little long-winded. To be concise, all I’ll say here is that GW1 did it. GW2 promised the good from GW1 in a fully persistent world. Paying to use my traits and then paying again just to change them around a bit is just another slap across my already very red face.

My suggestion was also a dual-speccing system. It feels like it would be the most balanced for the game given its level of world persistence.

I don’t need to go on a rant here. The Weapon Skill system, while easily balanced, rather unique and flavorful in general, has gone stale by this point. All I’m going to say is: “ANet, don’t add any more weapons to the game before you do what I’m describing in my picture below this post.”

To preemptively answer some questions:

• Yes, you could have a “4-a/5-b” set-up if you want. The original skills and the hypothetical new skills would not be tied together so that they would need to be swapped out as two respective sets.
• A Weapon Set’s 4 and 5 skills have always been utility-style skills. The goal with this suggestion would be to provide new ways to contribute to combat for each Two-handed weapon and Off-hand weapon that applies. This could even include introducing new skills to Weapon Sets that would simply be more raw damage than utility. That kind of exchange could really change the play-style of a particular Weapon Set.
• Upon entering combat, the Weapon Skills that you have slotted into your 4-5 slots lock up as do Utility Skills, thereby preventing one from swapping their 4-5 Weapon Skills during combat.
• All current one-handed, main-hand weapons would be unaffected by this change.

Khisanth.2948:

Doesn’t take much effort for an Elementalist to keeping something burning continuously. All encounters with Destroyers would need to be rebalanced as well as any environment that could keep applying burning( I am thinking of the grawl fractal and Evolved Destroyer fight). There are also all the traits that convert X% of one stat to another.

Having blind and weakness give overlapping effects does not look like a good idea. They might be fine on their own but that looks too powerful when both are in effect.

Weakness already reduces Endurance regeneration by 50% so I am not sure where you are going with that.

The Aegis change sounds like it would be very annoying to play a melee character. Especially a guardian.

Weakness is focused on limiting Endurance and giving a chance at limiting damage.. Blind is about reducing Critical hits.

Elementalists can burn things constantly if the thing they’re targeting is braindead. The only way to reliably achieve a >10s burn on another player with an Elementalist would be to get an entire Drake’s Breath off on them (which would quickly degrade into a 3rd degree burn due to the channeling time), get some friends to throw burning bolts/projectiles all over the place while you do some moderate burning (more power to you for the teamwork), or use Signet of Fire and a burning skill (which—Signet of Flame, really?—is honestly a bit crippling to lose one of your utilities for that; and it could also be nerfed quite easily).

You’re maybe right about the PvE aspects of it from monsters that can stack burning quickly. Then again, it might just make things more interesting.

Aegis. Then remove the bubble? These are broad ideas I’m throwing out, not specific demands. I’d be fine with it just being a block followed by 3 seconds of a 1-shot Protective Spirit ala GW1. It’d be better than what it is now anyway.

Tell him to rebind his Weapon Skill keys. It’s as close as you’re going to get. If you were allowed to change your Weapon Skills around, it would make the prospect of creating more unique skills for Main-hand and Off-hand weapons in the future more difficult and tedious since they wouldn’t have fixed places into which they can slot.