Guild Wars 2

raphaeldisanto.5478:

It’s not a technical decision. It’s a policy decision.

And as I recall Arenanet also has the policy of minimalizing grind. Having race change would help with this a lot.

All the jumping puzzles I’ve done have been relatively easy. EB puzzle takes me about 10 mins if I don’t get hindered by any invaders. Troll’s End has been the most annoying one, only because of camera issues.

I have two elementalists, one of them is a human whose name I would have liked to have on my Asura, and I would also like to change the profession of the first elementalist, because having two of the same profession is silly.

A race change would have been nice right there.

I see no reason not to implement a full race change, not just visuals. If there is indeed a problem, then I’d like to hear what it is. Cultural armor, skills, story and orders don’t look like a problem from the surface. Just a bit of work to actually make it function like a soul change(This is only what I call it, it could be called something entirely different.). It would be a nice option.
It might break immersion for someone to start off as a lvl 80 with the same name, setting off into the world with a fresh start or something, but not for me it wouldn’t. Imagine your character forgot who he was as his soul transferred to another body. Does it fit into the GW2 lore/world? I don’t know, if it doesn’t, make it fit. I still have no idea why we are fighting against other worlds in WvWvW. Shouldn’t be too hard to write some lore, with the awesome writers that have already made such a good amount of it in GW1&2.

I just did something I shouldn’t have done…

I changed the window size to increase FoV to match 3 monitors. Holy… Gosh! Feels like I’m missing out on half of the art in the game. Fps difference was 5~

I play MMOs to play with other people. Doesn’t matter how good you make a game people will get tired of it. GW2 does not hold your hand at the beginning, and it doesn’t do that at the end, either.
I love the fact that GW2 doesn’t force you to the endless gear grind. I hate the carrot on a stick MMO model. It just bores me. Grind grind grind. I rather explore and hang out with friends.
My ‘endgame’ in GW2 is fine.

I have no problems turning my camera to the left or right with my widescreen monitor, but when I move my camera up and down… It just looks wrong. Especially when going to top-down view. It seems like the camera position changes as you move the camera up. In top-down view if you zoom in/out you can see the camera position moving, quite a bit too. This is slightly perplexing. I’m sure Anet knew of this though and will hopefully fix asap, just as they did with the smoothing.

Also, using the excuse that things would look stretched with a higher FoV is 100% cat. Utter complete nonsense. Use a proper FoV and it will only make the art look better. I’m serious. Like, really serious. (Or as serious as Anet is with it making it suffer. —oh wait…)
I’m not sure how gameplay would suffer if you can already zoom out a fair distance.
How about performance? I don’t think 5~ fps here and there counts as “greatly”, not to mention you could always tune it down if you’re experiencing a “great” fps drop.

Okay, here’s an idea:

When you set a higher FoV, your maximum zoom distance reduces accordingly. This should fix any balance and performance issues, since if adjusted properly you should be seeing just as much with any settings.

PS. Really looking forward to getting first-person view so I can finally start taking proper screenshots.

PPS. Adding to the idea: make FoV slider only affect 1st-person view, if not 3rd person.

Thanks Arenanet for removing the smoothing, much easier to move around in tight places now with the camera not falling behind.

I thought Elite skills were supposed to be just that – elite? Whirlpool actually felt elite.

I’m hoping the next patch Elementalist get is going to have something good for once. If not, I’ll be really tempted to just shelf my two (asura and human) elementalists and play with my guardian.

Should have changed the mechanic and not just do a plain damage nerf… Fixed broken into broken?

Hm… Mist Form is a much better alternative.

Skaan.1423:

Most people who complain about our underwater damage haven’t learned how to use Water Attunement yet. I’m not saying the damage is excellent, but i’m saying it’s not something to complain about either.

I agree with Skaan. Water attunement is great underwater. Take on multiple enemies easily. Also Tornado/Whirlpool tears up anything.

Focus Fire #5 skill is definitely in need of attention. I used it maybe twice, then never bothered with it again, no point wasting valuable time on something that barely does anything.

I like kittens. And I can’t help but notice the green arrows pointing up next to the levels. Nice music though. Enjoyed.

Let’s hope they make supporting count for events and kills alike.

My friend revives NPCs and players. She gets bronze or nothing from event. Nice.

Implementing out of combat weapon swap for elementalists does not affect balance at all. It can already be done, manually. All this does is simplify the means of doing so. Weapon sets could also be a suitable feature for this.

The cursor needs to stay visible while turning the camera. This is an easy fix.

Fortify could use a 15 second drop in cooldown. You know, to be balanced with Shield Stance. It takes an utility slot, isn’t that balancing enough? The higher cooldown is unnecessary.

My first character was a Guardian and it was just as easy as you say it is. No leg-up here. Or I’m just that good. \o/

… Nah.

|Better trait synergy| Elementalists rely on attunement swapping yet their traits encourage into sitting in one attunement, Arcana being the only exception.

|Faster Dragon’s tooth, Shatterstone, Ice Spike, Eruption| NPCs and players alike walk out of these with ease. Elementalists don’t have a snare to land every 6, 4 or 2 seconds. The water “bomb” skills are barely viable for scaring little children. Making Dragon’s Tooth ground-targetable might be an OK solution too. Eruption is less of a problem exactly because of it’s ground-targetability.

|Fix Arc Lightning, Ice Storm, Persisting Flames, Ride the Lightning, Magnetic Grasp, Lightning Whip, Obsidian Focus| Arc lightning gets stuck in animation if target dies while it’s still channeling. Ice Storm shoots the arrows to the side, and not to the heavens like it’s supposed to. Persisting Flames trait simply does not give 30% longer fire fields, unless this means something other than the Combo Fields. Ride the Lightning fails to comply with moving targets, kittening the user into a state of helplessness. Lightning Whip misses Alot. Obsidian Focus only works with Meteor Shower and Churning Earth, pretty useless trait overall anyway, since the toughness disappears immediately after channeling ends, not sure if anyone ever uses this.

|Lower cooldown on Cleansing wave, Fire Grab, Gale| 40 second cooldown on a condition removal skill just seems wrong. Nerf the heal or whatever if you must, but make it a more useful condition remover, like “Shake it Off!” which has a 25 second cooldown. Or you could keep Cleansing Wave as is and lower cooldown on Cleansing Fire. Fire Grab, a weapon damage skill on a 45 second cooldown. Sure, it does good damage but by the time you go through all your other attunements, it’ll still be in cooldown. It’s a melee attack and hard to land, so I’m not sure why it has such a huge cooldown. It isn’t Churning Earth, for Grenth’s sake! Healing Rain and Earthquake are the only other weapon skills that have 45 second cooldown, Fire Grab pales in comparison. Which brings me to Gale, with a 50 second cooldown. A single target 2 second stun. Also pales in comparison to the usefulness of the other similarly cooldowned skill Obsidian Flesh. I’m not sure if lowering the cooldown on Gale is a good idea or if some other solution would be better. Earthquake is also a knockdown, but it’s also AoE, damage and a Blast Finisher, only downside being that it’s not ranged, but that’s not really a downside. Gale on the other hand, a heavy damage attunement skill, ranged, deals 0 damage, has longer cooldown, is not a finisher and is single target.
I understand that many skills have big cooldowns because Elementalists have a huge (20) arsenal of weapon skills, but these three skills’ cooldowns are the only ones that boggle my mind. Perhaps something else is missing from these skills.

|Longer cripple from Unsteady Ground| I very rarely find myself using this skill on anything other than mobs that stand still. Odd. Maybe it should be turned into a damaging skill? Or a Combo Field, unless Earth is purely finisher based? Removing the channeling doesn’t sound too bad either, make it tick cripple immediately.

|Lightning Strike and Blinding Flash merged into one skill| These cast instantly while using Arc Lightning, which is amazing, but, the blind is single target, range and the damage are lower than that of Blinding Surge, so why can’t it be a single skill like Lightning Surge? As I recall, air is supposed to be a heavy damage attunement. That single-target blind with 0 damage sure is doing its job representing just that, isn’t it? Throw that blind into Lightning Strike and make a new, possibly damaging, skill for scepter’s air attunement.

|Tougher Elementals| I’m using the elite Glyph of Elementals, mainly Fire and Earth. Fire one seems to die before it even gets to land its big bang, at least during bosses. Earth is tougher but I feel it’s lacking as well, being Earth, it would be fitting for it to cause bleed or cripple. All elementals should last until killed. I’ve not used Water or Air elementals much.
I love Fiery Greatsword by the way. It’s great for dungeon bosses. Looks epic too.

|Weapon swapping out-of-combat| We Elementalists can already do it manually from the inventory, but I only do that when I’m changing my build entirely. I’d love to be able to switch from melee to range from time to time with ease. Weapon sets, anyone?

|More base HP| I should be able to dish out instant kill damage instantly with the HP I currently have. Okay just kidding there. But everything else seems to be able to do that to me, while having more HP. I’m probably just missing the cannon from my glass.

That’s all my thoughts on the matter as of right now.
Thanks for reading.

STRanger.5120:

Tarkaroshe.8370:

Let’s not forget Anet’s OWN WORDS when describing the Elementalist:

“Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”

Yes, this statement haunts me all the time since release Still waiting for fulfillment though. Love my Ele

That statement hints at me to start using a crit build!

All I would ask for at this time is to have more base HP, off-combat weapon swap and bugs fixed… Please?

I’ve been thinking about making a warrior for a while. They seem a bit boring though.

I started using Earth/Water/Arcana traits with my elementalist at lvl 80 because it’s the only build that is actually useful for dungeons. Also, the fire Grandmaster trait Persisting Flames is still not working?

Cooking is very simple, and cheap. Go ahead and try it. If you have even a little bit of karma or gold you can do it. I see many people with cooking 400 while their other disciples at around 200~.

Or use the exploit that turns you into a thief and spam 2. :P

I have Power/Cond dmg Magic find gear and similar trait allocation. Getting one-shot is my job.

Out of combat swap is needed.

Now try Elementalist sPvp…

About Eruption; I never ‘face-tank’ with it and it deals plenty of damage. It’s actually my build’s most damaging skill.
I used Arcane Wave since betas and I got it as soon as I could on release. I learned about Eruption’s blast finisher much later.
Lightning Flash works well with the water trait Soothing Disruptions, which gives you regeneration and vigor every time you use a cantrip. The +100% endurance regen is awesome.

Pfft, this reminds me of Fable, where there were certain items that were being sold by the vendor for less than what you would get for selling them back to the vendor. I know I never had to think about money ever again.

That is the scenario that would happen if there were items being sold for less than what you would get for vendoring them. The overall economy not taken into account at all, this is already broken and an exploit because individuals would be raking in thousands of gold.

I haven’t had any issues underwater with Water as my main attunement.

I have faith in Arenanet, I believe they will make elementalist strong once more. But right now, there’s lots of bugs in the skills and traits.

Unsteady Ground definitely needs improving, the cripple lasts way too short amount of time to be useful. Frozen Ground is 10 times more useful: being a combo field, bigger area causing chill to last longer, -66% skill recharge and more effective slow. Having 4 attunements doesn’t justify having no weapon swapping, or that attunement swapping has longer cooldown than other classes weapon swapping, when there are skills that are just useless…

And why is scepter’s air auto-attack weaker than water’s, even on stage 3? Because they have Staff’s lightning Surge separated into two different skills, AND making Blinding Flash single-target only (Staff causes AoE blind) and Lightning Strike deal 100 less damage? What… Again, waste of a weapon skill slot. No, Dust Devil doesn’t make up for the waste of a weapon skill slot.
Scepter’s Air skill 1 is ridiculous (also, bugged) when compared to Earth, which works as a combo finisher, bleeds and deals more base damage.
And as has been mentioned many times, Dragon’s Tooth is way too easy to dodge… Er, I mean, too easy to walk away from.

I agree with a lot of the OP’s points but one thing I disagree on is Eruption; its a great skill. Deals plenty of damage and can be used as a timed blast finisher. Flame burst on the other hand is yet again one of those useless skills that do not justify having no weapon swap or long attunement swap cd. It’s only good for the burn if you have traited to deal 5% more damage to burning foes, but even then… Deals 1/3 of the damage of Eruption and has half the radius, while doesn’t work as a combo finisher.

Something that hasn’t been brought up in this thread yet is the use of Lightning Flash with Churning Earth. So I’ll explain; you can start casting Churning Earth, then use Lightning Flash to teleport, without interrupting the cast. This might negate the long casting time on it, since you can start casting it from afar.

I guess ‘exploits’ take top priority and functionality and balance is somewhere after that.

If you’re having trouble hitting mobs, then you’re doing it wrong… But I do agree elementalists feel weak compared to how squishy they are. Magnetic Aura can only do so much…

This is a pretty serious issue. Happens a lot (or enough to be annoying) and destroys the enjoyment for a few seconds. Seems like the sound can be pretty much any sound. At Jelako Cliffrise in Bloodtide Coast when doing the Pochtecatl frog protect event I hear a huge splash of water when just entering into the griffon home slope. Quite irking. Oh and the Matriarch Eagle Griffon there is way too squishy when fought by a large quantity of players. Dies within 5 seconds.

After getting scammed via mail and reporting the other player as a scammer do the scammed items get retrieved to their previous owners?