Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Lesser Elementals – As if the Elite wasn’t weak enough, who would really want to use this? I say remove and replace with something USEFUL.

They’re actually quite useful if you know how to use them properly.

True. Keep the ideas coming though, yours are actually viable (compared to some I’ve read in the past).

Every auto-attack interrupted is effectively a blind and an immobilize, which adds up in the long run. The dps granted by the air elemental is substantial enough to make a difference. In contrast to your view, I’ve had duels in the Obsidian Sanctum with a thief that evaded me until my Air Elemental went down. So it’s a significant threat to some at least.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Stop trying to compare them to “pet classes” – Ranger is the ONLY pet class as they HAVE to use them. Necromancer DOESN’T have to use ANY of them thus they are NOT a pet class.

Pretty sure ArenaNet called them both pet classes during the release events.

I take Golem on my Powermancer with NO traits at all to make it better – because it doesnt need them. Sure it makes them better depending on the build but you don’t have to take them.

Pretty sure the elementals outclass untraited golems in both survivability and raw damage. In fact, nothing you’ve said so far has convinced me that a traited golem is worth taking, let alone an untraited one. All you keep jammering about is that 1 launch every 40 seconds that’s supposedly so good that you can win every fight with it. You’re just not using your elementals properly. Maybe that’s because you don’t like their mechanics and thus don’t use them enough. I don’t know what the reason is, but for me they help me win fights. If there’d be any skill I’d change on the elementalist, Glyph of Elementals is probably the last on my list.

Ýou have a point there. You could plan ahead a bit more of course, or the pickup should be instant-like. It would make the conjures something different than kits and give the ele a slightly more unique role.

Katran.9186:

sorrychief.2563:

This has been suggested what I estimate a little over one kajillion (is that even a word?) times but if they worked like engy kits I would see no good reason to ever drop the FGS except for might stacking/healing purposes

That’s why I’m against kit-like mechanics.

Agreed. Maybe a fixed duration, no charges but a ‘drop on the ground and weapon appears for any ally to pick up with remaining duration’ could be a potential alternative.

Of course, to balance it should probably limited to 1 weapon per cast instead of 2.

It would be kind of like how banners work now, except the usefulness isn’t in the buff (because there’s none) but rather the alternative skill bar.

Being able to pick it up again after you drop it would make the weapons a lot more viable imho. Of course, Anet would either have to keep track of charges (which may have technical issues) or they would have make the weapons have some sort of duration that is linked to the weapon rather than the person wielding it.

Conjures seem fairly complex to code, maybe the current situation was the best solution.

zencow.3651:

Nope, primary reason was they didn’t want to make players have to memorise 40 weapon skills.

The current limitations on skill balance are a direct result of the near-infinite combinations in Guild Wars 1, which according to the devs own statements, made balancing virtually impossible.

That is why skills are grouped per weapon/healing/utility/elite, and it is also why the ele cannot have 2 weapon sets…they’d have 40 skills to combine at will, which is exponentially more than 1 set of 20 skills.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

ThiBash.5634:

You truly don’t get the whole ‘elementalist is not a pet class’ concept do you?

You truely don’t understand that of course i meant for each of them to not all be summonable at the same time.

Doesn’t matter. You want to make them permanenet, which means you’re effectively turning a non-pet class into a pet class.

I would take Golem over GoE every day of the week. I had a fight in OS last night being a 1Vs1 Tornado would have been useless, didnt fancy using FGS and we both went GoE -

Fire Ele died within SECONDS on both of our summons. I barely noticed the damage their one did. I don’t think they even noticed the damage mine did. In fact NONE of the ele we pretty much used them ALL during our 20-30minute fight and none made ANY sort of impact on the fight, we just ignored each others and let the AoE and splash damage kill them off.

Did you even consider summoning any of the other elementals? Because there’s no way your opponent’s splash damage could have instantly taken out an earth elemental. The glyph gives you the ability to use a different summon on the fly, but if you don’t use the right summon in the right situation then of course they’ll be useless.

his is what i mean, they simply are not a threat. Having to have them balanced around the fact their is 4 even though you can only summon one is rather odd as it makes them weaker than they really should be. Then you get into the fact that they have really long and undeserved cool downs – for what? They aren’t a threat and yet require 180second cool down…

Again…they don’t have a long cooldown. They have the lowest cooldown of all summon skills in all non-pet classes.

Given that I can do just about anything with my staff elementalist, including tPvP, I’d say they’re potentially very powerful. However, it did take me about half a year to actually learn how to play them well.

Xillllix.3485:

ThiBash.5634:

Impact.2780:

Counter Suggestion: Swap Weapons in Combat

It has also been argumented time and time again why in-combat swapping wouldn’t be a good idea.

The opposite is also true.

Every discussion I’ve taken part in reached the same conclusion: it doesn’t work.

ArenaNet split up the skills per weapon because they want to limit the number of potential combinations. Giving the elementalist weapon swapping thus counters their most basic design philosophy. And I have yet to see anyone come up with a solution for that. Well, a implementable solution anyway…weird, over the top and hard to program solutions are readily available.

Why don’t you just admit you want a necro that looks as awesome as the elementalist?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

interesting you dont mention the ONE summon that really counts, Golem.

That’s because it’s a weak useless summon which needs several traits to be even moderately useful and has 1 active ability with a humongeous 40 seconds cooldown.

Spirit of Nature: 60s duration, 180s recharge – Heals allies and has a a skill that removes 5 conditions from 5 people and resses 3 people. Seems a fair cool down considering.

Eles can do that already without using their elite slot. Also, our summon actually fights, and it can move without a hefty trait investment.

Thieves Guild:* 30s duration, 180s recharge – Summons 3 Thieves IIRC

Wiki says 2.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

BlackBeard.2873:

Just saying, I would take Spirit of Nature EVERY DAY vs. Glyph of Elementals, regardless of the cooldown. The Glyph is a mediocre skill on a great skill cooldown, whereas Spirit of Nature is a game-changing skill on a proper game-changing skill CD.

This. I see nothing that the Elemental offers making it worthy of a 180second cool down. The fact you get the choice of 4 elementals means nothing when they are all average.

It requires 20 trait points just to make it move with you. The spirit only works in a dedicated build, otherwise it’s practical duration would be slim to none. Not to mention the fact that they’re burst down far more easily than elementals because they don’t do anything on their own. At least elementals buff themselves, dodge, or attack and hinder the opponent. And they have more hitpoints.

The fact that earth elementals can tank any mob in the game and survive for its full duration is a game changing ability. The added dps from fire elementals is a game changing ability. The spammable ranged stun from air elementals is a game changing ability. Free ice fields every 20 seconds is a game changing ability (no other profession can spam ice fields).

Your weak flesh golem ‘once-in-a-match’ charge…now that is a weak, non-game changing ability. Even if you can time it, if that’s the best it can pull off, it’s weak. The air elemental at least has the advantage of the stun being harder to see it coming, and if it fails…well, 10 seconds later there’ll be another one.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yeah i think having 5 single Elementals would be A LOT better. They could then all be on the same 60second cool down and stay until die sort of thing. It would then make them easier to balance as well.

You truly don’t get the whole ‘elementalist is not a pet class’ concept do you?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Then you get onto the fact of the low duration and the high cool down

You’re purposely ignoring any evidence that doesn’t fit your view. I’ll list all summon skills so you can see the glyph of elementals is actually the best:

Spirit of Nature: 60s duration, 180s recharge
Thieves Guild: 30s duration, 180s recharge
Glyph of Elementals: 60s duration, 120s recharge
Asura Golems: 40s duration, 180s recharge
Charr Warband: 30s duration, 240s recharge
Hounds of Balthazar: 30s duration, 240s recharge
Sylvan Hound: 60s duration, 180s recharge
Mistfire Wolf: 30s duration, 150s recharge

The recharge starts when the elemental goes down, so if it lasts the full duration, the actual recharge will be 180 seconds. However, this means that it’s as high as any other skill at worst and much lower at best. And unlike other skills, it can be traited to lower the recharge even further.

So what you’re saying is simply untrue.

They need to be buffed in my opinion.

What you want is a change, not a buff. The only 2 pet classes in the game are the Ranger and the Necromancer. The elementals aren’t the main focus of the elementalist so naturally they function differently. The flesh golem works on the necro because the class can support it with traits and other minions. The elementalist does not and so the current version actually works a lot better. You don’t have to use them if you don’t like them, but I think many have showne they can actually put them to good use. So the optimal solution is that you go play minion necro, and we get too keep the elementals they way they are now. That way, both sides will be happy.

Impact.2780:

Counter Suggestion: Swap Weapons in Combat

It has also been argumented time and time again why in-combat swapping wouldn’t be a good idea.

Mystic.5934:

2-player can only get champ to 50% health

2 players can get it down actually. I’m hardly a great player, but I managed to beat it together with another player. I wasn’t even wearing zerker.

Not saying it was easy, and we pulled it off when the timer was already at 0:00…but it can be done.

Ravenmoon.5318:

none of those 100+ successful players will show up for the one taking place right now.

I would actually. I like this fight, I’m doing it for fun rather than loot.

Qaelyn.7612:

Yes, “just the right scale”, which is why unless you’re in TTS or you hang out in a big server’s LP main all day, you fail the event 90% of the time.

Agreed, it’s not perfect, but it’s easier on smaller groups than the wurm and tequatl. Ideally, you’d want platforms that can be soloed and then scale with the amount of players, or maybe a 4 out of 5 platform setup. However, the boss can be done with as little as 10 players per lane (beaten a platform once with just 1 other player) which is a lot better than the 80 minimum the other bosses have.

EDIT: The one thing I would change is the dependency on all platforms. I’m not sure if being able to help out other platforms would be the way to go though, as it could make things too easy. But a 4/5 setup would be good enough to give some leeway.

…not on the wurm please. The reasons for that are:

• There are no 1-hit kill mechanics.
• There are no annoyingly long stuns or immobilizes.
• The organization required for the boss can be done without third-party software.
• There is room for error.
• What you do as an individual matters (you’re not just one of many auto-attackers).
• There are various different roles for players to perform.
• Siege equipment matters but is not vital.
• One inexperienced player cannot make the event fail for everyone else (though several can make it hard, but that’s ok).
• It’s not just a single mechanic that you either master or not, making the fight more interesting.
• It scales better so you don’t lose automatically just because you don’t get 80 players together, but only managed 70.
• It’s accessible to casuals and other non-hardcore organized guilds, without being an instant win faceroll boss.
• It’s appearance isn’t random so you can prepare for it without using websites.
• You get loot even for partial completion so you don’t waste your time completely (the same goes for Tequatl, but if you get to the first stage, chances are very high you’ll beat the event anyway so it’s a fairly useless addition there).
• added: Non-structure setup means precision and critical damage aren’t useless.
• added: The split up fights with the wardens means conditions aren’t useless.

As you can tell, I dispise the wurm…and tequatl to some extent…but I don’t like stuff like the Shatterer much either. The marionette however, I’ll go to just for the fight. The loot is pretty much irrelevant to me (but I added it to the list because it’ll matter to others). That’s how much I enjoy the fight.

Gokil.2543:

EDIT: and thanks ThiBash for bringing it to their attention.

You’re welcome.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I wanted to stop by and say thanks for the feedback. We do feel that the celestial stat set will be hit the hardest with the upcoming critical damage changes, so we are looking at possibly boosting the overall stats by a small amount.

Also the celestial stat set in PvP is using a much lower stat multipliers than the PvE versions so we will be looking at changing this as well. Nothing is set in stone, but I wanted to let guys know this is something we are discussing.

Thank you very much for both the reply and the consideration. It’s much appreciated.

The first thing I’d get is Glyph of Lesser Elemental and Quick Glyphs. The earth elemental is a good tank and the trait will reduce the recharge on both the summon and your healing skill. The first elite to get would be Glyph of Elemental. Those summons can really make a difference while levelling up, and can make some tougher challenges fairly trivial.

Gorani.7205:

One main game mechanic question remains for me:
Is the game engine able to remember the status of a “pick up item” / environmental weapon after it is dropped, or is it reset?

Which means, would it be possible to conjure a Frostbow, use 4 charges, drop it, cast a few staff skills and pick up the Frostbow again with the same charges?
A lot of ideas about improving the conjures are tied to this question.

Being able to drop it (or swap out of it) and being able to use the remaining charges again later would be a very useful thing. One of the major downsides of conjured weapon is that the second you drop it, you lose it until you recast it. If that could be omitted somewhat, it’d be great.

It could be made into a trait, or maybe it could be just 1 weapon with double charges that you can either use yourself or let an ally use it. But being able to pick it up again would be very neat.

And for the record, the engine can do such things because you can pickup and drop rocks too.

Andele.1306:

Gw2Browser – this thing, that shaman helped guys on reddit with that quite a while ago, but its possible that, just like every npc in game, the 2 arent of the same armor type (one is heavy other is light or medium). On a side note, yes protection does make a massive difference.

True, but the duration is rather short so you’d expect it to only save the elemental for one or 2 hits. I’ll see if I can do some testing to find out more about this. The key to making proper use of the elementals lies in knowing all there is to know about them and I suppose this is no different.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The golem can be traited for lower cool down, more health, siphon health for the Necromancer among other things. So don’t quite see your point.

The point is that when it comes to summons, the elementals are the second best summon skill out there, yet you qualify them as useless.

true its on a longer cool down, but the fact i have TOTAL control of when it is used on my Necromancer means it is rarely wasted and when it is, it is because i was too slow or timed it wrong.

Having the ability to CHOOSE what to interrupt/stun is MUCH better than having several which could very well just interrupt useless auto attacks that are of little threat.

And yet some of us prefer the spammable version. Which so happen to work very well with the trait that increases damage against stunned targets. What you mention is preference, not performance.

Traited it becomes VERY tough and the fact that the stun and very decent damage is PLAYER controlled, lets not forget that the stun isn’t just one target either. Using it through a stacked group is VERY useful, using it to stop allies getting finished is very useful among other things.

Yet you need half a build just to make it useful. The elementals get all of their usage out of the box. And even with all those traits, the flesh golem is just a one-tick pony that gets nullified by a single stunbreaker, immobilize or stability. And if that happens, you have to wait 40 seconds before you get another shot.

ANY player that targets the Elemental first is simply doing it wrong, i have never had to think “oh kitten this elemental is a serious threat, better focus that instead of the ele”

I guess that’s why in sPvP ice elementals get taken out first. As for your silly little flesh golem, knowing that it can only do something useful every 40 seconds means that once it’s done its trick, you can safely ignore it because it’s otherwise useless. It has no conditions, weak damage, and no range.

Have you NEEDED to use them, just because they aren’t useless, doesnt mean they are useful. They are not NEEDED at all in PvE, because they are no threat and because we have ZERO control of them along with the insane cool down, low duration and other things i have mentioned.

Any skill that is NEEDED anywhere is a poorly designed skill. There should always be multiple options and if your whole build relies on your elite, then it’s a poor build to begin with.

As for the insane cooldown and low duration, I have already shown you that’s simply not true. If you want to have an honest discussion, stop ignoring the facts. The elemental has the best cooldown and duration of all summons besides flesh golem.

I wanted one of these for my engineer, but knowing this I probably won’t. It’s a cool item and I would like to buy it, but somewhere does someone has to say that things like this are not ok. Guess I’ll take one for the team.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

1) Very long cool down
2) Short Duration

It’s the cooldown/durations are shorter than things like Spirit of Nature (180 recharge) and Fellow Thieves (only 30s duration). In addition, glyphs can be traited for shorter cooldown. they can be traited to get lower cooldowns. Only flesh golem has a lower recharge but it gets a lengthy cooldown on its special in return.

3) No control of the “best” attack

True, but you get more than 1 special and they’re fairly spammable. Flesh golem has 40(!) seconds recharge on their stun, Air Elementals only 10 or so. I’ll take Air over flesh golem any day.

4) No threat in WvW/PvP

Then you’re using them wrong. And for the record, how is a flesh golem a threat in WvW?

5) No need in PvE

2 Fire elementals allow me to burst down the CoF p1 gate controller in just a few seconds in non-zerker gear. Earth elementals can tank anything (and work very well on lane 1 in the marionette event). You may not like them, you may not use them, but they are NOT useless.

Yeah, ArenaNet prefers their gamers get ouchies instead of shinies.

It’s funny how everytime ArenaNet release a patch that gets me in a good mood (Marionette is awesome, Taimi is cool, lots of lore, well done!) they end up annoying the stuffing out of me with their next patch. An ‘even better’ limited edition infinite gathering tool? AND Scarlet in the Edge of the Mists?

DOUBLEYOUTEEEFFF?

With Ferocity replacing Critical Damage in the future, has the team considered that the damage nerf will affect celestial gear as well (likely even more than berserker)?

Asumita.2174:

Guys, stop wasting your time arguing about celestial when it is an absolute truth that it was, is, and will be rubbish gear.

What’s wrong about wanting rubbish gear to not end up being even more rubbish?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Fire – solid damage, easily melted.
Water – Meh, the fact you cant use the Heal yourself is rather annoying
Earth – Plenty of health, thats about it
Air – stuns every now and then

Nothing Elite about any of them. Just because we have a selection of less than average summons doesn’t make the skill itself better.

The earth elemental can tank just about anything and stay up the entire fight, not to mention that it attracts aggro very well. The air elemental has a stun on a relatively short cooldown and the fact that it’s ranged makes it a lot more likely to hit. And again I emphasize, the dps from the air elemental isn’t that much lower than the dps of the fire elemental. As for the water version, an AoE heal is pretty strong but it also produces ice fields (afaik we have the only summon that produces combo fields). And it does push back targetting golems, making me wonder if it secretly has an interrupt as well.

Andele.1306:

Actually earth eles have same stats (both vit and toughness) as ice elementals, its just a point in preference of cripple+protection or chill+mini heals.

What do you base that on? Because when I use my elementals to tank, say, a champion, my earth elemental can stay alive where the others don’t seem to be able to. Is it just the short protection/weakness that makes such a difference then?

Jski.6180:

ice would be protection

This is already in the game. Any traits that buff auras will buff blast finishers in ice fields as well (because it causes an aura). Just get the trait the grants protection on auras an you’re set.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

Air elemental is the only thing that work in range but since it has stun, it’s base damage is a lot lower then Fire.

Actually, I’ve tested them on target dummies recently and 2 air elementals are only slightly slower than 2 fire elementals in destroying said target dummy. Earth comes in 3rd. Water were the only ones that couldn’t defeat a target dummy before they were unsummoned. That was mostly due to the ice and water fields not dealing damage.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

To me this “Elite” isnt really a an elite skill.

Yet we get to pick between 4 summons that all do something different, one of them being a tank that can take hits better than most players. The versatility is what makes this glyph elite worthy in my book and I use it to great effect in pretty much every area of the game. But I suppose tastes differ.

The tengu would make the most sense.

That’s true, but my question was more directed at the makeup of the glyphs. Why are they what they are, and why are there little triangles on the outsides of the circles that vary per glyph? Do they have any special meaning? Is there a reason why for example Glyph of Storms has a lot of triangles, and Glyph of Renewal has less?

When I looked more closely at the icons for glyphs on my elementalist, I noticed something peculiar. They all have a circle with an icon in them, but the circles have varying ‘arrows’ sticking out of them. Glyph of Elemental Harmony for example, has one in the to left and one in the bottom right corner, Glyph of Lesser Elementals has them exactly opposite and Glyph of Elementals has them in all corners. Does anyone have any idea if that means anything special?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Well the fact in WvW they are pretty much ignored anyway shows just how little of a threat they are.

That doesn’t neccesarily mean they’re not much of a threat. I’m often surprised by how little people actually know about what the elementals. To be honest, even I sometimes get surprised by them. I only learned that fire elementals could cripple last month or so.

Sure i dont want them to be OVERPOWERED i just think they do need to be adjusted. To start with they could go the:

1) Stats buff
2) manual “best” attack button

and see what happens from there. I dont really like the elementals best attack being something they cast themselves, most of the time when it isnt even needed just to be wasted.

I can relate to that, but which ability would you pick? The elite ice elemental has both a chill field and a healing skill. The elite fire elemental has a fire storm and a projectile attack. Which would you consider to be ‘the main ability’?

As for the stats buff, I think I’d prefer stat scaling. That way you can make them more offensive or defensive based on your build.

I do. They’re very useful but you gotta pick the right elemental for the job at hand. As for your suggestions, the stats suggestion is somewhat ok but the rest is pretty silly. The casting time is low enough (and lowering it wouldn’t change it). They do regenerate health outside combat (or maybe it’s just the Soothing Mist, but it’s still unneeded). Perma pets would require some serious rebalancing and rework (how would you change element types for example?)

Finally, the fact that the cooldown starts when it goes down means you’ll have less total cooldown if it gets destroyed prematurely. This makes it better than other cooldown summons. Your suggestion would make it worse.

We really need Guild Halls. As were promised…back in the day…

As the Asura in Lion’s Arch says: They don’t have boxes, they have water closets.

It’s still the main reason I bought this game (I just love player housing and guild stuff). I also feel like they’ve broken their word by stating it would come in a future release and then declare they won’t be working on it.

Everytime this subject comes up I get annoyed, to the point where I’d love to head over there and start smashing things. It’s just so unfair and I feel misled. Even if the rest of the game is decent, this is still a thing that gets me angry.

Mounts don’t really add anything to my personal gameplay. I like waypoints a lot more.

The Living Story is a huge succes. Scarlet as a character still sucks beans. But at least the rest is now good enough to compensate the still totally unbelievable unrealistic villan.

I do believe everyone here is excited to see her story put to an end; which is exactly what the goal was.

I am, though not because I love the character.

The wurm’s not just more difficult, it’s also very boring. At least at the marionette you can actually do things that matter. With the wurm it’s just 1 special rule and then auto-attack again.

The marionette has so much more roles, subtasks and interesting mechanics than the wurm does. That’s basically an auto-attack spamfest with 1 ‘mechanic’.

I know that the marionette cannot be kept, but it’s leagues better than any world boss currently available.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ThiBash.5634:

That goes for everything we see. From the watchknights to the airships, she was brilliant enough to have made them herself. Why is this one particular item not something she can steal, but should have made herself?

All of her stealing-projects were of state of the art technologies. The airships? Brand new in the world. The holograms? Again, brand new technology (the corporeality of it is that is). The Watchknights? Marvel feat of engineering.

Plus, she stole the Watchknights on a whim. Same can likely go for the holograms.

The injector is such a minor thing, on the other hand. It’s no marvel by any means. The anti-toxin, however…

It’s an injector for giant trees…how is that something mundane?

Let me ask you a counter question: if she just wanted the anti-toxin, why did she steal the injector as well?

Congratulations on beating it. Unfortunately this means it’ll never be improved now, but still…congratulations.

I could support this. It’s annoying having to re-cast AoE spells several time because you couldn’t see the max range through the screen clutter. Or worse, you hit/missed a small bump/rock/object on the map.

Sykper.6583

Many people are trying to defend Healing Surge as a viable option, however mechanically it is more broken than any other heal in the game, and its HPS is reliant on not utilizing the unique feature of the warrior class, Adrenaline and Burst! It’s seriously the only heal that punishes you for using it! To put it into perspective, it would be like if a Guardian Heal suddenly put all your Virtues on Cooldown, or an Elementalist heal only healed for more in a certain Attunement.

For the record…the Elementalist’s Glyph of Elemental Harmony does exactly that.

Please wait until the change is made before you complain again. You’ve been heard, ArenaNet is responding. They’re wise enough not to overnerf it all at once…let them try this. If it remains a problem, it can always be nerfed more.

Also, given that it’s not 10 or 15 percent, but an curious number like 8 suggests that they’ve been number crunching on this and have a good reason for their choice.

It takes a lot of work for a non-functional change, so don’t hold your breath waiting for it.

Also, you gotta take into account that not everyone wants to ‘look like their attunement’ all the time. I for one like this system, it’s subtle.