Guild Wars 2

We don’t know yet, that’s the point. We wanna know what’s gonna happen.

One thing that works in most PvE situations is the elite Earth Elemental summon. It can tank better than most warriors, and it attracts aggro as if it had a target painted on its face. Well, if it had a face, that is.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

ThiBash.5634:

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with Powerful Auras, is that it does nothing in solo playing, while there’s always the risk of any buff making it way too strong in team play.

You could buff your elementals. Also, apart from open world PvE, true solo play is rare…and if your build is teambased, why not find a teammate/WvW ally?

Questing, Solo-Roaming in WVW, roaming in pvp. There are a lot of solo activities.

Questing is open world PvE. But I suppose I should rephrase: if you’re gonna make a group build, stick with groups in WvW/sPvP. If you wanna solo, you’re obviously gonna need to make a build optimized for solo play. I don’t feel it’s unreasonable to have different trait/weapon setups for different purposes. Even if not all (Elemental Attunement) traits do so, some could. Powerful Aura is such a trait.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with Powerful Auras, is that it does nothing in solo playing, while there’s always the risk of any buff making it way too strong in team play.

You could buff your elementals. Also, apart from open world PvE, true solo play is rare…and if your build is teambased, why not find a teammate/WvW ally?

Why is it so bad to let Anet try balancing in smaller steps? They’re gonna apply a small nerf, see how that affects things and then see if it needs further changing. Why must it be a HUGE nerf all at once?

You’ve been heard, ArenaNet is acting upon it…wait with the complaints until the next patch is out, ok?

bigmonto.4215:

Anet, We need an answer.

If you want to nerf celestial? That’s fine, but allow us to reelect a different stat. Actually better yet, just remove celestial all together in the game. With the crit damage nerf, no one in their right mind is going to use this crap.

You have to realize all this is due to Ascended armor being so time + resource intensive. With Exotics, I’ll just buy another set.

This is exactly the point. I have much faith in ArenaNet, but they’re still human and they’re not perfect. We’re just trying to help them adress everything. And all we wanna hear from them is ‘we did consider that and we decided to (or not) to adress it for reason x (reason being optional)’.

There was this command that instantly blew up the watchknights…

…so I’m guessing Shout Warriors are the way to go.

The main issue with Powerful Aura isn’t the trait itself imho. The problem is that in order to get any decent number of auras, you basically need to run D/D.

In another thread someone suggested chaging one of the glyphs to create an attunement based aura on yourself. Something like that would really help this trait along.

To be fair, the updates are getting better. The main gripes I have the Living Story are the lack of actual story and dialogue (which was adressed) and the fact that Scarlet comes across as something a 10-year old roleplayer would create. The second basically ruined the character for me even if she got more depth. I’ll admit that it’s an extension of my general dislike of Sylvari lore op’ness. It felt like…again the Sylvari are the ultimate beings ever?

However, like I said, things are getting better and if Anet can lay off the Sylvari worshipping long enough to make actually realistic characters, I think we’ll have some good stuff ahead of us.

Gulesave.5073:

It’s good to see everyone making such good use of their Jump To Conclusions mats. That is the game everyone here is playing, right?

No, I’m playing the ‘ANET-please-do-not-forget-celestial-in-your-changes-the-same-way-you-forgot-throwing-versions-of-turret-skills-when-you-buffed-turrets’ game.

The reason celestial had so much critical damage was to make it worth using over other gear IF you stacked enough boons and critical stats. If it’s nerfed too much it’ll not even be useful in those circumstances, essentially making it useful.

I think the main issue is that if you make Ferocity do all that, then it’ll just be too powerful. Because it’ll not just increase your damage, but your healing as well (not to mention it’s condition damage and duration in 1).

Ok, so this got merged so at least someone from ArenaNet saw it. That’s a good thing right?

How does the sword ranger work? Because when I use it, I get stuck in the auto-attack chain which doesn’t let me move or dodge (well, with massive button spamming and often a second later than I intended to). How do you prevent getting stuck?

They could also fix it so that some pieces get slightly higher stats so the overall total remains the same as it is now (meaning they apply just the normal critical damage nerf and not the additional one that occurs compared to non-celestial gear). Boosting all stats by +1 would be overcompensation for the nerf, so if they want to avoid that, they could omit buffing some items (say the accesories get +1 but the rings don’t).

It’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but it does matter.

In fact, it’s mostly a sign of why implementing super-expensive Ascended gear wasn’t a good idea. It can make a huge investment worthless in a single patch. But that is another discussion altogether…

Holden.9273:

Guys lets just calm down:

- One of devs on live stream said that amount of ferocity in celestial armor will equal to other stats, right?
- They also said that reduction in damage for maxed out full DPS builds will be 10%, right?

So logically they must increase the stat ratio on celestial in order to have 10% not 17%

Remember when they buffed the Engineer’s turrets but forgot to also buff the throwable versions of the turret skills?

This thread is to make sure THAT doesn’t happen again. I have faith in ArenaNet’s ability to balance stuff out, but I want to make sure they don’t overlook things.

Sarrs.4831:

They are fine, but they’re getting buffed. An extra sigil slot can be used for a plain old +5% damage, with no significant mathematical work. That could most definitely throw balancing out of whack.

You’re assuming they’ll ADD a slot…but they’re likely gonna ADD a slot AND lower the damage by 5% BECAUSE the original design was ’the damage is balanced as if it had a Sigil of Force (i.e. 5% extra damage).

Nothing is gonna change in terms of power, except that you get more alternatives.

sorrow.2364:

Adrenal Health says “hi!”.

Just the weapon skills outheal adrenal health (and they’re free). Soothing Mist is on par with it. And regeneration surpasses it. So the ele gets 3 times that amount.

The trait which keeps the passive is a freaking grandmaster trait. Nobody is going to go deep into earth to take a grandmaster trait to keep the passive of a single signet active after you’ve used it only for a 3k healing every 25s, also considering how bad the other signets are.

With nobody you mean you right? Because what you’re stating is pretty subjective.

Also, you skipped over my main point: let’s see how this change works in practice before we complain.

You may wish to wait with making celestial stuff until it’s clear how the upcoming critical damage changes will play out.

If they don’t enhance at least some of the stats on celestial gear:

Celestial gets nerfed relatively harder than berserker, even though the nerf was aimed at berserker and not celestial.

For an ascended trinket it would mean the player loses 4 stat points relative to what berserker loses. If that continues through the entire set, it’ll be quite a nerf…50+ points in addition to what they lose relative to berserker.

I so hope someone at Anet thought of that and found a good way to compensate…

Just for clarification, the main issue is not that things are getting nerfed. The issue is that celestial is getting nerfed harder than berserker.

You’re also conveniently forgetting that eles often have Soothing Mist and passive regens up as well, which the warrior doesn’t get from themselves. Then there are the healing skills (which appear on any weapon but focus) and if they bring a signet, they can trait for it not to lose the passive if they use the active heal.

Overall, I’d say that we should first look what this change will do, and then complain about it.

They currently act as if they had a Sigil of Force (meaning they have 5% more weapon damage). That means it’ll likely be lowered by 5% and you can now choose to go for a Sigil of Force to get thing the way they were before, or you can pick a different sigil.

The issue is not the damage nerf, but rather that celestial (which wasn’t a problem) is nerfed relatively more than berserker (which they were aiming for).

A dev reply on this would be very helpful.

Orpheal.8263:

How small minded ….

You can always make some story on why the term fits, however keep in mind that critical damage is basically the don’t let go part of go for the throat and don’t let go. How exactly is that courageous? Or agile? It’s more like feral, more barbaric. They got in a good hit at the right spot and they’re tearing violently at it. The refined part (aiming with precision at a vulnerable part) is long past: it’s the part where a character aimes to deal massive damage at the exposed flank.

Asko

It was kinda silly that celestial crit dmg. was so high. I hope they fix it, not that crappy gear needed a nerf but it makes me feel better as a zerk player.

Believe it or not, the critical part was actually what made celestial worth bringing over soldier’s if you supported it with a good amount of might and fury. Which is why I’d rather not see it nerfed. However, adding +1 to all the other stats probably isn’t a solution either, because that would buff it.

Orpheal

And if they have to rename it, why can’t they give it not a good Stat Name that fits to the other Stats in its theme, something like:
•Courage
•Agility
•Dexterity
•Perspicacity
•Valor

Because none of those are fitting as a synonym for ‘brutally dealing
more damage’?

The potential nerf for celestial gear does concern me though. We’re one of the few professions that can actually make it work well, and if we’re gonna lose 50 stat points to the entire set then it’ll be quite harsh.

If it would end up as a nerf to celestial then it certainly wouldn’t help support…

Is there any word on how celestial will be affected by the ferocity change? Obviously many pieces now give way more critical damage than they would if the stats are converted. Will they be rebalanced or will the Ferocity just be toned down to the current stat level (effectively nerfing celestial gear?)

EDIT:

Comapre these:

+91 Power
+60 Precision
+7% Critical Damage

and

+38 Power
+38 Precision
+38 Toughness
+38 Vitality
+38 Condition Damage
+5% Critical Damage
+38 Healing Power

which means beserker gets 7% replaced by 60 ferocity, whereas celestial gets only 38 for 5%? That means it just lost 4 stats points.

This would be quite a bit for a full set…and a set that doesn’t need to be nerfed (most would say it needed a buff before this).

Gokil.2543:

It can be extremely potent in sPvP to instapop a downed person (and the one ressing him) with fiery rush+lightning flash.

How does that work actually? I’ve often seen people talk about combining FGS with Lightning Flash, but how does that work in practice?

Also note that you won’t actually see the green numbers from healing unless you’re actually healed. So get into combat, take a few hits, and try again.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

My answers are bold.

The heal glyph and elite glyph (just because there is nothing better) are viable in pvp, the utility ones are not.

You’re half right, and I’m half right. Earlier today I took another look at Glyph of Storms (which I normally don’t use) and to be honest, ít’s much too weak. An aoe utility with such a recharge should at least match the damage of a single Lava Font. So agreed, that one needs fixing.

Glyph of Renewal has 3 issues that prevent it from being usable. The first is the casting time, which is much too high to make it practical. The second is the fact that because it only works on downed players and not defeated, the opertunities for its use are slim. The third is that you can risk getting cooldown even if you didn’t ress anyone (which is harsh at 120 recharge). The three combined are enough to not dedicate a skill slot to it. However, the few times I’ve gotten proper use out of it, it’s downright brilliant. Because you can res people at range and while moving, it’s actually very good at getting people up during stuff like Giaganticus Lupicus or the Mai Trin fight. If they fix the aforementioned issues (and tone down the recharge a bit) I could see it being viable to some glyphic support builds.

The lesser elemental and glyph of elemental power have their uses, either as dps boost or to help spam certain conditions. They’re both useful for my personal playstyle (and the summon certainly has use in PvE) which makes me think it’s mostly personal preference. To a staff ele, hitting stuff is a real concern and the snares from GoEP and the summons help alleviate that a lot.

GoEP has too much tension which isn’t good design.

Guess we differ in opinion here. To me, it’s a good way to fill up on certain conditions in addition to those caused by the elementals and weapon skills. It’s not the greatest skill to put a stunbreaker on, but I agree with Anet that stunbreakers shouldn’t be limited to cantrips. With the traits’ emphasis on using many of the same skill type, this was the most logical choice. If that aura glyph that was suggested is ever designed, it’d make for a better choice.

Boring is very relevant when it comes to game design

Agreed but it is also subjective and hence cannot always be the main concern.

Zomaarwat.3912:

Signet of Air is awesome though. AoE blind and a stunbreak on a relatively low cooldown.

Agreed. The only issue I have with the skill is it’s passive. A movement speed boost on a profession that has a hard time NOT getting perma swiftness as a side product of pretty much every build feels a bit wasteful to me. If it were a 10% speed boost that stacked with swiftness however, that’s be a whole different story.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

No I am not refering to versatilty in builds. Sure glyphs are versatile but they aren’t viable so your point is pretty moot at least for pvp where eles need a lot of help.

They are viable in PvP. I’ve been using them for months in both WvW and sPvP now.

You simply cannot change your tactic in fights by much as an ele because of attunement cooldowns and needing to use all 4 to do damage as I wrote before.

You can by changing the order in which you use them. Fire→Water-Earth does something completely different than Fire→Earth-Water. At least, it does for combos and evasive arcana purposes.

Glyphs would be versatile if they were balanced for once. GoEP is a trainwreck just like the rez glyph, lesser elementals are really lacking abilities and glyph of storms is only good in earth for the blind. Casting glyph of storms in any other attunement is a waste of a utility slot.

They have some issues, but GoEP isn’t a trainwreck. It’s just misunderstood. For some reasons people seem to think it’s a stunbreaker with a preparation effect. It’s not. It’s a preparation effect that you can also happen to use as a stunbreaker if you want to. It’s all about having options, and this glyph happens to have 5 instead of 4.

So again the theoretical versatilty of glyphs is put down by all of them being underpowered and/or overnerfed.

Or being misused.

Arcane skills by themselves are the most boring skills ever in an MMO. They only get interesting and versatile with Elemental Surge, which again noone takes in pvp because it is up against Evasive Arcana which is just leaps and bounds better.

Boring is irrelevant when it comes to balancing.

The ‘evil guys become permanent allies’ bit only works if they’ve done things that the hero can forgive. The amount of damage caused by Scarlet is too great for that to be believable. Unless she was controlled by outside forces, I’d not see that happen in any believable way.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

ThiBash.5634:

Tactu.4867:

i’d say …there are 2 possible answers :

1. we are all insane , and do not know how to play our elementalists — > which implies that the devs’s opinions are : these are a bunch of wieners, so no point in bothering answering to them.

This bit has more truth in it than you’d probably care to admit. A large part of it stems from the fact that players insist on playing the elementalist like another profession instead of playing to its greatest strength: versatility. How many of you truly change their fighting style based on their opponent, or even regardless of them? How many of the dps eles actively use their support? How many combos are setup properly?

The crux of the problem is: We are NOT versatile. Engineers are.

We have to constantly cycle through elements to do damage and have skills to use so if someone needs a heal RIGHT NOW, well tough luck my water attunement is on cooldown. You get hammered by burst and really could use protection and stability? Well, tough luck, earth attunement is on cooldown because it needed it for the gap closer a few seconds earlier.

Engineers on the other hand are truly versatile. Not only can they build for whatever they want (they also have A LOT more viable utility choices than we have, and their elite is gamechanging) they have no cooldown on their weapon-swap mechanic meaning if they need a knockback right now they simply switch to flamethrower and use it. And if someone needs conditions cleared right now they simply switch to elixir gun and conditions away.

Your posts shows exactly what I mean. Versatility for the elementalist is not being able to build the way you want. Versatility for the elementalist is changing your tactics during the battle. Glyphs and arcane skills are perfect examples of that: you can literally change your entire build by simply swapping attunements. What you are referring to is versatility in the making of builds, which is a different thing entirely.

Tom.8029:

I liked the Elementals in PvE. But I really only used them for leveling as a source of mitigating damage by keeping the AI occupied.

They can be so much more than that.

You make replies like that and yet you wonder why your posts get deleted?

Tactu.4867:

i’d say …there are 2 possible answers :

1. we are all insane , and do not know how to play our elementalists — > which implies that the devs’s opinions are : these are a bunch of wieners, so no point in bothering answering to them.

This bit has more truth in it than you’d probably care to admit. A large part of it stems from the fact that players insist on playing the elementalist like another profession instead of playing to its greatest strength: versatility. How many of you truly change their fighting style based on their opponent, or even regardless of them? How many of the dps eles actively use their support? How many combos are setup properly?

perilisk.1874:

Yes, Scarlet as mad anti-hero. I can see it. Totally not-serious predictions:

…

Just spitballing, tho.

Is it just me or does your theory sound an awful lot like the story from Chronotrigger?

Mash Hog.5672:

What would be the best way to implement these Auras so that they’re more effective as our active defense?

Trait:
Get “X” Aura on Blast Finishing a certain Field.

We already have that in the form of ice fields + blasts.

Gokil.2543:

I disagree. The lesser elementals don’t even come close in usefulness. The skills the elite elementals have are the only reason they are worth summoning. 7k splash heal? Solid duration ranged stun? Water and air elementals especially are very underwhelming as a non-elite summon. Fire elite elemental does reliable dps due to having a good ranged attack, and earth elite elemental grants protection and aoe cripple.

Yet you still get an ice combo field from the lesser water elemental, which can be very valuable for aura blast builds. The lesser air elemental adds decent (not stellar, I’ll grant you that) dps but has an easier time hitting moving targets than the other elementals. And the fire version has good dps, with some minor might boosts. It’s only lacking that ranged attack compared to the elite, but it’s still more than adequate for PvE.

Btw lesser earth elemental doesnt grant protection.

Ok, my mistake. Just weakness then, which I’ll admit isn’t stellar (though when combined with GoEP could ensure perma weakness).

The main theme with glyphs, apart from the attunement changing, is that you can spam a lot of conditions and boons. You can pick which set of boons/conditions you’ll be spamming, but the downside is that you have less control over when they’re actually applied (as opposed to Arcane skills).

Mash Hog.5672:

Glyphs seem like a random set of skills thrown together at the last minute. They have no defined purpose and are incredibly ineffective. Since they have no defined purpose, they also lack traits which effectively improve them.

The thing about glyphs is that they change according to your attunement. This is not a thoughtless thing, but instead a very clever one. It allows the player to pick their strategy at the moment of activating the glyph. They could go for raw damage (fire elementals, burning on hits, fire storm), defense (earth/water elementals, weakness, sandstorm) or snares (water elementals, cripple or chill, ice storm) or whatever combination they can come up with. They heal can be either a speed boost, a power boost, a defense boost or an extra heal based on what the player wants at that time. The ‘boon on glyph’ trait further emphasizes this effect and basically turns GoEP in a ‘get the boon and conditions from a single element’ .

Basically, glyphs are what you want, when you want it. That’s their ‘thing’. You could go full out damage against a warrior and a minute later full snares against the next. Without changing anything about your build whatsoever.

Gokil.2543:

Same with the resurrection glyph and the elite glyph. The problem is really that the non-elite elemental summon is borderline useless. It doesn’t provide significantly different elementals because they lack the defining characteristics that come with the elite elemental.

That’s actually just the tooltip. Granted, the elite versions are slightly stronger than the regular ones. But for the most part, the small ones get the exact same abilities. Lesser fire elementals still grant might and cause cripple. Lesser ice elementals still cause chill. Lesser air elementals still buff swiftness. And lesser earth elementals still cause weakness and protection. The big difference is usually just one of the 2 or 3 abilities they get.

Mash Hog.5672:

I think that all of the Glyphs need to be redesigned.
They also need more traits.

They need some tweaks, but overall they have their uses in the right hands. The aura idea you posted is interesting, but I’d rather see GoEP remain the way it is without the stunbreaker, and have the aura and stun moved to glyph of renewal instead. Cripple/chill/weakness on meteor shower (and any other spell) is just too valuable to give up.

Anierna.6918:

the only acceptable builds in pve are zerk.

What he means is that it’s the build he prefers. You can actually just bring say, a celestial set or a soldiers set, and perform more than adequate in both PvE and WvW.

In both cases, it’s more about what you intend to do than actual performance. Support builds (not just healing, but boons too) tend to go for different runes and stats than dps builds. And of course, you can go bunker but that might be a little over the top for PvE as you won’t need that much defense.

Mash Hog.5672:

What are some bad skills skills? (Useless/Buggy)

All Sigils are completely ineffective.
All Glyphs are completely ineffective.

This bit is purely subjective and far from the truth. To me personally, glyphs are very useful. They’re very versatile, the elementals give good utility and added damage and the glyph of elemental power allows for snares on all other skills.

If anything, add some arguments to your statements.

BobbyStein.2315:

Actually, we have metrics on every LW release. While SAB was indeed successful in terms of participation, so were the other releases (Scarlet ones included). I understand that forum feedback can color perception on which releases were the most popular/best received/most enjoyed but opinions on this are largely anecdotal. Please keep that in mind.

True, but metrics don’t say everything either. For example, I’ve played through most of the Scarlet story because I’m a completionist, but I played through the SAB because I liked it. Neither metrics nor personal anecdotes truly show wheter players enjoyed certain content or not.

Now to your question: will we see a return of SAB? That’s not for me to say, but if it were to come back, what would people like to see from it? Harder/easier content? New world? More/no Moto story?

New story, and more Moto :-) . I play rpg’s for the stories and the lore first and foremost. Games tend to deviate from story to graphics more and more these days. Well, there are SNES rpgs that suck in graphics yet have wonderful stories, making me want to replay them even today. :-)

Personally, I’ve never had a problem with their casting times. You can summon them while moving anyway and 2.5 seconds really isn’t that much. Especially when, like you said, you can cast them beforehand. Also note that most summons have a similar or lengthier casting time.

They have great recharges, excellent durations and much versatility…I can live with a cast time like that.

Except you’re not really helping him, you’re telling him what to do. The OP wants to optimize the build in his link. What you’re telling him is to go play scepter/lightning hammer instead. That’s not improving a build, that’s pointing him to a different build and that wasn’t the question.

Anierna.6918:

There are far more knowledgeable people on this forum than. I’m just one of those people, and I’m not nearly as sarcastic/unhelpful as most of them. I do spend the time to read posts and give helpful replies. It’s not my fault that you misinterpreted what I wrote due to your ignorance of the class.

That’s just rude.

katniss.6735:

So I play zerker s/d in spvp. I can’t get guardians below 80%.
They simply spam staff 1. That’s it.
I have to bail or die.
Not full glass spec because I don’t want to die every 5s.
0/30/0/30/10.

How do you beat a guardian? (in spvp)

Don’t play berserker, that works for me at least. Guardians are made for the long fight and have enough aegis to survive a burst. The best way I can think of with a zerker burst build is to not go all out from the start, but spread your high damage skills so they don’t know when to pop their defenses.

Kyon.9735:

Cool. “Elite” Forum eles teaming up, are you guys?

Why not? We’re always getting ganged up on by the people that scream for buffs and thrash the profession, so why shouldn’t we work together too? Whether you like it or not, there’s a small group of players that can handle the elementalist the way it is now. So maybe if the thrash talkers and the elite town things down a bit, we can actually find the buffs that are actually needed. Instead of just yelling ele sucks/rules and calling it a day…

Gokil.2543:

Second: the area frost armor combo gives 3 seconds of frost aura as opposed to 7 from D/D. Ofcourse it doesnt stack in duration so ice field blasts are really only good to get the related boons on people from zephyr’s boon and/or elemental shielding.

Good point. I suppose you could use another blast finisher to get up to 6 seconds duration. But I never realized it lasts much shorter. Thanks for the heads up.