Guild Wars 2

Even fans of Scarlet don’t like her. Just look at the bottom of this post…of the 2 favorite (actual) characters, Scarlet scores 3rd place.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Favorite-LS-Characters-Why/first#post3298488

Remember that contest with only 2 participants, and the person still came in 3rd? Well guess what: Scarlet did it!

1 aegis per 30 seconds.

Try playing the guild puzzle when you worked for months to complete it…only to be locked outside at the waypoint while the rest of your guild moves on to enjoy the puzzle…

Deified.7520:

Bad characters- 1 being favorite

1. Subdirector null. He does bad, but is inside the law. I got angry at him because of this. I felt more inclined to find ways to undermine him. A little more depth to the character and the consortium in general and they can be very interesting lawful evil.

2. Aetherblades- This was the only alliance that would make sense. Inquest and pirates. Pirates most likely do anything if the pay is right. Inquest willing to hire them to help take out their plans. Even if their weapons/technology felt very out of place, it is the only alliance that made the most sense to me.

3. Scarlet- I always question her. Everyone says she is more than just crazy. I have to believe them. I wish they would reveal more about her since were almost a year into the LS and she has been blamed for everything. So far she just seems crazy, but I’m holding her in the top three because she is always the center for questions and debate.

Ok forum, your team! I’d love to hear what you guys think of the current LS crew.

This is hilarious…even for a fanboy, Scarlet scores 3 place even if there are only 2 actual contestants. The Aether Blades shouldn’t have been allowed in the list because they’re not actual characters, AND THEY STILL BEAT SCARLET! HAHAHAHAHA…

Any number of Scott Adams cartoons comes to mind.

They’re probably invested into lots of kids stuff too, and they think it’s the bomb. Next time you talk to your investors should should probably tell them the actual gamer is between 12 and 25 these days, and even 12 year olds are much more mature than they were when they were 12.

If you run sideways, you can still attack it with only a minimal loss in movement speed. Also, use your ground AoE skills wisely so they’ll land where he’s gonna be, not where he was.

Practice makes perfect.

Wintel.4873:

Mobs can’t hit Ele’s for 16k, because we’re balanced around having infinite stamina and dodging forever.

Oh…wait…

Then bring 17k health.

This is something that’s been bugging me for some time, and while I’m expecting a dev post telling me that ‘we can’t always follow all feedback or respond to everything’-response, this is something I personally find the devs should keep this in mind:

If you want colllaborative development to be effective and taken seriously, you need to give an explanation when you go against the majority of player feedback.

This is important to keep the level of trolling and frustration down.

The particular issue I’m referring to is that of the Dredge fractal. Tons of players on this forum have indicated that they found the fractal too long and that it had too many trash mobs. Now, I understand that it may not be changed for several reasons. However, what I don’t get, is why mobs were added to the fractal. If you have so many players stating that they’d rather have less mobs there, and you respond by adding more mobs to the start of the fractal…you’d really do yourself a favor if you also explained WHY you added them.

Staff:
25 Air: I/III
15 Water: V
30 Arcana: V/VIII/VI

Skills: GoEH, AoE, GoEP, GoLE, GoE

Gear: PVT gear, mix of zerk and cleric trinkets.

Sigils/Runes: Battle, 2x Traveler, 4x Altruism

Use the same build for WvW too. It has great damage while still supporting the neccesary defense to keep things running smoothly (and by that I mean both myself and my team: I don’t always play zerker optimal runs).

CallousEye.5018:

Are you thinking only PVE?

No, not really as I play a staff ele in sPvP too, and it works pretty much the same. If you want good dps, you’ll have to use your other tools too. You can’t (and aren’t supposed to) rely on just your auto attacks.

Anyhow, I’ve been playing a warrior sword + shield / longbow warrior in pvp lately and I very much feel the power inequality between the elementalist and the warrior.

Yeah, eles are much stronger when played right.

Mochann.5298:

I just want them to buff Meteor Shower into shorter cast time. Shorter cooldown would be icing, and buffed damage cherry on top.

Oh and faster cast for fireball.

Give me that and Ele becomes balanced for all the woe we have as glass cannons who die when someone looks at us.

Would be opverpowered, really. Meteor Shower really is fine, it can already deal over 10k damage to multiple targets without a glass cannon build. Faster cast fireball would be ok, although I’d prefer faster flying fireball.

Gorani.7205:

45 seconds for a stun break skill that is conditional anyway (are you in the “right” attunement for the condition effect you desire when you hit the “panic button”?) is too long IMO

I’d like to think of the stun breaker as a fifth option, not something to neccesarily combine with the condition of your choice…but that’s just a POV.

What I’m more concerned of is that if you reduce the cooldown, you may end up paving the way for an ele build that’s effectively immune to cc skills: with Melandru’s Rune, Geomancer’s Freedom and food the ele can already be pretty much immune to immobilize. They could then add this skill together with some more stun breakers and effectively become unsnarable. That’s a pretty big thing for eles, given that stuns and snares are our main counter play.

Mochann.5298:

People actually use Glyph of Renewal? I canned that useless skill ages ago.

It’s actually useful against Giganticus Lupicus when you need to keep moving and one of your team goes down. But I’ll admit, that’s the only place I’ve ever found it truly useful. That fight lasted so long that I actually got to use it twice.

After a recent patch, it’s no longer possible to do the same boss twice per bounty. This has some serious implications. It means that if a guild goes for a boss, and another guild is already fighting said boss, any guildies that arrive there after the boss goes down will not get their personal reward, nor a chance to try again for the reward. This may not be an issue for big guilds, but our smallish guild picks bosses specifically for the personal reward. If any of our scouts clicks too soon, the rest of the guild loses out on all rewards.

Please revert this change.

Sizer.5632:

Glyph of renewal should easily have a 1 second cast considering the cooldown and you have to drop survivability by taking up a utility slot. And not to compare classes that are totally different but look at some of the other rezzes (engy one is 1/4s cast on 120s base cooldown that can be specced down to 90s), ofc eles get different buffs on theirs but even so 3+ second to cast is way too long.

Good point, but consider that it’s a ranged res that you can use while moving. If it can also prevent a stomp from range then it may be a bit too much. The 2 seconds would give the stomper a chance, while still giving the caster a chance to res.

Personally, my main issue with the skill was always that if the res didn’t work, the skill would still go on cooldown. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but if there’s anything I’d change to glyphs, that would be my first choice. Because there’s nothing as annoying as wasting a super long cooldown on an effect you never got.

It’s nice to use it with rocket boots and superspeed as an escape tool. It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to catch you.

GreenOne.6093:

Not shure if you’re using S/D or D/D… You need to have sigil on both weapons if you wan’t to proc effect from them :/ witch seem silly for meh

Saywhat? Since when?

Gorani.7205:

Currently, you are playing not at full potential when using Glyphs over Cantrips (or other utility types like Signets & Arcane skills to a lesser extend).

Glyph are pretty neat in the fact that they give you a lot of options. You can switch between control, damage and defense based on your choice at that time. I prefer them over cantrips personally, although I usually bring Armor of Earth alongside them.

Inscription: The Might boost from attuning to Fire should be 3 stacks

Would be nice, but combined with fire attunement and altruism this could make GoEH give 9 might (maybe a bit too much?).

Glyph of Elemental Power: As it is useless as a Stunbreaker at the moment (compared to e.g. Signet of Air), I would like to see its recharge going down to 30 seconds and the duration reduced to 20 seconds. This will still keep the current uptime ratio (30/20 compared to 45/30), but would allow a calculated use of the Glyph either as a stun break or as a pre-fight damage boost via its conditions.

I’m a bit on the fence about this one. I can understand what you’re saying, but on the other hand, I view glyphs as ‘multiple options based on choice’. In that sense, the stunbreaker actually fits: you can either choose for a condition, OR use it as a stunbreaker. To me, the stunbreaker is just one of the 5 options you can use it for. Guess it’s a point of view.

Glyph of Renewal: It currently takes way too much time to revive a downed foe before a stomp, so reducing the casting time to 1 second is the only option for me to make it more viable. The recharge should go down to 120 seconds and it should heal like GoEH (without the boons). This way the skills gets out of the corner of being a highly situational skill that is dead weight on the skill bar most of the time.

Agreed. A lower casting time would be fine, but 1 sec is probably too short. Maybe 2 seconds? And maybe the fire effect could last a bit longer.

Glyph of Lesser Elementals: Fine, I just wish they would not die under water, so I can swim small distances after I have summoned them. Just make them invulnerable as long as they are in the water and use the “passive” setting from Ranger pets. They can’t attack or can not be attacked.

Glyph of Elementals: same as GoLE

Good suggestion.

Kamui.3150:

Regarding GoLE and GoE, I’d personally like them to have the summons work more like Necromancer minions. Don’t have them on a timer, and let us use their more powerful skill on command. For the GoE Elementals which have two skills, tapping the button can be one skill, while holding it can be another skill. Frankly I think all autonomous summons should be this way, makes them far more user friendly, and we don’t lose our Elemental right in the middle of a tough fight.

Don’t really see the point in that to be honest. I think they’re designed like this on purpose…less controllable, but you can choose more variants. Also, even the lesser variants often have more than 1 ability. And given that the skills already change based on attunement, it may be rather hard to code.

Mikau.6920:

By the way, good suggestions.

Agreed. Most of them are solid, with a few nitpicks here and there.

My boon duration setup is 4xAltruism 2xTraveler, for the extra might on both myself and my team.

One thing I do know is that energy procs even when your endurance is full. Combined with the shared cooldown, that may be the reason you’re not seeing any use out of them.

Mikau.6920:

What I’m in doubt now is if I should use 4 runes of altruism + 2 runes of water (+0.5~1 sec of regen and +3 sec of might) or I use 6 runes of altruism to apply 7.5 sec of fury for me and allies every time I heal. I was considering to use a +20 boon duration food to extend the might, regen and possibly fury duration.

In my build I’ve solved that by taking the ‘fury/swiftness on auras’-trait. Combined with Arcane Fury. It’ll give your ice field blast finishers fury for your team while just using Magnetic Aura will pretty much give you permafury for yourself.

Have you tried them in combat or only out of combat? Because as far as I know, they only work in combat now.

Also, they share cooldowns so if one of them triggers, the other won’t trigger for a few seconds either.

Just trying to pinpoint the problem here…

kornfanxx.3751:

P.S. hearing things about ascended gear, i know of it but does a exotic setup get smushed by a ascended one? just curious.

Player skill is still more important than gear, however Ascended is reaching a point where you’ll notice the difference. Ascended weapons for example, give a roughly 5% damage boost. There are traits that do as much. You can still get by and be competitive with exotics, but ascended will make things a bit easier on you.

CallousEye.5018:

ThiBash.5634:

What I don’t understand is the fascination with auto-attacks that many people seem to have.

It’s an obvious major weakness, one of many the class faces.

We have poor auto-attacks and then our other skills are typically difficult to land in pvp.

As far as I can tell, most attacks we have either do marginal damage or are easily avoided.

You’re missing the point here. What I’m trying to show is that unlike other professions, our main source of damage isn’t our auto attacks: it’s at best a mix of both auto attacks and other skills. Staff eles for example can use Lava Font/other skill in addition to our auto attacks (unlike the warrior, that has to choose between 100b or his auto attack). Naturally, to balance that the auto attack is somewhat weaker. When it comes to sets like dagger/dagger, the auto attack is actually a filler used when everything else is on cooldown. The bulk of the damage comes from skills like fire breath, and because we have extra skills, we can cycle through quite a few of them before we end up at our auto attacks. Typically, I’ll use auto attacks about 20% of the time. With all my other attacks doing much more damage (and when you’re a bit more skilled, you’ll hit a lot more often with them), my dps is quite a bit higher than my auto attacks suggest. Even a single meteor shower would raise it substantially. So just focusing on the auto attacks seems a bit short-sighted imho.

If you consider summons to something to bolster your dps, even warrior banners fit this category.

Banners don’t have auto attacks (and before you say anything, elementals do give party buffs). The ranger has his own auto attack dps lowered because he has a pet. It’s only logical to assume that Anet applies dps restrictions to other classes that can use pets (to a lesser degree maybe). I’m not saying it’s a HUGE factor for us, but it could be part of the reason.

And finally, we deal a lot more AoE damage. Fireball can hit up to 5 targets, and unless I’m mistaken, most weapons can only hit up to 3.

Anierna.6918:

lightning hammer and fiery greatsword are huge parts of pve. an ele without an fgs in dungeons is an abomination.

Strongly disagree here: you can do very well in PvE without ever touching a conjured weapon. In the listed cases, they’re mostly used as crutches for eles/teams that need them.

ATMAvatar.5749:

Conjured weapons are currently the only way to (albeit temporarily) get around the range lock problem we have during combat.

There are other ways. Proper use of evasive arcana for example allows a staff ele to melee.

CallousEye.5018:

One of the major sources of inequity for our class is our auto-attacks (non-LH) are poorer than most classes. Typically they’re slower to activate while doing lower damaged.

What I don’t understand is the fascination with auto-attacks that many people seem to have.

Yes, they’re weaker in general, but on the other hand, most of the time you’ll be using other attacks. For example, fireball may have weak dps but there’s often a lava font active too. Or you can be cycling through your attunments, say a d/d using dragon’s breath then fire graps then switching to water for frost breath healing then to air for a ride the lightning etc.

Also, we have the option to bolster our dps by summoning elementals. So it’d be fair to have slightly weaker auto attacks.

We have enough anti-projectile stuff to counter engineers more easily I guess. Just imagine a static discharge burst right as you activate Magnetic Aura…:)

Zelyhn.8069:

Also earth provides no offensive stats

Condition damage is an offensive stat.

lordkrall.7241:

Or do you suggest they just throw away months of work just because some people seems to hate the current story?

Yes. That’s actually fairly common business procedure: take your losses before things get worse.

If the devs are gonna put Scarlet in every LS expansion, then we’re gonna complain about Scarlet every LS expansion until they get it right.

Seeing as how they ADDED mobs to it, I’d like to think that even if that was the plan, they didn’t accomplish it.

Nick.6972:

Short? How short? People complained about Liadri and the whole fight took only maybe 2 minutes.

That beins said, it’s extremely easy to avoid AoE.

Well, less boring then. Once you get the hang of avoiding the circles, it’s just a long wait during which nothing really happens. At least let us still attack the boss while dodging. Might make it a bit more challenging for those groups that want to speed things along.

Best:
Solid Ocean Fractal
Swampland Fractal
Volcanic Fractal

They’re all well balanced in length and difficulty. You can play them well with pickup-groups and they offer some non-combative challenge.

Worst:
Aquatic Ruins Fractal: too long, too little to do and the dolphin bit is silly.
Underground Facility Fractal: too long and way too many trash mobs that should either be skippable or not there (skipping can be a challenge in itself)
Captain Mai Trin Boss Fractal: again, too long, cannon phase is just boring and waiting instead of challenge. And why was a champion added before the fight? That’s just a time filler (something I’d hoped wouldn’t be present in GW2).

I find it boring mostly. Never liked the fight (you get an achievement if you finish it under 15 minutes? No boss fight should last 15 minutes to begin with!) and it’s still too long. Also, I really don’t get why that champion was added before it.

Content should be short and challenging…dragging it out doesn’t do anyone any favors. The cannon phase was shortened, I know but it’s still a tad too long. With a party just running around waiting until they can finally get back to actually playing the game again.

I like how they added more mobs to the start of the fractal. It’s like, Anet trying to punish all the people that skipped in the past by making a fractal that’s too long even longer.

Seriously, a good start would be to remove the mobs between Rabsovich and the final boss.

AKGeo.6048:

That or I’m just being really hopeful. Sue me.

No worries. Unlike Anet, I don’t like to ‘Sue’ characters relevant to the plot.

Deleted by hacker is my personal preference as of now…I’m way beyond thinking about lorewise solutions…I just want her gone from the game.

Thobek.1730:

Hatred for Scarlet has now gone global.

lol!

Like the update a lot. Just about anything it was an improvement. The lore stuff about Dessa was pretty cool too (even if it’s a sad story).

The only downside about this entire update is Scarlet. All the other stuff was very nice. Well, apart maybe from the rune…that’d be perfect if the aegis lasted 10 sec instead of 5.

Sarrs.4831:

How long will it be before we know anything, let alone beat her into a pulp? Years?

Please not…let it be less please…microseconds would be a good alternative…

johnsonade.9547:

If I want to be everyone else’s idea of “stubborn” and go for that 6th bonus, that’s my business.

And there’s nothing stopping you from doing just that. If you want to be stubborn, you can use the new runes and the 6th piece bonus will still apply to your character too.

AKGeo.6048:

It’s a viable theory, and supports my earlier Guru-hosted assertion that Kiel isn’t as good as she seems. Especially since she immediately went away from her do-gooder pillar of justice character when she won the election, what with her numerous “slips” of the tongue in the fractal story mode dialogues. She maneuvered her way into power by playing the good guy so the players would like her. But I think she’s got a lot going on behind the scenes.

That would be fun…but I fear such a storyline is too complex for Anet…remember back when Jubilee was about to be released, and we all said: “the watchknights getting out of control is too obvious, so at least we know THAT won’t happen”?

Aarean.5398:

Theres obviously a ton of hate for scarlet right now and people are sick of her but perhaps this is what anet wanted? We all hate her REGARDLESS of the reasons why, this gives anet an emotional reaction out of us and they have the perfect platform for giving us some good LS content tied to her downfall. At this point we all want to erase her from existence so perhaps anet has a good agenda for her related to this, or possibly they wanted a completely different reaction out of us regarding her and it flopped horribly…. thoughts?

The reasons why are mostly due to poor story writing and bugged gameplay at this point…dunno about you nut to me, that’d seem like a VERY poor basis for a game.

No, she’s not and the day she stops being part of the story will be the first day in a lomng time when I’ll actually start enjoying the story again. With every expansion, she’s getting more and more annoying, to the point where she actually makes it impossible to play the game (literally, I was just gathering a bit in Iron Marches and every few seconds I got jumped on by a zerg-pumped Scarlet, that spikes for 25k per shot even though I’m al alone there).

Time to remove the weed from the game, and let the true flowers blossom.

A way to ‘fix’ this issue could be:

a) Only let her attack players who are actually part of the farming zerg. And part of the event…and not in a corner somewhere trying to AVOID the event.
b) Scale her so solo players don’t get spiked down in under a second, unless they have 30k health or more (seriously, took kittens of over 5k and one of over 2k before I even knew she’d spawned). My guess is that if 40+ players are farming champions, Scarlet gets scaled accordingly…even if she appears somewhere randomly to someone who’s just levelling.

…learn hacking just so I can remove Scarlet from the game servers myself.

Just now, I got jumped by the stupid plant while purposefully avoiding and steering clear of the invasion events. Out of nowehere the plant popped up while I was stuck under a pier, and spiked me down for 20k instantly.

If Anet’s intention was to make players dispise her, then it worked. But not in a good way I’ll say.

Stupid plant…

Somewhere in between. They can be part of a build, the focus of a build but you can also play well enough without them.

Carighan.6758:

I seriously think the reveal will be that she’s not actually bad, she’s just taking extreme and morally questionable measures to further an ultimately positive solution to a dragon threat.

It’d be a fitting end to a story of a mary sue villan…because apart from being perfect in everything, she also tries to save the world.

Sorry, but even I don’t have THAT little faith in Anet’s writing staff.

It’s funny how people trivialize Scarlet’s accomplishments by saying: “but she didn’t learn all of it”. Fact is, she still learned more than even Asura do in a fraction of the time. Does it matter if you only study 3/4th of Medicine (which takes a decade at least) if you do it in just 1 year? No, of course you’re not a mary sure then…after all, you didn’t learn ALL of it…

I’m so glad many of you have enough imagination to enjoy Scarlet’s rediculous story because I certainly didn’t.

warllockmaster.1379:

You say, you find scarlet annoying?
That she is horribly written?

She is Brilliantly, made and here are the following reasons.
1# She distracts you each time from her real goals, by using the Alliances.

You don’t care how she formed the alliances right? Basically you’re saying that if North Korea and South Korea made peace and attacked the USA tomorrow, it’d make perfect sense?

johnsonade.9547:

It can be argued that it’s useless, but having the option to make use of it is better than not having that option. That’s like saying “oh man, it’s better to go hungry then have this terrible food I’m eating.” while you’re eating it in front of someone that can’t afford it and is obviously hungry.

The thing is, it’s a false comparison. It’d be better than no rune of course, but you have alternative options available long before you get this particular rune. With so many runes available that are better options, in practice ‘unusable’ and ‘unviable’ become the exact same thing. If you could use it you’d switch to a better option anyway, so why argue about semantics when you could be ingame enjoying the engineer’s awesome gameplay instead?

The concept is nice…the agony bit…you can avoid that if you want to, it was mostly added for those that do like vertical progression. However, there’s nothing in the fractals that cannot be accessed without it.

I’m as much against vertical progression as the next guy, but the fractals are actually very well designed…limiting vertical progression to a specific area of the game with no limitations on playable content. There’s no other MMO I know of that combines horizontal and vertical progression so well as fractals do.

I wonder whether all of this has something to do with the Rata Sum fractal…

We’re not forced, I agree with that. But there is pressure, and not all of us can cope with that in the same way. Personally, I too would enjoy a slower pace. It may be true that the amount of players that plays an LS part drops off after 2 weeks. Still, it kinda means you gotta jump right back in again for the next big thing. Part of the problem are the achievements and meta loot: if they weren’t there, the must-play-as-much-as-fast-as-possible-before-it’s-gone feeling wouldn’t be there.

Be that as it may, I’d prefer a slower pace too. There’s already so much stuff to do in the game without the weekly releases. If anything, I’d rather have more lore than more gameplay and achievements. The reveal about Dessa for example, which expanded a small bit on what we already knew (what Lion’s Arch?) was very nice. I’d like to see more of that.