Guild Wars 2

I wonder…is there any warrior spec that specifically doesn’t use Healing Signet?

The reason why this is a problem can be seen from the following:

Before the change, an ele had the option to use an on-kill stack sigil on a different staff, and then swap to different staff once the stack was filled. They would keep the stack until they got defeated, which essentially gave them the effect of 2 sigils.

In the new situation, the ele can equip a on-kill stack sigil next to their regular combat sigil. The net result is the same: 2 sigils.

Meanwhile, the greatsword warrior (who also had a single sigil) now can use the on-kill stack sigil on his alternate set and get 2 combat sigils on his main weapon. This means he effectively gained an extra sigil.

And that is why this change will nerf eles instead of buffing them.

Stealth has some counters, but due to the way it is currently implemented, those counters don’t work.

The main issue with stealth is that it’s a layer of defense on top of the other defensive mechanics a profession may have. Being invisible is strong, but if the person using it can also teleport to a different location, or trade places with a clone, or have acces to multiple blocks/immunities during the short time they’re revealed, then it essentially becomes a mechanic without downsides.

One thing that would be very cool is if certain ranger pets could ‘sniff out’ stealthed characters and attack them automatically. It’s too muc of a hard counter to implement though.

Chain Lightning

Problem
Back before Fireball was affected by Blasting Staff, this skill’s niche was to hit multiple targets reliably. With the change, Chain Lightning effectively became a poor man’s Fireball.

Solution
Increase the damage a bit, to make it a good alternative to Fireball.
-or-
reduce the cast time so it becomes our “fastest” autoatack (suggestion by Mizhas.8536)

Pros
-Chain Lightning will be a good alternative for Fireball (same skill, different flavor) and not a ‘stopgap’ measure.

Cons
-May deal a bit too much damage against a target if there’s only 1 other target due to the ‘double bounce’. However, given the low fighting chance staff eles have in such duels, combined with the relatively low usage of staff auto attacks in general, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Lava Font

Suggestion to move damage to the front of the pulse rather than to the end removed due to convincing feedback.

Water Blast

Problem
No matter how strong the heal, the fact that the ele essentially deals no damage makes it impractical for use. Healing has little to no use in PvE, and the radius is too small for it to heal anyone in PvP.

Solution
Lower the heal, increase the damage up to the level of stoning.
-or-
Make the heal center around the ele rather than the target.

Pros
-The skill will have more varied use, making it an actual alternative to fireball or other attacks.

Cons
-Some folk may actually like the healing, despite the fact that it essentially cuts your party’s dps by 20%.

Blinding Surge

Problem
It takes a long while to cast, which takes away the effect of being able to stop an attack through blindness.

Solution
Lower the casting time, reduce the radius, recharge and/or the damage.

Pros
-The skill will be more useful as an active defense.
-It’ll make staff eles able to defend themselves a little better in 1v1 without making them more powerful in large scale events.

Cons
-Some people may prefer the extra damage or lower casttime.
-It may become too similar to scepter #3.

Gust

Problem
Gust takes so long to activate and has such a narrow cone that in order to actually hit something with it, you’ll have to pay them gold to stand still. This makes the skill utterly useless.

Solution
Make gust activate instantly on cast.

Pros
-The skill will finally be useful. Seriously, it does nothing at the moment because you’ll never hit with it.
-It won’t make staff eles more powerful in large encounters.

Cons
-Why wouldn’t you want to make a skill usable? Seriously, it’s just to make the skill actually DO something.

Eruption

Problem
The activation time on eruption is so long that it’s often only used as a blast finisher. It’s hard even in PvE to hit stuff with it. Given that it’s staff’s major bleed contributor, its delay effectively makes condition builds for staff useless.

Solution
Instead of waiting 3 seconds to deliver the entire effect, split the effect in 3 parts and add an effect every seconds. The blast finisher would still come at the final second.

Example
Instead of:
after 3 seconds, deal 300 damage, 9 stacks bleeding
the skill could read:
deal 100 damage and 3 stacks bleeding every second. The final pulse is a blast finisher.
Duration: 3 seconds

Pros
-It’ll make condition staff builds viable.
-It won’t affect using the skill for blast finishers in any way.
-It won’t increase the ele’s dps, just the timing.

Cons
-It may become too reliable. Instead of dividing the damage equally, the first damage package could deal 20%, the second 30% and the final 50% to still make it work.
-It could be a tad too powerful combined with Arcane Power immobilizes (because it can now immobilize for itself).

Eruption

Problem
The activation time on eruption is so long that it’s often only used as a blast finisher. It’s hard even in PvE to hit stuff with it. Given that it’s staff’s major bleed contributor, its delay effectively makes condition builds for staff useless.

Solution
Instead of waiting 3 seconds to deliver the entire effect, split the effect in 3 parts and add an effect every seconds. The blast finisher would still come at the final second.

Example
Instead of:
after 3 seconds, deal 300 damage, 9 stacks bleeding
the skill could read:
deal 100 damage and 3 stacks bleeding every second. The final pulse is a blast finisher.
Duration: 3 seconds

Pros
-It’ll make condition staff builds viable.
-It won’t affect using the skill for blast finishers in any way.
-It won’t increase the ele’s dps, just the timing.

Cons
-It may become too reliable. Instead of dividing the damage equally, the first damage package could deal 20%, the second 30% and the final 50% to still make it work.
-It could be a tad too powerful combined with Arcane Power immobilizes (because it can now immobilize for itself).

Chaith.8256:

Could you consolidate these 4 ideas into one thread, instead of 4 threads?

I thought Anet wanted things brief and to the point? If I all put them in a single thread, that wouldn’t be the case.

Chain Lightning

Problem
Back before Fireball was affected by Blasting Staff, this skill’s niche was to hit multiple targets reliably. With the change, Chain Lightning effectively became a poor man’s Fireball.

Solution
Increase the damage a bit, to make it a good alternative to Fireball.

Pros
-Chain Lightning will be a good alternative for Fireball (same skill, different flavor) and not a ‘stopgap’ measure.
-Would make it a better ‘pet spam’ clearing skill.

Cons
-May deal a bit too much damage against a target if there’s only 1 other target due to the ‘double bounce’. However, given the low fighting chance staff eles have in such duels, combined with the relatively low usage of staff auto attacks in general, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Water Blast

Problem
No matter how strong the heal, the fact that the ele essentially deals no damage makes it impractical for use. Healing has little to no use in PvE, and the radius is too small for it to heal anyone in PvP.

Solution
Lower the heal, increase the damage up to the level of stoning.
-or-
Make the heal center around the ele rather than the target.

Pros
-The skill will have more varied use, making it an actual alternative to fireball or other attacks.

Cons
-Some folk may actually like the healing, despite the fact that it essentially cuts your party’s dps by 20%.

Blinding Surge

Problem
It takes a long while to cast, which takes away the effect of being able to stop an attack through blindness.

Solution
Lower the casting time, reduce the radius, recharge and/or the damage.

Pros
-The skill will be more useful as an active defense.
-It’ll make staff eles able to defend themselves a little better in 1v1 without making them more powerful in large scale events.

Cons
-Some people may prefer the extra damage or lower casttime.
-It may become too similar to scepter #3.

Gust

Problem
Gust’s animation takes so long to activate and has such a narrow cone that in order to actually hit something with it, you’ll have to pay them gold to stand still. This makes the skill utterly useless.

Solution
Increase the activation animation’s speed of gust.

Pros
-The skill will finally be useful. Seriously, it does nothing at the moment because you’ll never hit with it.
-It won’t make staff eles more powerful in large encounters.

Cons
-Why wouldn’t you want to make a skill usable? Seriously, it’s just to make the skill actually DO something.

For staff, fixing the broken stuff like Gust activating way too late and being way too slow would go a long way towards fixing without changing our large group effectiveness at all.

LordByron.8369:

A light profession with stuff like blurred frenzy, shatter, sword 4 block is perfect…it gives mesmer the tools to survive without being OP.

Yes, which is exactly my point…they get all of those, on top of their stealth/clones. That means that if you finally find them, they get a bucket of defensive skills to use…after which they hide again, and the thing starts all over. And they get 5k extra health too.

They should have either, not both. Especially since other professions only get one of these mechanics.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yeah because them dying in seconds (unless Earth ele) is really the fault of the player.

Yes it is.

As i have previously stated when this came up. I have had MANY duels with eles and the summons have been NO threat – Why? Because they either die in seconds or they do no damage so they can be ignored.

Duels. It’s always about duels with you. There’s more to the game than duelling, and everywhere in PvE, elementals have their place, purpose and tricks. Having said that…

Go ahead and ignore my Air Elemental when I’m duelling you. Please do. In the meantime, it adds damage close to my auto attack and stuns you every 10 seconds.

ThiBash.5634:

The elementalist is soo much better than the mage in WoW.

Except The WoW Mage had better attacks, did more damage, better mobility, Invisibility, Better CC, clones, better arcane skills. I can’t see in Any way where the Ele is better than the WoW mage – Maybe at healing and thats about it. But you have to consider the different game types as well for that.

The mage in WoW is a boring dps bot. It has nothing like attunement swapping, skills that can have different effects based on said attunements, or combo fields. Mages are passive and dull, because WoW is passive and dull. GW’s combat is much more active, and that goes double for the elementalist. The elementalist is much more fun, and therefore much better. Balance will come later. Remember that it took WoW years just to get where they are now, balancewise.

Note: given that I’m among the most avid supporters in favor of the elementalist on the forums, I feel that Anet’s devs should consider the content of this post carefully and not dismiss it out of hand.

The thing that would balance elementalists…

…is quite simple: increase their base health to 15,000.

Why?
Eles are super squishy. It’d be in everybody’s interest to make them just squishy. While I get that from a traditional standpoint, warriors should tough and casters should be weak, it just doesn’t work unless you give the caster ample options to avoid the damage. The traditional warrior relies on his toughness, the traditional caster on their tricks or their damage. So the alternative to this change would be to buff ele damage, and that might cause more problems than this change.

Why not?
Anet wants eles to remain super squishy. The counter question I have for that is: why? If you take the mesmer for example: mesmers have an excellent defense mechanics through stealth and clones…and yet they still get more blocks, evades and teleports than the elementalist. I strongly feel these 2 professions should have their respective health bars reversed.

Pros
-It will open up more build options because eles can worry a bit less about their defense.
-It will make a lot of other re-balancing unneeded.
-It will make the ele easier for less experienced players.
-It will not make them supertanks, just add a little survivability.
-Relatively small change that’s easy to implement.
-Diamond Skin and Stone Heart may need to go because they’re overpowered (see note below).

Cons
-Changes the core balance of the game. A solid argument, but I don’t feel it applies here. The balance we have today is different than the one at launch. There was no telling how strong stealth or high health would become.
-May require some rebalancing of some ele skills due to bunkers becoming overpowered (doubtful).
-May make ele too tough in general, if so 12,500 hp can be considered.
-May cause issues with level scaling.
-Other reasons on Anet knows. If they would share them, I’d be much obliged.

Note regarding removal of skills as a ‘pro’: I’m very much against the concept of hard counters against certain builds. Instead of making matches more interesting, it leads to ‘if I have skill x I’ll beat you, otherwise you’ll beat me’ scenarios. That’s not a fun game based on player skill, that’s just dumb luck (or rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock at best).

Doesn’t the warrior have the ability to throw his spear underwater?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

it would be pointless in most cases, Most of the elementals SUCK.

Like I’ve said many times before, you’re just using them wrong.

They’re pretty good at their respective roles, and while I can understand that you’d like a bit more control over their special abilities, they have in fact, more than 1 special ability.

Also, their strength (and uniqueness) lies in the fact that you have acces to 4 different summons in 1 skills. You can use a tank in 1 fight and a ranged stunbot in another.

Finally, the way their cooldown works is actually a boon: instead of always having a 180 sec cooldown, you get 120sec + how long your elemental lives. If it stays up for the full 60 seconds, the cooldown is 180 (120+60) sec. However, it it goes down prematurely, the total cooldown gets reduced by how many seconds it had left. And don’t forget you can also trait it quite cheaply to have 20% reduction. Not every elite gets a trait like that.

Eviscera.9703:

Reminds me of the Mage in WoW.

The elementalist is soo much better than the mage in WoW.

If they plan to have Scarlet in it, then they can take as long as they like in not telling us anything.

And while I wrote that, I realized the irony of what I’ve written.

But seriously, no idea.

Guild halls.

Guild halls.

Guild halls.

And not player housing…I want my main to live in Divinity’s Reach.

Another reason to ‘tax the rich’ is to prevent market speculation. Just before ascended armor was introduced, people with gold to spare bought huge amounts of cloth materials just to sell them at much higher value later. If you have many rich people doing this, the overall cost of materials will increase because the poor simply can’t make use of this effect as much as the rich can. Ergo, money makes money and also ensures it doesn’t go to the hands of the poor. It’s an effect that strengthens itself and while not inherently bad, it is something you may want to control a bit to avoid excesses.

Dragon’s Claw does help against blinds and aegis since it hits in multiple packages. Vapor Blade has its uses too, mostly because it hits everything in a line. Especially in PvE, the 600 range can make the difference between being able to hit your target, and twiddling your thumbs because you cannot be in melee for some reason (boss attack for example). It’s not great, but no other melee weapon has a 600 range auto.

I’m inclined to agree here. I had to get used to the relaxing pace again, but I prefer not having time limits on the stuff I want to do. As for the Living Story, I’d like it a lot if it focused on the story and not so much the achievements.

Scrib.9207:

let’s be real here, no good player is ever going to lose to a staff ele in 1v1, i know i never have.

Know the feeling. This morning, I just defeated 2 staff eles all by myself…on my staff ele. Staff eles are so easy to take down that even staff eles can 2v1 ’em.

menida.5743:

Why not at the beginning of the dodge ?

Because it’s much easier to aim. Especially blast finisher and blind.

P.S.: sorry for my english

Np. Your english is fine.

The ingame clock could display 01:04 the whole day.

Is that the pirate puzzle? Because I just did it yesterday or the day before, and I got through just fine.

Although I’ll admit I’m always a little scared I’ll end up defeated.

kta.6502:

This game isn’t supposed to be serious like Skyrim.

Regardless, there are those that play the game for the story. Their concerns are just as valid as balance, gameplay or other concerns because they paid for the game just like any other player.

ratche.6204:

Actually the fact that this is fiction matters more than anything. I didn’t go out yesterday and throw grenades at my enemies, or chop down a tree for crafting materials.

I didn’t read this whole thread so this has probably already been brought up but I gotta ask, how awesome must your life be that something like this annoys you

Because there are many ways to enjoy the game. You can love it for the e-sport, for the social part, or because of the story immersion. From your calleous, harrasing tone I can deduce that you’re not the kind of person that can start reading a book in the morning and when done, wonder why it’s getting dark outside already. That’s fine, everybody’s different. I’m not even gonna ask you to try and imagine what it’d be like because if you were capable of that, you wouldn’t be asking what our problem is.

As for your judgement on what I should or shouldn’t care about though, I take offense. You assume from a few forum posts that I care more about an ingame dialogue than about a war? I’m presuming it was just a discussion tactic and you’re not really that stupid. Regardless, there being a world out there does not invalidate my main concern.

I like stories. I like role-playing. MMO’s are role-playing games. Role-players pay just as much for the game as you do, so their concerns may be heard. You may not like it but your trashtalking will not shut us up because you’re not more entitled to anything than the rest of us.

The one thing that would really improve guild’s social interactions is having a guild hall to ‘build’ together. Please add them to the game soon. I’ve been waiting so long for them (and personal home instances, but I’d be happy with just guild halls).

My guess about the Dwarves knowing what would happen could be due to an alliance with the Jotun…who could foretell the future from reading the stars. Maybe they were elevated by a Jotun with a hammer, which they saw as ‘the Great Dwarf’.

“Next time, do your own dirty work! You could have captured her but you went for the kill instantly! In what way were you any better than Scarlet?”

Even with its flaws, the combat system in GW2 is orders of magnitude better than the tank&spank setup.

The new improvements are nice and all but…I was so hoping for the addition of guild halls.

Please Anet, you’ve promised them years ago…when will they be added? Because I’ve literally been waiting for them since day 1. Literally.

I think there’s no argument that mesmers are overpowered right now. It’s not so much the clone mechanic in itself, but the combination of clones and invisibility that basically renders them immune to damage. It takes so much time to keep finding the right one over and over again that if they decide to tank, you’ll never get them down. Ever.

But I’d rather see mesmer (and thief) toned down than eles buffed.

I’m not sure I follow. Being able to chose the location is preferable fo most of our non-target skills because that allows you to actually hit with them. If they landed where the enemy is at the moment of casting, all they have to do is keep moving to never get hit at all.

However, I do agree with you on 2 of our auto attacks: Chain Lightning and Water Blast. Ever since Fireball got blasting staff, CL has lost its niche so increasing its damage closer to Fireball would be nice. Water Blast is pointless no matter how much heal they add to it. It could really use a damage increase up to the level of Stoning. Stoning and Fireball are fine imho.

Other than that, a slight increase in projectile speed and/or speeding up the casts and/or removing the aftercast delays would greatly improve them.

Vash Past.4385:

I’ve even gone as far as practicing fighting backwards, since waddling backwards is so slow and you often fight defensive battles as staff ele.

Have you tried running sideways? It’s a lot faster than walking backwards, and you can still keep attacking while you do so.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

The issue ele has it can’t change to a better Weapon in combat. Other professions have option to bring range and main weapon.

Staff gets better near melee range. Just because it has 1200 range doesn’t mean it’s not usable in melee.

Anet could fix this by making a new PvE elite skill ‘Call Pact Support’…which would function like the Charr’s warband support.

That would make our characters true commanders of the pact.

ratche.6204:

um, it’s not really a view of life, seeing as how the subject of this thread was never alive.

View of life as in, which morals and ideas the player has. And wheter the game is fiction or not doesn’t matter. If words didn’t hurt people, we wouldn’t have psychiatrists.

yuri.2765:

I searched other topics with that title or at least a mention of either Kas or Jory, but got 0 results

The search function is bugged. It’s been like that for a while. Rest assured though, that many players already responded to this in a positive manner.

Well, on the plus side…once they change the bosses to have more armor and less health, your condition build will be stronger in PvE. May not be much, but at least it’s something.

ElexOrieN.2130:

A dev once admitted in an interview that nobody at arenanet knows how to play the elementalist.

Source?

To me, the elementalist’s versatility is their special mechanic, not attunement swapping per sé. No matter what build you pick, you’ll always have damage skills, conditions, cc and heals.

I do agree with your final point though: it does seem that the other professions (and namely the warrior) kinda ruin the game for the elementalist. Maybe if the other professions were toned down a bit (don’t make healing signet equal immunity against everything but bursts for example) the ele would be in a good place.

Either that, or increase ele health by 2-5k. Anet doesn’t like it, but 1 numerical change would solve all the elementalist’s problems in one go.

If you want extra conditions, you could consider using Sigil of Torment and Sigil of Doom after the patch. You’d get 2 extra conditions which would give you room to use a rune that doesn’t add yet another condition.

Ugruk.4069:

To bad you cant cap points running away… you know what the actual objective of the spvp maps.

If half the opposing team is chasing him, they’re not capping. 1 player distracting 1+ enemy players seems like a viable tactic to me.

Valento.9852:

Don’t nerf anything, I humbly beg you ANet!

Just make Tribulation Mode insanely hard, and unforgiving, and frustrating…

…and normal mode doable.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

See arguments like these could also be why we don’t get fixed. If you make an ele build that is a good mix of all stats. The ele will be sub par at everything. If you make a warrior for example with a good mix of all stats he is good at everything.

That’s a problem with the warrior more than it is with the ele.

Let me put it in another way: if you have a weapon that deals both bleeding and power, you will only get optimal performance if you add both power and condition damage. The resulting build will be a build that doesn’t deal the best raw damage, nor the best bleeding damage, but the combination will be optimal. However, for the elementalist people are purposefully ignoring the fact that their weaponsets do a lot of different things, and then complain when they focus on a single thing. Unless you make use of all of your skills, you’ll fall short. But because players only want bunkers or damage dealers, nobody wants the ele. But the other side of the argument is that a balanced ele will deal more damage than full bunkers, and can take more hits than full glass cannons. For most people however, that seems to be unacceptable but for the small group that can work with that, the ele rocks.

As for the high dmg argument. In pvp…

That’s why I said PvE.

Why is it so wrong to have a response like “I didn’t like it but it was neccesary.”? Why are some of you so intent on telling us how we’re pathetikittentle whiners if we’re making a comment about an ingame dialogue? Why is your ‘no-care’ view of life superior to ours? In fact, where do any of you get the audacity to tell others how they should view things?

It is bugged. Don’t know when it’ll be fixed, sorry.

Versatility. If you make an elementalist build that excels in just 1 thing, you’re not playing to your fullest potential. It’s not bunker or glass cannon. Builds that are a mix of both perform best in PvP. As for PvE, ele dps is among the highest out there so there they get extra damage.

I’m not sure if the 4th ability change is that much of a nerf. It’ll trigger when you get hit, and when they hit you, chances are high they’ll use another skill shortly after. It’ll be easier to make it deal damage vs. players I think.

Dirame.8521:

At least stone heart has a caveat, Diamond skin didn’t and we’re still not sure if it’s been changed.

True, but it’s still a hard counter against a certain build style (burst thieves and warriors) so it’s not any better.