Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

-8 Condition Damage
4th ability gets +5% trigger chance, +10s ICD, changed the trigger from on hit to when you are struck
6th ability gets -2s confusion duration and +7s ICD

Changes aren’t as bad when you group them instead of list them seperately though. The stat change is pretty much irrelevant, and for what I’ve seen all runes get it. The 4th ability took a hit but the good thing is that it’ll now activate when something is actually doing something to you. That can potentially be an advantage, because if they hit you once they’re likely to use another skill right after. The 6th ability did get a hit, but given that confusion on top of a stun is pretty powerful, it makes sense. It’s by no means useless now though. It’s just no longer the choice for every condition build. Which is nice, imho.

Moderator.8539:

Hello everyone,

just a friendly reminder to keep the discussion in this thread relevant to Guild Wars 2, so that we can leave the thread open. =)

Thanks!

It’s a friendly reminder, I know. But don’t you think that having a thread that heavily promotes GW2 over Wildstar is a thread worth keeping? Even if it focusses a bit too much on the competition?

The trick however is getting your players to visit the website…

ellesee.8297:

it’s fine. hopefully they’ll look at berserker stance and diamond skin too. hard counters just make a bad game.

Agreed. Which is why I’m kinda bummed out they also added Stone Heart.

Meglobob.8620:

ITS OFFICIAL ANET NOW HATE WARRIOR

WELL DONE WARRIOR HATERS

Those are in addition to all the other nerfs incoming…

Sorry, but I have no sympathy for warriors. You can’t deny that warriors as they are now, are solid. They have good defense, are self reliant, deal good damage and are easy to play. It’s also a known fact that professions that were in a less fortunate position, managed to hold their own quite well. So for warriors to be nerfed slightly, but still be above what the weaker professions used to be, means you’ll still be doing fine. It’ll just be a little more challenging. Which can be fun right?

What I like most about the elementalist is that we have options. We don’t have to pull off the same trick on every mob because of our limited skills. No, if we chain Fire-Earth-Water it’s a whole different ballgame than Fire-Water-Earth. Which is also why I like staff the most: the combo fields and finishers allow for a lot of options depending on which order you use them in.

My own calculations in the elementalist forum indicate that celestial will outperform soldier’s for elementalists in both survival and damage. The reason for this is because of the condition damage and healing power. They may be too complex to make a generic formula for, but they do matter in the overall power of the stat combo.

The other thing you gotta keep in mind is that if celestial and berserker are both nerfed in damage by 10%, the gap between them will get smaller. If berserker has, say 10k dps, and celestial 5k, lowering both by 10% will result in 9k and 4.5k respectively. The damage difference is lessened from 5k to 4.5k. So while both are getting nerfed, celestial gets a relative buff.

Overall, celestial is in a better position than it was before the change. But you do need to make use of all its aspects (damage, conditions, defense and healing) or you’ll lose effectiveness.

There’s the problem of conjures also being available as weapon skins. That might be something for Anet to decide to go for the other weapon types first.

Neko.9021:

If you’ve ever fought a DPS Guardian, you’ll see just how strong Retal can be on a DPS build. DPS Guards are very squishy yet they get a lot of mileage of damage out of having Retal.

Like Chris said, retaliation only works if you can afford to take a few hits. The ele can’t, and 3.5 seconds every 10 seconds is hardly 100% uptime. You’d be both lucky and unlucky if you could get 1 damage pulse out of every retaliation.

The main reason I dislike the mortar is actually the grenade kit. A traited grenade kit serves the same purpose, but has a better range and allows the engineer to keep moving. The only way I’d see mortar become viable is if its range exceeded that of grenade kit. Either that, or turning it into some sort of ‘super turret’ that fires on its own.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Trying to see if i can get around 1,000Healing Power without sacrificing too much. 1,000 Healing Power would grant around 3000 healing per a cast. If you could get that along with Written In Stone then it would be pretty decent.

Rather hard to get around 2,000Toughness, 1,000 Healing Power and a reasonable amount of Health. Debating if i could some how sacrifice some Condition damage. I have nearly 2,000 when fully buffed.

Its just tricky trying to decrease Condition damage but increase Healing Power

Have you tried Zealot’s gear?

Mattmatt.4962:

So as a result, out of the 5new trait, none is viable.

Yeah, and the funny thing is: the reason for that are Anet’s design decisions. Blind on burn would have been awesome if it were a cooldown per target, so you could rely on it not being wasted on a ranger spirit or something. EC would have been usable if the cooldown was per boon, not overall. Extra healing would be neat, if healers actually served a purpose.

Stone Heart is just to stop us complaining about thieves and warriors (you have a trait to combat them now, not allowed to complain if you don’t take it) and that leaves us with the air trait…which would have been so much beter if it could have been combined with the other grandmaster trait. But I suppose that at least has a purpose…niche as though it may be.

Relshdan.6854:

confirmed as global cooldown (one proc…then goes on CD) in readyup thread……so disappointing.

would have been fun in pve/wvw…now pointless in those modes.

Agreed. I had planned to make a build around it, but if it’s just 1 target, it’ll be way too unreliable given that most if not all of our burns are AoE.

In fact, if it’s global, it effectively means the 5pt Fire Magic trait ruins it. Way to go Anet!

Mesmers and heavies are more popular. Doesn’t mean that eles are useless in groups though. Every profession can bring something worthwhile to any group. If you want to optimal speed clear stuff and set the timescale to seconds…then yes, not every group will allow for a world record. But people that don’t want eles in their groups are usually the types that cannot do a dungeon unless it follows a certain pattern exactly…and you should ask yourself if those players are good enough to play with you, not vice versa.

kaupo.2573:

Here u seem to be using the Condistion damage value for celestial set and the “x.5” should affect the base damage of burning aswell. It should be:
Burning dps: 208= (328+.25 × 350) x .5

You’re absolutely right. I’ll fix it straight away. Thanks a bunch!

purgatoryz.6038:

Great, now calculate EHP and celestial gets blown out of the water.

Actually it’s the opposite: if you have more healing, you can survive for longer periods of time. The only place where EHP is a factor is against burst (as in: how much damage drops you instantly before you have a chance to heal up again). Of course, it partially depends on the actual number of heals you have. Overall though, celestial will be better against sustaining damage whereas soldiers will be better against burst. But that should be fairly obvious.

Neko.9021:

Elemental Contingency gives the Elementalist access to Retaliation. That’s huge.

No, it’s minor. Eles aren’t facetanks, they’re built to either cc the enemy or avoid being hit. If they take enough hits for retaliation to become useful, they’re gonna lose the fight.

There has been a lot of discussion going on about wheter celestial is worth using on an ele or not. Therefore, I’ve decided to re-post my earlier comparison of soldier’s and celestial gear. This time however, I’ve added condition damage as a factor too. Hopefully this will finally end the age-old debate of wheter celestial rules or drools.

Calculations are done with 916 base power/precision, 10 stacks might (350 power) and fury (420 precision). It also assumes a 50% burning uptime and no other conditions being applied.

Soldier: 865 power

Power: 865+916+350=2131
Precision: 916+420=1336
Condition damage: 350
Crit damage: 0%

Effective Power: 2809 = 2131 * (1 + 1336/2100 x (.5+0))
Burning dps: 208= (328+.25 × 350) x .5

Celestial: all stats 408

Power: 408+916+350=1674
Precision: 408+916+420=1744
Condition damage: 408+350=758
Crit damage: 27.2% (408/15 points per crit damage %)

Effective Power: 2747 = 1674 x (1 + 1744/2100 x (.5 + .272))
Burning dps: 259= (328+.25 × 758) x .5

Comparison

EP difference with soldier’s: 97,8%= 2747/2809 x100%
Burning dps difference with soldier’s: 113,7%= 423/372 x100%

Compared to soldier’s gear, celestial has roughly 2% less raw damage. However, it also gets almost 14% more dps from burning. So what does this mean?

So what does this mean?

Say you cast a Fireball of 1400 damage every 1.4 seconds. That’s equal to 1000 dps. You also use Flame Burst whenever you can, resulting in 50% burning uptime.
-With soldier’s gear you’d get 1020+208=1228 dps.
-With celestial gear you’d get 1000+259=1259 dps.

This means that even with minimal appliance of conditions, celestial pulls out ahead. Of course, this is a gross oversimplification and in reality your dps will likely be higher. Yet you may also have better (or worse) bruning uptime, and maybe some bleeds as well. So the conclusion you can draw from all this is:

When comparing soldier’s and celestial in terms of damage dealing, if you use few to no conditions, use soldier’s. Otherwise, celestial will either be better or the difference will be so small that it won’t matter.

On a final, personal note: I personally prefer celestial because it has healing power. Given our greater than average number of heals, defensewise celestial gives me greater survivability.

Valin.6873:

Question about d/d next patch… Will switching from berzerker to celestial gear be better? Right know I’m running d/d with berzerker gear.

Define better. More damage? No. Similar damage? No. Better defense…yeah, a LOT better. And better defense than soldier’s too.

Cecilia.5179:

If you look at the calculations people have made, the dps loss is pretty big. One thread showed that Soldier’s gear will have higher dps than celestial after the nerf.

You misread the thread. Soldier will have higher damage only if you don’t factor in condition damage. With condition damage, celestial will outperform soldier’s. And defensively, celestial is getting a huge buff.

Kyon.9735:

I think they were just trying to show the synergy of the new GM traits.

If they wanted to show the new trait’s synergy, then they should have shown their synergy to the current traits. In this case, anything EC does for Stone Heart, Elemental Attunement will do better. This just makes it look as if they balanced EC around supposed synergy with their other grandmaster trait.

If Elemental Contingency work like EA (Boon ICD is per attunement) I’ll definitely give it a try.

You’d still have to get hit 4 times for boons you can get more easily in other ways. Well, other than retaliation but that requires you to be hit even more for it to be useful. EA (and EA) just blow this out of the water, and then jump on it and smack it, and then insult EC’s choice of phone while they’re at it.

For thsoe wanting some insight on how the devs play eles, I noticed something interesting:

In the Ready Up Blog at 1:07:27 one of the devs mentions the following:

Elemental Contingency would go really well with the new earth trait because you cannot be crit, and you gain protection, so you’re actually pretty tanky.

Any ele worth their salt would know of course that Elemental Attunement would be a much better choice for this by miles. It costs 10 trait points less, its protection duration is twice as long and it triggers whenver you switch to earth to defend without forcing you to remain in earth. And that’s not even considering the aoe or the other reasons why EA is better to use.

So if you wonder why some ele decisions seem so out of tune with how the ele functions…this should give you some insight to the why.

Oh, not this discussion again.

You’re misreading it. It’s not a single attack on a single target. It’s the fact that your aoes can hit a lot of targets, and combined they do a lot of damage.

Even if you just consider the ‘artillery nukes’ Meteor Shower and the skill on Frostbow, you cannot say they don’t deal a lot of damage.

Provided you have any sort of meaningful build of course…

My main concern still remains though: will we get balance through generic traits, or through traits specifically designed to combat 1 specific type of build? Because to me, the latter isn’t balance. Just lucky that you brought the right spec.

Xenon.4537:

It would be nice if someone could calculate the effective % damage reduction gained by having crit immunity to a standard zerker build. Like, how much dps does a zerker lose if they never crit?

If a build had 100% critical damage, and 50% critical chance, it’ll lose 1/3 of its dps.

My favorite town set was my wintersday outfit + glasses styled to match Chauncey von Snuffles…pity I can no longer wear said set.

I experienced this bug as well yesterday. When I refreshed to confirm, they were gone.

He is, but Kopper isn’t.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Also, you stae the Focus is a defensive weapon. Just curious – why does the “defensive” weapon have no healing skill for? I mean even Dagger off hand has a healing skill and you can’t really call that a defensive weapon. Pretty much ALL weapons except for the “defensive” weapon has a heal…Strange that.

Maybe because it’s a defensive weapon, not a recuperation weapon?

I don’t see why it cannot be both…a global CD, but if you happen to apply multiple burns with 1 effect, you get multiple blinds.

My issue isn’t about the trait itself, but the fact that eles get so many ‘super defense versus specific build’ rather than ‘weak but generic defense’ traits. It kinda forces us to go rock-paper-scissors(-lizard-Spock). Meaning any balancing against other classes will now likely be done assuming we use said traits, leaving those that do not underpowered.

It’s the concept I dislike, not the trait itself.

Given that the game already tracks which cultural armor pieces are unlocked on an account (through the corresponding achievements), is there any chance those armor pieces will be unlocked even if they were deleted?

I for one, have unlocked pretty much all tier 1 cultural pieces but I lacked the room to keep them. It should be possible to add those armors to the unlocked list when the update goes live. Question is…will the devs do that?

cheese.4739:

Actually we can already do a huge number of blasts in one field:
1) Eruption
2) Brilliance
3) Wave
4) Evasive Arcana-Earth
5) Flame Axe

And since Eruption needs to be precast and the others are utilities, you can actually get 2 Flame Axe blasts if you’re very quick in that Healing Rain.

This does require heavy trait and utility investment

That final sentence explains why it is balanced. What the OP is suggesting is to add a similar effect to every staff ele. It would be way too powerful.

and that’s one issue with Staff: it’s combo-tastic, but we have a very limited number of combo skills on the weapon itself, as well as not many finishers to choose from among our utilities.

It’s already got a good number of finishers compared to other professions and weapon sets. Staff is a field generator first and foremost, which is also where its power lies. The fact that it gets finishers at all is a bonus, and an important one, but it shouldn’t be overdone.

With the amount of burning eles already have, I doubt you’d even need a specific setup to make it function properly. Which coïncidentally is what makes it such a great trait. :-)

Also, don’t forget the 5pt fire magic minor trait that gives you an extra chance to proc this.

The trait itself sounds like a great trait against thieves, warriors and other zerkers. But my concern is that it’ll be too good. Because instead of toning down insane bursts, or making eles a bit tougher, Anet opted to make a hard counter to them.

I fear that now, ele defense will be balanced around the assumption that they’ll use Stone Heart against burst builds and Diamond Skin against condition builds. This means that builds that use neither will nog get buffed, simply because ‘the ele is in a good place against build x’. My fear is that, because we now have hard counters, we are effectively told to shut up in terms of balance complaints.

And I don’t like that prospect…

McFribble.2349:

Water: This grandmaster trait is not for solo play. It is for those looking to be a group healer. Not all traits need to focus on turning the Ele into a Pow/Pres/Crit damage class. Just admit it is a great trait that you will probably not use because you don’t want to be a group healer.

Not gonna use it because there’s no NEED for a group healer. The problem with this trait isn’t the trait. It’s the fact that healers are useless.

This sentence:

I am one for balanced game play

and this sentence:

Fire Skill 1 : Since this explodes would it not make sense for it to blast? Sure you would be able to blast pretty often, but your target would need to be standing in a field for it to work.

do not match. Do you have any idea how insanely powerful a blast finisher every second would be? In fact, do you even realize how strong blast finishers are in general?

Earth Skill 1 :If changed to explode it should also become a blast finisher.

No.

Ice Spike : This skill works identical to Dragons Tooth in that there is a delay when cast before it hit’s its target and they both inflict a comparable level of condition, however Ice Spike does not blast. This should be a blast finisher with that in mind.

No. It would mean you could get 2 blast finishers in a single healing rain or frozen ground (3 if you prep an eruption, 4 if you also add in arcane wave). Way over the top.

Pro- More combos on staff which is lacking in it’s ability to do so.

Staff is THE combo weapon in the game. You get your finishers from Earth, as well as Arcane skills and Evasive Arcana. If you’re gonna add blast finishers to auto attacks then you truly need to learn what blast finishers can do. Might stacking is the least of their uses.

Why acces to multiple blast finishers is a bad idea:
The combined healing effect of 2 blast finishers is roughly the same as that of a #6 heal. Your suggestions would lead to 4 blast finishers per healing field, meaning you’d effectively heal heal up to 5 people for twice their own healing skills. On every cast.

Encanis.4031:

So, basically, celestial is dead?

Pity, I wanted to equip my 2nd ele with celestial, suitable for open world and wvw.
What else to take now? Soldier with some dmg items mixed in?

No. Celestial loses a bit of raw damage, but its defensive stats and condition damage stats are boosted as well. Effective power doesn’t factor those.

Also, keep in mind that my earlier calculations only show how much normal damage celestial does compared to soldier’s. Celestial also gets a fair bit of extra damage on conditions. Given the ele’s numerous heals, I’d say there’s a good chance you’ll have the same damage as soldier’s, with extra survivability.

With the planned change on PvE mobs armor/health, condition damage will be relatively more powerful too, so that’s another plus for celestial gear.

SlayerUK.5029:

Malcastus.6240:

Only if you hit them at the same time I would imagine. I wonder if you apply a 12 secs burn to someone if it re-applies blindness after 5 secs, or you need to apply it again.

If blind could be re-applied by a long duration burn itself, then this trait sounds more interesting.

Given that every ele weapon has at least 1 burn to apply, and you’ll automatically have Flame Barrier, and you have fire combo fields to use, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it proccing again on long burn durations.

Having said that, I doubt it works that way. If it did, it’d be more like ‘when you deal damage with burning’.

My guess would be that they’ll use Lightning Touch for this trait. If they do, then the damage would be roughly half that of Ligthtning Strike. But the weakness would be AoE and that could be interesting…

Using those calculations with 916 base power/precision, 10 stacks might (350 power) and fury (420 precision) we get:

All stats: 385

Power: 385+916+350=1651
Precision: 385+916+420=1721
Crit damage: 51%
Effective Power: 3018 = 1651 x (1 + 1721/2100 x (.5 + .51))

All stats: 408

Power: 408+916+350=1674
Precision: 408+916+420=1744
Crit damage: 27.2% (408/15 points per crit damage )
Effective Power: 2747 = 1674 x (1 + 1744/2100 x (.5 + .272))
New Effective Power: 91%= 2747/3018×100

So for the typical boon ele, celestial will get a 9% nerf in effective power. This is in line with the overall damage nerf of 10%. The compensation has to come from the defensive stats and, if future plans are to be believed, the increased effectiveness of condition damage vs. PvE mobs.

Soldier: 865 power

Power: 865+916+350=2131
Precision: 916+420=1336
Crit damage: 0%
Effective Power: 2809 = 2131 * (1 + 1336/2100 x (.5+0))
Difference with new celestial: 97,8%= 2747/2809 x100%

Compared to Soldier’s gear, the loss is roughly 2.2% effective power (note that this damage comparison does not include condition damage).

Assuming the initial numbers are correct, the math seems to be ok. As the Reddit thread says though, wheter it’ll be a damage nerf for the player also depends on stuff like fury and might.

Juclesia Elcritian.8410:

But the bottom line is, you might as well make Soldier’s if you wanted Celestial for the defensive capabilities, whilst maintaining good damage output. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen someone on this forum already math out the Celestial vs. Soldier’s comparison and they were almost identical pre-Ferocity in terms of power. Which means, now Soldier’s will be the clear winner.

Not entirely true. For the elementalist, healing power will do a lot more for survivability than just toughness/vitality. As for being virtually identical to soldier’s…well, isn’t that the ultimate goal? For choices to be equal in power but different in flavor?

So apparently there was another ‘Ready Up’ about the upcoming feature patch. What I’m curious about though is this: why is there no link on the official site to said video? Or even the TwitchTV channel in general? People (meaning me) are missing out on a lot for the simple reason that if you go to the official site, you don’t get links to the official information.

Same with exclusive interviews for fansites…why not post a link to them? I don’t think the fansites will mind that they get a lot of extra attention, and the players will at least be up to date on things.

This is pretty much why I’d rather have ArenaNet rebalanced the existing traits. Most if not all of these traits are okish at first glance. However, being grandmaster traits, they don’t really fix our main problem: mandatory trait choices. Instead, they either introduce new ones, or get ignored after the initial hype wears off.

Netko.9271:

So new traits are :
Fire: Blinding Ashes: Blind foes for 5 seconds when you burn them – cooldown 5s

Active defense for glass cannons. This trait is actually well designed, and was much needed. Glass cannons greatest weakness was that they gave up on all the mandatory defense traits. With cleansing fire and this trait, you could actually make a damage ele that can hold its own…provided they can time their skills just right.

Air: Lightning Rod – interrupting an enemy causes them to be stuck by a damaging lightning bolt that leaves them weakened (5s)

Sounds good, but needs interrupts, which makes this skill ‘meh’. D/D will like this, Staff will pass on it. Not bad, but niche.

Earth: Stone heart – You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth

Another ‘counter profession’ trait. While it will be useful against thieves, I don’t like that eles have to pick certain grandmaster traits just to be able to survive certain professions. Don’t like hard counters in general, and I really don’t like putting 2 in the same trait slot.

Water: Aquatic Benevolence- your healing to other allies (not self) is increased by 25%

Only useful if healers ever become needed in the game. Otherwise, it feels like a filler let’s-get-people-out-of-Water trait. My guess is that it’s intentionally useless.

Arcane – Elemental Contingency- Gain a boon when you are stuck, based on your current attunement, coodown; 10 seconds. Fire: 3.5s of retaliation; air: 5 seconds of fury; Earth: 2.5s of protection; Water: 3 seconds of vigor

Hmm…so how useful would this be compared to Evasive Arcana? The retaliation is interesting, but eles’d rather not get hit if they can help it. Fury is useless because they have Arcane Fury already. Vigor is ok, but eles have a better alternative for that as well. That leaves protection, which is actually quite nice. But not enough for me personally to pick it over Evasive Arcana.

ellesee.8297:

no you’d just have to waste 30 points into the inventions line.

You could use the trait, combine it with the run speed boost, and then a random other trait. It’s not completely useless.

PsychoDM.5279:

What’s wrong with healing my allies?

Nothing, but it is largely unneeded. This would be a great trait if healing others actually did anything in a fight.

Sure, occasionally a heal can be useful but overall, you can make do with people’s own heals and 0 healing power party heals.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

If I was that thief, i’d wish you were another thief instead. But again… this is just my opinion.

And I respect that. You’re making a good point, I’m just adding my 2cents. This thread is full of good staff ele advice and you’re a skilled dueller.

Karl McLain.5604:

This is just the first of many traits that we’ll be revealing. Tune into Ready Up tomorrow (http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2) for more information on what’s coming!
We’ll be talking about all of the new elementalist traits, one of them in particular being ‘Stone Heart’.
See you there,
-Karl

Thanks for the response…truly appreciate it.

However, I still feel that a trait that has no practical use shouldn’t be added to the game in the first place. The fact that other traits are added as well doesn’t change the fact that there’s exactly 0 use for healers in this game.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

However, strictly in my opinion, I feel that every player in a tournament needs to be able to win a 1v1 fight to be considered a viable build.

But what if you lose every 1v1, but win every 2v2? There’s also such a thing as ‘greater than the sum of the parts’. And if there’s anything that applies to that, it’s combo fields. The more people with finishers you have around, the stronger your combo fields (and to a lesser degree, AoE skills) get.

Arcane Lightning doesn’t add 10% damage though, even if you crit 100% of the time. It adds 10% critical damage, which means:

At 0 critical damage:
-Your critical damage goes up from 150% to 160%.’
-160/150=1.07
-Multiplied by 100% that gives you 107%, or rather +7% damage.

At 50 critical damage:
-Your critical damage goes up from 200% to 210%.’
-210/200=1.05
-Multiplied by 100% that gives you 105%, or rather +5% damage.

And that’s only if you crit every time. If you crit less, it’ll add even less overall dps. On the other hand, a surefire way to make good use of Air Training is to swap to Air and then use your Arcane Skills.