Guild Wars 2

Can’t heal during mist form now huh? Cool, I didn’t like having a chance to survive anything. That’s why I play an elementalist, you know, to stand still and die.

Warriors….. can heal and even continue attacking during:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endure_Pain
and it lasts longer than mist form. They can also trait to have it automatically activate at 25% health, the only comparable traits we have activate arcane shield (yeah, 3 blocks is comparable to 4 sec total immunity, right?) or armor of earth (protection and stability are really good, but invulnerability is kinda…. better).

Engineers…. have a 3 sec immunity skill too:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir_S
They can’t attack during it, but they can heal. It can also be traited to auto-activate, remove a condition, and have cooldown reduced to 40 sec.

I’m really just confused why the developers seem to hate elementalists so much. Least natural HP and defense, hardly epic damage, but apparently surviving is considered OP on a class that was just designed to be a walking loot bag.

Oldgrimm.8521:

suicide if you will not add protection boon

Engineers don’t have as many options for protection as for other boons, and even those options are very short duration compared to the uptime on most every other boon.

They are hardly the only class that will be hurt, I just used that example because it is a skill that would give a 12% increase in damage received (at +3% per boon), and for the boons it does give, would make this skill less than worthless in any fight with a boon hate warrior.

On my elementalist, I don’t run bunker build, my uptime on protection sucks compared to every other boon (minus stability) but I do have several boons most of the time. This is another nerf intended to weaken bunkers against damage dealers, but it’s actually making everything except full bunker less viable. Gotta stat for more protection uptime now just to survive, bunker build here I come (just kidding, more like elementalist retirement home and warrior reform school here I come….).

Xiahou Mao.9701:

I don’t know if you’re really thinking that through. Remember, one of the boons is Protection, which cuts incoming damage by 33%. The end result is that the Lyssa rune user might get 8 boons and the attacking Warrior might get a 24% bonus to damage, but the effect of Protection still mitigates that to the point where the Kill Shot does less damage than it would if there were no boons (and thus no Protection) up.

Now, if someone found a way to get every boon except Protection on themselves, then they might be in for some pain.

Another way to read that is protection is the only useful boon now (against boon hate warriors anyway) and loses effectiveness for each additional boon. With the amount of aoe boons going out in this game, this sounds like a horrible idea. Well, maybe regeneration is ok too, as it will outheal the increase in damage still (except for bursts…..).

Please don’t buff me with might/fury/swiftness now, thanks. Yeah, thanks for that extra 9% incoming damage homey….. Having allies apply debuffs to their group…… ho….leeee…kitten…. Who came up with this genius plan?

I vote they rename this elixer to “Suicide by Warrior”: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir_B

There weren’t many spots that elementalists can fully protect siege anyway. It mostly just taught people to shoot trebs and catas more effectively, by varying power and aim slightly, alternating timing, knowing the splash damage radius and what terrain you could hit for damage to go past the swirl. It was a fun mini-game sometimes, blocking or shooting around blocks.

Oh well. Some good changes, some I think are bad, but whatever, they know their game right?

This is what happens when giving people who will never be happy what they want.

You wanted a long kitten pointless rank grind? You got one. Grats.

Ralathar.7236:

ThiBash.5634:

There was a video of a scepter user not too far back that used Hurl in combination with switching to Air to create a massive instant spike. Combined with the combo finishers bit, it gave me a new insight into the skill.

I can see that if you did what I just posted and combod it with double lightning strike (one from the passive), and Arcane Blast. But that is a rather niche situation and as an Air Scepter ele let me assure you that 95% of that damage was not hurl. Also both Arcane Blast and Hurl are rather easy to see coming on a 1 on 1 and should be dodged, avoided, blocked, or reflected by good players. Specifically since the combo field + rock armor practically screams “I’m going to use hurl within 5 seconds!!”.

Kind of like when someone used Ride the Lightning at me there is a 90% chance he is going to try and use updraft if he enters melee range.

You should have rock armor up all the time, so anyone dodging every time they see a combo field may evade some of your hurls, but they will be drained of endurance, so just hold back another second before bursting in air+arcane. Adapt. Don’t be that guy who always opens with RTL>updraft.

For a clinical 1v1, I generally start in earth and just get rock barrier up, maybe throw a dust devil to bait a dodge. Into fire for a DT which generally forces a dodge or at least a position change, then when I see what direction they head, throw my phoenix there (lead a bit), basically feeling them out and trying to force dodges before using RoF or flame grab. The idea is to hang out in fire if possible, applying burns and forcing heal/dodge uses, then catch them on the back foot with a RoF-hurl-(channel rock barrier and immediately swap to air)-attunement/lightningstrikes-RtL-arcane burst which can be completed in the space of a couple seconds. Those sort of fights are pretty rare though, so there’s usually even more fields around to combo hurl off anytime.

nothing.7941:

Tried it several times and some of the skills are decent, espcially the air skills, but overall it just feels like I’m giving up to much from dagger.

I started on S/D before D/D was the “fotm”, so maybe I’m more used to it’s flow or something, but I find it as generally useful as mainhand dagger.

Mainhand dagger is great against backstab thieves, which were a lot more popular a few months ago than they are now (in tier 2 WvW anyway), but the current flavor of necros, mesmers and even engineers (probably rangers soon too, once more people figure out how powerful some of their builds are) are pretty much a hard counter to D/D.

Some of those builds can facetank a D/D elementalist (bunker build anyway) but don’t fare nearly as well against S/D or even S/F.

TurtleMilk.9431:

I see. Thank you for the help.
I really wanted to use Air all the time, but I agree, it does seem weak compared to fire… I guess I’ll go look into a D/D build that still lets me use Air.

Any element you use all the time will weaken you overall. Elementalist is best played by knowing what all you skills are and being familiar with their cooldowns, and switching elements whenever appropriate.

For a maximum mobility build, put at least 20 points in air and take aeromancer’s alacrity for the reduced cooldown on RTL. Perma-swiftness can be reached several ways, not going to list all the possibilities, auras, boon duration stuffs, glyph heal in air, etc….

Firey greatsword is key in any max-mobility build as well.

Rahar.9872:

In regards to the Thief mobility – Ele has that, and his other tricks. That’s why there’s no Thieves in high end tPvP.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Flash

This whole post was nonsense, but especially this part. The reason there’s no thieves in high end tPvP is because you can’t contest a point in stealth, thieves need stealth to survive and deal damage.

Who cares about mobility in tPvP anyway? Isn’t the whole point to NOT move from the points?

Lightning flash has a 900 range, unlike: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep with 1200 range. Not even mentioning HS spammability, infiltrator’s arrow or strike, or the amount of distance you can put on by chaining smoke bomb>refuge>blinding powder>HS…..

LordByron.8369:

^
Makes sense…
lemme see i get engaged in a zerg fight…..

Now my allmighty class is so fast that will outrun other eles…

not to mention cleane all conditions, break stun and outrun thieves and warriors, while negating damage from 20-60 player….

really an OP class i say…

As i said only stealth can do that and its the reason you don t see any class scouting except thieves.

You run away only if you spot zergs from the distance and they don t want to waste time……
That is not disengaging.

Exactly. If you really do get away from a zerg, they LET YOU GO….. Period. End of story. It wasn’t your skill, it wasn’t the class being OP, it was because they saw you as a worthless distraction and just ignored you. Any half decent commander won’t let their zerg chase one annoying ele because there is literally nothing you can do to them anyway.

That playstyle makes entertaining videos, but has no impact on the actual battles.

Pirhana.8935:

DeWolfe.2174:

Another slap in the face to alt players in WvW. Good luck farming enough WxP for all these things across 5-8 characters. Oy….

not sure how it is a slap in the face… they are giving you lots of different things to strive for or a way to build your characters. personally id rather have it so you couldnt eventually have everything becuase then you will be teh same as others. i liked DOAC system, there was alot of stuff to choose from but you could only get enough points to buy a fraction of the stuff and 99.9% of people never even came close to the cap on points

It’s good that you like games with “grind for power” models, where the guy with 100 hours a week to play on one character gets better stuff/powers/etc. than the guy with 10 hours a week to split between 5 characters.

I personally don’t find that game model attractive, as I play in bursts with sometimes months off due to that silly “real life” thing and I enjoy trying many classes and builds.

I thought (based on their marketing a year ago) that this was a game made for people like me, and I believe it originally was. In effort to attract more players who enjoy vertical time gated progression games away from the myriad others of this type already in existence, various forms of “power creep” have been making an appearance in GW2.

It doesn’t take years to master this game. It doesn’t require 100 hours a week to be proficient. Artificially empowering those with more time to spend at the computer makes skill LESS relevant to game play, which in turn puts those with less time but equal skill at a disadvantage. When I beat someone I want it to be because of my skill, not my gear/level/rank, those “victories” feel hollow. When I get beat I want it to be because of my opponent’s skill, not some artificial numerical advantage, those losses can be frustrating and teach nothing.

I miss what GW2 could have been, and I am a bit sad about what I see it becoming. That goes for plenty of stuff in the world these days though, so I’ll just have fun till I don’t, then spend the rest of my characters “lives” derping around PvE with my girlfriend. Now that I think of it, that sounds more fun anyway.

World completion generally has the goal of getting a legendary weapon.

What is the cost of server transfer compared to, like, any of the ingredients to make a legendary?

For a WvW player, doing the dungeons to get the tokens for some of the ingredients requires learning a new game mode, different strategies and maybe even re-speccing/re-gearing. A PvE player applying the same process to WvW should have no problem accessing all the POI/vistas.

Just be patient and color rotation will be implemented, or transfer, or sack up and run a guild WvW night.

and:

Tons of combo fields including the only lightning combo fields in the game, and the only ice field that doesn’t require a specific utility or elite skill.

Daecollo.9578:

See them everywhere in WvWvW.
The funny thing is they didn’t even use or rely on Omnomberry Pie and that was the only thing other classes got to be on-par.

I used the pie, back in the day.

eyes get misty….

anyway, what’s with all the guardians, necros and mesmers in WvW these days? I see them everywhere! They’re so OP!!!!

draner.5213:

covenn.7165:

draner.5213:

d/d eles, I’m a thief and I want to kill you, how do you suggest I go about this?

If we are specced and geared decently for 1v1 fights, you really can’t. It might be frustrating for you that an ele gets away from you or forces you to run away from him, but I can tell you without a doubt that it is equally frustrating for us…. you attack us at a time and place of your choosing, and if things go badly you can get away the vast majority of the time with no consequences due to stealth. Instead of stressing about it, it is just easier to accept it for what it is and then take joy on the few times someone sticks around to fight when they start to lose.

Yea, that`s kind of my current tactic, shadowstep in, get a taste, and see if I should scram, the high mobility of the d/d ele is mostly the problem I run into. I’ll stealth and book it, but if I come out of stealth visible to them at all I better hope safety is nearby, cause their chase is a force to be reckoned with.

Not that I should be helping a thief to kill us easier, but hey, maybe it will help steer more away from the bunker spec in the long run ;p

Don’t waste your shadowstep to get in if you can avoid it. That’s mistake #1. When fighting anyone who isn’t just going to die to 2 hits, save your cooldowns, make them burn their’s early if you can.

D/D bunker ele beats D/D glass burst thief. Like a rock beats scissors. Switch weapon sets and specs. Blinding powder is pretty much a hard counter to D/D, can’t hit anything in melee range with that dang smoke field always up. The blind on stealth trait is OP as hell also.

Don’t burn all your initiative. Ever. A little part of me cheers any time a thief uses HS to gap close on me when I’m at full HP, that’s a pretty good sign I’ve already won.

Sword is a good weapon to sort of anti-troll the troll spec bunker elementalist. Spamming #2 for juking is annoying, you probably won’t kill them this way, but you can tie them up as long as they would have you. Pistol whip can be brutal if you can force their cantrips and water swaps before using it much.

As was mentioned, D/D elementalists are “everywhere” for a few reasons, but in WvW many of them are staff eles just trying to get to the zerg…..

I wouldn’t consider any build with 30 in water to be glass, especially in sPvP where enemy damage is lower than WvW and the amulets make you take some survival stats.

Is it possible to do ok with your build?
Sure.
Are you?
Then it is.
Are your opponents just “bad”?
Probably, or maybe, who knows, it’s pretty subjective. If you’re “good” then they are probably “bad”. ’Cause, there are a lot of people in the world, and some will be better at stuff and some worse.

tl;dr Your build isn’t “glass”, but yeah, you can do alright with it.

Dynnen.6405:

Thrashbarg.9820:

ErlendR.6107:

Is so easy, remove aoe cap … is not too hard to understand …

I’ll see your blob and raise you 4 superior arrow carts….

(some days I think the people suggesting removing the aoe cap have never heard of retaliation. there are a few skills that sort of ignore the aoe cap, and you can just about insta-gib yourself using them on a big enough blob. I know, they have these visions of their 5 man elite zerg-busting unit dropping the pain on big balls of “noobs”, but in reality it would just be suicide by retaliation damage.)

we’d adapt to that problem, trust me.

By stacking in your own blob and blasting water fields? Getting enough mesmers and necros to strip the retaliation as fast as the blob could reapply it? Only running glamour mesmers and hoping the enemy blob just suicides on your confusion?

Those methods would require more than 1:5 odds to have much chance of success against even random groups randomly spamming stuff on/from their blob, so it wouldn’t change the “best counter for a zerg is a bigger zerg” meta.

How exactly would 5 players counter the retaliation damage from hitting 60+ targets at once?

(I’m not being sarcastic, I’m seriously asking. I run around in small groups and solo a lot and retaliation hurts already, I’d like to know a counter that doesn’t involve “bring more players”.)

Thought this thread was about confusion in WvW, not specifically mesmers, their builds, or theorycrafting about their abilities to stack X amount of confusion in some laboratory 1v1 of the imagination….

It’s hard to maintain meaningful discourse when the subject keeps changing. The title of the thread isn’t “Mesmers are OP”.

It’s partly a human nature thing. If zerging wasn’t fun for a lot of people, there wouldn’t have been all the wars where masses of humans “won” simply with overwhelming numbers (huns, romans, americans…..).

WvWvW is meant to be a massive war game. Massive armies crashing into each other, that was the plan. “Zerging” is actually what this game mode was MEANT to be. That doesn’t mean there is no room for small groups and roamers to have fun, it just means we’re roaming in a “zerging” game.

The WXP patch seems to have encouraged zergs, but also it seems to have brought lots of new people into WvWvW. It might not be my favorite way to play, but it’s also not really my place to say that no one should do it if they enjoy it (which, obvoiusly, they do).

ErlendR.6107:

Is so easy, remove aoe cap … is not too hard to understand …

I’ll see your blob and raise you 4 superior arrow carts….

(some days I think the people suggesting removing the aoe cap have never heard of retaliation. there are a few skills that sort of ignore the aoe cap, and you can just about insta-gib yourself using them on a big enough blob. I know, they have these visions of their 5 man elite zerg-busting unit dropping the pain on big balls of “noobs”, but in reality it would just be suicide by retaliation damage.)

Kryank.8069:

I use tornado as elite as you can cancel it once active and keep the stability element of it.

That was patched out months ago. No longer works that way, now you lose stability as soon as you cancel tornado form.

Dasorine.1964:

Asura also have the advantage of being pesky little things to target manually

It’s all in your head, the hitbox (aka targeting area) for all races is the same size. You can click slightly over an asura head or to the side of them and still select the target. Norn and charr need to be clicked around their torsos since the hitbox is about “human” or sylvari size, clicking their heads won’t work if they are near max racial height.

Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous that the class with the lowest armor and health pool, and no access to stealth, should ever be able to get into or out of a fight, especially when locked into a fully melee range weapon set. Just stand still and die, stupid clothie!

Apparently one movement skill which ignores cripple and chill (but acts as a nifty 3 second self-stun if anyone uses immobilize) is OP on the squishiest class, but the toughest class can trait to remove immobilize on their 1200 range rush or blow their horn which removes all movement impairments, or hey, both, cause, like, weapon swap.

I’m breaking my sarcasm meter on this one, going to take it for repairs now.

(I’ve written pages on this topic before, specifically analyzing and comparing different class builds and their relative defense/offense capabilities. People don’t change their opinions based on reading well thought out posts though, so I’m not going to bother anymore. Suffice to say, after close to 2,000 hours playing multiple classes, 1,300 or so on elementalist alone trying all different builds, I don’t believe RTL is in any way unbalanced, unless you consider running away to be winning.)

Thanks for answering.

Apparently I’d tried every spot except that 1 square centimeter, lol. Even after reading this it took a bit to find just the right spot between the “toggle rotation” button and the “world map” button. Moving it up the screen was accomplished by just dragging resize past max, silly me for thinking the function would work the same in reverse.

Not a bug then, but the design could use a little reworking maybe.

Not sure if it’s a bug, but it should be considered as one.

I moved the mini-map to the top corner of my screen to see if I liked it better there, and now I cannot move it back, the only thing dragging the corner (how I moved it from the bottom originally) does is resize it to max.

If there is an option I’m missing somewhere feel free to make fun of me all you want, just tell me what it is as well please.

The oil ground targeting is terrible as well. Even when I manage to jump on the oil during a siege, even if I can tank the aoe damage, it takes several seconds just to align my camera and find the one tiny spot where the circle is green and I can pour. It can only pour in a super small area anyway, why not just put a chain behind the door to operate the oil?

Map redesign is a whole different issue, and much more complex that I wish to discuss right now. Should they be better? Yes. Do I know how to accomplish that? hmmmm……

I agree, somewhat. There is probably a reason (some anti-farm-o-bot-a-tron-mabobber reason) that karma gear isn’t salvageable, so if ANet sees the reason and I don’t, ok, I can accept that.

Depending on the runes, it might not be cost effective, but you can always use transmutation stones to put the rune on something else. Most of that stuff can be put into the mystic toilet as well, so you at least get one piece of trade-able exotic gear for every 4 you chuck in there.

The problem with elementalists and condition builds is the attunement swapping mechanic. Bleed damage can be quite powerful, but only if not cleansed, and sitting in earth attunement to keep bleeds up limits cover condition application. As soon as you switch to do anything else, you lose your main source of damage for at least 10 seconds.

In WvW, condition builds which lack both poison and confusion are not particularly effective either solo or in groups, and we have neither (without taking odd racial skills anyway, and those are even weak compared to the true condition profession’s basic utilities).

Not sure about those daggers, I don’t recognize the name offhand. The main thing is that they are exotic quality. Soldier’s or cleric’s stats work best with that build but anything is ok.

You can mix and match cleric and soldier gear to suit your tastes. Basically soldier’s will let you take more hits, cleric’s will let you heal up faster, in practice the effect is pretty much the same.

Any other types of stats don’t work as well with that trait setup (IMO). Condition damage requires a good bit of stacking to see much dps increase, and comes at a loss of another stat which is usually more useful. Critical damage is a bit wasted on a build with low precision and precision is a bit wasted on a build with low critical damage, you mostly use crits to keep your vigor up with that build anyway and fury provides enough for that.

Do you have much karma? If you have about 250,000 karma, you can get the soldier’s (power/toughness/vitality) armor set from the temple vendors in Orr. It’s exotic quality, and basically free if you have the karma already from leveling. Every piece except pants is available in soldier stats, for pants you can run dungeons or save WvW badges or just buy a crafted set with some other useful stats (like cleric’s).

A full cleric’s set is weak to condition damage (you have a lot of condition clears, but in WvW condition spam is everywhere so be mindful of your cooldowns if you go this route). It’s fine against direct damage though, good mitigation through toughness and you have a lot of healing/regeneration built in. If your boons get stripped or converted to conditions or you get chain-CC’d you’re in for a beating though.

A combination of soldier’s and cleric’s is pretty standard for your build. Soldier armor/weapons and cleric trinkets is a good balance. Low damage but you can stay alive forever. The usual rune set for those is 2 superior water, 2 monk and 2 major water or something with protect/regen increase.

This is the build I use for everything at the moment.

If you look in the Damage & Survivability totals section, you can see the difference. Mine has food buffs added, so remove those if you want to compare more accurately.

I find sigils of force, accuracy, battle and energy are generally best. Stacking either perception or bloodlust will help as well.

I don’t do fractals, so not sure, I’d imagine it would perform well there too.

I find evasive arcana and boon duration setup lacking without full soldier’s/cleric’s gears. 10 second attunement recharge is good for stacking boons, but doesn’t line up well with many good skills cooldowns. With my setup, RTL will be off cooldown every time you switch to air, updraft every second time, phoenix and ring of fire every time, fire grab every 3rd, etc (assuming a swap on every available cooldown, which I am not recommending, exactly…..).

Not sure if that counts as suggestions, but there ya go.

ghtchill.7613:

Unfortunately we don’t spend a lot of time keeping what we take. It seems to be a Kaineng thing…

In lower tiers and in matches where coverage superiority is the defining factor, it’s ok not to work too hard on defense. Dominating through coverage doesn’t require learning strong defensive tactics, losing does.

Kaineng came up really fast through the ranks without any periods of loss/recovery like both TC and FA have weathered. The players from old t8 pre-transfer Kaineng may be an exception, but I’m not sure how many of them are still around.

Don’t get discouraged by losing, someone has to lose in any competition. Do your best to win, learn from your losses, get better where you can, but most importantly just have fun and the rest will follow.

Xirin.8593:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Gankers (I mean, uh, roamers, yeah, that’s the word)

Are you against roamers/gankers? Your comment is puzzling.

Nope, sometimes I am one. I’m just a snide kitten sometimes. ;p

(I am against nearly unlimited free rallies when I screw up though, just feels like cheating.)

When leveling in WvW, use gear appropriate to your level, and spec everything into vitality and toughness. The upscaling math makes you crazy tanky.

My engineer is level 30ish, with full vit/tough gear and as many trait points as possible in the lines that give those stats. In WvW he has something like 35,000 HP and nearly as much armor as my level 80 thief in full exotics. With elixer-S and automatic elixer-S at 25% HP trait, he’s um, pretty freekin survivable. He hits like a limp noodle, but can tag with grenades just fine for exp, and his new supply drop elite is helpful as well as thrown elixer buffs.

The way the upscaling math works, using food/oil/stones close to your level should result in stat increases similar to the level 80 foods. Weapon damage is the only thing that doesn’t seem to scale well, so if you really want to deal damage it’s better to use a condition build if possible.

Entropy.4732:

Thrashbarg.9820:

If the counter to something is just to not attack (or even dodge or heal) then it’s not a fun mechanic for anyone in the long run.

This is the real gripe people have with confusion. Not that it’s OP, not that it does too much damage, not that it doesn’t fit in WvW, none of that. The real complaint (which the above poster had the honestly to include) is that confusion INTERRUPTS the “flow” of other classes who get pleasure from cycling through their combos and racking up their numbers without thinking about it. It makes you pull back and think for a second, then react. Other classes don’t want to be interrupted from the button-mashing. They want to just do their thing. I get it, I do. But interrupting your flow and turning your combos against you is what mesmers DO. It’s the core element of our class. We are there to mess with your mind. If you have a gripe with confusion because it’s not fun for you, okay I get it, but no class mechanic should be nerfed because it’s “not fun” for someone else. Immobilization, stuns, and stealth are not fun for me, but the thief class needs them.

I get your points as well. They are valid. The thing is, it isn’t about having to just stop mashing buttons for a few seconds to counter in GROUP fights.

The game isn’t balanced around 1v1. tPvP is balanced around 5v5 and WvW is intended to be large scale warfare, the developers have never stated that 1v1 is a balancing point and it’s rather obvious it isn’t (1v1 backstab thief vs. staff ele anyone?)

1v1, or 5v5, sure, stop attacking a few seconds, let the confusion wear off, or use condition clear knowing the mesmer you’re fighting also has cooldowns.

20v20 or more though, if you stop attacking, your enemies heal to full, and keep attacking you, while you can’t heal, because you’ll take more damage.

Confusion should punish bad play, I agree. Currently in WvW, however, when it is used to maximum effect it trumps everything else (except maybe some specific uses of siege which are not really viable in open field or many locations).

If I had to build the ideal zerg, as the meta stands currently, I’d take something like 40-50% mesmers, 20-30% necros and the rest bunker/support builds of any class (preferably guardians mostly, and enough eles to keep swirling winds up constantly).

That doesn’t really suggest confusion (and no-target-limit condition-aoe) is balanced, as far as WvW is concerned. In PvE, I think confusion could actually use a buff, mobs hit too slow in general to take much confusion damage.

Persephone.7436:

This thread has too much QQ not enough Pew Pew.

Sorry, can’t pew pew, too many confusion stacks….. ;p

People keep talking about one mesmer stacking confusion, as if any fights in WvW (that matter anyway) are 1v1.

How many stacks of confusion can you get by having several rangers with quickness and piercing arrows trait, thieves with dual pistol unload, rifle warriors with piercing trait, and every other projectile finisher in the game firing through ethereal fields?

How many stacks can you get on a group charging through a chokepoint by having 20 mesmers all drop every glamour field they have in a 100 meter line?

How many confusion stacks can you get by having 20 necros pop epidemic?

WvW ain’t about me vs. you, or him vs. her, it’s us vs. them. vs. them others.

It would be nice if players couldn’t rally from hitting the PvE mobs anyway. They do make the landscape more interesting, and combat sometimes “gah! CC’d by a moose!”, but it’s too easy to use them as cheap rallying posts. Gankers (I mean, uh, roamers, yeah, that’s the word) tend to hang around groups of them for this very reason.

Edit: hahahaha, the post above mine was written while I was typing, and illustrates my point perfectly. Well played, sir.

If the counter to something is just to not attack (or even dodge or heal) then it’s not a fun mechanic for anyone in the long run. Eventually WvW will be MvM with armies of mesmers having staring contests while waiting for each other to commit suicide.

Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration. Reality though, is that confusion is a bit too powerful in large group PvP (WvW that is).

This isn’t specifically about mesmers, or about how much confusion can a confusion-chuck stack if a confusion-chuck could stack confusion. WvW isn’t about 1v1s or class v. class, in big fights you simply can’t always wait it out or cleanse all conditions. In big zerg fights I see more and more often that the side with the most mesmers and necros wins, perma-blind/weak and perma confusion spam and they don’t even need to leave their death-blobs, get close and die if you dare.

Nnekk.5806:

DevonCarver.5370:

Tracked it down and we are working on it. Thanks for the info.

That is just crazy! Actually, this makes me quite angry. It seems I was wasting my time reporting a bug. For every legitimate bug that someone reports, literally, hundreds of people experience it but lack the will to report it.

I know I submitted a bug report on this months ago. To now tell me you guys are now just finding out about this is absurd. It leads me to believe that bug reports are not being thoroughly/properly reviewed.

I guess I’ll stop submitting detailed reports since they are often ignored.

Thanks you guys!

My thoughts exactly, and this is why I did stop submitting bug reports a long time ago.

I appreciate Mr. Carver’s enthusiasm for his new job, however, and I will probably start submitting bug reports again (or just making threads here, since they seem a good way to get noticed) now that someone may actually be reading them.

This bug has been around since the beginning, as far as I know, and I expected it to get fixed when they fixed the bug which prevented players from picking up supply from a camp with the +5 buff if they already had 10. I do look forward to it actually getting fixed now though.

Slamz.5376:

I don’t think the big problem is rewards — it’s boredom + time to react.

I love defense. If I see a tower under attack or think it will be soon, I will run in there and man siege. I often leave siege behind after taking a tower just so I can have it ready if we need to fall back and defend.

The problem is that with golems and superior rams and zergs possibly bringing several of both, even reinforced doors can drop so fast that there’s simply no time to do anything about it. Usually with towers by the time you know it’s under attack, it’s too late. Even fully upgraded keeps can be like this due to a sudden sneak golem attack with mesmers porting them — the scout says “omg 20 golems at the NW gate” and it’s already too late unless the friendly zerg happened to be right there already.

If we want more defense I think we need to remove golems from the game and consider a way to limit rams. 1 scout isn’t enough to slow down a zerg and you aren’t going to get 10 people to stand there doing nothing for 30 minutes at a time.

+1 for this post.

Although I’d suggest a low siege cap specific to golems rather than removing them entirely. A couple golems can be defended against, but 10 golems with mesmers timewarping them chews through gates before anyone can arrive to back up in many cases.

Alternatively, remove the ability of players to directly damage gates and have the gate’s hp scale proportionately to the amount of siege hitting it. Then you can still bring 20 golems if you want, it will just still take as long as 2 superior rams (or whatever is reasonable to keep gates from melting in under one minute). A big enough zerg doesn’t even really need golems as long as players can just dps the gate.

On topic: defending is rewarding unless the odds are hopeless. In anything like a fair/even fight the defenders should be able to hold for several defend cycles. Giving credit for building siege could be problematic. Even the current system where repairing gives credit is easily abused, often to the detriment of actual defense by draining much needed supply to farm exp/karma/gold.

I think damaging enemy players should count for defense, not just killing or repairing. Attacks are often repelled without any actual kills due to the downed state, using siege to kill ram/cata build sites and drive off attackers can go unrewarded easily under the current system.

paleeshi.1924:

Thrashbarg.9820:

There are a couple things to consider when using a build in spvp and trying to apply it to wvw, well more than a couple, but anyway….

Full zerker gear in wvw has NO vitality added, unlike the amulet, so you’ll have even less HP.

Damage (that you will take) is higher in wvw than spvp. Backstabs and kill shots will insta-down you. None of your skills will insta-down anyone. Many other profession’s skills have been nerfed in spvp to reduce their damage as well, prepare to 3 shot yourself on confusion stacks.

I’m well aware of that. However, the PvE build I’ve made is far more better than the PvP one. With food I’ve calculated having 15300 health, 2220 armor, 50% crit chance and 96% crit damage. This gives me both higher defense and damage compared to sPvP. I’ll see how well it works in WvW and I also want to try staff dps build inside dungeons/fractals to see how far I’ll be able to push it without dying all too much.

Those numbers should be workable. I don’t really consider that full glass, since you have enough armor and hp not to get oneshot, it’s more of a hybrid-dps setup. If you have mist form and maybe another cantrip that’s plenty of survivability.

My build has similar numbers but I trade a bit of crit damage for toughness as I swap between all weapons depending on situation (and whim, occasionally). Full bunkers are boring, and full healer gear isn’t spectacular as support (2 rangers and 2 thieves is a better healing setup than 4 elementalists anyway, not to mention guardians, or other group comps with water fields and more blast finishers than staff elementalists….. ok Thrash, stop ranting on the forum and go play now…..).

I’m not sure it needs another buff, per se. Once I got the hang of it I don’t have any problems, but the learning curve was steeper than any land weapon set (probably in part due to the 3-D rather than 2-D nature of the environment combined with action-combat).

Every element has great skills and some that are kind of mediocre or situational at best.

Fire: Probably my least used underwater element. Has a good cripple and a burn and fire field. Can generate fire aura or area might with the finishers in water attunement.

Water: This is where the damage is, mostly. Best ranged single target attacks, #2 has a short cooldown and hits hard. Good short range CC, #3 is a gap-creator/blast-finisher/aoe-chill and hits hard, #4 is a short range aoe sink (disable) that gives regeneration as well (still bugged not to work with cleansing water trait unfortunately). Tidal Wave (#5) is perhaps the hardest hitting underwater skill in the game, IF you get the positioning just right, wedge your target into a corner against the terrain and profit.

Air: Best point blank dps auto-attack. Decent ranged aoe attack on #2. The air bubble #3 is tricky to use and very situational, but can be great in pvp to confuse opponents or set up a burst in water. The #4 and #5 are both great CC, #5 in particular as it is the only underwater lightning field.

Earth: Mostly melee range, although skills technically have longer ranges. At point blank, the auto-attack stacks 3 bleeds per hit, and the #2 hits hard and applies more bleeding. The only one you’ll really want to use at max range is the #4 to sink your opponent while you close the gap with #3 or just swim over. The smoke field generated by #5 will help keep you safe at close range (aoe blind) and can give stealth with blast or leap finishers (underwater stealth elementalist? oh yeah!).

The elite has great damage and decent CC, even after it’s damage was nerfed. It’s also a whirl finisher.

Comparing OP’s favorite 3 classes, elementalist will probably feel lacking , especially if thinking of water combat like land where fire is a prime dps element. Rangers are very powerful underwater due to their pets and some traits (in pvp, pet ai has no problem tracking opponents, where a player has to be spinning their camera like crazy to keep target sometimes). Warriors are point-and-click easymode underwater. Elementalists have to learn to maximize their combos and positioning underwater to be effective.

Give it more than a week. I have over a thousand hours on my elementalist since beta last year, and I don’t feel like I have mastered it yet (of course, that is in part due to my general badness at video games). I felt the same way as OP at first, took a long time to get my “sea legs”.

Your praise is duly noted, however, please stop picking up my extra Firey Greatsword! I was going to use that…..

(just kidding, help yourself to the awesomeness, just send a donation to the “Elementalist Liberation Front” in the name of the “Please ANet make conjures function like engineer kits” fund, thank you)

declan.3968:

Why people complain about chests, I always loot supply with them. Maybe you having max supply when you loot them?

Two reasons:

1) The chest is the same model that appears when you have a rare or better drop. It looks like it’s going to have good loot, in other words.

2) If you are carrying more than 10 supply, picking up the dolyak chest containing 5 supply will reset yours to the 10, effectively stealing supply rather than giving it. This is a bug, of course, and hopefully will be fixed soon.

Supply is hardly a rare drop, having it appear in the rare loot chest is an oversight at best, kinda trollish at worst.

paleeshi.1924:

Atm, I’m looking forward to build myself a zerker Staff build for WvW. It seems it’s not even close as bad as people might have told.

Cheers, Lux Domina.

:)

There are a couple things to consider when using a build in spvp and trying to apply it to wvw, well more than a couple, but anyway….

Full zerker gear in wvw has NO vitality added, unlike the amulet, so you’ll have even less HP.

Damage (that you will take) is higher in wvw than spvp. Backstabs and kill shots will insta-down you. None of your skills will insta-down anyone. Many other profession’s skills have been nerfed in spvp to reduce their damage as well, prepare to 3 shot yourself on confusion stacks.

Casual aoe is everywhere and moving can sometimes require taking damage, since you can’t dodge constantly. Keeping track of the possible sources of incoming damage in a zerg fight is exponentially more difficult than keeping track of the movements of 5 or 8 opponents. Your enemies won’t all be fighting in a circle the size of your aoe, they will just walk away from most of it.

When you die (and you will, if it happens a couple times in a 15 minute match with 8 people, it will surely happen in a protracted keep siege involving a hundred players) you’ll rally every downed enemy that tagged you. In wvw I don’t care about people hitting “omagawd humongo numbaaz!” so much as not dying to every stiff breeze that blows past and rallying half the enemy army they just downed.

All that said, it is possible to run glass cannon staff in wvw. Just have a good group do protect you, all the time, avoid open field combat if possible and use terrain/allies to your advantage at every opportunity.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/

This site is my favorite build calculator. It has a few minor errors but it works for pve/wvw where most of them use the spvp junk (I mean, amulets….).

I just wanted to point out that TC isn’t a hive-mind (and I sort of doubt any server is….). Some of us are probably actively recruiting and wouldn’t mind pushing to tier 1, some of us probably wish we had never even gotten the coverage to blow out tier 3 back in the day, and most of us probably fall somewhere in the middle there.

We have always had minimal oceanic coverage and many have been trying to recruit to cover that gap for a long time. We’re mostly friendly and certainly won’t turn anyone away, but we aren’t trying to actively stack our already well populated NA time or anything. Unless WM is just gone from Kaineng, some more oceanic coverage isn’t going to unbalance the tier (just might give WM something other than PvDoor to do at “night”…. jk jk….) it would just let some of us get a bit more sleep.

SHAKA ZULU.3128:

I know KN has a decent reputation in T2, but remember that most of the other servers below are not fond of us. Getting the NA coverage we need is pulling from the prime coverage of servers who still feel cheated by what happened.

Sounds like the guilds coming to TC are from a server which got stomped pretty hard by TC on our way up as well. It’s possible not everyone you beat hates you as much as you might think.

That would depend somewhat on the rest of your build and your main game mode(s).

What traits will you be using? Do you mostly do open world/solo pve, dungeons or WvW?

I’d tend to suggest carrion over shaman’s gear just based on reading your post. Using a focus changes your defense from healing to more active mitigation since focus doesn’t have a heal (unless you have someone else laying water fields, in which case, healing power doesn’t scale well with blast finishers, so still….). Power will add more damage to your basic attacks, nothing wrong with power. The real question is will the healing power give you a significant boost in survivability? Focus is already tanky as hell…..

For a bleed build, though, focus is an odd choice. I used to run a power/cond s/d build with bleed duration runes that could maintain 12+ stacks of bleed and stack over 20 at some points which was fun. Two things made me change to precision/crit-dmg eventually: condition removal spam in WvW and mob leashing in PvE. It’s hard to kite enough in PvE to let the bleeds work to full effect, and staying in earth a lot to maximize stacks minimizes cover conditions so it makes cleansing easy for human players.

Not trying to discourage you, but you mentioned not wanting to shoot yourself in the foot. Overall, I just found bleed build to be a sort of self-foot-shooting for elementalists. Necros, engineers, thieves, and probably some I forgot can do pretty brutal things with a condition heavy build, but the attunement switching mechanic sort of locks us into applying only one condition at a time. The signets will give you a few more, but it’s not a steady output. Maybe a weird build with rabid or rampager gear and 25 points in air for vulnerability on crits could provide some type of cover conditions….. hmmmmm, maybe I’ll try that……

It’s a complex game, been in development over 5 years to get to this point and development is ongoing. Such a complex game, in fact, that any changes will have impacts on balance that aren’t apparent at first, so I’d rather not see constant changes.

The reason they don’t post much in this sub-forum? Maybe a few reasons, I could speculate on them, but I’d probably get flamed or derided as a “fanboy”.

TogoChubb.3984:

My point on defense is that there is far less of incentive to defend b/c the rewards are a fraction of a sucessful capture.

This assumes an average capture time of less than 12 minutes from first wall/door hit (15 minutes for stonemist, 9 for towers, 6 for camps).

Defending a tower/keep/castle for 3-5 cycles (even if just repairing) gives the same reward as a capture. Failing to defend also gives some reward, not sure on exact numbers but seems like about half of the successful defend reward.

It’s actually pretty well structured, as it should be possible to defend those locations against anything other than enormously overwhelming odds for those time frames. As far as sentry points and dolyaks, yes, they should be rewarded, but how to go about it without encouraging exploits is a whole other question.

It may be partially an issue of server or tier attitudes, as well. On my server, we have a very defensive approach to WvW, so it’s not unusual at all for defenses to last a long time. If you’re just totally outmanned then there isn’t much way to hold things very long, but (much like the night-capping issue many face) there isn’t a whole lot Anet can do to prevent that, humans like to bandwaggon.

WvW just “feels” better to me. There are bigger goals than just killing or holding that circle for a few minutes.

s/tPvP is more about individual player skill, but it’s so small and over so fast it doesn’t “feel” like it means anything. Nothing changes other than who you are fighting with/against.

In WvW the maps may stay the same, but at any time of day there are vast differences in who holds what and how defended is each point. There are also strategies for large encounters that cannot be used in 5v5 or 8v8, and while it might look like mindless skill spamming (or might actually be, depending on the skill of your zerg, I guess) I guarantee you that an organized group will wipe a disorganized group randomly spamming skills every single time. Getting into a voice program with a good group can change everything.

I also prefer WvW because the pace is different. There are huge bursts of activity followed by downtimes as groups strategize and resupply. In sPvP you know when the battle will start and end, in WvW battle can start anywhere at any time and it’s not over until one side surrenders.

As far as small scale fights go, I’ve had some great ones in WvW, and some horrible ones. The thing here is not only the level/gear differences, it’s the build differences. In sPvP the build variety is much smaller, not only limited by the amulet/jewel system, but also pigeonholed by specialty (bunker/roamer/etc). In WvW there are a lot more builds running around with large group combat focused builds, if you catch these alone or in small groups of course they will seem bad (a shout-heal or banner warrior is great in WvW, how many of those do you see in sPvP? Or how about glass cannon staff eles? yeah….).

But anyway, OP stating he’d only had a few small scale battles and spent a short time in WvW, as well as posting this in the PvP forums, probably indicates the answer he’s looking for isn’t the one I’m giving. To make you feel better “yeah, bro, I hear ya, WvW is just dumb zergs, dunno why it’s so popular, people must just be dumb.”

Defending is rewarded by winning.

Sure you can ride that karma (or wxp) train, but it’s gonna derail when it hits a well defended and upgraded structure. It sure feels a lot more like winning to me when I’m able to contribute to upgrading and holding objectives long enough to discourage the karma farming zergs.

Hearing about enemy commanders whispering our side to say “nice defense, no way we can take that keep with you inside, we’re going to another map” is infinitely more satisfying than opening the “B” menu and seeing some high number under the “rank” tab.

Maybe this comes from my situation also, having several main characters. With WXP being character bound, I know I’m never gonna keep up with the cool kids anyway.

Mura.8673:

…I foresee problems with your innate buffs idea. min/maxers would get the commander status just to have that buff, with no intention of doing anything else commander-like. …

GrandmaFunk.3052:

As long as commander status is only obtainable through a gold purchase then it should not provide any other advantages.

Xyne.9104:

This is equivalent to p2win isnt it?

All these things and more. There are already enough commanders who’ve bought a tag just to show the world that they have 100 gold to spare.

The last thing I want to see when I log in to WvW is 50 commander tags all over the map (or more likely all bunched up in one spot anyway).