Guild Wars 2

I don’t find the “late game zones” so impossible and I play an elementalist (on my other classes I just chew through them like butter).

Only thing I find annoying is the utter lack of motivation (some would call reward) for killing group bosses. When all goes well you get a metal scrap or a bad blue for an event lasted 20 minutes and escalated into big boss.

Cyric.7485:

Yeah, because we’re all so bloated of ego that we blow all our utility skills just to GET to you and backstab you, never once thinking we might need to escape if things don’t go according to plan.

Good argument.

Poor kitty, they won’t attack if they don’t have the 100% safe retreat abilities full up.
How sad, when all the other classes beginning with warrior and necro can escape whenever things don’t go according to plan, eh? Oh wait, welcome to being like the other classes.

“But but but we are squisheeeeeeee”. Really? Tell me about squishie, I also play Elementalist, same health as yours and even full bunker spec, exotic cleric gear etc. I still get spam critted for 6.5k by yours truly.

Cyric.7485:

As for the whole “avoid in 0.2 seconds” remark, I’m curious if you think all players should have a charge-up animation similar to NPC mobs so that you have time to contemplate where you want to dodge, because as it stands now you pretty much have 0.2 seconds to dodge an attack most of the time as well.

Only hammer warriors and elementalists play like NPCs. People have up to 4 seconds to “dodge” certain attacks, it can be done by simply walking away…

Cyric.7485:

Every player attack in the game can be dodged to my knowledge… this means you can dodge Steal, you can dodge Cloak & Dagger, you can dodge Backstab, you can dodge Heartseeker, etc etc.

That’s why we got 1 million endurance points and we can dodge the endless string of 5k-6k attacks (some spammable) coming from thieves.

Cyric.7485:

I won’t deny that thieves aren’t easy to dodge, what with all our shadowstepping antics, but I firmly believe that becoming familiar enough with something with allow you to anticipate it properly.

You know why they aren’t easy to dodge? Because you can’t dodge what you don’t see and thieves appear on screen well after they landed their “next attack”.

This kind of stupidity also affected Warhammer Online, a “thief” of that game could open with a stun that lasted 2 seconds, and in those 2 seconds he could kill a squishie who would not completely go super-t*rd defense spec + full tank gear.
They’d also appear on screen almost at the time when the other guy died.
They were as fun as GW2 thieves to fight, and like them, if they would be countered they could just stealth away in peace.

I find that people quit GW2 for two reasons:

- Many PvE oriented people come from WoW or similar and find the lack of a “beyond end game” content disappointing. Not a GW2 fault, but still this will cause these guys to leave.

- Many PvP oriented people came from other older games with the “e-sport” idea, with the “balanced PvP” promises in their mind.
What they found are thieves and similar abominations on one side, and necros / elementalists on the other. That is something so far from any kind of decent gameplay that they quit disgusted.

Cyric

Well considering how commonplace backstab thieves are, it shouldn’t be too much trouble to move your finger to your condition cleanse hotkey when you see a thief approaching, huh?

Good thieves clearly run around like headless chickens, well in the open, holding a sign saying: “HEY GUYS GET READY FOR ME!”.

TransparentlyOpaque

Agreed.

Whats wrong with admitting your playing an elementalist?

Yeah admit you played an elementalist. You know, even people with good reputation some times fall that low and log in their ele

Of course after few seconds they are dead and then they see their downed “abilities” again and thus decide to return on their new main ASAP. An uneasy feeling of unclean still sticking in their mind for having logged their elementalist some minutes earlier.

Acerac

Warriors are top tier at leveling and stomping scrubs in spvp, therefore bad players think they’re OP. It makes sense really.

True. But it’s also true that bad players account for 90% of the player base, so they are OP for 90% of a whole MMO player base, which is not little.

Spicyhash.7605:

@Skip: You say that like tPvP is the entire game. Lol

The fun thing about tPvP is that it’s a minority mini-game.

If ANET thinks it’s good to screw 2M players to make 50k players happy, then they risk losing 1.95M players and keep to 50k happy ones.

Vakirauta.6397:

They better leave the professions and nerf some mobs. If they continue on doing so, we’re going to have a bad time killing a simple mob.

No, you’ll just get downgraded to elementalist level and take 1 minute to kill a mob. At least you don’t also risk dying while doing so because you don’t have any armor.

wertyuio.8630:

finally. someone ELSE who roams the world by himself killing everything they see

…but…. are… you running a full berserker’s build? -_-

Well, his damage is not absolutely pathetic, so… it’s quite possible. I don’t understand why when he gets hit he does not get constant 4-8k damage by the others though.

Very very nice, it’s not easy to make S/D work like that.
I am sure that as more and more videos of elementalists comboing “blink” + churning earth we’ll get it savagely nerfed / removed though.
Not much the opponents can do to avoid it, so it’s OP.

ThiBash

The one thing I do not understand is WHY it was nerfed. I mean, who complained about it? The npcs? Sure, it was a strong move, but with a cooldown like that, it should be. At least to make up for the fact that it was really just a filler skill…it’s just a sit and wait till it’s over skill.

It’s a consistent design decision. Before this nerf we could say “all our elite skills are horrible and worthless except our (still buggy ofc) underwater one”.

Now, it’ll be consistent, we can say “all our elite skills are horrible and worthless” without exception. Cleaner, leaner design.

daphoenix.4283:

@Rhoto and Vaerah
Yeah sorry if I end up making this class more inferior than it already is in some aspects by posting these videos (I obviously don’t want ele nerfed myself!), but I thought people would find it entertaining and helpful for learning some PvP tactics.

Daphoenix, you certainly don’t have to be sorry, you actually provide the other elementalists a point of reference at how they could do if they were in the 0.1% minority who has your same situation awareness, knowledge of so many tricks of the trade and so on.
Who should be sorry is the developer who see a 0.1% minority succeed in the one viable build and wants to ALSO nerf those 0.1% into uselessness.

I mean, are we constantly surrounded by OP elementalists and seeing them engorge sPvP, tournaments, PvE and WvWvW like we see mesmers / thieves and warriors?

No, eh? That’s what’s sick, to have a class that requires to be a 0.1% player just to be competitive, forced in one build and still being “watched with attention”. WE watched with attention. I don’t know if it’s more tragic, humorous or just pathetic.

daphoenix

:D ty for feedback

I uploaded some more videos demonstrating some more epic escapes and killd

How do you create those static fields, with D/D?

Cristian.8069:

It has got so bad that lately i get almost nothing but porous bones in cursed shore due to DR. It’s really sad that Anet is treating their customers like this. They could say “we are working on it, pls have patience” or something but their ignorance/silence is an offense for us players. I waited for 2 weeks but i don’t think i’ll wait 2 more to see this fixed.

I find it incredible that no major gaming review site has started taking interest into this.
I mean, sites lile MMORPG.com and similar, they are so ready to publish the last glitch / rumor about B— games yet something so major and face mashing like GW2 being totally swamped by bots finds no place, no interest?

Shukran.4851:

Wolfe.3097 : or change class forgetting thieves till a next balance/buff, because we will have a no dangerous-no hp-no armor-no usefull class after that, but every other player who don’t play thief will be happy.

Actually, when ANET said they were moving off the holy trinity, I thought they’d really do that.
The holy trinity was tank, healer and DPS. They indeed watered down tanks, gave heals a bit to everybody but they still kept “DPS”, in the form of thieves.

Thieves as the classic “assassin / backstab” should also have been transformed in something else.
Rogues / assassins are the annoying class everybody (but them) hate in the MMOs for how cheap they game play, if GW2 wanted to really be tradition breaking then it should have implemented different than 2 button => kill mechanics on them as well.

Yes in prime time some skills become totally unreliable. I.e. charge abilities stop charging to the target and stop you in the middle between your position and the target, sometimes with humorous results.

Wildclaw

And yet pretty much every single viable trait that the elementalist has is defensive in nature?

Well, that’s his statement, not mine. I know an elementalist can go full bunker and still lose just 20% of his “DPS”, because our DPS has been nerfed so much it’s pointless to go for it. I mean, you can gain 20% DPS and lose 80% survivability, how many would go for that?

“On Botting and What We’re Doing About It”

I suppose the results show what you are doing?

I really had high hopes in a new generation of game.
My Necro + Elementalist with 1000 bugs and woes plus the completely out of control botting tell me I was wrong.

DesertRose

You can go bunker spec and still deal 1000+ DPS with Eruption. Is ~1000 DPS really funny damage? Maybe I suck but as a glass cannon Ele I couldn’t deal significant more damage over time with it

My guild is focused on WvWvW and we are basically all day in there.
Yet (and ele is my main with 400 played hours and since BWE1) I have never died either off meteor shower nor eruption.

It’s just impossible to die in there if you are not AFK.

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

Herein lies the problem, how can you nerf the bunker build without ruining elementalist completely?

Easy, you make the class simply unplayable for several months and slowly, VERY slowly buff tiny pieces here and there till you re-create a farce of the class itself. Has plenty been done in other MMOs, I don’t know if ANET follows the same methods.

The premises are here: game designer only looking at the after effects (all go bunker build) without asking himself why nobody goes for more aggressive builds. But then, he’d have to admit their BW3 nerf was done in the wrong directions. Not many are great men enough to admit their mistakes however.

I knew this one day would become an e-sport issue. On other PvP games the players too all roll super-small classes so they can easily hide behind stuff, their animations are the hardest to spot and so on.

For what the game designer has recently posted on this forum, they want to favor high damage builds over bunker builds and he does not mention balanced builds at all. Make of it what you want…

I greatly dislike 2 shot games, I had enough of that garbage in Warhammer Online, where a RR100 Witch Hunter / DE (read: “rogues”) would easily unstealth => 2s stun => kill before is over or shortly after. Yes they could kill glass cannons within the 2s opener and no, there are no “PvP trinkets” in there to counter it.

Stormy O

However, the elementalist do have strengths. They definitely can heal more than other classes (e.g., compare with thief)

This reminds me SO MUCH vanilla WoW, when playing a druid was like playing ele now.

Back then there were two officially, devastatingly UP classes, one was warlock and the other druid.

The most heard excuse for sooking so much was: “hey but you can HEAL and FLEE”.

Imagine that, the others could spam 2 buttons and bathe in kills without any need to flee, but hey we were balanced because we could flee…

Same thing for skill cap and everything. Intricate, less effective classes always get flagged as “high skill cap”, because hey, mr. genius, if you have a very high skill, then they look good.

PeteyPen.7136:

@ Vaerah

Yes, it means illusions, invisibility, incentive and overall more effective unique class mechanics. Warriors are far from a low skill cap class to own noobs. (Unless you’re a frenzy+100 blades minute warrior.) I’d argue that they are the highest skill cap class because in order to win as a warrior you have to time your cool downs almost perfectly compared to the top classes in order to win. Wait, I take that back, I think Elementalists are the highest skill cap class due to attunement swapping, but warriors are up there believe it or not.

Yes I play ele, necro and warrior the most (ranger too), warrior was meant to be my weaponsmith alt (to make stuff for ele and necro) so I cobbled a basic GS set together for it, but when I found out it was so effective, I started to actually play it everywhere.
It’s a refreshing change being able to swap from 400 crits and basic survival achieved with 10 button presses to 6k crits and basic survival granted by dodging and moving in and out.

Defektive.7283:

I use more than use two buttons, I generally use 16 buttons.

I run Hammer / Axe-Mace.

Oh well I run the default GS build and I only need to press 3, 2 / 2,3 and sometimes 4 and 5. Boring and ******** spec? Sure but it works against 90% of the playerbase.

Any tips about how to deal against mesmers with elementalist? Even if I am full bunker spec their pets still hit me for > 3k a shot.

Hey, if you read the class designer post still on first page, you’ll notice that not only he finds it fine but he’s “watching closely” those pesky elementalists who were forced to completely kitten themselves and go full thoughness + vitality and full earth + water spec.

Apparently we are not meant to play, we are meant to be 1 shot and then play “spectator mode” while the others have fun.

So, you rolled an high health, low skill cap class to own noobs with two buttons and now want utility and whatsnot. Do you know that means you woud have to lose the two buttons properties to be given that utility?

What? Fights should last few seconds as a show of skill? How cute, what about the majority of the world population who simply has not available an USA – UK or Germany quality connection?

If you use two identical players on fast paced specs, the game turns into “my ISP > your ISP”.
I can see a LAN game being so unforgiving, but a MMO?
Also, who did not experience server lag in prime time? Going to call skill “my server lag < your server lag” as well?

Julissa.6731:

Can anyone tell me why some of my traits disappear when I head to the mists the first time after logging into the game. I always end up playing several games before I realized I am completely kittened. Are others having this issue? I am not seeing anything on the boards atm that talk about this issue. Help!

I have the same issue, except my major traits ALL become blanked when I teleport to HoM. I’d like to know if it’s a known issue or not.

Of course we promptly got the developers eyes on this kind of build and we’ll get it nerfed. Figures

JonathanSharp

Keeping an eye on something means we’re watching it, seeing how it plays out, and making sure we don’t make knee jerk reactions (nerfs or buffs).

I’d love to know what’s on the owen for eles.
Since my other main is a necro, I am that close to quitting this game as is.

Tinius.1380:

What is funny is reading all the posts QQing because of an expected “ele nerf”, while Jonathan actually just wrote the devs were having an eye on one single build that is not particularly UP at the moment. You definitely need to change your view from class-wise balance to build-wise.

When the single build IS the one used build for the whole class, then it becomes class-wise.

Sprawl.3891:

i like how ele’s try to validate their overly tankiness by saying it’s the only viable build.

Here’s the catch: while a warrior / thief achieve 2-3 shotting with 2-3 buttons, the “overly tankiness” off elementalists comes from frantic and active juggling a dozen of spells, CC, dodge, “blinks”. Only then the elementalist becomes “overly tanky”. I.e. it’s active and quite frantic and skillful gameplay, certainly more skillful than 2 button killing or 3 button super-tanking.

Duckzor

Tank ele’s make me want to bang my head against a wall. It’s just…pointless youcan’tkillmeicantkillyou lololol youarenevercapturingthispoint. What’s the point in having that type of build be available

Because the other option for the elementalist is a build where “NowYouCanKillmeIn2ShotsICantkillYouExaclyLikeBefore”.

Oma Overdose

Wow you want to nerf ele of all things. I really liked speccing into water and I never felt like I was particularly op.

At this point I expect they announce a drastic nerf to necros as well. You know, they have so much in common with Eles (except the health): dozens of documented bug, high effort vs tiny reward, non-existant pet AI and so much more…

IPARKER

LOL from all things eles are getting nerfed….?
are we being trolled here or what?
balance is fine?
almost everybody i see agrees this game is very flawed when it comes to balance
from mesmers who can transform you into a bird to thieves that can kill you in 3 secs with almost not doing anything that requires skill at all

He did not even mention thieves, apparently they are so fine. It’s elementalists forced to spec and gear full bunker to still be hit for 6.5k by 2 button spammers that NEED nerf NAO.

Mammoth

I don’t know, what else do you think watching could mean? Hint, starts with W.

They’re watching the build. If it’s fine you have nothing to cause concern, do you?

Maybe because some people have played PvP MMOs for > a decade and learned the terrible things game designers can do?

Trust is not given, it’s earned.

In order to earn trust you don’t toss statements like necros suck because they have not learned the hidden power of DS or mentioning a reactionary ele build (reactionary because born out of our class bugs and 2 button spamming egregious OP classes) instead of nerfing what makes them all go bunker build.

JonathanSharp

if the meta fixes itself (because a lot of times, once you learn how to deal with something, you realize it may not be as imba as you first thought)

I fixed my meta by rerolling a warrior and a thief.

I am not alone at this.

JonathanSharp

Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.

Glad you are finding new ways to nerf Eles in the only thing they don’t utterly blow at.
Never mind finding why they all go unfun tank + heal build instead of something better.

kabaal

Ouch, tank ele is the only worthwhile spec they have. I hope you look at improving them elsewhere before nerfing it.

Glad I am not alone at thinking this.

The picture shows exactly, I mean totally exactly how the game is now.

ManCaptain.3154:

Very funny. How come eles constantly have a ton of boons on them, which get reapplied so often it’s pointless to try to strip them? Oh right attunement switching….no idea what are you going on about with “skills are individually weaker”. They aren’t.

Eles have a “ton of boons on them” because they all play the 1 viable known spec (mediocre but better than the others).
I’d rather not have the boons and just own faces like I do on my melee characters, but hey, I suppose giving meleers the kills and elementalists some buff icons is too unfair for the former!

metaphorm.6904:

What’s up for next week? I think Guardians is next week, and then maybe we’ll do Thief again a week after that.

I play necro and elementalist. I feel safe my classes won’t be mentioned for a while

Scribbles.7493:

Attunements should count as a profession disability rather than an advantage. Trading weaponswapping for 15 more skills sounds great on paper, but then you realize these skills are just individually weaker in effect and spread out, so at the end of the day you have to use several skills in order to reach the same results as some other professions with just one button press.

The game is broken when dagger melee Elementalists have half the health of a Warrior, less armor, have to play the attunement piano in order to deal their clunky ten skills combos and still manage to reach not even half of the DPS of an offense specced keyboard facerolling Warrior.

Elementalists exist so that I feel I am playing a strong class when I farm them on my necro.

Stop selling stuff for a steal and maybe the trading posts fees will go down to acceptable values.

TP = safety, at a price.

Be glad, in EvE you can pay the price (if you so choose) but still don’t get the safety, so GW2 is quite kind with the players.

I have noticed that even using the indicated spec and gear I get hit with higher damage and deal less damage than what I see on the video.
Ie I still get hit for 6.5k hits by one player and it’s common to see > 3k crits from random attacks off the others. But in your videos you seem to get so little. How do you do that?
I try being mobile, use earth aoe stun, water slows and air “bubble” (stun on hit) and ofc RTL + knockdown but I don’t know how to stay alive while they are on cooldown. IE I dodge a necro bite but I still get hit for 3.5k anyway (if I stayed it rises to more).

I mean, am I the only player on a server where opponents focus you all the time and I always get at least 2 thieves on my face? It’s like I had an aggro sign on my head.

JonPeters

Looking at the numbers this morning, we believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we’ll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted.

Please adjust those numbers so it’s at least possible to complete one event without hitting the DR.

There are several – and not all at Orr – that involve defending a town against waves of mobs.

I joined one of those in the Sparkly Fen region (hardly max level) and it comes with a count-down timer: 20 minutes.

I can tell that after 10+ minutes or so, I started getting swamped by red messages and getting nothing from the mobs.

Now, how am I supposed to do join one event (not two, just one) if I lose any reward in the middle of it?

Expecially considering the though veterans and bosses usually come at the end, that is when the DR kicked in place, yet if I die to them I still have to pay the same repairs?

What if after the one event I actually want to move on and keep playing in the region? Does the DR reset somehow or I am locked out of any drop till I quit?

Alostrael

I won’t argue that a fast connection can lead to someone being able to outpace a person on a slower one. That is a fact. I would argue however that the difference is minimal (in general) and is nowhere near the problem that some people would suggest.

It’s easy to check. Go fight the training NPCs, expecially the thief (engie too can provide feedback). With low lag they die like… well… NPCs. Easy peasy.
With some lag (180ms) they suddenly become harder.
With >220ms RTL and the 3rd fire skill suddenly stop teleporting you to destination.
Worse, once you press the 5th skill it activates AFTER the mob has knocked you down / the engie has done his KD.
Even if it still fires in time, since RTL stopped halfway (and you get stuck) the NPC does not fall so he can keep pistoling about.

Alostrael.5734:

@ Leiloni, the delay is nothing like you suggest. The difference is fractions of a second.. not “a few seconds”. It is like the difference in twitch skills between a 15 year old and a 40 year old. Whilst combat is more active than other MMO’s, it is not like it is as twitchy as some FPS.

The difference is that other MMOs have global cooldown to partially counter lag. Nobody can spam skills quicker than that global cooldown and the cooldown is usually at least one second long.
GW2 has not it, so a guy playing on a fast connection will outpace who is on a slow one.

Kevin

I know it’s not a true display of skill or constructive gameplay but at the very least, it’s a true display of my love for the Elementalist and the enjoyment I get from having more buttons than any other class. Enjoy!

Yes it was very fun indeed!
Very nice splitting into small groups and then ganking them in peace.
Also, I did not find you lacking, not at all. Only thing that I don’t understand is why you and others use the healing signet instead of the default heal. Even with the signets trait it does not seem that impressive.

Bsquared.3421:

Most people are unaware, but I believe static field is NOT an AOE stun, it only hits targets at the periphery. It effectively acts as a cage. If someone drops the skill on you and you’re in the center of the circle, you won’t get stunned

It’s like Ring of Fire, unlike that spell, static fied does not appear “hollow” but it seems to be so.

Playing since BWE1 but only realized Ele was not a mage when I did a couple of PvP games against people with a clue.

Now that I know, I respecced, regeared, re-learned, re-everything and having a much better time.

Baladir.2736:

Regardless there are alot of people who buy into your argument that because we have a higher learning curve, that this translates into final level of potential of the class. Those are two different races. Time off the line in the quarter mile does not translate into the final mph at the finish line. Both can arrive at the same time and the race is then over.

Yes but then one may legitimately ask: “what’s the point”?
I mean, some people might love to just make their life nasty for the pure sake of it, but most (think about it: any CEO) want to pour in a lot of effort in order to see nice results.
If the result is identical, why work overnight and during week end and be CEO if you earned the identical wage of a burger flipper?

You have also to take into account how many spells have roundtrip: first you issue the spell, then the server acknowledges, then you receive the desired buff / RTL / whatever.

So, any lag you have is effectively doubled because the “messages” between you and the server have to also come back to your client.

Now, while some stuff like RTL does not suffer so much (it gets executed server side even if you still don’t see it done on your client), other things like shields, stuns etc. you rely on your eyes to see if it’s up or not, and those are not visually updated till your client receives the acknowledge from the server. So, it’s true that your effect is already working but you don’t see it and you may needlessy wait since you don’t see anything still happening on your side.