Guild Wars 2

Hell, I give up on Ele. I’ve been sticking with it, hoping maybe NEXT patch they might throw us a bone or at least SAY something. But nope, notta. Ele does literally nothing I can’t do better on another class with higher survivability to boot.

I figured I’d hold out just one more patch, see of there was a glimmer of hope. But just some bandaids, some fixes that somehow make us worse and still not even a “Hey, we know the class has problems, we’re working on some stuff just hold tight”.

If they would just SAY something about it, I could at least go PVE and wait it out.

Let them die so I can rez them for exp and glory. >.>

Interesting, but frankly score in spvp hinges too much on player behaviour instead of performance. The best Thief in the world blitzing everyone he sees is going to lose out to a dude just farting from point to point and running in to stomp.

You can turn the entire tide for your team with uber support and control the whole match, and get kitten for your efforts. See: Bunker Banner Warrior.

I know its been said already, but seriously this is a massive oversight. Why is it more rewarding to let someone die then rez them then it is to keep them alive? That’s kitten backwards.

And no its not hard to do. There’s a litany of games that have pulled it off just fine.

This is a game, not Thunderdome. Why should people be forced to play specific classes just to enjoy what they paid for?

I was rather baffled when I first pulled it out and discovered it really doesn’t, you know, actually burn anything.

There better be SOMETHING in it. The state of the class balance in spvp is utterly embarrassing at this point.

Because I’m getting sick of having paid $60 to be frustrated on a nightly basis because I clicked the wrong class icon after installing the game. spvp is a mess and just being silent about it or what you plan to do about it is incredibly frustrating. Its pretty obvious there are balance problems in spvp between the classes and no, “Soon™” is not acceptable anymore a month in. If you’re not going to do something, at least SAY something. Communicate with your customers. Its pretty obvious there’s a lot of frustration to go around on the forums right now.

Its not even ready for retail. Half of this crap should have been readily apparent in betas.

Honestly, I wish Elemental attunements had more of a purpose to them than just a glorified weapon swap. Each one should feel like a different mode or stance. Instead of just a different set of particle effects. They should all confer some sort of permanent mode bonus while you’re in them. Extra power in Fire, extra precision in Air, extra toughness in Earth, extra healing power in Water.

They become rather meaningless the more the class leans towards just flicking through them as fast as possible in a cycle. I’d rather we swap attunements based on the tactical situation at hand. Not just peel through them as fast as possible as a default approach.

The root of the problem is everything about the class mechanics basically encourages you to rotate through them as fast as you can. Nothing really encourages using them adaptively or specializing in any given element. But everything about our traits encourages you to do the opposite, staying in one or two of them.

Its completely contrary.

Ele is the GW2 equivalent of an 80s training montage. Once you suffer through it then reapply what you learned to another class suddenly you’re Rocky Balboa.

I’d swap Engineer and Ele on your list. Engineer is tricky and much like Necro, largely hampered by a mile long bug list. Ele has some fundamental issues though. All 3 are fairly uncommon in spvp. With Necros probably being the rarest class in spvp.

Whilst any given match will have 3-5 Thieves, Mesmers and/or Warriors.

I play one too, and Supply Crate is effectively an area denial tool that can be mopped up with AoE. Far cry from completely removing a key member of someone’s team for what is, in pvp terms, an eternity.

Staff > Magnetic Aura when a Ranger haste dumps on you. They’ll explode or come close too it. Combine with Runes of Earth which grant Magnetic Aura at low health and can proc Protection on hit.

Elementalist is the crystal meth of Guild Wars 2. If you started with it before trying anything else, you’ll never really be able to quit it. Even though you know its horrible for you and will lead only to misery and frustration. Oh, sure, you’ll go cold turkey. Get yourself clean.

But it’ll always be in the back of your head. Tempting you with just one more hit of that sweet sweet Earth. Come on, baby. What’s one more spvp match? You can quit if you want too! What’s the harm?

…..(sob)

I am utterly amazed you were able to say Moa is weaker than Supply Crate or Binding Roots with a straight face.

I mean, I agree Thieve’s are out of whack on burst. But in what universe has stealth ever been equated with highest survivability in MMOs? Stealth has always been a tool for a rogue class to scout and/or to set up a front load attack without being wiped off the face of the map in 3 seconds by classes with superior utility and durability or ranged classes with superior crowd control if not damage.

Traditionally, the rogue is only the cat when its stealthed, once its in the open it turns into the mouse. The only problem GW2 has with them is that the frontload doesn’t give the target much of a chance to react or counter. When people lose without feeling like they had a chance to win, they become kitten off. Its as simple as that. Instagibbing, stunlocking, etc, anything in mmopvp that removes the players ability to fight back so they die helplessly will kitten off your players.

Its not rocket science. -.-

This is getting pretty ridiculous. A simple “Hey, yeah, we screwed up, sorry. It’ll be posted on <insert date>” would do wonders to defuse frustrations. Rather than just ignoring player frustrations entirely and keeping up the “Trust me, it’ll be Soon™” gag.

Aside from the horrific task of attempting to balance a new class into the existing game…..

You can already build a healer out of the existing classes if you so desire. But you’re looking at the game the wrong way. It’s not meant to have a trinity and its certainly not meant for the classic mind numbing life bar whack a mole that “healers” get shoehorned into in other games. That’s not how the game works.

You need to think of being a healer in this game as akin to being a Defender in City of Heroes. Your job is to mitigate damage through the use of several tools of which healing is only one. You must be both proactive and reactive about it.

You must turn aside the blade from an ally then heal the cut. Not stand idley by why they get impaled then waddle over and go “Oh, dude, I can totally take care of that.”

Agreed. Throw us a bone here. sPvP is a wreck and an exercise in frustration for half the classes. The other half are farming glory as long as the gravy train stays open.

spvp is by and large where the biggest problems are to be frank. Because its the arena in which the classes get directly compared against each other in combat. Most of the complaints likely stem from spvp. In WvWvW you can hide in the crowd and the more people there are, the less important individual player actions become.

We must have played different Mesmers. Trying a Mesmer after Ele was godkittenluxurious. Its downright farkin’ relaxing in comparison. Even if someone does spot the real me, so what? The Mesmer’s tool bag doesn’t magically close because someone figured out the trick.

Aristio.2784

You don’t know how companies work so let me explain it to you.

Given that its a very common practice for MMO companies to run public test servers, this statement is spectacularly daft.

Conjurations were honestly the big thing that drew me to Ele in the first place, so it was fairly disappointing when I figured out by and large they aren’t that useful. Because Ele relies on essentially a constant rotational rhythm to be effective, a conjure breaks that rhythm. But you can’t stow the conjure temporarily when you need to get back to your rotation for a heal or an aura.

Ironically, they would be more worthwhile if they behaved like Engineer kits.

Yes, that’s what I was trying to say, thank you.

This is pretty dead on. I had that thought the other night. I’m not a wizard, I’m a ninja with a complete disregard for proper combat attire.

It is spamming though. Because the key to our DPS is to dump out our DPS skills as fast as possible. The fact they have different coloured visual effects doesn’t change much. Hell many of them can’t even be bothered to do anything except damage. They are redundant. So they need to be spammed out as fast as possible to achieve overall dps. Attunements do not lock out long enough to break the chain. You go in, you hit the keys as fast as possible. You follow the same pattern over and over. Breaking it mainly only when the situation calls for it such as when you need to heal. But because Elementalist is automatically in trouble if anything notices it, even this takes on a rotational pattern. I don’t choose when to use Updraft, I NEED to use it or I’m in trouble. I don’t choose when to use Earthquake, I NEED to use it or I’m in trouble.

See what I’m getting at?

Its a rhythm. You’re twitch gaming. I can play the class just fine, but lets be honest, its twitchier than Thief. Its balls to the wall muscle memory. It’d be different if every skill under a given attunement had an attunement specific secondary effect.

But they don’t. So they are effectively redundant buttons. Hence the problem. Why have 20 weapon skills if 10 of them are the same with a different colour particle effect. Why have 20 weapon skills when 8 are mechanically identical.

This is what my problem is with the current system. It’s effectively an inefficient game design. Attunements are…bloated. It probably looked awesome on paper but when it came around to it they had to try and think up 60 unique weapon skills. That ain’t happening. They ran out of ideas around the 20 mark.

It needs to either be streamlined down, or properly fleshed. I suggest streamlining down. But if they can somehow figure out a way to properly flesh it out, that would be fine too.

Krisko.4093

I’d say merge the utility Conjure skills into a single glyph-like skill where the attunement you are currently in determines what weapon is dropped, and what weapon you get in your hand. From then on, while it’s in your hand, it swaps to the other elements respective weapon as you swap attunement.

You read my mind. I was just about to post that exactly. Conjures should be a glyph like. One spell, 4 different elemental weapons depending on attunement.

Man, I forgot about the Dervish. I miss Dervish. -.-

1 button doesn’t currently have 4 different effects. 7 buttons have 4 different effects and 4 seperate cooldowns. 1, F2, 1, F3, 1, F4, 1. What I’m suggesting, in a nutshell, is that you have 5 weapon skills that behave like Glyphs in that what they do is context sensitive to your attunement. Rather than having 4 attunements that mechanically speaking behave like weapon swaps.

What this does is 1) introduces cooldowns so that the class doesn’t rely on spamming. 2) Because cooldowns are present, Anet does not need to adjust Elementalist DPS downwards because of the any potential higher DPS ceiling reachable by spamming attunement rotation. 3) With that done Elementalist can gain more meaningful versatility by having weapon swap and additional weapon sets. Without the previous concern of it becoming to complicated that was used to justify Ele’s limited selection.

Most my problems with Ele stem from spvp/tpvp, yes. PvE we could certainly use some adjustments just in base damage or surviability. But its tolerable and we do fine in any kind of group or event scenario.

I have fun flailing wildly about in a select few builds, but it wears you out faster than other classes. Sort of like everyone’s playing an MMO and you’re playing the final round in a Counter-Strike tournament where everyone only has AWP’s.

And you have a knife.

Attunements in their current form are by and large the root of most of the complaints regarding the class. They’re a good idea, but kind of roughly implemented. They function mechanically as a weapon swap but because they function that way each attunement maintains its own separate set of weapon skill cool downs. Which is the direct cause of the disparity in effort the class exhibits. In order to be effective the measure is essentially how fast can you keep hitting buttons as you rotate through all of the attunements without the artificial stop gap of cool downs ( Attunement recharge doesn’t cut it ) to break it up that other classes have with their weapon skills. By and large, this is more effort and impulse than it is skill. You’re playing Dance Dance Revolution instead of Chess.

So how can improve it without dumbing the class down to pew pew dps?

Well, lets look at Arcane and Glyph skills. These have context sensitive effects based on the attunement you’re in. 1 button = 4 effects. This, honestly, should be how the entire class operates. You should have 5 weapon skills with context sensitive effects rather than 4 different “weapon sets” with separate cool downs that by and large are mechanically the same. This would also open the Ele up so it can have weapon swap and more weapon selection. For more variety and versatility. As Ele is currently the only Scholar class without a unique weapon choice ( Mesmer’s have swords, Necros have Axes, Ele shares all its weapons with one and/or the other. ).

This would negate the button spam chaining of the current design and allow for more thoughtful play. Your weapon skills could be more meaningful and effective as their overall DPS could be increased. The ability to weapon swap would open up more versatility and replace any lost versatility. There would no longer be an onus on dividing up the Elementalist’s DPS potential into 4 keys for every 1 key other classes have because the ability and requirement to perform unending key spam would be removed.

Your attunement would mean something rather than just being a weapon swap button that grants a boon. While the central theme and function of the class would not change. You would just now have to select the best attunement weapon skill for the situation rather than just spamming them all in sequence. It would balance out the ratio of skill and effort on the class. Which is currently skewed more towards effort. It would lean the class back more towards making tactical designs instead of twitch gaming.

Furthermore, Elementalist Traits ( which need an overhaul anyhow ) could be reworked around granting weapon specific bonuses like every other class has. Instead of attunement specific bonuses that offer nothing save a recharge reduction and a handful of misc weapon bonuses that are all stuffed into one neigh mandatory trait line. Each Element Trait line could properly lend itself to certain weapon(s) theme and new weapons could be added to bring Ele up to par selection wise with Necro and Mesmer. Rather than having one class whose trait design is contrary to the rest of the game because of its class mechanic.

All of the framework to do this is already in game as its already present in existing Elementalist skills. The theme, adaptability and central mechanic of the Elementalist would remain intact if not be improved. All that would change is the class would become more thoughtful and less twitchy. I mean, it is a “Scholar” after all.

Anyhow, flame away. I know you want too. >.>

WvWvW is pretty much the best case scenario for us as we can leverage Staff support in a situation where we can hide in a crowd and have plenty of inattentive enemies that may not notice our AoEs winding up beneath their feet. While conversely lots of allies to really get the most out of our support AoEs.

sPvP satisfaction drops like a rock because we’re confronted directly and an Ele essentially needs to put in twice as much effort for the same return when fighting in a small scale situation. Both our offense and defense requires constant effort in the form of unending button spam. Whereas other classes can perform offensively or defensively with less effort.

Other classes effectively get a break in at least one aspect of their performance. Guardian and Mesmer have an easier time defensive. Thief and Warrior have an easier time offensively. Ele doesn’t get a break in either. That’s pretty much the problem in a nutshell.

It can work, provided you don’t just try to heal. With staff we have the best access to Water fields for AoE heal blast finishers and an easy way of applying Protection and reflect off of Earth Attunement. Using Arcane Blast and Evasive Arcana ( Procs off your dodge rolls, dodge in Fire or Earth triggers a blast finisher. You can get 3 straight AoE Heal blast finishers off of one Healing Rain at times with it as its cooldown is a bit wonky ). If you go with applying Protection on Auras and Powerful Auras, you can likewise toss out AoE Frost Armour off of Frozen Ground as well.

Mainly, you need to be mitigating as much as healing. Just healing won’t keep up.

Conversely, Dagger / Dagger healing with a similar Aura build is also pretty solid and quite tanky ( For an Elementalist anyway ) as D/D has access to 2 Auras off of weapon skills. Water D/D isn’t a slouch when it comes to heals either if on a Healing / Tough build.

The first, last and only time I was ever accused of being overpowered on Elementalist was last night on my D/D Water Ele build. >.>

I find it “sticks” to one attunement sometimes and the internal cool down rarely seems to work. I’ve been able to pull 2 straight blast combo dodges with it while in Water. Other times Cleansing Wave goes off properly without the Fire/Earth blast finisher. It seems really buggy.

And Thaiden. That context sensitivity skills your talking about, you would really use 1 hand weapon wihout offhand to get a 3rd different skill, which btw it’s useless compared if u have an offhand. So no, it’s same basic skills, 5 with total cause I don’t know 1 thief that would use only 1 main hand for the 3rd different skill (the one without offhand).

What I mean is if you add axe as a main hand and offhand you also need a bunch of new dual skills for the new combinations. Which pushes the total past Ranger. Whereas adding a new 2H weapon, such as Rifle, would skip the issue and probably fit much better with Thief ( in a sort of sniper/sharpshooter type role ).

Personally, I’ll take any class that has a sharpshooter feel to it with rifle. But there isn’t one thus far. Warrior uses it like a WW1 infantrymen and Engineer uses it as a shotgun for some bizarre reason.

If out of combat happens all the time as you allege, then weapon swapping would be possible all the time anyway, ergo there’s no reason for Ele to not have a weapon swap by your own logic. As it changes nothing. ;p

As I said, 20 abilities don’t do you much good when all 20 are with the same weapon. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 skills with your sword, you’re still swinging a sword and still have the same advantages and disadvantages as a sword. It’s not like there’s this exciting array of unique and amazing skills on Ele.

Its actually quite bloated and most of your skills are mechanically the same on the same weapon.

Doubling the abilities to LOSE versatility is a pretty stupid design if you want to put it that way. =p

Those 20 skills are by and large all the same though. Their focus and usage doesn’t change. Other classes use weapon swap to change the their play style / focus. Ele can’t do that.

As a Warrior you can roll Greatsword for melee and swap to rifle when you need to fight at a range. Changing your play style. With Ele you can roll daggers and….swap to 3 other sets of daggers with a different colour effects. It doesn’t change your play style. You’re still wielding daggers with all of the strengths and weaknesses of daggers.

Ele has enough “lock in” with its traits and builds as is.

I don’t mind secondary objectives so much, but the trebs drive me up the flippin’ wall as their entire purpose seems to be simply to ruin any entertaining battle you have going. Often in a matter of seconds due to their seemingly magic accuracy at times.

As for the whole Lord/Keep thing, the idea is sound but the implementation is kind of silly given how easy it is to blitz him with even 2 people.

You’re forgetting if downleveling was removed, 80s would just wandering around completely destroying events and farming. Ruining that content for lower level characters.

You’re forgetting Thief has context sensitive dual skills which increase its total weapon skills. Adding Axe would actually give Thief more weapon skills than Ranger because of dual skills.

From what I’ve seen that’s pretty close. Thief > Warrior > Mesmer > Guardian or Ranger > Engineer > Ele > Necro in my experience. You get the rare match with only a few Mesmers, but there’s ALWAYS a farkton of Thieves and/or Warriors.

BishopX.6453

if a class is not good people will not play it. people ONLY play the most powerful class. I point you to warhammer online. the ranger class was called Shadow warrior, it looked like STRIDER and nobody played it…why? because it was a horrid class.
did anyone play the thief in D&D? no they plaed warriors

Shadow Warrior was essentially a scout skirmisher. It had no pet and it had to stance dance like a fighter class using both ranged and melee. Not exactly a classic “Ranger” class. The "Ranger"ish class was the Squig Herder and there were plenty of them around.

BishopX.6453

dark age of camelot, had a thief caster that could be an elf and a dual weilding archer that could be an elf… two least played classes for most of the game.

Nightshade’s “casting” was unspec’d damage and rather laughable. Little more than an annoyance used for interrupts or finishing off the occasional limper. The “classic” Thief in DaoC was Infiltrator. The “pet archer” in DaoC was the spear wielding Mid Hunter, not the “dual wielding elf” you speak of which had no pet. People looking for a dual wielding Elf went with Blademaster.

DaoC suffered from a lot of FOTM’n in its mid to late life. But originally it was incredibly prohibitive to level any stealthing class to 50. Regardless of pvp viability. Of which stealthers in DaoC had zilch outside of their own realm as they had absolutely no group utility to speak of to offer a visible group. When they finally eased up on the pve difficulty curve around New Frontiers there were plenty of Rangers and Hunters to go around.

Next question? -.-

I would dearly love to have weapon swap. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 weapon skills if they’re all the same thing. Being able to swap between staff and d/d without having to crawl off in a corner and rummage through my inventory would be <3.

I have a 5 button mouse, so I map 1-5 with it than bind the right hot bar to Ctrl + 1-5. So I can keep my whole hotbar on my mouse and only need the keyboard for class specific function keys. Works pretty well.

I’ve been playing Ele since the get go as well and having gone around and played every other class as well ( Hell, I’m not sure I’ve pve’d much at all yet >.> ) Ele is by far the most involved class to play. It’s also one of the most unforgiving due to its general squishiness.

My problems began when I took all the blood, sweat and tears I put into Ele and tried applying it to another class. The difference was alarming and pretty disheartening. I have to play balls to wall at all times on Ele to keep up the symphony of the elements required to keep us on par. ( We need a t-shirt that says “I’ll Stop Pressing Keys When I’m Dead” ). It can be satisfying, but also tiring and frustrating when I need 20 keys to fend off some kitten that’s teabagging the numpad. Whereas if I turn around and apply my staff Ele skills to a staff Guardian or Mesmer suddenly I’m a demi-god amongst men.

The satisfaction of the skill and effort required to drive an Ele exists within the microcosm of the Elementalist itself. The only appreciation you’ll derive from it is from other Elementalists. Other classes fighting us never think “Wow look at all the stuff he’s doing! This guy is good!” they think “That was weird, I fought an Ele and he didn’t explode inside of 5s like the rest…..oh well! #2 LIKE A BOSS!”.

Rangers seem to eb and flow. But frankly the “Ranger” archtype is always popular in mmos regardless of whether or not the class itself is good or bad.

It’s the Drizzt Effect. It’s been around for years.

As for Necros, they’re like shooting stars. Whenever I actually see one I make a wish.

It can get a little bland, but I mean that’s not really any different from any other MMO out there. At least in GW2 your skills change depending on the weapon you have equipped. That’s more than you can say for most games.

Warrior does feel kinda bare on variety though I’ll give you that. There isn’t much variance in the play style of its utility skills compared to other classes. As most of its skill variety comes from the wide range of weapons it can use instead. Which, yeah, could get stale if only like a few of the weapons.

I consider Ele in need of some fixing up.

I play with a gaming mouse and frankly I can’t fathom playing it without one. It’s a one way ticket to carpal tunnel syndrome playing Ele as is with one. ;p

Honestly, I rather like that GW2 has avoided the trap of most MMOs and given us a collection of focused, streamlined skill choices. Instead of most MMOs where you typically end up having 2-3 buttons that by and large just do the same thing with different names.

Increasing skill variety in GW2 should come from the addition of new weapons, not more skills to existing weapons. So the core gameplay stays nice and streamlined, but more options are made available.