They obviously are never going to restrict by region. That’s a silly idea that will never go anywhere.
Discounting point gain at offpeak times is the only real solution I have seen anyone come up with that seems like it would both address the problem and not be a non-starter for some other reason.
Uh right now off-time WvW counts MUCH more than prime time, for the reasons the OP explained. So acting like there is parity now is silly.
One thing everyone should be able to agree on is that of all the possible combinations, the WORST is having off-time WvW count more than prime time WvW.
Restricting by region just means servers with lots of unemployed people or people who work the night shift and who can stay up all night end up winning. That’s a terrible solution.
The real problem is what the original poster pointed out – capping at night is about three times as good as capping during the day, when it should be about 1/3 as good.
What I would suggest is just steeply discounting point gain at any time besides prime time. It could be a sliding scale, going from normal 100% gain during the 6-8 prime time hours for the relevant server down to 10% for the lowest population time hours.
That way you don’t get a situation where suddenly the clock strikes 12:01am and suddenly points go down rapidly, but you also end up with a situation where capping at 5am gets you very limited rewards.
Using tornado in tpvp is ideal for throwing people off points such as clock tower to get the initial cap. Yes it makes you a giant target but the interrupts and knock backs make it very useful. If you are a glass cannon build you will likely get burst down but if you’re not (which you shouldn’t really be) you can survive 3 people bashing on you the entire duration and get out and heal once its done. It’s situational but point control and neutralization with tornado makes it a very powerful elite. Confusion just destroys is because it “cast abilities” so rapidly in comparison to any other player casting attacks
Right, and his point is that’s silly. Elite skills shouldn’t be 100% cancelled by one condition type.
Toughness also doesn’t work on condition damage. As a general statement, vitality is superior for most classes and most builds in most circumstances.
That said, it depends to a large extent on what your build is. For example, if you have a water/arcane build that is heavy on clearing conditions and healing, toughness is weighed more highly because you don’t have to worry about condition damage nearly as much.
Yep. You can put two of the same type to stack twice as fast, but unless you’re getting downed a lot it’s better to pick one stacking buff and one passive for your offhand. 5% damage is an obvious choice for a lot of classes, although it’s questionable for ele because it doesn’t modify condition damage.
Not going 30 arcane is really shooting yourself in the foot with a water build. A large portion of your healing and condition removal in water comes from switching to water and dodge rolling with the 30 point talent. Take those away and you are much, much less effective. With 0 arcane you not only can’t dodge roll for a 1kish group heal plus condition removal every 10 seconds, you also are locked out of water for much longer when you switch (which you should), meaning you can only get the group heal + condition removal on attune about half as much. Overall your healing goes down by over half.
My current build is 0/10/15/15/30. The only thing I think is questionable is the 10 air. I do it for the 20% off gylphs, because I tend to use the heal glyph, glyph of storms (usually earth) and often the elemental glyphs. 20% off your main heal in particular is pretty huge and vastly increases your survivability.
You could also take the points out of earth and put them in water, either 5 or the whole 15. Going deeper into water does get you some stuff, particularly the talent that cures conditions when you put regen on someone, which combined with all the otehr condition cleansing makes you basically immune to condition damage builds. IMO though passing up 10 points in earth for earth armor at 50% is very hard to justify because it saves you so often.
(edited by Yukishiro.8792)
Moa morph is ridiculous. Otherwise mesmers are ok.
Tornado has one particular use in dungeons: it is a whirl finisher that lasts a really long time. If you have a team that can place lots of combo fields you can put out some ridiculous combos with it.
The original post made me cry. The idea that earth is the worst element and useless is crazy. Earth is one of the best elements in staff. Weakness on auto attack is great in a lot of situations. Eruption allows you to easily stack 14 stacks of bleed on a very large radius. Shockwave and the earth4 snare give you tremendous control.
Man I would love fighting a bunch of scrubs auto attacking the door. I can’t imagine a better setup for soloing a whole zerg.
What is wrong with you people? let others play their class like they seem fit.
If i want to play 30 fire 30 air no survival and only stay in fire then so be it.
This doesn’t have to mean they are downed all the time.
Through smart play and positioning it’s well possible to stay alive in dungeons.Stop forcing your opinion on others, it’s annoying, especially through ingame messaging (wtf?)
If you’re grouped with someone who is constantly dying because they spec only for damage and refuse to switch attunements it would be pretty weird if you DIDN’T call them out on it.
They should definitely all be tied onto one “glyph of weapon summoning” that reacts based on your current attunement.
Lol stacking 12 stacks of might is like a 20% damage bonus, not a 100% damage bonus.
D/D in explore mode just doesn’t work well. It is one of those things that seems like it should work in theory but in practice it is just not worth the headache. You will spend far more time downed that can possibily be justified.
For explore mode dungeons staff support is really by far the most viable ele spec. Mainly because it’s the only one that offers something another class can’t do better and more easily.
S/D is easier and much more viable in harder content (dungeons, PVP).
D/D works fine for leveling but the problem you encounter in harder content is that you are range locked in a way no other class in the game is. If you get into a situation where you need ranged attacks…you just die. There’s nothing you can do.
Yeah on JQ when you are on a wall you are pretty much getting constantly blown up by siege. I can’t remember the last time I got to sit on a wall freecasting for more than 3-5 seconds without getting plinked by someone or something.
The long lockout when you switch attunements is puzzling as a design choice
in Elementalist
Posted by: Yukishiro.8792
There is nothing wrong with that, and that doesn’t mean you should never switch to water/air when playing simply because their damage isn’t uber (this is especially true in a group setting).
Uh but that’s the whole point. You SHOULD switch to water and air, but there’s hardly ever any reason to STAY in water and air for more than 3-5 seconds tops. At the moment water and air seem to be designed to go into them briefly for specific control abilities before rapidly shifting out of them again. With that kind of design in practice you have only two “full” elements comparable to the weapons other classes get. A 15 second switch timer feels meaninglessly punitive in that context.
Right now if you use staff 20-30 arcane feels 100% mandatory. That just seems like bad design.
I don’t know what game you play but on JQ when I’m sitting on a wall it’s pretty rare to be sitting at 90%+ hp for any length of time. Maybe your server gets pitted against people who don’t use siege weaposn or take so long to target you that you can sit there dropping spells on them and not get targeted but my experience has been it doesn’t happen much.
I mean I guess you could put on earth reflect shield and sit there for 5 seconds or so. I hadn’t really thought about that much. It seems awfully situational though to justify the extra 5 points. But I will grant in that specific situation it might be worthwhile.
The point is ele doesn’t come behind when the player is good. A good player on an ele will do about as well as a good player on another class.
The problem with ele is the skill floor – the minimum amount of skill needed to do well – is much higher than most other classes. It isn’t an issue of being underpowered, it’s an issue of it being too hard for bad players to do well.
The passive healing on healing signet is pathetic except in D/D and so is the active healing. I use the glyph for healing. It heals for more overall and gives you a useful boon.
The long lockout when you switch attunements is puzzling as a design choice
in Elementalist
Posted by: Yukishiro.8792
@Yukishiro The same is true of the staff. Any of the 4 attunements are viable to stay in for an extended time if you’re traited for that attunement.
No, no they arn’t. Water and air are vastly, vastly inferior to fire and earth no matter how you spec. If you sit in either for more than 3-5 seconds you’re doing something wrong 95% of the time.
When you run staff you have two primary elements and two utility elements. The 15 second timer is meaninglessly punitive.
If they want to make all the elements viable that’d be different but right now the 15 second timer is too long when in reality you only have 2 elements that are fully fleshed out and 2 that are just for utility.
Underwater, water attunement is the only one that is worth akitten Just stay in it pretty much 100% of the time. Switching loses you dps because the other three are so bad.
Please reduce the power of orbs or remove them before 1 week matches.
in WvW
Posted by: Yukishiro.8792
Orbs are terribly broken. The buff needs to be something that doesn’t add combat effectiveness, or does so in a very minor way. The buffs are just too huge.
How they ever made it into the game with their current effects is a puzzle.
You don’t do it for the +toughness. You do it for the armor of earth at 50% and the aoe cripple. It doesn’t seem like the 3 second pbaoe cripple is a huge deal but I find it actually makes a big difference in my survivability.
But yes if you already have 15 points in earth there isn’t much point going beyond that for a survivability build either.
I guess I can see 20 points in water possibly but I definitely wouldn’t do more than that.
(edited by Yukishiro.8792)
Staff is 2handed.
I would gear for power and/or condition. Elementalist survivability is more active than passive. The reason to spec into earth/water isn’t so much for the +vitality or toughness as it is for some of the survivability traits.
The long lockout when you switch attunements is puzzling as a design choice
in Elementalist
Posted by: Yukishiro.8792
It sounds like you’re talking about D/D. Your comments don’t really apply to staff, where it is most apparent because staff has more different sets of skills on each attunement than D/D or S/D.
Anyhow I just dont’ see a good justification for making the lockout time as long as it is. It doesn’t seem like it really enhances the strategy. It just punishes you needlessly for switching to another element for one particular skill.
If they want the long timers they ought to balance elements better. Right now for most ele builds fire and earth get 90% of the uptime and air and water are basically only used for specific abilities. If they want the long lockout timers they need to make air and water more viable to sit in for more than 1-2 seconds at a time.
If they are hard to play compared to other classes wouldn’t that make them under powered? If they have to work so much harder to achieve the same result?
No. It means they’re hard to play. That doesn’t mean they’re underpowered when played decently. It certainly does mean a bad elementalist is underpowered compared to a bad warrior or guardian or ranger.
Uh what? Ele can farm faster than practically anyone else with the right setup.
What is the right setup?
You can AOE farm with several builds. Scepter/dagger is probably the easiest, but staff works well too. You can even do it with dagger but it is definitely harder than the other two.
Basically you collect 5-8 melee mobs, gather them up, glyph of storms earth + the relevant earth AOE attacks then switch to fire and drop your fire AOE attacks. You can burn down 5-8 mobs in about 5-10 seconds.
D/D is very weak against multiple ranged mobs honestly. If you are fighting in an area with lots of ranged I would suggest switching to staff. Earth 3 is massively useful in that context.
If you open with eruption——>shockwave——->earth 3 at max range then switch to fire and use fire 3 and just move out of their range and let them get dotted to death that is usually the safest way to go. You can lay down ground aoes as you back up for some extra damage. As with anything earth glyph of storms helps here too.
15 into water is what you want. Beyond that is not worth it. The heal on switch to water is the best thing you get from speccing into water. Beyond that the returns are not worth it and the points would be better spent in arcane or earth.
Also it’s kind of depressing when everyone around you is killing twice as fast, and die half as much.
Uh what? Ele can farm faster than practically anyone else with the right setup.
I like having builds that don’t require you put 30 points into an element. I don’t think I’d like a revision that made going 30 points into an element mandatory.
That said, ele traits in general are definitely underwhelming and could do with an across the board boost in effectiveness.
The long lockout when you switch attunements is puzzling as a design choice
in Elementalist
Posted by: Yukishiro.8792
It seems obvious that elementalists are meant to be played by cycling through elements. But if that’s the case, why make 20+ points in arcane pretty much mandatory just to get the cycle timers down to a reasonable level?
I think the class would really be improved by reducing the timer on cycling to the same 7 second cooldown as weapon swapping. Swapping attunements shouldn’t be something players feel like they can’t afford to do because getting back to fire takes too long and lowers their DPS by too much in the meantime. I can understand the logic of having some lockout timer, but the current one feels punitively long if the class design is based on swapping, as it certainly seems to be.
Tornado is amazing, but it has to be coordinate with the group. It is a VERY LONG whirlwind finisher, if your group stack combon field under you during the duration it can be a tide turner.
Yeah this is the best use for it. If you can get people to drop 4-5 fields under you you can do some pretty ridiculous stuff with tornado. But that level of coordination is extremely hard to pull off anywhere but maybe a dungeon.
D/D is kinda the weakest for this honestly. You have better overall damage but your ability to put out one decisive burst combo is way less than scepter/d, primarily because fire 2 and 3 in scepter is SO powerful for burst.
I didn’t read the whole thread but the reason you see that isn’t that ele are underpowered but that they are hard to play and therefore most ele are very bad.
I would hesitate to take an unknown ele on my dungeon run too. Not because the class is a handicap but because the PLAYER will probably be a handicap.
Any moron can play a warrior or guardian fine. It takes a certain amount of knowledge and ability to play an elementalist in a dungeon and not end up being a liability.
It also doesn’t help that staff support is the most viable dungeon build but staff support requires the REST of your team to know how to play WITH the spec to get the most out of it.
Basically ele are just really unfriendly to noob pickup groups so it’s no surprise people stay away from them in the noob pickup context.
(edited by Yukishiro.8792)
I was damage dealer in our guild group that flew you through the instance, you should be grateful for the quick xp instead of bashing my play style first in game and now on the forums.
I am entirely geared for power, preci and critical damage = damage dealer. Switching attunement only reduces my damage since even with autoattack I’m doing atleast double the damage than in any other attunement(splash damage, traits for fire).
For survival I’m using lightning flash, burning retreat and signet of restoration and those are usually enough when I’m not getting one or two shotted by dungeon mobs. Prolly going a bit more survival oriented gear would be better for the overall damage output, but switching water with 0 healing or any other attunement is waste of time and damage.
Well if you were downed multiple times without switching attunements that is probably a pretty good clue you weren’t doing enough to stay alive. Being downed = dps goes down by 95% at least. Not very good for your dps.
Also discounting the damage available in earth is pretty silly. On almost all weapon combos earth has some serious damage capability, either direct or condition or both. It also combos naturally with fire.
Because all the traits help only 1 attunement. So it’s worthless to switch to another attunement since you’ll get more damage staying in one.
Better just stay in fire if you have 30 points in fire since you get +20% damage from 10% trait and 2x 5% on burning. No real reason to go to earth since you will just reduce your damage by doing so.
No you won’t. This thinking comes from the error of thinking the traits actually matter much like they do on other classes. But on ele traits are extremely underwhelming. The most effective damage build is fire/earth anyhow so you should be losing negligble damage even from traits.
It’s a great idea, fairly well known by now, but there’s an issue with this whole thing. It doesn’t synergize well with MF gear which is Power/Precision. MF gear is good for getting better drops when you’re… yep, farming.
Yep this is the big problem. Although honestly it still does so much damage it doesn’t really matter even when you’re geared power/precision instead of +condition.
Also scepter in particular has enough straight damage that it works fine with power/precision. Staff is a little more iffy because a larger % of the damage is condition damage.
I mean, it’s true that you could do a lot more damage, particularly in staff, if there was +condition +MF gear. But if the mobs are dead anyhow does it really matter that you could have killed them 1.5x over?
If you are required to attunment dance to be good...(LONG)
in Elementalist
Posted by: Yukishiro.8792
Didn’t read whole thread but just don’t worry much about traits on ele. They’re almost all completly underwhelming anyhow. You have to swap to make the class work because the abilities you need to do anything are spread across all 4.
Ele depend less on traits than any other class. Just pretty much pretend like they don’t even exist and then they become small little bonuses instead of gamechangers.
It’s a bummer that trait builds are so irrelevant on ele but it’s just a fact. Most people go at least 20 into arcane because it’s the only line that has decent traits that augment the class as a whole, and the reduced reset time after switching hugely enhances your ability to attunement dance.
Same can be done in staff. Ele are definitely good at AOE farming.
Elites are definitely a weak part of the class – along with traits. Many other classes have gamechanging traits and elite skills. For ele they are all pretty underwhelming.
The most viable ele build for tough content right now is staff support and for that the greatsword can be good because the build lacks good damage that doesn’t come from ground target effects. But as an elite skill it is rather disappointing.
Air is utility right now, not DPS. It doesn’t have solid DPS on any weapon. Fire always wins no matter what choices you make, in every situation, by a significant margin.
Air is currently not designed as a primary attunement but something you switch into periodically for the utility.
I typically use it and water as switch-through elements. Fire and earth are without a doubt more effective as your primary elements, on basically every possible weapon combo.
The elementalist’s traits and elites are lacking. Their damage isn’t as high as other professions, or when it is, it comes at a much greater sacrifice. Attunement dancing makes elementalists hard to play, but it doesn’t offers them any inherit advantage over other professions. Yes, it’s a requirement for you to not suck, but that’s it. It’s even hard to argue that elementalists are more versatile, because elementalist’s skills have high recharges, are simpler than other professions’ skills, and the profession is stuck into one range.
There’s a reason for why the elementalists with the most success are all Staff support. A lot of CC and combo fields there, enough distance, no need to rely on their lacking damage.
I don’t think elementalists need drastic changes, but they’re clearly lacking in many aspects. When you create the profession with the worst passive defense in the game, giving it skills so you can be as defensive as any other profession won’t be enough. Elementalists are currently jack-of-all-trades, master of none.
This is all completely right. Right now the only thing Ele offers that other classes don’t do better is staff support because staff ele is the only weapon that offers anywhere near that number of combo fields. I enjoy my staff support ele a lot but there should be other viable options and right now there really arn’t for harder (dungeon, PVP) content.
A lot of the problem is that scepter/dagger, while powerful in general PVE, relies much too much on ground targeted skills with delays. This makes the spec vastly harder to use in situations where the margin for error is very low.
The other big problem is being locked into one range makes D/D borderline suicidal for harder content. The risk of going D/D is vastly higher than the risk for any other class of going melee range, but the rewards arn’t any higher than other classes.
Ele right now really have only one good build for harder (i.e., PVP or dungeon) content: staff support/aoe.
That one build is perfectly fine when played right: in dungeons, basically as a combo field creator to set up combos for the rest of your team, and in wvwvw, you just sit back and create lots of AOEs to put pressure on the zerg.
The problem is that none of the other builds work very well. They basically all require more effort for the same result you get on another class from pressing 2 or 3 buttons while running in circles.
In particular the lack of being able to switch ranges like literally every other class can is crippling in harder PVE content and PVP content. It is a large part of what forces people into staff support because when you can’t switch to a longer ranged weapon your only real choice is to pick the longest ranged one.
If you’re going to be running around in a lower level zone just find a merchant and buy the appropriate tier. There are so many merchants scattered around that it is easy enough to do.
The PvE aspect does not share this path. If a player just turned 80, he won’t be able to finish the high end instances like someone who already spent 100 hours getting his gear together to actually be able to beat those instances right? How is PvP any different based on this logic ?
Because PVP is against other players. A mob doesn’t get frustrated if he gets oneshot by your Magic Greatsword of Doom.
The idea that someone new to PVP should have to be repeatedly farmed by better geared players than him for weeks in order to become competitive is just stupid and bad design. It is amazing it has lasted as long as it has.
Your reward for spending more time in PVP is that you get better at PVP. If you can’t beat someone who just started PVPing 5 minutse ago after spending dozens of hours…you should take a look in the mirror because the problem isn’t with the game, it’s with you.
But yes, if you want gear-based PVP where you win just based on spending more time farming gear…this is not the game for you and you should quit now.
Get a rifle, circle strafe in melee, use active dodging, abuse greatsword abilities 2 and 3. Hundred blades stops people being hit from attacking you a lot of the time, and greatsword ability 3 will send you past them so they can’t hit you. The only time you should ever not be circle strafing is when you’re using hundred blades.
Warrior is one of the easiest classes in the game to level with. If you are having trouble that doesn’t bode well for your ability to succeed at this game.