Guild Wars 2

Shifu.4321:

Warriors will give up the ability to solo AC, but in exchange they also get the healing capabilities of an elem.

Deal?

Give us the 9k damage abilities you have on a 6 sec cd and we eles will gladly give you the 3 1.4k heals we have, but we have to drop your base HP to 13k hp to compensate.

Wethospu.6437:

What about the huge disparity when some classes do huge damage by reflecting hard-hitting projectiles back (including negating that damage)?
Sure, we can base our whole balance how well classes do against burrows in path 1 (I can tell you how it goes with Warrior: barely).
Or we could ask why is PvE designed like this? Why monsters are passive and dumb? Why don’t they dodge, move out of AoEs, etc? Why CC is so worthless? Why only basic survivability is usually more than enough? Why combo-fields still suck? Why conditions still suck?
I’m honestly interested trying other classes but I simply can’t endure leveling/gearing progress.
And yeah I’m ok with reducing Warrior damage.

When I bring an ele or guardian to the group, reflection is not even necessary because I can give the group high uptimes of protection and regen alongside aoe offheals. The guardian even gives group aegis.

Reflection is heavily overrated in groups where having a guardian/bunker ele lets the group soak boatloads of damage.

And reflection isn’t up every 6 seconds. 100b is.

P.S. This kind of support is reliant on the utter inability to deal any decent damage. DD specced eles and guardians will lack such support ability, and for all in their investment into berserker gear and jewelry they will not come close to half of a warrior’s damage.

On the other hand, a warrior is not only capable of going damage, but he can build a shouts heal shield warrior with pretty strong group heals and condition removal, on top of bringing banners that give warrior-exclusive group stat boosts (I don’t know of any other class that can boost a group’s base stats with their utility skills). He can build to support rather well. Viable, flexible builds that other classes don’t get to have because their damage is crap by comparison on offensive specs.

It’d be pretty wrong if you could hold a point against a necro laying out full aoe and his teammate — they’d be useless if they couldn’t force a single guardian off point. The suggestion is to have a teammate come help; all ti takes is a fellow ele to throw some healing on you and you’ll be fine. Or have a mesmer pull off the necro with Into The Void.

I know being a bunker guardian gives people the impression that they should be able to keep the point from God, but that’s really not how the game should play. It’s OK to hold a point against a single player, but not against many.

Teammates need to CC for you to land your stuff; scepter works best in a team.

Been following since your Matchless Gaming youtube video on Guru ;p

Interesting to see your evolution and time playing scepter/dagger when d/d is so popular. Wish they’d buff the sustained damage of scepter and reduce delay of Dragon Tooth and Shatterstone — would make it such a more enjoyable weapon to use.

Anastasis.7258:

I have no idea why so many people are saying some classes op oP OP… Just in my opinion, if you got your butt kicked by some others classes, that doesn’t mean that that class is op. I believe that Anet already did the best on balancing each classes’ ability. For the conclusion, I believe that if your PvP controlling skills has reached a good stage, you will not complain about which profession is OP anymore.

Tarcis Rhapsodos.

This strawman is not useful at all. Keep these out of my thread; guru is a good place if you want to trash talk people.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

What are the times to clear/kill times compared to your warrior.

Puandro was most likely faster considering that weth’s run is made of joint clips. Plus, ele has no issues whatsoever with burrows. Yes, he kills mobs slower but make up in other departments.

In AC, where burrows feature prominently the department may seem important. In dungeons where mobs feature prominently, not so much.

Puandro played flawlessly, but not as a d/d ele clear. He had to use staff most of the time because otherwise he’d be taking many dirtnaps.

You underestimate the power of Lava font on mobs, Lava Font + Fireball > DD in terms of DPS.

I’m talking melee capability; I don’t think anyone questions the efficacy of the fire staff. And lava font works when mobs aren’t moving out of it so often. The Butcher in hotw is a good example of a mob that will be horrible for scepter and staff specs but much better for d/d.

Of course, aoe is king in PvE at the moment. They will be nerfing that. Single target Lightning Whip with fury up is our best single target dps imo.

Snow Leopard as well, considering mesmer stealth and slipperiness.

I want green moas and skelk as pets.

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

What are the times to clear/kill times compared to your warrior.

Puandro was most likely faster considering that weth’s run is made of joint clips. Plus, ele has no issues whatsoever with burrows. Yes, he kills mobs slower but make up in other departments.

In AC, where burrows feature prominently the department may seem important. In dungeons where mobs feature prominently, not so much.

Puandro played flawlessly, but not as a d/d ele clear. He had to use staff most of the time because otherwise he’d be taking many dirtnaps.

Laxuar.3504:

Great post, i wish to write like you ç_ç.

I don’t agree with your idea to buff arcane shield because i’m afraid that mist form plus an other strong defence like it would be too tank.

I think the elementalist need a buff for the chance to do some damage. But it need a nerf on this build because it tank like a guardian but with the half of equip in defence. He can use valkirye, sigil of bloodlust and sigil of battle that mean a lot of damage.

But I nerfed mist form already in my suggestion. At 2 secs immunity and then 3 attacks blocked. That’s not significantly better to shield stance and endure pain, on a class with far less HP and even less armor.

And you can disable mist form from channeling a stomp while in the form, just like disabling stealth stomping. Both are deeply disliked mechanics because stomping should have a risk investment, and shadow refuge/mist form/rampant stability availability remove those risk investments that SHOULD exist.

You have to take the changes in view with the nerf to boons and runes that would happen, because the ele will become decidedly squishier, and under my changes to mist form it would neither have the long stalling it used to have, so less bunkering ability. It would just allow for more build variety by giving him the tools to not die the moment he steps out of the door because he didn’t go bunker spec (and I encourage people to play a 13k hp class with 75 sec cd stunbreakers and 916 toughness against current teams with backstab thieves and mesmers; it’s not fun).

LiuK.5741:

D/d is not op.
Well is op in the current meta because d/d is the counter to glass thief and shatter mesmer. Almost all team run thief and mesmer so… btw its more op s/d
And i agree about protection. 33% its too strong. 25% would be better

D/D is op, like most bunkers are OP atm. They can still be good offensively while becoming unkillable without a necro around to convert boons at the right time or 2 high DPS players focusing a bunker.

Any bunker is a counter to thieves/shatter mesmer, not just d/d. It’s why you see them as a necessity, because otherwise games would just be about who got in the first few strikes and CC and killed the other players in 4 seconds flat with the current damage in the game.

You don’t see any balanced builds in the game for the very reason that balanced stats are not enough to survive glass cannon builds and cannot kill bunkers. So right now the game is very polarized.

The build needs a nerf, my main is an ele, who happens to play a much weaker scepter/dagger simply because d/d bunker feels cheesy and for mostly aesthetic reasons as well. So let’s get that “you’re biased against eles” crap out of the way.

I know d/d ele will get nerfed, but I would like to point out that necessarily it is not the weaponset or the spec that needs nerfing (besides excessive condition removal from water traits).

1) Boons are too strong. Stability and protection in particular; when you put stability aoe like the guardian can on extremely high damage dealing classes like the warrior or thief or mesmer, this is basically extreme unavoidable damage. The stability durations are too long and it should not be something you can hand out in AoE. Same goes for Protection, which my ele and other guardians can easily provide for teammates at too high a rate.

Put time warp and aoe stability together, and it’s outright ridiculous.

2)Boons are too accessible and only countered steadily by a necro and to a lesser extent a mesmer. Corrupt Boon and mesmer shatter boon removal cannot compete either with the rate at which guardians and eles renew boons by the bunch.

3)Boon duration stacking runes synergize too well with boon duration traitlines like Arcana

The build you see is the culmination of really poor innate ele survivability. Any builds that don’t heavily invest in Water traits or arcana will be 2/3-shot in the current state of burst by the very fact that the ele starts at 13k hp without heavy investment in defensive traits and gear, and our stun breakers are all in rather high cooldowns, some nearly double of my mesmer’s stunbreaker cooldowns. An ele’s burst delivery, unlike mesmer or warrior or thief is delivered piecemiel via chaining highly telegraphed skills, whereas something like blurred frenzy>shatter or steal>cnd/backstab, frenzy>100b is so much more immediate and cannot be stalled. Simply put, a burst specced ele cannot exist in a meta where other classes can deliver the burst more reliably and shut down the ele by virtue of higher healthpool/defensive utility that can be used offensively on shorter cooldowns (the only defensive utility that can be used offensively as far as I see on the ele is Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth, both of which have >75 sec cd’s, versus Blurred Frenzy and Stealth bursting’s much lesser cooldowns).

You will simply not see any d/d or scepter builds that don’t have points in water or arcana, simply because eles need to exploit the OP state of boons like protection and stability to have any chance at staying active among enemy warriors and thieves and mesmers. Unlike a warrior (or thief or mesmer with high avoidance skills that can be used offensively duch as stealth detargeting or immunities), an ele cannot spec for berserker or power/prec builds. Condition builds are weak in the game unless you can spread aoe conditions ala Epidemic for pressure — condition builds will never compete single target with burst builds’ sustained damage in the current state of the game.

So, before you consider touching actual weaponskills or utilities, you might look to removing boon duration runes or making the rune bonus effects non-stacking (so you can’t use 2 sup water and 2 sup monk and 2 major water in wvw and to a lesser extent something similar in spvp), and touching the defensive boons like protection and stability in how accessible they are to the guardian and elementalist.

You may want to do something like making boon duration traitlines not stack with gear, because the fact is that bunker builds are abusing these features, and guardians/ele the most since they have such ample access to boons that completely put them above the other classes in staying power while losing not so much offense because might stacking is so effective in the same build.

P.S. Find me an ele who isn’t using Mist Form. Not only because you can channel abilities through it, but simpyl because it is the only real defensive ability that buys you time to recover and bide someone’s burst sequence in a way the other stunbreakers cannot. Perhaps you should consider making Arcane Shield another stunbreaker to compete with Mist Form. And once you nerf boon durations and stacking on ele bunkers, look at their base health and stunbreaker cooldowns.

P.S.S. A way to fix mist form to not be so dominant is to shorten the cooldown to 30 seconds but make the mist only last 2 seconds. You should also halve the cooldown of Arcane Shield without any nerfs to it (it never warranted such a high cd), and for Armor of Earth you could bring the cooldown to 35-40 seconds and lessen the duration of stability.

Probably took much longer than the warrior, and as the video displays most of it had to be carried out in range. No melee in full berserker for large parts of the time like with a warrior.

Well done nevertheless. You just can’t conclude that because of this video warriors are not god of damage in PvE.

This ele had 3055 HP, the warrior over 4k plus the armor difference. And in what part of this video, on a character downscaled to lv35, did you ever see this ele hitting with a skill for 9k damage, let alone half of that. Fire Grab is 45 sec cd vs. 6 sec 100b and doesn’t even hit for half the damage 100b does.

What are the times to clear/kill times compared to your warrior.

You know, not everyone has full boon duration runes or Zephyr’s Boon. Some people spec for something more than OP d/d bunker.

Easier than a thief? More frontload than a thief? Hell no.

The only thing ele has over thief is aoe damage/support and bunker ability. Thief is pretty good still; bunkers are just dumb good in a conquest format with classes that can 3-shot nonbunkers.

1-Will legendaries like Meteorologicus and Minstrel receive aura/footstep/animation updates?

2-What are your plans for current lodestones like Charged Lodestones?

3- Any goodies for the ranger, necro, scepter ele and scepter mesmer?

Warriors still do sustained damage. It’s in their absurd autoattack crits. Especially axe/axe warrior sustained damage.

I know you like the class; so do I! I still roam wvw on this class, but I have other classes as well. And it’s obvious the only reason I play on this class is for the flavor and clearly not the strength, because when you see the numbers of your other classes, you realize how low ranger numbers are.

And don’t think me a damage nut. I’d love to be able to run spirit support builds as well, but I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon at the rate of class changes they implement. Prior to game release, they said they would diligently balance classes and would have the tools to quickly implement changes. Post-release, you see tweaks at best every 2-3 months, no better than the other MMO competition.

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

I’m not going survival build on neither my mesmer or ele…. full berserker/ruby jewelry with ruby orbs and offensive traits.

You try playing a 13k hp ele with 916 toughness and come back and tell me you do the same numbers of this warrior sustained.

I am, but thanks for persuading me to try. If you would want to discuss that, pm me. That’s not a topic for it.

Nice, I await the video

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

He’s an awesome players, but other classes can’t do this simply because of the vast damage potential differences. You gear a ranger or ele the same way and see if you can pull these numbers off and sustain such damage. You can’t.

Why? It’s not just 100b; warrior autoattacks dwarf the damage of other classes’ autoattacks. I WISH my mesmer or ele could consistently crit with autoattacks for the same number warriors do, but they don’t. And the fact is a higher hp pool and highest armor rating allows you to dish out defense for a longer time before needing to turn defensive.

Higher hp classes allow for berserker gearing while lower health classes take much more risk. In fractals above 20 ascalonian mages can easily 2 shot someone under 15k health, as can the ascalonian warrior autoattacks (not just the easily dodged charge).

If you’re using survival build, why would you expect to deal similiar damage with autoattacks as someone who uses full zerker exotic/ascended with ruby orbs and 20/30/0/0/20 traits? He got 0 defensive traits/items. My ele deals some decent damage, 2x(2-2.5k) with air autoattacks d/d with some stacks of might when they crit, and they crit pretty often.

I’m not going survival build on neither my mesmer or ele…. full berserker/ruby jewelry with ruby orbs and offensive traits.

You try playing a 13k hp ele with 916 toughness and come back and tell me you do the same numbers of this warrior sustained. You simply need to back out much quicker, and the fact that you need to back out/go defensive means your damage drops while the same warrior can stay in for longer maximizing his damage.

I’m waiting for the videos of full berserker rangers, eles, and mesmers pulling the same numbers this warrior does.

He’s an awesome player, but other classes can’t do this simply because of the vast damage potential differences. You gear a ranger or ele the same way and see if you can pull these numbers off and sustain such damage. You can’t.

Why? It’s not just 100b; warrior autoattacks dwarf the damage of other classes’ autoattacks. I WISH my mesmer or ele could consistently crit with autoattacks for the same number warriors do, but they don’t. And the fact is a higher hp pool and highest armor rating allows you to dish out defense for a longer time before needing to turn defensive.

Higher hp classes allow for berserker gearing while lower health classes take much more risk. In fractals above 20 ascalonian mages can easily 2 shot someone under 15k health, as can the ascalonian warrior autoattacks (not just the easily dodged charge).

There is a reason why you see water/arcana d/d bunker eles but now 30 trait point fire/air/earth in full berserker gear. And the reason is HP/armor levels.

typingofthedead.5614:

Zenith.7301:

Please address ranger-exclusive utility to a group or a group support area where the ranger excels in a way no other class does. Whate is the ranger’s version of portal, aoe stability, marks/corrupt boon, cc bunker, etc?

well for starters, rangers are prolly the best rezzers/stompers with all their access to on demand quickness/stability/invulnerability (and stealth on cc if traited)

they have access to an incredible amount of spammable AOE cc/area denial through traps/muddy terrain / entangle/barrage.

we offer a lot of pressure with a bit of burst potential, with a ton of customization over how we do damage (access to all the dps conditions thru you/your pet, can choose burst pets or buffing pets, etc). it makes us a lot more flexible with the shifting meta

healing spring is one of the rare water fields in game. (esp since eles dont staff much anymore)

hrmm, you can contribute to a middle fight with with your pet while guarding back point.

our bunker builds actually do some damage as well as cc if you go traps

lots of access to chill which is an underrate condition.

i’m not saying we;re perfect, but we have a niche… and u CAN spec offense (can easily get my SB autoattack to do upwards of 1200 per crits on squishy targets. that adds up quick with quickness and pet damage). it does lay down a ton of hurt, its just more sustain than bursty. and you just need to play more reactive to stay alive, using evades/position/snares

You are seriously listing an elite as your reason to be the best stomper/rezzer? You do realize that necros with signet of undeath exist, right? So, right there, you are not the best rezzer in game. For stomping, sorry, warrior and mesmer both have stability and quickness; the mesmer even has stealth. And if you want to touch on elites, Mesmer Time Warp makes mass stomping and rezzing a breeze.

Neither traps nor muddy terrain nor barrage compare to engineer aoe cc, let alone a hammer warrior. Knockdowns/stuns/knockbacks/daze>>>>>snare.

Burst? What are you smoking, you mean waiting for a raven f2, assuming your pet can stay on a target when you need it to land? I can’t believe you’re comparing ranger burst to thief, mesmer, or warrior burst. Or ranger condition damage to engineer and thief and necro condi damage.

It’s not just fine for the ranger to be OK while other classes are great. Classes don’t operate on a vacuum. Maybe we’re not broken in many aspects engineers are (they’re basically only good for cc bunkering and most of their skills are broken), but to say that we may be a bit better off than at least engineers is not something to boast.

They saddled this class with a pet, and released it knowing very well that it would take them 4-5 months to actually get it working above mediocre. How you can saddle a class with a main mechanic that is a handicap for such periods of time is crazy.

A pet that doesn’t scale at all — no food buff gains, no stat inheritance from your gear. If you want it to be decent, put 30 in BM or the pet is just bad. And the fact remains that regardless of your gear progress or access to boons, a third of your damage (the pet) is not scaling like a class whose entire damage/survival is entirely focused on themselves is scaling.

Scaling is a huge issue that has reared its ugly head in every MMO and needed to be addressed at some point to not disadvantage pet classes.

Yasha.5963:

Zenith.7301:

mjharrison.3209:

D/d ele is hard countered by ranged that can apply any of cripple/chill/immob/stun. Stop being bad.

You mean the cripple you can remove with water attunement?

Because I want you to list the ranged classes that have immob besides the engineer. The ranger doesn’t (if you take a kittenty pet, the f2 activation is literally 2 seconds, way too late), the thief doesn’t, the mesmer doesn’t, the warrior doesn’t, and scepter eles don’t.

So, who has it? Guardian, class that can’t do crap for damage so it doesn’t threaten an ele. Engineer, who people barely play. Staff ele, which will never in the world do damage that a d/d bunker ele can’t outheal.

Traited warrior, warrior longbow, scepter ele, guardian utility, ranger SB has a stun/daze (1 sec), ranger muddy terrain can immobolize if you time it right, thief as various options in traits or through venom for immobolize and stun; just off the top of my head. However, when you are basically immune to conditions like some d/d ele builds, it matters little.

What warrior uses longbow in PvP. What ranger uses Muddy Terrain in PvP. Scepter ele does not have an immobilize — that’s dagger/dagger ele’s earth attunement #3.

You have options, yes, about as much an option a mesmer has with using the garbage weapon — scepter. Classes won’t bother to bring one subpar utility skill or trait just to try to counter one class spec.

And, yeah, it does matter little with the condi removal on the ele. But this is not unique to him. Guardians are also pretty ridiculous — and you want to know the common culprit that makes these classes OP? Boon stacking. When only two classes, and only one reliably (necro), can counter boonstacking in this game, we’ve got a problem.

The longbow is kittening horrible outside sniping from towers. WHY would I ever bother using one.

mjharrison.3209:

D/d ele is hard countered by ranged that can apply any of cripple/chill/immob/stun. Stop being bad.

You mean the cripple you can remove with water attunement?

Because I want you to list the ranged classes that have immob besides the engineer. The ranger doesn’t (if you take a kittenty pet, the f2 activation is literally 2 seconds, way too late), the thief doesn’t, the mesmer doesn’t, the warrior doesn’t, and scepter eles don’t.

So, who has it? Guardian, class that can’t do crap for damage so it doesn’t threaten an ele. Engineer, who people barely play. Staff ele, which will never in the world do damage that a d/d bunker ele can’t outheal.

Nier.2478:

The main point is if you can deal sustained DPS whether be it AoE or single target, then you shouldn’t be able to stack HEALING.

Why the hell is double Warrior not cheese but double Ele is? Because a good Ele’s mobility can’t be impaired. Not to mention the HEAL STACKING is ridiculous. Warriors can stack condition cleanse via Warhorn, but Ele’s can be ten folds better simply because they stack BOTH healing and condition removal. Don’t even get me started on the fact that Ele has more reliable DPS due to the fact that THEIR MOBILITY CAN NOT BE IMPAIRED.

Why the hell is double Thief not cheese but double Ele is? Because Thieves are actually vulnerable to AoE, let alone the fact that they don’t AoE better. Ele’s can also trade hits with AoE because they provide AoE AND stack team sustain on top of it.

Keep dreaming. Double thief/warrior/mesmer is just as much cheese as double ele. Instead of cc’ing and wearin someone down, they instagib them with burst.

Great, best way to fix RNG? Add more RNG instances of course. At least those who don’t randomly get gifted 200-470 gold will be able to buy their precursors for 150-250g instead if this follows the same road as the karka event!

Make random people rich — make others with equal effort spent grinding the gold and give their gold to people with lucky drops who didn’t have to grind said gold. How fun.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Because GW1 had 99% of its content instanced and could easily support a single data center for all players in towns, whereas it’s totally different in GW2 with very little content being instanced.

The reason people wanted guesting was for dungeons and fractals to begin with, which are instanced zones. WvW was already offlimits, so the only group content left that people really wanted group forming versatility with was dungeons.

Yup, CC on an engineer or warrior is MUCH better. Of all things to complain about overly strong bunker eles, this is not it.

I hope you realize that the reason many people looked to guesting was for group finding purposes in slower hours on each region…

If I on a EU player was playing at later hours, finding fractals and dungeon groups even on gw2lfg was pretty much impossible, while the NA page would stay full and vice versa.

This guesting would change nothing. If I invite friends to play guild wars 2, they already had the option of a free transfer to my server.

This makes NO sense. In GW1 I was able to play with whomever I pleased and had a full pool of people to choose to play with.

Choops.3710:

DaShi.1368:

Then they should look at the Guardian and the ele. Those are required classes. By giving every class portal the only change you make is to remove the mesmer from the match. People still aren’t going to want engineers, warriors, or necros. They’ll want thieves, guardians, and eles who can now port. They will be even less diversity.

All I see from your posts here is “remove the mesmer from tPvP.” We get it. You hate the profession.

I think this is one of those ‘you see what you want to see’ sort of moments. The OP has been polite, respectful and intelligent with his responses but it keeps going back to the plight of mesmers. Get over yourselves, he makes good points, no one wants to remove mesmers from the game, we just want to make it so they’re not required for tournaments. What’s wrong with that? A good player will have a spot, mesmer or not.

No. When it comes to spots, you take a kitten guardian and ele. Eles and guardians in a conquest mode are not “optional”.

Kasama.8941:

This is what I’ve been saying all along in all the “portal is OP” topics: Share the skill on more then the Mesmer. Players aren’t really mad about the skill, but the exclusiveness of it. I would love to see the Engineer have some kind of personal catapult turret, that works like a portal like Jump Shot. Then just watch players fly all over the place!

And then you have a class with way more CC than the mesmer, that is great at bunkering, completely replacing the mesmer because the mesmer has nothing to offer to a group other than his damage and portal.

Necros remove boons much more easily. ele/engi/warrior cc much better. Warrior and thief do better damage, especially sustained. guardians and eles tank and boon up the best.

Mesmers are brought for shatter spec and portal. Take either of those away and nobody will bring a mesmer because the other classes can fulfill other tasks better.

They just need to limit the people that can be portaled in spvp to the mesmer and one more person and deny any more portaling after that.

Why not explore such currency rewards for metaevent bosses and particularly the dragons? 45 minutes spent fighting a huge dragon only to receive 4 obsolete blue pieces and two also obsolete green crests.

Looking at removing blues/greens at levels where people reliably have rares or exotics and looking at conversion for lower tier crafting mats to be equivalently rewarding as t5/6 is a good suggestion as well. Nobody cares about destroyer slivers because the longevity of lv30 crafted rares does not compare to the longevity of lv80 gear.

You might also want to tie in the storyline completion to the legendary. The GW2 story in this game feels completely optional and I could experience most of the game without knowing the background or significance of Destiny’s Edge or the struggle with Zhaitan since most of the rewards are concentrated in farming areas and fractals — which don’t involve much story.

That was a whole lot of vague rambling posing as wisdom. I love these people who lecture and forget about referring to specifics.

Please address ranger-exclusive utility to a group or a group support area where the ranger excels in a way no other class does. Whate is the ranger’s version of portal, aoe stability, marks/corrupt boon, cc bunker, etc?

If you’ll just keep hiding behind accusations of those who don’t share your viewpoint as “inexperienced”, feel free to leave the thread — you have nothing constructive to offer other than making assumptions about people you’ve never played with. Telling people L2P is not useful in the slightest and it is never appropriate in any thread.

The problem with the scepter is its sustained damage. It’s awful, and most importantly outside Dragon Tooth/Phoenix all your damage is single target.

They need to fix the #1 skills for the scepter, and by fix I mean straight out buff their damage (the fire skill needs a good direct damage portion; the rest need their numbers tweaked up and Shatterstone/DT with halved delay before detonation and for Shatterstone to do more damage, while earth and air #3 skills should cleave/aoe).

If the scepter is to stay mostly a single target weapon, then its damage needs to reflect that investment and be higher than weapons with plenty of aoe capacity.

Will the reward scheme account for the current state of these items? I know many are fine, but charged lodestones certainly aren’t at 3.7-4g a piece. What will you do to make prices and investments more reasonable?

What will you do for one-handed legendaries vs. two-handed legendaries as the BiS system kicks in? People used the same resources to craft both legendaries, but one will occupy all slots worth of BiS whereas the one-hander/offhand will need to grind ascended for its complementary non-legendary.

teviko.6049:

Zenith.7301:

I don’t need a build against backstab thieves. All it requires is a stunbreaker and predicting the steal/cod.

What I need a build for is to actually play an offensively traited/geared ranger in close quarters combat or skirmishes with the same effectiveness and group utility of other classes; which just doesn’t exist.

And the fact is that a ranger brings nothing close to the utility of portals, marks, shadow refuge, aoe/single target frontloaded spike, bubbles, warding lines, group stability, group protection, boons in general, let alone aoe blind/weakness. It brings nothing that another class couldn’t do better.

Stop giving me selfish builds you think do well in 1v1 bunker scenarios or standing in a tower shooting at people (I’ll just pop down a ballista and do much more with it).

Selfish?? SELFISH?

You, sir, will not be pleased unless people agree with your little tantrum and give in to wailing and gnashing of your teeth about the injustices you feel are inherent to this class.

Have you bothered to look into the build? It’s quite powerful, AND you CAN be in close quarter conbat, quite effectively.

Maybe, if you understood more about your class, this might be a different discussion. Traps can bring a whole level of control other classes can’t achieve, and this build…well, since you don’t understand the power of the ranger, it is of no use to discuss this with you.

LOL traps bring control other classes can’t achieve. Try a staff necro or hammer warrior or engineer before you feel like hurling some other lie in this thread.

100b can easily hit 16-18k; your 10k chrning earth is nothing — 100b can be reduced to a fraction of the cd fire grab and churning earth have so it’s far more spammable massive damage.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Zenith.7301:

Why are people attacking your phantasm?

Phantasms in a phantasm build hurt very badly, as well as having very low hp. If you have the spike damage, it is extremely advisable to wipe them out quickly instead of letting them chew on you.

Edit: Also aoes/bouncing attacks will hit phantasms one way or another.

Or, you can easily dodge the phantasm’s attacks.

Why are people attacking your phantasm?

Turbo Whale.1738:

D/D eles solo champs by sitting there and making sure every single weapon skill and attunement is on cooldown. Not that hard.

Who cares if you can solo champs — my mesmer can solo champs, as can my ranger and any decent warrior with a rifle and greatsword.

I bet you I can solo that champion on my mesmer or warrior FASTER, because the simple truth is I got kittenloads more sustained damage.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Zenith.7301:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

it’s called balance.

with my build, i have 20k+hp, just one cantrip in my utility (okay sometimes two), and decent amount of toughness, heals for a crapload, and stacks 18-25 might in one rotation to deal some serious damage. i’m no pro, but with this setup, it makes me feel like one. an ele’s hp is the least of your worries my friend.

And that’s the only build eles can take, which you seemed to miss the point on.

Points on Arcana and Water are NOT optional in pvp. Boon duration boosting runes are NOT optional in pvp.

You can’t build a full berserker ele in pvp without being heavy on cantrips. And guess what? Every ele and his mother is running cantrips because they are NOT optional utilities as a result of crappy baseline survivability.

Try running a full glyphs berserker ele and see where that gets you. Try running conjures. Try running 30/fire/30 air or anything with lower than 10 points in arcana and water.

Regarding your argument, i can say that people choose not to go full Fire/Air spec is because the risk/reward is a joke. What i meant to say is increasing ele’s hp pool will still not make Fire and Air trees viable since the traits are just very underwhelming compared to the Water and Arcana traitlines. This is not the solution we are looking for, IMHO. I think it will only worsen the problem on bunker builds for eles. I believe same goes for other utilities in a way. I don’t use glyphs, signets, and conjures not because I have low hp hence I must always bring the “oh crap” utilities but because these other utilities are just not that worth it at the moment. Maybe if some traits in Air and Fire, heck even Earth, like those in line with certain utilities in that aspect were to be imrpoved, only then will we see some other viable or unique builds. Ones in which I can sacrifice my already crappy survivability, i.e. not slotting three cantrips, and choose to fill those slots with utilities which are actually useful.

No, you bring that cantrip and trait into water/arcana because otherwise a cloak&dagger+steal will 2-shot you at 13-14k hp, as will a mesmer shatter or a frenzy 100b.

Guess what? All our shorter cd stunbreakers are cantrips, with armor of earth having a monstrous cooldown compared to, say, my mesmer’s 32 sec stunbreaker cd.

Even if you could increase ele damage by 100% people would still not run the builds because mesmers and thieves and warriors can burst you before you can burst them, anytime. Immunities via Frenzy/Distortion/instant MI shatters, stealth and teleports, stuns and immobilize with haste. You would die before you could even go into an Updraft>Burning Speed>Firegrab combo.

They have means to mitigate your burst on their core weapon utilities and avoidance mechanics/base hp, whereas outside mist form you do not.

It’s the same reason burst rangers and necros are garbage (besides the horrible damage they do) — they cannot land burst in safety or heavily control the target to assure the delivery of burst while avoiding any burst themselves. Their burst is not instant, and both can’t remain offensive while using defensive measures (which blurred frenzy/distorion, stealth, and warrior high base health and armor allow them to do).

I don’t need a build against backstab thieves. All it requires is a stunbreaker and predicting the steal/cod.

What I need a build for is to actually play an offensively traited/geared ranger in close quarters combat or skirmishes with the same effectiveness and group utility of other classes; which just doesn’t exist.

And the fact is that a ranger brings nothing close to the utility of portals, marks, shadow refuge, aoe/single target frontloaded spike, bubbles, warding lines, group stability, group protection, boons in general, let alone aoe blind/weakness. It brings nothing that another class couldn’t do better.

Stop giving me selfish builds you think do well in 1v1 bunker scenarios or standing in a tower shooting at people (I’ll just pop down a ballista and do much more with it).

They are only valued because of wells, mark fear/chill, and corrupt boon.

Nobody wants a scepter necromancer, a dagger necromancer, or an axe necromancer. They want a necromancer who uses a staff and debunkers. Not for his superb damage (it’s actually terrible; a warrior will do in 3 seconds what it takes you to do in 10). Not for his superb control (engineer, ele, and guardian both trump that).

It’s because boons are OP, and besides the mesmer the necro is the only class that can remove boons (and the class that does it most efficiently).

Gallrvaghn.4921:

it’s called balance.

with my build, i have 20k+hp, just one cantrip in my utility (okay sometimes two), and decent amount of toughness, heals for a crapload, and stacks 18-25 might in one rotation to deal some serious damage. i’m no pro, but with this setup, it makes me feel like one. an ele’s hp is the least of your worries my friend.

And that’s the only build eles can take, which you seemed to miss the point on.

Points on Arcana and Water are NOT optional in pvp. Boon duration boosting runes are NOT optional in pvp.

You can’t build a full berserker ele in pvp without being heavy on cantrips. And guess what? Every ele and his mother is running cantrips because they are NOT optional utilities as a result of crappy baseline survivability.

Try running a full glyphs berserker ele and see where that gets you. Try running conjures. Try running 30/fire/30 air or anything with lower than 10 points in arcana and water.

Greatsword is even easier to kite than mainhand sword; what are people thinking? You have the entirely avoidable swoop and a longwinded sword throw that can also be easily dodged.

With the mainhand sword, you get double pounce, plus your autoattack chain keeps you on the target even should they snare you.

Ok, what about WvW where people can get critdmg to 110.

Amulets and runes in spvp are rather inflexible. It is one thing to fight an ele in spvp with no access to 2 sup mon, 2 sup water, 2 major water; it is another to thing to do so in WvW. Same for thieves and warriors — the synergy of ruby/berserker gear in WvW skews things and outcomes in spvp might be different than wvw duels for that very reason.

jaif.3518:

Pet switching should spawn the pet AT the opponent, not at you. The cooldown should stay at 15 sec even on pet death.

This has to be a joke. I use this aspect of pet switching constantly to save my pet from dying. It’s awesome….heck, it’s borderline broken it’s so useful.

…

And in pvp it’s useless considering your pet has to trek all its way to the opponent again. It’s 1/3 to 1/2 of your damage not being on target for several seconds.

F2 activation needs to be instant or close to phantasm attack speed (0.25 sec). The pet must not be rooted for it.

Pet switching should spawn the pet AT the opponent, not at you. The cooldown should stay at 15 sec even on pet death.

Pets should have the 30% movement speed trait as baseline to make up for their poor uptime, since they don’t constantly remove cripples or chills from aoe.

Sol.4310:

I’m just bored with the ranger. So sick of being my attacks being single target.

We need some major improvements to AoE, as WvW is mainly who has the most AoE in team fights win.

Rangers do well at duelling but if you fight a ranger 1v1 its whoever has the most bunker, not who has the most skill.

I wish we could use Hammer and bring out new bow that deals AoE damage. Just stupid how our AoE is Barrage and traps they are not viable in WvW. I wouldn’t call swords/GS as aoe there damage is no way near on par with every other class in terms of damage output.

Rangers have become boring.

And any ranger having problems in PvP, run a bunker ranger at least 900 Healing.You get to watch your pets do all the damage.

Well, that’s the issue. It pays to be a bunker, because the ranger side of the equation is so weak relative to the crappy AI beefed up BM pet, so since your offense as the ranger is negligible, you might as well build to last long enough for the pet to autoattack something to death.

This class I feel is held back outside a bunker BM+WS tough/condi build because its damage is staggered.

The damage itself from weapons is so kitten poor, and the damage from pets when specced into BM is good, but it’s not frontloaded like warrior/mesmer/ele damage.

So you rely on your pet to deal most of the damage, except your pet can’t frontload damage like other classes, and so you must build bunker to not be a sitting duck to other classes as your pet wears them down.

I feel like I have no real power/prec/critdmg builds, and for the bunker condi damage build, I’m stacking toughness primarily anyways and condition damage is secondary.

Tried a pow/tough/vit build; it was horrible. D/D ele comes in WvW, my attacks barely scrape him, and at a moderate 1800 toughness I still die in about 8-10 seconds. Shortbow does no damage, sword does no damage to him.

If I play tough/condi bunker BM build, yes, odds are I’ll win or make him run away alongside most toons except perhaps a mesmer. But that’s because the long game favors the garbage pet and its terrible ai/mobility we have as we stack regen.

But using a kitten bow or anything outside axe/torch/sword/dagger is a good way to lose, as is having less than 2k toughness and traits on both BM, NM, and WS.

Please buff our base weapon damage. It’s horrible.