Guild Wars 2

Lendruil.9061:

Zenith.7301:

Lendruil.9061:

Zenith.7301:

TheFamster.7806:

Zenith.7301:

You know, it’s kinda cute to see all these random people coming in to tell one of the guys who cleared Vale in less than an hour and part of a cross-game top raiding guild that they don’t understand ele if they think eles are a low utility class.

It’s so adorably but hopelessly clueless. And the lack of official support for metrics has allowed these people to flourish.

lol so cute to see that you think clearing vale in less than an hour is an impressive fit. Most of the raiding guilds at least the decent ones are clearing it within an hour easily including downtime and trash runs without using condi warriors. If twitch didn’t delete videos you can go to any top guild stream and see that they have cleared Vale easily within 50 minutes starting.

Also if you are in top guild you should know each guild has at least 1 member who is in charge of spreadsheet of various builds and classes. I guess ignorance is bliss because it allows people to speak out regardless of factual information.

Not a very smart post. I’m talking about DnT’s first public clear. You know, the one that got their privilege revoked because it made it seem like the raids were too easy (which they are relative to other games, yet they still got punished and hated on publicly).

When they did that first public clear in less than an hour every other guild still took several more to clear it.

Next time try to at least have some modicum of awareness before hitting the submit button.

Yeah well but the other guilds also didn’t have time in advance for testing the raid, so next time try to at least have some modicum of awareness before hitting the submit button.

There were more beta guilds than just DnT. Given that it was a closed beta, have some modicum of awareness yourself about NDA and what we know they got and didn’t get to test.

Besides, their public first clear was with a comp that isn’t even the speed comp of today.

If you feel so sour about accomplishments accorded to them, how about bringing up your cross—gaming credentials? What other MMO’s have you gotten world firsts and achieved top ranked parses? What do you have to offer that allows you to say DnT isn’t qualified to state with authority that ele is a 100% DPS class?

I don’t know why you get offensive now, in my post I didn’t say any rating about DnT, I only said that it’s not impressive to have a fast “first” clear, when you could already test the content beforehand. This was actually the reason why DnT said in their reddit post that it’s not an “official” world first. And afaik there was only one more beta testing guild.
Also I didn’t say anything about ele’s dps so i don’t know why you come up with that.

I’m saying it because that was the point I was addressing in my post before someone chimed in to say that a <1hr clear time was not a qualifier for saying that someone doesn’t know how an elementalist plays. Yet somehow you chose to nitpick about beta, as if we didn’t see the raid release experience with squad problems on day 1 and unavailability so for all we know they were beta testing content that was just as bugged/unstable, and downplayed their clear time on a class comp that wasn’t even fully optimized. And they can’t even comment on it because of the NDA. So let’s not pretend like they had weeks worth of practice when we don’t even know how and when testing was offered and in what form it was.

So let’s reiterate the point I was making in case people still miss it: it’s dumb for people (not saying you personally said this, just other posters)with no credentials to come in and tell Nike that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he calls the ele a 100% dps class. Feelings for DnT aside, it’s just dumb to have so many posters acting indignant as if he said something horribly ignorant when DnT much like rT are one of the primary producers and shapers of the meta and clearly have invested enough in the game to know what they’re talking about.

If it makes it any better, I fully concede that the post you responded to may have been insensitive to the accomplishments of the official world first guilds, and I did not mean to downplay their feats, just highlight that DnT is not an inaccurate/unreliable source for class assessments.

Hell, if you or any former members of KING decided to chime in on class balancing and perspectives and some random people came in to imply that you’re ignorant and don’t know what you’re talking about, I probably would have made the same remark.

Lendruil.9061:

Zenith.7301:

TheFamster.7806:

Zenith.7301:

You know, it’s kinda cute to see all these random people coming in to tell one of the guys who cleared Vale in less than an hour and part of a cross-game top raiding guild that they don’t understand ele if they think eles are a low utility class.

It’s so adorably but hopelessly clueless. And the lack of official support for metrics has allowed these people to flourish.

lol so cute to see that you think clearing vale in less than an hour is an impressive fit. Most of the raiding guilds at least the decent ones are clearing it within an hour easily including downtime and trash runs without using condi warriors. If twitch didn’t delete videos you can go to any top guild stream and see that they have cleared Vale easily within 50 minutes starting.

Also if you are in top guild you should know each guild has at least 1 member who is in charge of spreadsheet of various builds and classes. I guess ignorance is bliss because it allows people to speak out regardless of factual information.

Not a very smart post. I’m talking about DnT’s first public clear. You know, the one that got their privilege revoked because it made it seem like the raids were too easy (which they are relative to other games, yet they still got punished and hated on publicly).

When they did that first public clear in less than an hour every other guild still took several more to clear it.

Next time try to at least have some modicum of awareness before hitting the submit button.

Yeah well but the other guilds also didn’t have time in advance for testing the raid, so next time try to at least have some modicum of awareness before hitting the submit button.

There were more beta guilds than just DnT. Given that it was a closed beta, have some modicum of awareness yourself about NDA and what we know they got and didn’t get to test.

Besides, their public first clear was with a comp that isn’t even the speed comp of today.

If you feel so sour about accomplishments accorded to them, how about bringing up your cross—gaming credentials? What other MMO’s have you gotten world firsts and achieved top ranked parses? What do you have to offer that allows you to say DnT isn’t qualified to state with authority that ele is a 100% DPS class?

TheFamster.7806:

Zenith.7301:

You know, it’s kinda cute to see all these random people coming in to tell one of the guys who cleared Vale in less than an hour and part of a cross-game top raiding guild that they don’t understand ele if they think eles are a low utility class.

It’s so adorably but hopelessly clueless. And the lack of official support for metrics has allowed these people to flourish.

lol so cute to see that you think clearing vale in less than an hour is an impressive fit. Most of the raiding guilds at least the decent ones are clearing it within an hour easily including downtime and trash runs without using condi warriors. If twitch didn’t delete videos you can go to any top guild stream and see that they have cleared Vale easily within 50 minutes starting.

Also if you are in top guild you should know each guild has at least 1 member who is in charge of spreadsheet of various builds and classes. I guess ignorance is bliss because it allows people to speak out regardless of factual information.

Not a very smart post. I’m talking about DnT’s first public clear. You know, the one that got their privilege revoked because it made it seem like the raids were too easy (which they are relative to other games, yet they still got punished and hated on publicly).

When they did that first public clear in less than an hour every other guild still took several more to clear it.

Next time try to at least have some modicum of awareness before hitting the submit button.

Azukas.1426:

Rome.7124:

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

Seriously everyone needs to stop thier kittening. Since June 23rd every big patch has made us top dog in this game.

Haha what?

Azukas.1426:

Think about the actual classes that are hurting (warrior/thief).

You mean the ones that are described as getting multiple substantial buffs in the preview?

I’m thinking your version of reality needs a second opinion.

No multiple substantial buffs were revealed. Stop with the drama. I mean someone stated that thieves will wreck us just by clicking on our names again….seriously they discussed buffing AAs….

The most alarming thing I saw was the buffing of necro/druid. Not feeling that but we’ll see.

So just cut it out and let’s see what happens.

Anet hasnt had good track record when it comes to Mesmers, you cant blame us for feeling negative. ANd I think you are underestimate how much “buffs” thieves will receive.

I’m calling it, Mesmers and Revenants will be nerfed out of meta.

Please name this track record that anet has.

As for thief the preview literally said auto attacks and acrobatics. Could there be more? Maybe but we don’t know.

Considering autoattacks constitute the majority of DPS of many classes, including the revenant’s broken kitten DPS autoattack (which is getting nerfed thank god), I don’t see how you can wave off autoattack increases.

Classes whose majority of competitive DPS comes from auto:

1- Revenant
2- Ranger mainhand sword (their only viable and very flawed weapon)
3- Condi necro, dagger necro, Reaper before 50% health Gravedigger spam.
4- Guardian
5- Staff daredevil
6- Dagger ele with lightning whip

In fact, most of the DPS inbalance in PvE in this game comes from the vast disparity in autoattack potency across the classes.

Please let my kittening signet of spite passive work on DS, thx.

Make Chruning Earth work like Dragon Tooth. You drop it below you, and it detonates on its own after the delay instead of self-stunning yourself for a ridiculously long cast that never lands on anybody with a brain and is a DPS loss in PvE.

Reduce the cd of fire grab down to 25 secs base. I don’t understand how something that barely does the damage of a warrior’s eviscerate and requires the target to have a condition on them has such a hideously long cooldown when backstabds can be done every 6 seconds and hit for more.

Make Warhorn’s lightning orb a stationary cast that damages the enemies in its range. Make the water field on warhorn targetable as well, its moving nature helps no one.

Warhorn’s Fire Sync needs to be un-nerfed, fire 5 needs its power scaling buffed so the pulses on a power spec are worthwhile.

Warhorn’s earth 4 needs to give the magnetic aura not only to yourself, but allies. Earth 5 should also apply weakening/cripple pulses.

Air 4 for warhorn should pull the targets to you and travel faster.

If the shouts stay as is, they need to have their cd lowered. Fire aura should be looked at, it’s worthless getting hit for a third of your health only to proc a single stack of might.

Water Overload needs to pulse out healing outwards, clear conditions on pulse, and give vigor at its burst.

The trait for stability on overload cast needs to give 2-3 stacks of stability with a duration of 4 seconds.

Swiftness on overload cast is worthless considering swapping to air attunement already gives you swiftness and swiftness is such a saturated boon across classes. Switch it so after successfully casting an overload allies gain 2 seconds of quickness.

The warhorn trait should reduce warhorn and overload cooldowns by 20% on top of what it already does to become attractive compared to heals on aura.

Buffbot class gets its buffs nerfed and its most pathetic weapon slightly buffed (inconsequential because any condi weapon that has no burning is a worthless condi set as burning is the bulk of competitive condi DPS).

Who’s surprised, PvP balance still drives balance decisions at the expense of PvE.

You would think that instead of thief autoattacks, which already do 30-40% more damage than mesmer mainhand sword autoattacks (its strongest DPS weapon), it would be the mesmer and ranger and elementalist water/earth attunements getting their pitiful autoattacks looked at.

But nope, they’re deadset on once again making thieves kings of damage, and guess what’s gonna happen. Replace eles/revenants with thieves.

There’s no bigger asset to a group than DPS, they’ve virtually learned nothing.

You know, it’s kinda cute to see all these random people coming in to tell one of the guys who cleared Vale in less than an hour and part of a cross-game top raiding guild that they don’t understand ele if they think eles are a low utility class.

It’s so adorably but hopelessly clueless. And the lack of official support for metrics has allowed these people to flourish.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

NikeEU.7690:

ODB.6891:

I agree with you that class A appears to be more powerful in both scenarios…primarily because the utility of class B needs to be improved in both scenarios.

Thanks to competitive PVE records/tournaments we have kinda proven the theory that specialists are better than jack of all trades in regards to min/maxed parties. Engie is the classic 70/70/70/70 class in your example with ele being the low utility 100% dps. Which one proved to be more popular in record runs and tournaments? Ele by far.

Refreshing boons, best healer in the game, 20 stacks of might, pera fury, aura sharing, infinite fire fields… darn ele’s and their lack of utility!

Best healer? What are you smoking. 20 stacks of might? Revenant and Mesmer already got might and fury covered. Auras beside frost are not that good in PvE, and who needs the infinite fire fields when might is taken care of already.

Ele’s have redundant utility, not exclusive utility like Revenant facets and Assassin’s Presence or Spotter or Empower Allies or Alacrity or Quickness sharing or boon strip or reflection/absorption. Their utility is easily replaced, and if their DPS is ever not the top they’ll just be replaced by the highest DPS class with exclusive utility and without the downside of 10k base hp and light armor.

What’s more, you seem to not realize the fundamental difference between DPS, utility/support, defense, and healing.

Of all those mentioned above, ONLY DPS is never superfluous. You bring only enough utility/healing/defense as needed to not die in the encounter, but after reaching that threshold you maximize DPS. Look at records and optimized runs, they always aim to cut defense to gain offense.

And not just this game. WoW, Wildstar, FFXIV all these games with far superior raiding scenes and encounter design, and it’s the same. Teams look to cut tank/healers and add more DPS, and encourage their healers/tanks to find opportunities to DPS if not equip some DPS off pieces once they get comfortable with the encounter.

In any game where there’s an HP pool that needs to be depleted, the most important element will be damage. Damage reduces kill times, reducing windows of error, pushing difficult phases faster or skipping them altogether. A team that increasingly stacks damage improves its time and encounter experience. A team that cuts on its damage output finds a longer encounter with more chances to be overwhelmed.

People keep talking as this is a Berzerker elite spec issue, but it’s not.

It’s rather simple, Burning as a condition is way to good relative to the other conditions like bleed/poison/confusion/torment.

And so, classes with the best burning access also tend to make the best condi classes by far.

Just nerf burning and put some of that damage back into bleeding/poison/confusion/torment.

PvE class DPS balance in this game is still terrible and will continue to be, anyways. They only balance every other 4-6 months and at best they are slight tweaks, because they won’t split PvP/PvE balance.

PvE balance hasn’t even been done for over 3 years, why are people expecting any better now.

Look when zerker builds reigned. The difference between an ele/thief/warrior/engineer and ranger/mesmer/necro were vast. Of the ranger/mesmer/necro trio, only the necro got kind of a fix in their elite specs.

Mesmers and rangers are still kitten DPS classes by comparison, and instead their elite spec pushed them to the niche roles of buffbot and healbot respectively.

Look at classes autoattack DPS differences for kitten’s sake, they’ve done nothing to fix the crappy autoattacks because they won’t split PvE from PvP. Mesmer autos still suck because of pvp whine. Necro axe auto didn’t get buffed to be on par with other classes’s ranged weapons, because of PvP reasons according to Robert Gee.

This game will be a joke of a balance state so long as they refuse to split PvE/PvP, balance autoattack damage numbers, and implement anemic balance tweaks drowned out by tool tip polish on such a long wait between balance patches.

People cried about melee being good in dungeons/fractals and they made this one of the most anti-melee expansions with some mobs.

The Wyvern is a perfect example, as is that Vine boss that surrounds himself in a puddle of death-venom that heals him if anyone is on melee range.

The people telling you L2P are probably the ones camping ranged weapons in their zerg or running useless PVT gear being carried by zerkers with ranged weapons.

TLDR equip a ranged weapon and profit, zerg content is trash and not really balanced so just use other people as meat shields.

Fay.2357:

apharma.3741:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

blakdoxa.7520:

I don’t giving alacrity to the mesmer was the best idea either.
There ARE going to be more elite specs in the future and just HOW will Anet even begin to make another spec on par with chronomancer?
As some others mentions alacrity makes chronomancer one of the best supports, not to mention their ability to fulfill a tank role due to wells and continuum shift.
There’s only two possibilities I can think of: either chronomancer gets nerfed to the ground to make the upcoming spec more appealing (i.e. sell dat xpac) OR the new spec is so ridiculously op that chronomancer put on a shelf (i.e. power creep).

Believe me when I say there are going to be more nerfs.

Or the next elite brings mesmer damage on par with other classes. It’s not like raids are composed entirely of chronos.

I don’t want an elite spec to fix the problems with core mesmer. Elite specs should never fix massive glaring unintended weaknesses like huge dps ramp up times and a general lack of dps.

Though I must admit I find it hilarious when someone (not anyone in this thread) says mesmer dps is too high and should be nerfed.

Anyone remember the guangmath from before the spec patch that was vomiting crazy about how mesmer condie dps with pistol phantasms was going to be incredibly broken?

As frifox points out, and his comment also applied to AlphaWhite’s generous condi mesmer estimates, napkin math is one thing and it translating to game encounters is an entirely different beast.

Mesmers suffer the same thing rangers do. A large percentage of their damage does not benefit from runes or sigils (phantasms/pets) or food damage modifiers. Ascended upgrades don’t confer the same scaling benefits to AI classes as they do to classes whose entirety of damage comes from themselves.

And instead of fixing ranger and mesmer they chose to turn them into niche support classes instead. At least mesmer got the less garbage deal as they didn’t get forced to become a healer overnight to stay relevant to raids.

But both are buff/healbots.

3 years later the massive differences in DPS across classes still haven’t been fixed, and something as simple as balancing autoattack damag across classes hasn’t even been attempted since their rationale is to allow PvP “e-sports” to interfere with PvE balancing.

The obvious take is this game will never be taken seriously in PvE or PvP given the massive imbalances allowed to fester since developers will not balance them separately.

This game won’t have the WoW, Wildstar, or FFXIV raiding scene, nor will it have a serious PvP scene as a result of trying to straddle the middle line with both formats and dedicate as few resources and developers as possible to balancing the kitten game more than once every 4-6 months.

Not that it matters because the “big” patches they usually excuse the “quarterly” (more like half a year) wait for end up being mostly bug fixes/icon text polish with a few anemic tweaks to garbage traits/utilities.

Jski.6180:

Zenith.7301:

Jski.6180:

Zenith.7301:

Laraley.7695:

I think it’s hilarious mesmers have a trait that copies all boons on 30 sec cd, but Heat sync got nerfed cause apparently too strong.

Mesmers also have the lowest dps output in the game, you know below vanilla necro and ranger.

They are alacrity/quickness bots and if they lost either of those they would not be brought to raids, it’s not like people are stacking them like revenants and eles used to be so you’re whining about the wrong class.

But then again whining about mesmers seems to be the bandwagon of this year.

The thing is for ele to get heat sync you need to go down the tempest line and use an off hand of WH giving up the abitly to use any other off hand or staff the main power house of the ele class all for fury / might share something that ele / tempest can give out in large amounts with out giving up any thing. Mez just needs to slot a utility to get the abitly to use the strongest boon effect in the game.

A dagger/warhorn tempest still does far more DPS than mesmer. I don’t think you grasp how low sustained DPS for mesmer is.

Standard full damage phantasm, a build chronos can’t even run, was the highest mesmer dps build. It does a potential of 12-13k DPS. It’s that pitiful. It also doesn’t have much in the way of cleave, compoletely single target with iswordsman.

I main both ele and mesmer. Vastly different classes. In fractal 50 sometimes I could not even bring my mesmer because people would rather have a guardian who reflected just as well if not better and had similar quickness uptime. It wasn’t until chrono where a mesmer became desirable over guardian for content where using portals wasn’t a thing. Meanwhile my ele is always in demand.

And come this xpac ele is still in some demand, just not as much because Anet was happy to create a class even more OP, the Revenant and Engineer, who bring the damage of the ele but with far more survivability and unique group utility other than might and fury stacking.

So the truth is your complaints should be aimed at the utter dominance of revenants and engineers as DPS classes over a mesmer out of all things, who’s serving the role of a glorified buffbot.

This is not a question about the class over all its about the effects of boon shearing and how it simply brakes the game to have strong boon effect on a perma level. If you want to get into looking at a class over all we need to talk about cdr that mez has blunt doable effects the abitly to wepon swap and high level hp / armor / invariability up time for a mages class.

The game of GW2 is balanced arone the ideal that you cant have these boons up all the time and to have them up all the time will only lead to the boons them self getting nerfed into the ground. Quickness at one point was 100% speed up stab at one point had no charges system resistances is still to new to say what going to happen to that.
Its happened in the past and your and other ppl of mez unwillingness to gives up an know op effect will only harm the current effects of boons.

The thing is mez/chron has the abitly to give out these strong boons on its own with out boon share but its able to doable that out put due to its boon shearing copy what is on the mez/chron. Its ok for the class to have all of these boons its ok for a lot of classes but to have them at the duration level that a mez/chron can out put is inexcusable and border line exploitative.

According to you. Boons need to be nerfed anyways, the power of boons relative to conditions has been utterly lopsided since release. You cry about quickness/alacrity as if 25 stacks of might and perma fury and 50% increased boon duration for the group hadn’t been a game-breaking problem that has existed for 3 years.

And it’s cute you don’t want to deal with the overall picture, because the overall picture is HOW classes get balanced. Who cares if mesmers excel at boon share if their damage is abysmal, worse than a tempest ele wearing zealot armor or a tank revenant.

I’m all for nerfing alacrity/quickness as long as we nerf ele/revenant/engineer DPS down to the level of everybody else.

And we kill ele fire and water field monopoly. Persisting Flames, Glint revenant perma might/fury.

And meteor shower on large hitbox bosses as well.

Jski.6180:

Zenith.7301:

Laraley.7695:

I think it’s hilarious mesmers have a trait that copies all boons on 30 sec cd, but Heat sync got nerfed cause apparently too strong.

Mesmers also have the lowest dps output in the game, you know below vanilla necro and ranger.

They are alacrity/quickness bots and if they lost either of those they would not be brought to raids, it’s not like people are stacking them like revenants and eles used to be so you’re whining about the wrong class.

But then again whining about mesmers seems to be the bandwagon of this year.

The thing is for ele to get heat sync you need to go down the tempest line and use an off hand of WH giving up the abitly to use any other off hand or staff the main power house of the ele class all for fury / might share something that ele / tempest can give out in large amounts with out giving up any thing. Mez just needs to slot a utility to get the abitly to use the strongest boon effect in the game.

A dagger/warhorn tempest still does far more DPS than mesmer. I don’t think you grasp how low sustained DPS for mesmer is.

Standard full damage phantasm, a build chronos can’t even run, was the highest mesmer dps build. It does a potential of 12-13k DPS. It’s that pitiful. It also doesn’t have much in the way of cleave, compoletely single target with iswordsman.

I main both ele and mesmer. Vastly different classes. In fractal 50 sometimes I could not even bring my mesmer because people would rather have a guardian who reflected just as well if not better and had similar quickness uptime. It wasn’t until chrono where a mesmer became desirable over guardian for content where using portals wasn’t a thing. Meanwhile my ele is always in demand.

And come this xpac ele is still in some demand, just not as much because Anet was happy to create a class even more OP, the Revenant and Engineer, who bring the damage of the ele but with far more survivability and unique group utility other than might and fury stacking.

So the truth is your complaints should be aimed at the utter dominance of revenants and engineers as DPS classes over a mesmer out of all things, who’s serving the role of a glorified buffbot.

You remove alacrity as it currently is from mesmers, and they’ll be dropped from raids.

Mesmer is bar none the lowest DPS class ingame, if it can’t have the strongest utility there’s no point to having one.

Laraley.7695:

I think it’s hilarious mesmers have a trait that copies all boons on 30 sec cd, but Heat sync got nerfed cause apparently too strong.

Mesmers also have the lowest dps output in the game, you know below vanilla necro and ranger.

They are alacrity/quickness bots and if they lost either of those they would not be brought to raids, it’s not like people are stacking them like revenants and eles used to be so you’re whining about the wrong class.

But then again whining about mesmers seems to be the bandwagon of this year.

spoj.3175:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kucabara.9237:

ugh condi reaper so sad ;;
so useless ;;
so tanky ;;
DMG so low ;; http://i.imgur.com/dEAUvk4.gifv

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3uyisk/condition_reaper_crazy_damage_potential/?

#necrodrama2015

Based on your supplied video he does an average of 12-13k dps with 10s of burst that briefly tops 28k.

My ele does an average of 21k with bursts of nearly 40k dps.

Not entirely sure what your point is here? condition can do burst dps too with the right situation? If his group dps had been better (no reaper) they could have killed the add before sabetha got back and then he wouldn’t have even been able to do that with epidemic.

Overall not very impressed. People are too easily distracted by one or two large condition ticks and lose sight of the actual dps numbers over the fight. Another reason we need dps meters.

Try looking at it from the bigger picture. If a single necro can do that much damage consistently and burst that high occasionally. Then 2 necros with regular epidemic copies can create some very strong dps.

I was able to maintain 15k+ dps while doing the kiting role on Sabetha. That means i dont get quickness or alacrity and i often lack capped might. And i cant cast soul spiral unless its the champs or shes doing the fire wall. I was able to get 27k bleeds without epidemic the other day. It looked like it was because of a very convenient amount of jagged horrors getting healed and them all hitting the boss at the same time.

Epidemic has actually become a utility worth taking two necros for. And that will continue as long as future bosses have adds. Its just noone is really taking advantage of it because the top guilds have a shortage of necro players.

Either way its more than condi engi. Obviously condi tempest is pretty broken.

Correction, burning is pretty broken. Rest of tempest spec is pretty garbage from a holistic point of view. It’s a bit of an upgrade to vanilla staff ele on stationary, safe targets because of fire overload and that’s it.

The actual weaponset the elite spec was designed in mind with (dagger/warhorn) is absolute garbage. The Tempest traits are pretty terrible. It’s basically fire overload you’re taking tempest for.

I think Reaper is a far bigger upgrade on base necro than tempest is (although just like tempest reaper traits and shout utilities are pretty mediocre for pve).

It’s just that base necro is so bad that not even reaper can carry it to the hieght of ele/warrior/revenant.

But, hey, raids in GW2 were completed in a single day so it’s not like you’re dealing with actually hardcore content that requires stric optimized class compositions.

Necro is perfectly viable in raids, if a group is wiping it’s because the group is not executing the fight properly.

Hakuryuu.8634:

You’re complain about grinding for COMESTICS. They’re entirely optional, and no one force you to do so. No one is going to crap on you for not having one. You won’t die without it. You choose to commit to the grind yourself, and even though ANet has been a kitten lately, don’t stab yourself and blame it on them.

Nobody forces you to raid in WoW, the gear treadmill is also OPTIONAL, as is EVERYTHING IN A GAME.

It never ceases to surprise me that people think this a remotely smart argument to make.

Aomine.5012:

Zenith.7301:

PvP ignorance doesn’t seem to realize that the nerf to the skill in PvE comes from the CAST TIME.

PvE mobs strike a lot faster, harder, and with less telegraphs than player skills.

Increasing the cast time to 0.75 seconds makes this a pretty weak reactive tool to defend your team with as most boss/mob attack rates are below 0.75 seconds so you basically eat the attack before the cast is done.

I laugh out loud when I see that someone saying PVE mobs strike faster and less telegraphic than PVP. (They even have big wind-up or fixed CD timer/ rotation)

Sorry I really can’t keep on reading and take this seriously.

If you actually played fractal 50 before the expansion nuked fractal difficulty, you’d know mossman and archdiviner melee had autoattack swings with less than that cast time that hit light armor zerker for 7-10k damage.

But I suppose people have short memories and it seems like raids is all they think about now, even though it’s the least rewarding PvE content by far.

PvP ignorance doesn’t seem to realize that the nerf to the skill in PvE comes from the CAST TIME.

PvE mobs strike a lot faster, harder, and with less telegraphs than player skills.

Increasing the cast time to 0.75 seconds makes this a pretty weak reactive tool to defend your team with as most boss/mob attack rates are below 0.75 seconds so you basically eat the attack before the cast is done.

GLaDOS.5897:

Maybe faster to summon the 1st phantasm, but since it will be trickier to proc the block, so will be the summoning of the 2nd phantasm :/

Not really, PvE mobs attacks are plenty predictable and autoattacks/incidental damage is fairly easy to predict.

Will make large scale events like wyvern and Tangled Depths a lot worse though given our squishiness and how hard mobs hit.

But that’s more an issue with their garbage PvE design (not that the PvP is being handled any better, maybe in the next decade they’ll see the good in splitting PvE/PvP balance).

Well, for PvE it’s bittersweet (when do they ever split balance…), since it’s a nerf to the block but a buff to the phantasm ramp up as the phantasm will summon earlier.

Given the campaign at the SPVP subforums I see history repeating itself just as mesmers saw in Vanilla launch where it was a barrage of nerfs for pvp purposes until the class was crippled. Lots of bitter thieves/warriors angry about their time in the sun fading.

Thief doesn’t need the 1v1 back, they just need better teamfight presence and utility.

Nerf stealth, buff their innate survival with more damage reduction mechanisms that don’t come with the side benefit of large, spammable spike.

I mean, it’s not like rangers are doing well either. No, druids are not rangers, they are a completely separate healbot class that makes them give up their offensive capabilities (in which mesmers and thieves always eclipsed them).

Necro of course is out of meta as well, anybody could see it coming, when revenant is doing unrelenting assaults that hit for same or more damage than a Gravedigger with the added benefit of evade frames and a teleport to your target while having the strongest mainhand sword autoattack in the game. So power necro is a defenseless pinball with slow animations that are easy to dodge, and condi necro is totally eclipsed by condi engineer.

This game will never be balanced until they bother to split PvE/PvP balance and do balance passes more often than every 4-6 months.

You people are asking for nerfs to chrono, but if you nerf chrono no one will bring a mesmer to raids, because mesmers are already the LOWEST SUSTAINED DPS class in PvE, and the only reason to bring them is quickness and alacrity with continuum split, and if you nerf that and wells you might as well replace the chrono with guardians or more revenants.

It’s that simple. Hire more class developers because clearly you are undermanned on that front, SPLIT PVE/PVP balance, and do more meaningful balance patches more often.

Biggest problem is it excels at nothing. Virtually the only thing of note is the might/fury share, but why would you even need that when you have revenants and warriors farting out perma might/fury.

Defensively, the focus is better. Offensively, the dagger is better.

The warhorn also has no mobility whatsoever. You have no gap closers.

I’m also surprised sand squall doesn’t give reflection to all your allies as well.

Then there’s Wildfire, which does miserable damage and less burning than fire wall on focus.

More importantly, using warhorn involves using mainhand dagger, which is a far inferior weapon to staff in most content.

You basically only use dagger for spvp and duels. In group PvE and WvW, staff is supreme.

TexZero.7910:

SlyDevil.3952:

TexZero.7910:

That’s including the fact that this is under double rewards. So naturally we’d be getting 4 shards. Let that sink in real quick.

Only gold and xp is doubled, shards are consistent.

If that’s the case then i misread the blog.

Even still, i stand by the fact that for beating hard content getting 1 exotic and 1 rare + bags and 8 shards is rather lame. The option to purchase the cooler stuff is a nice feature, if only it was feasible to do in the same relative time as completing a full raid wing.

Of course it’s lame. It’s intended.

The whole reward scheme in this game is that of a Free 2 Play game, garbage baseline rewards to drive a gold-centric economy that encourages people to convert gems to gold.

Whatever is not accessible by gold is gated behind either large, time gated grinds or garbage RNG to keep you logged on to the game for a long time so you’re more likely to make gem store purchases.

I don’t know what you people were expecting of a game with no subscription model.

TerminalMontage.5693:

I beat Vale Guardian for the first time today, from the fails this week I accumulated 40 shards, and upon beating him I got.. 8? THAT’S IT? I was expecting, I dunno, at least 30 or so.

8 is abysmal. On top of my 1 exotic. It was really fun, and I wasn’t doing it for the rewards, but hearing the devs talk about great rewards in the streams and POI before HoT is a joke. I feel lied to.

Yeah, you kinda deserve it if by 3 years you still keep falling for Colin’s impish-faced hype.

This is how they function. Prior to a box sale all the devs show up and become active in the forums, along with the hype train. Balance changes happen every other weekend.

And then they get your money from the box sales and vanish to the nether. Nothing happens until every other 6 months, the exception being the gem store fashion tehy release every other week or month.

Scepter is a pvp weapon (and a mediocre one right now).

A weapon with garbage autoattacks (thus, garbage sustained damage) and no sustained cleave outside dragon’s tooth isn’t going to be good anywhere in PvE.

You could try scepter build to might stack and then use lightning hammer utility, but dagger builds can might stack as well and they are less risky to use since this game hates zerker ele melee in the jungle and dagger melee range is longer than lightning hammer.

And either way staff is better in PvE because these developers can’t even be bothered to balance PvE, where a ranged weapon outperforms a melee one.

Well, in 20 hours of practice Snow Crow beat Wing 1, so I don’t get how somehow that isn’t taken as a damaging statement to the reputation of raids considering that to clear a raid in any other MMO it has taken weeks to months. And those are figures not factoring gearing up, as the top guilds always clear the raids undergeared.

It’s no different from what DnT claimed in terms of speed. And quite frankly who cares how long it took to clear the first wing if they found it fun.

I still think penalizing and shaming an entire guild full of members for the lack of tact of a single guy and his tweets was beyond overkill.

spoj.9672:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Iris Ng.9845:

For once, I don’t mind another “Open World Boss guild” (like this one) to become a raid tester. At least they are openly honest about their skill level and genuinely excited about and committed to a challenge that it is refreshing to see their opinions on it.

Rather than some individuals think they are better than everyone else, but always try to taxi to the “Open World Boss Guild”- organizing maps to profit off others’ hard labor.

Just my two cents.

Also, congratulations to DnT for the world #first removal.

Iris, genuine excitement and happy faces do not help in testing a raid catered to the extreme and only the best players, does it?

The raid testing needs to be pushed to extremes, not to the happy middle ground. If the latter is the case, raids are just dungeons or high level fractals. And they were supposed to be something more.

Thats why they need to get another dedicated guild on track. I can’t suggest any names because I dont wanna discredit anyone I didnt mention. I know there are guilds in here more than capable of doing this.

I wouldnt regard DnT as a guild that can push extremes. They are the only NA guild though. So yeah….

While DnT faded from relevance in WoW shortly around the times of BC, the speed kill contained NoTrigger, who is known as the #1 Wildstar parser worldwide on Spellslinger and Esper.

You can’t ask for much, though, the top of the top are still at WoW due to the vitality of that game’s raid scene and financial support.

emikochan.8504:

With all the break bars the cripple pulse is actually quite useful.

If you’re gimping your DPS with this low DPS channel to apply the weakest form of degen to a breakbar…you’re doing it wrong.

Churning Earth simply needs to work like Dragon’s Tooth, create the aoe spell in the ground and erupt after as a fire and forget spell so the ele can do something else in the meantime.

It wouldn’t break it in PvP where it is still easily dodge, but it no longer gimps the elementalist and is actually usable in PvE.

Zanshin.5379:

Not only did they clear it first thanks to their weeks of testing and bragged about it on their website/twitter/reddit but they also took advantage of it by being able to sell the specific loot from the raid first, therefore setting their own price.

What a bunch of doochebags.

What a ridiculous post.

So, if they put in the effort to clear something, they should just let the items rot in their inventories out of “fairness”?

You do realize gold is of little consequence to these people, given if you check their videos each of them has every single legendary, multiple ascended sets of various stats, foods, and sigils.

These people are loaded, they made their money off TP trading long ago. They just stated for how much the mini sold in terms to give an impression of how good the loot was.

Since, you know, a huge complaint about this xpac is the garbage loot in most of the content.

butch.8136:

The only “bothersome” tweets are/were from their DnT twitter.

Things like: “After speed clearing the #GuildWars2 raid content in 15 minutes we’re attending the after-party sponsored by @mortonsalt. The loot is great.”

Might be the truth, but without any given (or just because of the) context it just doesn’t feel right.

I can tell you in 2-3 months not even the top 5 world guilds in WoW or FFXIV are speed clearing Mythic/Savage difficulty raids they have on farm status in just 15 minutes.

That’s not a problem with DnT, that’s a problem with Anet’s encounter design.

Hell, some WoW Mythic boss encounters last as long as 8-10 minutes, some even inching the 15 minute line.

Wildstar isn’t behind.

If DnT’s 15 minute clear statement is in fact truth, it does not remove the fact that a guild who has a raid in farm can clear a wing of a raid faster than running arah path 4 twice.

And Anet’s in a rut now, because if they change raids to increase difficulty/kill time, they are privileging the guilds who got the early clears over latecomers. So somebody’s gonna be kittened regardless.

Don’t see how this announcement is fruitful, you’re only inviting a deluge of sanctimonious white knights to join the cajoling. Especially given the bitterness involved by those not invited to test, people already had an axe to grind and you provided the pitchforks.

To me this visual culling is stupid.

In FFXIV, you have an option to cull OTHER PEOPLE’S EFFECTS, and leave yours intact.

Oh, quit whining. At least your meteors still nuke people for 4k+.

Try being a ranger with laughable 1-1.4k Barrage ticks that trigger even MORE retaliation so you take off maybe 20% of the melee train’s health in exchange for 60-70% of your health.

It’s so obvious you haven’t played greatsword mesmer or ranger if you think retal unfairly targets ele, at least you actually do damage while mesmer in WvW remains a portal/veil bot and rangers are stuck with single target DPS in a zerg format all about AoE.

Retal is the least of ele’s problem. Lack of build diversity and being pigeonholed into celestial because of terrible baseline survivability are far larger problems.

1) Be a high HP class like necro or warrior, or a high defenses class like Revenant/Engineer.

2) Make peace with the fact that elite/champ level and above many enemies you simply CANNOT melee.

3) If you are an elementalist or thief, bring your ranged weapon against vets/elites/champs/legendaries, you will likely be 1 shot in melee most of the time.

Low HP classes don’t melee very successfully against champs and above, or they have to equip soldiers/celestial sets to do so at the expense of DPS performance unlike necro/warrior.

To be honest what annoys me is that the expansion is essentially a package of group dynamic events grind.

There’s nothing else for PvE people who like instanced content.

Also, map completion is an absolute nightmare since it’s not possible to solo it anymore.

Try to solo Tangled Depths map completion, it’s a horrible labyrinth littered with groups of veteran mobs that might as well be elite. They just blow you up, so you don’t even want to explore the map or fight mobs, since it’s not uncommon for extra mobs to be constantly spawning in to explode you in a few hits.

So what do people do with most mobs? Run past them. Somebody gets downed? Keep running past, or you risk yourself getting 2-shot by some veteran mob while trying to rez the guy, only to be defeated and have to make another 10 minute run because all waypoints are so far from each other and often contested.

And, oh, the hero points require waiting for some time in groupfinder.

Points of interest are locked behind event chains, such as the Auric Basin with the cave you need to port to to rescue the Exalted guy from the champ.

Everything in these maps is a pack of lethal veterans or high hp high damage mobs that makes people want highly populated maps with activity so as to mitigate the obnoxious lethal mobs everywhere and quick respawn times.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Zenith.7301:

Inflating mob damage with poor telegraphs into 1-shot territory for low tier hp classes is not exactly “hard” content. If you can make content easier with gear swap that causes passive defense, it’s not exactly hard content.

Except it is.
Higher damage and worse telegraphs mean you need to do a much better job at reading the opponent and becoming familiar with them. Either you run the risk with paper defenses where things actually threaten you, or you find some way to reduce that threat. It’s certainly not the only way of increasing difficulty, but it definitely increases the difficulty and requires an improvement on mechanic mastery.
If it isn’t harder content a) what then is it exactly? b) what is harder content to you?

Harder content to me is content that demands tight execution. If I can mitigate it by throwing blinds and stacking aegis, it’s a joke.

The idea of real hard content would be Priestess of Dwayna, where people need to coordinate different tasks, or doing the dredge control room where people have to split off to the switches without using cheese objects like spy kits.

Naturally, GW2 is lacking on a lot of difficulty, and implements the age old lazy way of giving “difficulty” by making mobs HP sponges with inflated numbers that just encourage stacking something like reflects or blinds to trivialize.

Look up Wildstar’s Datascape, or even Genetic Archives. Look at the Blast Furnance in WoW or Blackhand Mythic or FFXIV’s Alexander Savage Floor 3.

Those are content with meaningful difficulty because the difficulty isn’t “more HP and damage”. There is a variety of extra complex tasks with tight checks and many critical points of failure. Tethers to be done correctly, aligning and splitting up at the right times, positioning mobs at certain distances from each other and coordinating teammates into handling each appropriately, responding to encounter specific debuffs and mechanisms.

GW2 has shown slight approaches to meaningful encounters with the first boss of the raid such as the lightning to be split across teammates and displacement orbs, but it’s a very slight mechanism compared to the raid design of many other MMO’s. Wildstar takes the cake by far, but few people know it due to the game’s population fail.

Aomine.5012:

Zenith.7301:

You cannot seriously compare HoT meta event mobs, many of whom have a breakbar making them immune to the blind spam that made fractal 50 easy, to fractal 50.

It’s just a terribly ignorant comparison.

Try doing overloads consistently on a dagger berzerker ele in HoT meta events and come back to me.

Hell try the Chalk Gerent or Vinetooth Prime as a berzerker dagger ele.

Since all these people in forums whined about melee, all we got in HoT is viciously antimelee mobs like Vinetooths and hammerheads and champ vines that lay a permanent lethal aoe so you can’t even melee them, most of this miserable content ends up with the DE zerglings camping ranged autoattacks.

lol. I think it’s either your skill issue or gear issue or trait issue.
HoT is not exactly “hard” compare to high level fractal with disgusting debuffs, (Cliff Side lv59 rings the bell)

I tried Earth Air Tempest, half marauder and the rest full zerk and can roam in HoT map with ease and still killing things very fast. In fact the survivability is much better than I originally anticipated. Long lasting protection, on demand stability/breakstun, high aoe damage, lots healing.

Honesntly speaking, unless you really really want to solo lots of Champions .(Which probably only ranger can do so), you should have no trouble surviving the jungle.

Hint: Why do you use a dagger against a stationary boss namely Chak Gerent?
The dps is LOWER than staff tempest, and staff tempest is safer to dps him too.
Also the fact that you bring out Chak Gerrent kinda make me laugh because Tempest is the most important dps cannon against it, otherwise the dps would not be enough and the event will fail. Yet you talk as if tempest is bad at doing Chak Gerent, even though it’s pretty much mandatory lol.

Because, as you mentioned, braindead staff is for people to spam lava font and fireball/meteor shower from safety.

Kinda laughable you would be lecturing people about skill when you yourself avoid challenging gameplay by camping ranged weapons. Kinda like a bearbow ranger telling people they must suck because they can’t solo champions relying on the crutch of a bear grabbing aggro while they fire safely from range (and if they somehow manage to mess that up, there’s always #3 for stealth to reset or reposition to safety).

I play dagger because quite frankly staff ele is dreadfully boring and kind of an aberration that a class with a ranged weapon setup is doing equal or greater damage camping a single attunement most of the time than melee classes and setups who actually need to place themselves in danger to perform.

Unfortunately dagger ele does not come with the payoff to the risks it brings relative to other melee specs, let alone some overtuned staff.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Your signature says “PvE deserves harder content” and you’re complaining about the difficulty of the content. Sounds like you’ve got some experimenting to do.

Inflating mob damage with poor telegraphs into 1-shot territory for low tier hp classes is not exactly “hard” content. If you can make content easier with gear swap that causes passive defense, it’s not exactly hard content.

You cannot seriously compare HoT meta event mobs, many of whom have a breakbar making them immune to the blind spam that made fractal 50 easy, to fractal 50.

It’s just a terribly ignorant comparison.

Try doing overloads consistently on a dagger berzerker ele in HoT meta events and come back to me.

Hell try the Chalk Gerent or Vinetooth Prime as a berzerker dagger ele.

Since all these people in forums whined about melee, all we got in HoT is viciously antimelee mobs like Vinetooths and hammerheads and champ vines that lay a permanent lethal aoe so you can’t even melee them, most of this miserable content ends up with the DE zerglings camping ranged autoattacks.

Aomine.5012:

Sunshine.5014:

Pre-swap to air while channeling Meteor Shower is actually a dps loss.

Have you considered making your Air Overload 3.5 secs CD longer is a greater dps lost?

Channel Meteor -> Swap right to air -> by the time you finished casting Meteor shower, your Air Overload would be ready in 2 secs instead of 5.

ps: I’m talking about fresh air dps Tempest here.

He’s telling you that you’d be losing the 10% damage modifier on meteor shower from fire attunement by switching to air.

Also those 2 seconds of dead time waiting for air attunement is still a DPS loss over lava font and fireball spam.

The only place I see for a fresh air build is on the dagger variants since the highest auto on dagger is actually air.

Either way if you bother to do a boss like Alpha from CoE you notice the critical failure of Overload design in GW2 combat. Too often in actually challenging content you are forced to dodge, cancelling the channel, or you finish the channel and take a crapton of damage or even get downed.

Hell even with Harmonious Conduit,that measly 1 stack of stability isn’t enough in HoT meta events where mobs are farting out CC right and left so you get stunlocked out of overloads often assuming you haven’t been 1-2 shot by a champions poorly telegraphed charge/smash attack or the puddles of lethal aoe mobs love to cover the entire floor in.

Best all round class in the game.

Indispensable 50% group boon duration, the only group prot with reliable upkeep, or 12-13 might stacks+ perma fury for the group, on top of being in the top 3 DPS classes.

Replacing Eir with her dimwit, uninteresting stereotypical male norn son (who’s also ugly as sin, that butterface) was a bad call.

Trehearne, however, was about time that hoebag gave me my kitten Caladbolg back. Filthy thief, that’s what you get.

I just think the trigger should be any attunement swap, not just water. Add a 5 sec icd or something if necessary.

Iohanna.4863:

apharma.3741:

Monica.9701:

No thanks. Im a PVE staff DPS Fire/Air/Tempest using the shouts. And the regen it gives me is awsome for surviving the HoT jungle. The regen is more useful to me than the condi removal.

You are not a dps ele if you’re using tempest. Bountiful Power alone is a great 6-15% damage buff.

Air/Arcana/Tempest

Done. Enjoy the lightning!

Enjoy the lack of persisting flames, which greatly reduces your DPS and fury provision for your group.

Tempest traitline needs damage modifiers and damage boosting traits somewhere, and no a 5 sec 10% buff from a 20 sec cd 4 sec cast overload is nowhere close to sufficient.

Mesmer autoattack alone may not purge boons, but paired with phantasmal disenchanter and phantasmal haste it most certainly can.

I think most mesmers haven’t tried out the buffed iDisenchanter, no class can compete with the mesmer’s boon removal if they take that.

Unfortunately it also comes at the cost of easy permanent alacrity uptime that having 3 iavengers would provide alongside a well or two with the AWtEW trait.

I personally think that mobs SHOULD have ample methods of boon removal and CC to disrupt stacking and the easy power spike boon stacking provides (capping might and maintaining it is way too easy for the enormous benefit it provides, same for perma fury uptime).

But I think that same principle should apply to mobs, and not be like the dredge where boon removal is pointless thanks to the rate of application.

That’s why I like the ascalonian fractal, because as a mesmer I feel rewarded for bringing utilities like null field which I would never consider using otherwise, and the results of that choice show in the greatly reduced damage my party takes. Same applies to necro with well of corruption.

I’m also NOT in favor of returning to the incredibly inflated damage spikes of some bosses ala old fractal 50.

Mossman/Archdiviner/dredge at Fractal 50 did such obscene damage with mere autoattacks. Some of those tells were covered in visual clutter since these were small humanoids, so things like Mai Trin’s twirl were hard to even see in time with an elementalist or guardian in the party, especially with male norns and charrs instead of the 5 tiny female human party.

It’s totally OK when spoonfed aegis by a CD guardian or playing a kitten class like warrior who can eat and autoattack or two without being one shotted, but they are NOT fun as a 12k HP berzerker elementalist who chooses to not run staff, and the same goes for a thief not running sword/pistol for evade spam.

Dredge have little tells on their autoattacks and instant, long kitten dazes that would take off 2/3 of a berk elementalist’s HP, that was just silly when that and cultists made life as an elementalist miserable while warriors and guardians and now revenants don’t mind because they have way more spike absorption.

So, NO, I’m not in favor of increasing difficulty by tuning up damage. That’s just dumb.

Make difficulty by making the MECHANICS more demanding. The game should not be just about dodging, it should be about performing tasks in a fight, make it like Priestess of Dwayna in P4 where the idea was to have multiple tasks performed.

Make the failure to execute interesting mechanics in the fight wipe you, like that lightning strike on the raids, etc.

Not some ridiculous boss whose autoattacks spike for ridiculous amount of damage, favoring heavily the heavy armor/high HP classes while pigeonholing classes like elementalist into staff.

More damage & HP= Difficulty is BAD, LAZY DESIGN.

Zania.8461:

Balance – high tier fractal bosses have insane hp values pushing meta even farther towards damage. At the same time they also have extremely high toughness automatically setting meta for high condition damage. Condition damage is extremely uneven across classes making this change prioritize certain classes in certain equipment far more than the previous system did.

Want to emphasize this.

The move toward high toughness mobs to make condi viable is garbage.

Condi should have been increased in output to match power builds. And in the case of engineer, ranger, and guardian, it already did.

Instead, with high toughness mobs, you are not only boosting condi specs, you are taking a dump on power specs.

And since balance among condi specs for the classes is so bad, with engineer so far above the others followed by ranger and then guardian — with all others lagging considerably behind since they don’t have anywhere close to the access to burning-- you basically switched out the dominant power specs for sinister engineers.

So you, in fact, reduced class variety in group comps even MORE.

But we all know why you increased mob toughness instead of buffing condi to match power. Because PvP, since you won’t split PvE and PvP balance, you feared pushing condi power in PvP and instead chose to screw PvE players, AGAIN.

GG with that, instead of stacking elementalists you can now replace with sinister engineers, who have the same damage output, except with no penalties since it works on mobs regardless of toughness levels.

Hopefully one day you will actually start balancing classes for instanced PvE, instead of designing for PvP and making PvE performance incidental.

The warhorn on warrior is bad? What the hell??! It’s an absolute essential weapon in the warrior WvW teamfight toolbox.

lobothegreat.3980:

I can live with the way fractals are setup currently. What I can’t live with is the current rewards. Why were the ascended boxes drop rate nerfed when raids that will require them are going to release in a few weeks? Why do i get next to no money for completing all these fractals when i have to buy a TON of Thermocatalytic Reagents for agony resistance? I STILL can’t buy anything remotely useful with pristine/regular fractal relics. Would it kill anet to offer ascended armor/weapon boxes for pristine relics? I Feel like the rewards for doing fractals just aren’t worth it currently.

This will never happen.

The primary purpose of ascended items is as a goldsink, then time sink to keep players logging on chasing the carrot so that they either buy more stuff off the gem store by playing the game more.

Forget about token based reward systems. RNG and goldsinks are their preferred methods of item acquisition.

Manufactured rarity to drive up gold value to drive up gem purchase with real life money.

Basically, their model is to make you decide between farming for a very, very long time, or to create a shortcut with your wallet to circumvent the RNG and gold farm.