Engi needs the same thing as everyone else: MORE SPEC OPTIONS!
Have you ever played a Chronomancer? If you fight anyone who knows how to avoid your burst, then their significantly harder to play, whether condi or power. The only faceroll Mesmer specs that have ever existed have been PU specs.
Perhaps adjust revive speeds based on the number of players reviving. One player’s reviving will stay as is, but two won’t double the revive rate. Instead, it’ll be more like 1.75x for example.
You obviously can’t make changes so that if someone starts stomping with stability, there’s absolutely no way of successfully rezing, but reviving can’t be so powerful that it’s impossible to stomp, even if two players rez.
Only if they remove the daze on respawned phantasms.
And yes, I agree Chronomancers have too many illusions and too many shatters. But we need to nerf other elite specs as well, not just Chrono. Reaper applies too much chill/bleed; Berserker applies too much crippling, bleed, sometimes burning; Dragonhunters have too many blocks; Tempest is actually mildly balanced in spite of having too many auras and heals. I only named a few specs and a few things each spec can do. Some of these specs are blatantly more powerful than others. Berserkers can only be kited by those with constant condition cleansing, escapes, blocks, evades, etc., or else it will condi bomb you over and over with ease.
This isn’t just a Chronomancer problem. Make a thread about how everyone has too much of everything. That’s the problem with the game. Everyone knows that’s the problem, including Anet, who doesn’t want to admit it. And since I just called out Anet’s bullkitten, I’m about to get more infraction points! Bring ‘em on! Greed’s a powerful enemy.
20 seconds without combat or being on a point. RIP Reapers. What about thieves needing to run from home to far for a decap? I’m pretty sure that’ll take 20 seconds or nearly that long. And what if someone ends up being on that point? He’s not going to engage in that fight just to avoid getting banned. I like that you’re thinking of solutions, but this one is no good. Also, anyone can just stand outside the spawn area.
At the very least, they should make it so that if you aren’t in combat and not moving for, let’s say, 30 seconds, then you’re banned. They should be careful what system they implement to deal with AFKers. If it’s too weak, it’ll be easily abused, but if it’s too strong, then honest players could end up being punished.
I mean…i’m not specifically trying to be salty about it, but is there a point to the video? Any half-decent Daredevil does obscene damage and can survive a 1v1 as long as they choose to. Eventually any spec runs out of ‘oh kitten’ buttons and dies because you can never get rid of or pin down a DD. Maybe I’m missing something here.
Yeah you shouldn’t be dying to a DD 1v1…
If you’re beating DDs 1v1, you’re fighting terrible DDs. Unless the target can predict precisely when one will burst or run away, any decent one will bait CDs and burst a tiny bit before running away. That’s how all the decent DDs I’ve played against play. Bait, burst, run, repeat. Now in game, this is useless since you’re not going to get the point anytime soon, so it’s not like you actually need to practice fighting one playing like that.
Why did Anet design the necromancers this way?
Can I get a legitimate answer. Like a legitimate reason as to why necromancers are designed as being perfect focus fire?
Probably the answer will look something like “conditions conditions bler bleh”
Honestly, “conditions conditions bler bleh” is the best answer there is. Reapers can pump out kittened amounts of condition damage. But if it was nerfed, they would be absolute kitten. A single Berserker can stay on you indefinitely with almost no problem whatsoever simply because you have no good escape. Flesh Wurm’s cast time is way too long, and it’s CD is also pretty long compared to catch up methods and other escapes on other professions. Shroud 2 only goes 600 range and a single cripple is enough to let you catch back up. With all the ways to kite now too, Reapers are easy to kite. So not only can they not kite themselves, but they cannot prevent kiting.
But because they do massive condi bombs when freecasting, they won’t buff defences. And to be honest, that’s a good thing. Reapers are a great example of the game’s powercreep situation and why you can’t make good balance from it. Their damage is too high, so they need weaker defences to “balance” it out. (I put “balance” in quotes because it’s not a real balance). If they buffed Reaper/Necro defences, they would be too OP.
I think one of the best solutions is actually nerfing the Soul Reaping line so they aren’t dependant on it (as well as making a couple things baseline like unblockable staff marks). This will open up the option to use the Death Magic or Blood Magic lines, with slight buffs to Death Magic to suit conditions specs a little better. This would be a good start because this needs to happen anyway, regardless of Necro’s state.
No, that would add to the powercreep. The problem is that conditions do too much damage, and condition specs can stack conditions too easily, while also being tanky.
No spec should be able to apply powerful condition damage and then literally be able to run away while the damage ticks away. Or worse yet, the conditions continue to tick while CCed. Power specs are shut down from CC or being forced to run. Condition specs aren’t as much.
Queue times are long because the player base is low. And the player base is low because the game’s balance and matchmaking is kitten. Sacrifice queue times for better balance, better better matchmaking and preventing class stacking and you’ll attract more players because they’ll want to play the game. That will automatically decrease queue times. And the more players the game has, the shorter the queue times, so we may even see times shorter than currently.
Reapers absolutely have too much corruption. But this is a problem overall with the game. Too much of something given to certain specs. Reapers have too much boon corruption, Berserkers have too much resistance, Daredevils have too many evades, Chronomancers have too many illusions, Druids have too much pet damage, etc.
The problem right now though with Reapers is that while they have too much condition damage and corruption, they really lack in sustain. Literally their only sustain are two dodges, with no access to vigor. They can choose protection boon skills (Spectral Armor), a teleport (Flesh Wurm), “Rise” and other skills that can help them survive, but it’s not enough. With all other professions having too much offence, Reapers die extremely easily unless you can position yourself perfectly and kite well. Have you ever noticed that the best professions every season are the ones who can sustain themselves against the insane offensive pressure? With too much offence, you need too much defence to survive. If excessive damage was reduced, excessive sustain would also need to be reduced to maintain balance. But that’s not the case. Sure there’s technically a balance, but it’s not a good balance. Pre June 2015, balance was better. It was a “good” balance you could say.
If they want to make Reaper’s balanced, they need to reduce the excessive offence in the game, and also reduce the excessive defence at the same time. But in the case of Reapers, they only need an offence reduction, not a defence reduction. Reapers are supposed to be the attrition profession. They should live a long time, but not do as much damage as others.
So don’t fret if you can’t beat Reapers 1v1. That’s where they thrive because their attrition is maximized, but in a teamfight, it’s difficult for a reaper to escape, so focus them. As long as they’re focused, it’ll be nearly impossible for them to corrupt your boons.
In 1v1s, block shroud 4, dodge shroud 5, and stun them when they don’t have stability and when you want to burst. You’ll probably be hit by their Marks. Don’t worry about that. They all have the same animation, but they often use the fear Mark first and then the chill one. So if they switch to staff and you can see a staff cast, it’s probably fear. Berserker stance is best used when you want to put high pressure on them. They have few ways of getting away from you since they can’t apply movement conditions to you. They have a passive trait that applies Spectral Armor at 50% hp. Stop attacking them when you see that so they don’t get as much shroud. Note that you cannot block Marks and the Warhorn daze. They might use Shroud 2 just to get away from you. If they do and you can’t get back onto them, use LoS. You might still get hit by Marks, but they can’t use anything else from that far. The main idea is to constantly apply pressure, dodge the right skills and hit with burst skills to cleanse conditions and maintain Adrenal Health. If you do that, you might out attrition them!
One last thing, if you’re running the Diviner’s/Seeker’s, good luck! You can stay on them more, but you’ll always have slow and chill on you.
Because that would make sense.
I’ve been wondering the same thing. This would help reduce the high pet damage that mender’s Druids can do, while still keeping dps focused amulets useful.
Or we could reduce powercreep and reduce stability uptime and the amount of CCs in the game. Then players will have to think about when to use stability and CC skills, instead of seemingly spamming them like now.
The problem with gorilla is that it’ll probably end up being a hard hitting, high toughness, low vitality stunner. So basically a melee bristleback with a stun.
You can STILL grab another account and advance faster than a main account?
Are they gonna reset MMR anytime soon? This kitten is kittened.
The best nerf they can do to moa that won’t ruin the skill is a more obvious animation. Right now it’s just a quick sparkling effect that you can’t see in the middle of all the clutter of a teamfight. It needs to be obvious like Executioner’s Scythe. Nothing too obvious, but also more obvious than it is now.
Other Mesmer signet casts show the signet symbol over the character’s head as they cast it. Moa shouldn’t be an exception.
If you get CCed and then changed into a moa, that’s when you’ll need team support. And that’s fine. In a team game, requiring support from your team is ideal imo. In a duel, a mesmer will have to cast Tides of Time and use the quickness from it to get off the cast. That will force a stunbreak to avoid it. If you see Continuum Split, you know you’ll need to dodge or stay far away from the Mesmer, forcing a blink if they want to use ToT to get a stun. Either way, Moa against a good player requires effort. With a more obvious tell, worse players will still need to dodge or block it, but will be punished as they are punished now when getting hit. This will avoid destroying the skill while also making it a little easier to deal with.
They could probably also get away with a slightly longer cast time. No more than half a second more.
Make a bigger tell on Moa, Maybe increase cast time by 1/4-1/2.
Yes, let’s add more unblockable skills and powercreep to the game instead of reducing the amount of blocks and powercreep.
Maybe if they put a tiny bit of thought into what PvP means, they wouldn’t have added PvE. It’s kind of one reason I don’t like Legacy. It has PvE… Same thing with Forest. Temple is great because it has other objectives that don’t involve any PvE at all.
But unlikely Legacy and Forest, the objective is to kill the Lord. In Conquest maps, they are secondary objectives, not primary.
Another reason I think we don’t like Stronghold is because balance is so wonky and they keep kittening around with amulets, but instead of putting their resources into that, they make a PvE PvP map. Making another PvP map would be a waste too, but not as much… At least it’s PvP.
The only real problem with DH is the same problem with every profession and their elite spec: too much of everything, especially CCs.
Too much the excessive CC is almost necessary with how many blocks, evades, immunities, heals there are in the game. With such an abundance of everything, it’s easy to succeed by spamming. With fewer options, you are forced to use skills wisely and carefully. That’s skill. What we have now is not skill. Only Tempests now are no longer OP because the ridiculous abundance of everything they have is weaker than the abundance of everyone else. Actually, that does mean they are OP, but they are less OP than the rest.
How many CCs do the meta, or near meta, specs of each profession have? This includes immobilizes, but not chill or crippling. This also includes long setup CCs like Tempest overloads.
DHs: 5 (one is a stun break trap proc)
Scrappers: 4-7 (Elixir X counts as 1)
Chronomancers: 4 (Diversion and Chaos Storm count as 1 each. Also, CS reset CCs don’t count.)
Reapers: 5
Tempests: 4-5
Druids: 4
Daredevils: 4-5 (one is passively applied immob at 50% hp)
Heralds: 3
Berserker: 4
Anyone want to crunch numbers of pre June 2015 meta spec CCs numbers per profession?
Maybe it’s deserved, but it’s still wrong. You can get your point across with basic kindness. Harsh words rarely help someone. Only a few people find it impacts them in a positive way. So stop kittening being a bunch of kittens and just like bads should learn to play better, you should learn to speak better.
Next time you see someone run into mid alone when the enemy is there, don’t kittening call whisper how much of a kitten he is. Tell him that running into mid alone isn’t helping his team win. Suggest to him that he should learn other basic PvP skills before playing ranked, and even offer to give advice. That kitten will go a lot further for most players than being a godkitten kitten kitten.
Funny that those who understand basic PvP skills don’t understand basic human decency. Guess what gets you somewhere in real kittening life. It’s genuinely pathetic to be a kitten, and it takes actual balls to be kind. So grow a pair.
Now…I do agree that it needs to be harder for bad or new players from joining ranked in the first place. Maybe they need a high enough MMR, or maybe they should kittening actually reset MMR so that we can see if the whole 50% even games thing is even working.
Well, it’s almost as kitteneeing that one teammate run into mid with 4 enemies there…
Like, these guys are in Sapphire which means they were likely at least Diamond last season. How can players that kittening bad make it to Diamond?
Yes, playing a Druid will be tough this season unless the enemy team has no idea how to focus one. And with the ridiculously high CC from DH/Zerker combo, it’s hard to stay on point long enough to heal anyone. Still, they’re easily the best healing support and if played well and positioned right, you can maintain high CAF uptime and then you should be able to heal and peel well enough. Druids have great peeling ability. Glyph of Equality, 10 second CD root, CAF 3, Staff 4. And if all else fails, Staff 5 into 3 is a great heal.
And look on the bright side, you may be pressured easily, but at least you can actually escape on a short CD without relying on a minion. You also have multiple ways to stealth.
They’re still good in PvP. Their damage with Paladin’s is good if you can stack up might, and their sustain is still god like overall. They also provide unique utilities that other specs might have difficulty providing, such as on demand AoE stealth, AoE condition cleansing on low CDs (EG 3, Purge Gyro or Elixir R (I think it’s R…), AoE damage reduction, AoE protection and mobile water field, multiple lightning fields, some superspeed…I think there’s more…oh yeah, the 900 range stomp. Most professions can’t do all of that with one spec. So while they took a little sustain nerf and a decent damage nerf, their utility is still untouched and powerful. I’d take one on my own team given the choice.
Just watch out for other specs taking your skills in the future, just like Engis did to Thieves. Game’ll probably be dead by then anyway.
If anything tells you how seriously Anet pays attention to PvP (or lack thereof), this should say it all. They didn’t even update the title.
Combined with their decision to just say “screw it” with matchmaking and go back to what they failed with in Season 1…should say it all.
This is how I feel too. But this matchmaking feels like more like season 2 and 3 with blowouts almost every game. Only two games so far have been close for me. And my losing streak is already greater than last season. I’m rusty, but I reached Legendary last season and since then, have been getting bad teams against better teams. This tells me that either things are working as intended and not reseting MMR has kittened things up, or their intended even games aren’t actually happening because of a bug. I think it’s the first one, and the previous seasons have kittened up MMR too much across the board, making a wide range of skills at each level of MMR.
If they just reset MMR, I could at least drop with the rest of the bads that drag me down (or I drag down because of my rustiness), and the better players gain higher MMR and I no longer have to fight them all the time. But if my MMR lowers, currently, I end up fighting higher skilled enemies with a lower MMR than what I was earlier.
I need to stop getting my hopes up that Anet will ever do something right. Balance is ungodly awful too now. Last season was actually better with the tanky Tempests. Now it’s tanky DHs, and the nerf to damage reduction skills (Rise, Phantasmal Defender, etc.) has boosted up power damage, while they leave condi damage as is.
I have to admit though, the game does feel more skilled though. It could be one reason I’m rusty. I need to boost up my skill.
This a good thread. It would be great if someone made a post on how to PvP that could get stickied. Or add more info to the already stickied post about getting started in PvP. Perhaps a link to a guide with info on what the best things to do are.
There’s definitely something going wrong with MM right now. They claimed that matches would be more even, but so far most matches are exactly the same as last season, except this time I’m on the losing side. Every…single…game has had at least one DH on each team, and more often than not, two to three on one team. My last game had three on the enemy team and two on my team. Guess who won because stomping was impossible.
The “meta” DH spec has how many CCs? Shield 5, Heal trap, ToF, F1. Guess how many are instant cast? Only the trap heal isn’t. F1 does require another skill to use though, so I suppose it’s instant in the sense that the pull itself is, but it takes time to set up.
But throw in a second DH and those CCs are doubled. Throw in a third, and they’re tripled. Imagine that with a Berserker…oh wait, Zerker CCs are single target… that actually makes them mildly balanced!
For the love of God, when are you going to increase cast times of traps?
Balance is through the roof bad. So is SoloQ matchmaking. Literally every game today was Amber worthy. kittening Amber worthy players were in Sapphire. How the kitten did they get to Sapphire so quickly? They had to be Diamond or Legendary, but these players were far undeserving of those ranks. I myself am rusty, but I’m almost always the last to die, even under pressure, and I res when I can, and I stomp when I can. I heal allies, and I peel enemies as best as possible. I CC low hp players (and am usually the only one doing so). I know for a fact that I’m better than Amber level players, so why the kitten am I being teamed with them and fighting against players who actually are deserving of Sapphire? What the flying kitten Anet? You must have bugged something bad this time.
I’ve literally seen more skill come out of hotjoin players.
OR! …somehow…just somehow reduce how much astral force a Druid gains from healing…
Oh that’s right, PvP team has no control over balance.
Well, we’re kittened.
Three of my games today have been pretty close, but my teammates still suck, and I’m rusty too lol.
Thieves are gods…if played well. The vast majority of thieves suck. A small portion is good enough to get somewhere, and then there’s the best. The best make the class truly OP.
Thieves are squishy but deal ungodly damage. A good thief can deal that damage while not getting hit.
So yes, thieves are OP. Most thieves will deny it, but most thieves suck or are extremely bias. Same thing goes for mesmers.
To kill the pet, you need to force swap the first one and then kill the second one BEFORE it dies. And killing the pet getting healed and stealthed by the druid is a lot harder than it sounds. If you manage to kill the pet, you then have to kill the first pet again, and then the druid will just run away. In other words, pets are kittening OP! I know they’ve been nerfed, but not hard enough. Druids alone already do decent damage. Now just add a pet to that…
I chose unoriginal names: Spike and Smokey. You can guess what pets they are.
Scepter is fine….yeah freaking right. The third attack applies a bleed and poison stack and corrupts a boon. Three conditions with one attack. I don’t care if it’s the third attack and it can’t be used under pressure. No AA should ever be powerful enough that you may need to dodge it.
If Anet wants Diviner’s and Seeker’s Amulets to be used, they need to fix boon corruptions because those amulets have no vitality to ever help against conditions.
If Anet wants to keep a boon corruption on Scepter, just add it to skill 2. That way it’s more reliable, more skillful, but also less OP. Win/win.
Now let’s start putting our focus on the rest of a Reaper’s methods of condi bombing. Staff 3, especially with 4, and Staff 5 applies fear which applies chill which applies bleeding. Corrupt Boon corrupts 3 boons and therefore applies 3 conditions. With Curses, entering shroud corrupts a boon and if traited, Shroud 2 corrupts 2 boons, and Shroud 5 with 4 applies insane poison and bleeding with chill. With Signet Spite spec, Plague Signet transfer up to 5 conditions and corrupts 2 more, applying up to SEVEN conditions with one, instant cast skill.
If you want Reapers to be balanced, you need to nerf their corruption and condi bombing ability. However, you also need to give them better ways to survive under pressure. One way could be giving more ways to receive healing while in shroud. I’m sure you have someone on your team who is smart enough to find a solution, but has no power to enforce it.
TL;DR: Reapers can condi bomb too easily, but take too much pressure. Nerf condition pressure, buff ability to take pressure.
I like how large it is, but I’ve heard that some find it to be too open and I somewhat agree. There are LoS spots at each point, just off the point, but they’re pretty sparse overall. Mid could use one extra LoS spot. Otherwise, I do like the map. At least there aren’t spots where the freaking camera doesn’t zoom in because of a roof!
Condi Mesmer has always been good at 1v1s, and it still is. Macebow is also good for 1v1s, as is Scrapper.
I’d like to see Diviner’s changed to give toughness or vitality instead of ferocity.
+1050 Power
+560 Precision
+560 Toughness or Vitality
+1050 Concentration
Anet could at least make a 560 toughness and healing power amulet.
+1050 Power
+1050 Precision
+560 Toughness
+560 Healing Power
Maybe they could actually add a 3 stat amulet for once in their lives.
+900 Power
+900 Vitality
+1200 Healing Power
Basically that’s a power version of Magi’s.
Maybe they could be smart too and readd celestial with reduced stats. 560 of all stats was too much. How about 460? This would make the overall stats equal to a 4 stat amulet.
+450 Power
+450 Precision
+450 Toughness
+450 Vitality
+450 Condition Damage
+450 Healing Power
+450 Ferocity
And if that’s too much, there’s 425, just under a 3 stat amulet.
+425 Power
+425 Precision
+425 Toughness
+425 Vitality
+425 Condition Damage
+425 Healing Power
+425 Ferocity
Removing Celestial was not the right move. The stats should have been reduced because it was giving too good of overall stats. 4 stat amulets are doing the same thing compared to 3 stat ones. Celestial is 3920, 4 stats are 3220 (big difference!), and 3 stats are 3000. What’s the problem with adjusting 4 stats and celestial to be around 3k?
Let’s make 4 stats something like 900 and 600, or 850 and 650, and let’s make Celestial 425. The only reason Tempests didn’t run a 4 stat amulet last season was because there wasn’t one with healing and toughness together. Give back Celestial or add a 560 toughness and healing power amulet, even if it has to have precision without power.
+1050 Precision
+560 Toughness
+1050 Condition Damage
+560 Healing Power
Would 1050 healing power with 560 toughness be too OP? Probably, but I’m going to suggest it anyway. Also, what’s wrong with doing 560 power amulets? Sure it’s less power, but it beats NO power at all!
+560 Power
+1050 Precision
+560 Toughness
+1050 Healing Power
I’m just going to go over your suggestions for staff since I have the most experience with it. I’m only going over what I think are problems with your suggestions. Anything not mentioned is something I agree with, which is most things. I would comment on dagger and focus too, but I like all your suggestions overall for those.
Staff:
Frozen Ground: I like the vulnerability suggestion, but I think the only real buff it needs is a reduced CD to 25 seconds.
Healing Rain: This is fine in terms of speed. Though if a CD buff is needed, it should be no less than 35. It’s a powerful skill for condition cleansing when traited properly.
Chain Lightning: Keep in mind that this skill bounces 3 times, so it would be OP if it hit too hard.
Lightning Surge: While a reduced cast time is needed, A 1 second cast time is still too long for a skill that hits as hard as Scepter 2, which is instant, and blinds only one target. For a 1 sec cast, it can stay a single target damage skill, but it should apply AoE blind around the target.
Eruption: YES PLEASE! This has to be done. It takes way too long to do damage and it’s staff’s only blast finisher.
Good analysis. Let’s hope the devs see this. I know they will, but let’s also hope they actually realize it and make changes. I know they won’t. I guess they thought Eles would want to use Dagger/Focus with the Air traitline. Though it makes sense that some weapons benefit from a trait more than others. It’s just the nature of having different skills on different weapons.
The main problem with Eles right now is exactly the same problem that HoT has over all. TOO MUCH DAMAGE! You need Earth and Water to survive, or be ready to run away a lot. There’re so many conditions flying around and so many stuns lining up into incredibly hard hitting power burst. If you’re not specced for protection on auras, you won’t live long. And if you don’t spec for cleansing on aura (which btw requires at least 2 traits), then you better be really good at dodging condition attacks, which is impossible with all the stuns flying around.
The ONLY damage Ele spec I’ve found that works against just about anyone is Demo or Marauder Staff using Earth/Water/Tempest. The amulet will depend on enemy comp. Staff has the range to stay away from danger, and it’s great for CCing and kiting.
It’s really too bad that you either have to run Focus or Staff with Earth and Water to survive. If powercreep was reduced, other options may become viable. With less condition spamming, we could spec Air or Fire and not have to worry as much about being condi bombed every 3 seconds. If power damage was reduced, we could spec out of Earth and not have to worry as much about being power bursted every 3 seconds. Though Earth will probably still be necessary due its incredible synergy with Tempest. I think one solution is to simply rearrange the 40% protection trait with the stability on overload. Overloads should always grant at most 1 stack, but having 40% protection and protection on overload should be a choice with vigor/regen on aura. Or hell, they could make that a GM trait, so we don’t have to pick healing on aura. It’s this perfect synergy that forces us into certain traits. Reduce some of that synergy and we can finally choose. This should go for other specs on all professions. Trickery on Thief is mandatory because without it, they lose 3 extra total initiative and about 10 seconds off Steal’s CD, but no more boon strip and dazing with steal. In this case, it’s not about synergy; it’s about a traits being too good to give up. They need to make some things baseline or nerf them (nerf! NERF!)
Bad thieves hate the state of thieves. Actually, thieves do need some changes. Less burst (in pvp only) and a little less reliance on evading. Though I think the whole idea of needing to evade every attack gives the class actual skill. That’s hard to come by in this game.
Another problem with it is that Sword 3 is a hard hitting power attack, but when berserking, f1 becomes completely useless in a power build.
AG’s CD is way too short, but so are most HoT CDs. But consider also that RtL is cut in half when it hits a target.
Also, AG is a 15 second CD. Nobody runs the staff trait because Primal Echos is too good. Ele’s however can easily trait for reduced Air CDs because it’s the most useful trait of the three options.
A joke? Well that’s easy. Just say “I play Ele” and people laugh.
Well, if a player is jumped by anyone without stealth, they really should be punished. It’s up to the player to be aware of their surroundings.
Now when it does come to stealth…we have a problem. Thieves usually spec for 20% more damage below 50% hp and it’s REALLY easy to get someone to 50% hp if you catch them off guard. Though a good player should be able to react quick enough to possible stay above. But once you’re below 50%, if you don’t have condition cleansing or a CD, you’re dead. You could also player Warrior and just passively heal and mitigate all damage below 50% hp for 4+ seconds. Balanced!
Support Tempest is dead, compared to Druid, who can deal better burst and give better support, and, if played well, even survive better. You either have to run Staff or Scepter because staying in melee without support, protection or CDs is going to result in a quick death. It’s so unbelievably easy to CC Eles, and you have to run the regen on aura use trait in order to handle conditions. It’s difficult to stay above 75% hp while being hit without the strong heals from before, so Diamond Skin isn’t particularly good. Using an Overload other than Earth is difficult for the same CC and melee range reasons.
I tried Demo amulet with both Staff and Scepter/Focus and I found Scepter/Focus had greater burst and sustain, but its utility is lacking compared with Staff. Conditions weren’t a problem much on either set, even without Diamond Skin.
I think Staff might end up being better still because of the utility and the fact that it’s just easier to do damage, even if it does less. It’s also easier to kite and stay mobile between points. If your team is good and can compensate for your lack of damage while taking advantage of your utilities and CC. Water 5 is also great against conditions.
My biggest struggle right now is finding the right heal. I’ve tried the Glyph which gives the greatest health in a short time, but Ether Feast is great against conditions but is unbelievably easy to interrupt. I’m really afraid of Anet giving Eles more stability instead of reducing the CC in the game. Giving stability would be the easiest “solution”.
“…similar skill…” uh huh. That must be why my games at Legendary were so much worse than all games in Ruby. Because those players in Legendary were at my skill level. Right.
This is actually a good suggestion, but it won’t work until we fix the issue of kittenty players getting to a far higher rank than they deserve. This includes myself. I don’t want to be Legendary if I don’t deserve it. But I also don’t want to be restricted from lootz that apply to other game modes (Legendary backpack ahem). It’d be much better if lower skill players were restricted from something that is only useful to PvP, like a title, or a skin.
Even if they fixed them, there’s so much stability, evades and blocks going around that they won’t work most of the time anyway. Once again powercreep makes a whole mechanic useless.
I was afraid they wouldn’t redesign traps to be more noob friendly while being better against higher end players. DH’s are still gonna stomp noobs while being nearly useless against better players.
They nerfed backstab? It didn’t hit that hard… The problem was how hard Thieves hit AFTER backstab.
I tried this with GS – M/S in HotM, Seeker’s Amulet, Leadership rune, Disc/Defence/Berserker, keeping Cleansing Ire. It did pretty well. I’ll try it in games later. Chances are it’ll be too squishy against Thieves and other power based specs, but it should do fine against hybrids or strict condi specs. It’s quickness uptime is fantastic and you actually have a reason to use a regular burst skill (GS for fury). I found Seeker’s boon uptime was sufficient enough. You only lose a second or two on most skills. And the extra crit makes up for it. I might also swap GS to Rifle if sustain is too low to always be in melee range. The only real defence it lacks from Macebow is vitality or toughness. Though with how high burst is, ANY lost defence is going to be noticed quickly.
The defences of other professions like Necro, Mes and Engi were nerfed slightly, and Eles were hit pretty hard. This should hopefully bring Guard to a more comparable level. Also, those defence hits were indirect buffs to Guard burst. I think we’ll be seeing more Guards as long as other professions don’t continue to overshadow them. Mes, Rev, Thief all have better mobility too, and in some cases far greater burst potential. I’m expecting to see Mes, Rev, Ranger, Engi teams become the kings. The 5th member could be either Warrior, Necro or Thief. Ele might also still be around, but it’s hard to say.