Guild Wars 2

OriOri.8724:

But you need 2 hands to shoot a bow

You probably in reality would need 4 hands to do Rapid Fire realistically. There’s no way anyone can shoot and arrow, pull out another, set it up and then do that 6 more times in only a couple seconds!

But then again, this is a game where you can shoot fireballs and call down strikes from a cannon in space onto a precise locations. Oh, also, somehow every profession using a finite resource for ammo (bullets, arrows, grenades, mortars) never run out no matter what.

So, duel wielding bows doesn’t sound too implausible in this game.

Fluffball.8307:

Anyone getting hit by maul deserves whatever happens. That’s the single most telegraphed skill in the entire game.

Next to Glint elite, Shiro Elite, Reaper Shroud 5, Reaper Shroud 4, Chrono Shield 4…could go on. :P Maul is fast as kitten compared just to these, and every single one can be dodged.

The insane damage is why only specs that can abuse the massive amount of evades/blocks/immunes (Power Hammer Scrapper, Glint/Shiro Herald, Condi Chronomancer, Bunker Druid, any Berserker, D/P and Vault Daredevil, any Dragonhunter) or abuse massive healing (any support Druid, Support Tempest, any Dragonhunter) or prolong a fight till they can get support (any Reaper). If the spec can have a good number of sustain skills and/or healing while also dishing out high damage, it’ll be meta or near meta.

And both high damage and high sustain being possible in one build all came with the June 23rd, 2015 patch, and was enhanced greatly by HoT. High sustain requires high damage to compensate, and high damage requires high sustain to compensate. Lower both and compensation doesn’t need to be as big. The game won’t slow down either because with fewer sustain skills, players will still die quickly if they’re not careful, even with a damage reduction.

Also, a thought occured the other day. You know how elite skills have long CDs (usually)? Ever notice how elite specs seem to contain lower CDs? This could be a solution. Increase elite spec related CDs. Keep elite specs skills stronger than baseline spec ones, but give them long CDs. This should be the trade off of speccing into an elite spec. You get more powerful skills, but you have longer CDs that cannot be spammed. But right now, elite specs are full of low CDs on skills that do everything! Make elite specs like elite skills: powerful but infrequent. This way baseline specs have the advantage of being faster specs, but with weaker skills. Traits will need to be balanced the same way as baseline specs, but the skills and upgrades you get can be made more powerful at the cost of longer CDs.

Shaogin.2679:

Why not just queue for ranked or unranked?

Maybe he does and sometimes he just wants to play a little hotjoin. I enjoy hotjoin and I would love to see some improvements to it as well.

Anyway, this thread is clearly about custom arenas, so let’s keep it on that topic. Asking why he doesn’t just queue for ranked or unranked only serves to derail the thread.

Rym.1469:

if there are no projectiles to block in fight, Protective Solace is 100% useless – can’t swap it for other skill either.

Except that it’s a light field and can be used with staff 4, sword 2 and the elite to cleanse conditions. It’s also cheap if you just use it for the light field since won’t be draining energy for more than a second or two. It’s also a light field which can be prolonged for as long as you need it. Allies can blast/whirl in it for more cleansing. There’s absolutely nothing useless about this skill when no projectiles are present. This is coming from a PvP perspective.

Protective Solace + Precision Strike = cleansing bolts, and I did a little testing and noticed that it can cleanse a condition from yourself as well. I looked through the whole spec and couldn’t find any evidence that it wasn’t from a cleansing bolt, so I’m surprised it was affecting me. I had no idea it could.

Edit: According to the wiki, “Cleansing and Healing Bolts apply their effect in a 150 unit radius on impact.” So it looks like cleansing bolts can hit enemies too and cleanse conditions from allies around them, including yourself. Likewise, you’ll cleanse more conditions if you’re around allies who get hit by a bolt.

560 of all stats is too power compared to 3 and 4 stat amulets, but if Celestial Amulet’s stats were lower, I think it could work. 425 of all stats would roughly match a 4 stat amulet. And 425 of toughness, vitality and healing power isn’t that powerful. They could bring the stats even lower even, like 400.

Condis wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t stacked up so easily by one single player. If skills apply 3 stacks of burning with a single hit, then it should last only a few seconds at most. But then you stack up condition duration and it ends up lasting forever, forcing cleanses with one, single skill. No skill required but your reward is great. This is why people hate conditions. They can be as rewarding as power damage but require less effort to apply, unless they take time to stack up. And that’s where the problem happens. Skills apply many conditions and many stacks of conditions, and professions like condi Reaper frequently apply them because so many skills apply many conditions and many stacks of conditions. You just can’t block or evade all of them. You also can’t block or evade all power attacks either though, but if you’re hit by a power attack, that’s it. You take damage and you can heal through it. If you’re hit by a condition attack, you have to cleanse it or heal it and then continue to take damage because they last so long. And if you choose to cleanse, you might cleanse every condition except the most powerful one. Simply put, power damage is easier to deal with. Conditions are tough. So actually, it’s not that condition and power specs don’t require different level of skills (though I could probably go into why they do), but that conditions are just harder to deal with, and I would argue that the more powerful both conditions and power damage become, the rate of difficulty at which conditions are to deal with, grows faster than the rate of difficulty at which power damage is to deal with. If both power and condition damage were brought down, the balance would be better, and both would be more equally easier to deal with.

Mikhail.4961:

This is really interesting. Just a question though: is Glint a necessity for this build? I know, I know, dumb question: Glint > all, but I have to ask, since you spend most time in Ventari stance anyway.

I tried out Shiro, but the extra evades didn’t help enough. The heal is crappy and the elite is expensive. It’s only advantage is being able to teleport into a fight more quickly. Glint provides boons to allies and the elite is cheap and has more use than the Shiro one. With Glint, you have more chances against excessive conditions as well, and you can’t go wrong with AoE regeneration that can tick up to 500 on allies.

Rifles will be more viable when we add more projectile hate, amirite?

425 of all basic 7 stats… for once. Celestial made to be as powerful as a 4 stat amulet, rather than more powerful.

4 stat amulets I’d like to see:

1050 power
1050 vitality
560 condition damage
560 healing power

1050 precision
1050 ferocity
560 toughness
560 healing power

I’m sure we can do a healing power toughness amulet as long as they are the lowest stats, and it doesn’t do any damage. No power but high ferocity will help give it at least some damage while not giving it any power.

1050 power
1050 concentration
560 precision
560 vitality

1050 condition damage
1050 vitality
560 power
560 precision

Just ideas.

It’s an unusual mechanic but I think it’s a great one. It allows the rev to stay away from combat while still doing significant healing. This is why so many traits focus on increasing outgoing healing to allies. But, I prefer a more selfish setup because my healing is high enough on allies and more often than not, I’m being focused lol.

This thread was on page 3 so I’m bumping it up so people know that this guild still exists.

Just gotta dodge every single attack. Make sure you never enter a game without 1,000,000 endurance.

Hi, all, you might know me as that guy who will never say that rev is weak in PvP. However, I’m actually here to suggest some changes to Ventari that could help make it a tad bit better and more useful/easier to use. Yep, that’s right. I’m actually suggesting rev buffs.

I played around with Legendary Centaur Stance today and I had lots of fun with the great healing, but I noticed a few issues that just didn’t seem right. So here are some suggestions related to those issues. Keep in mind that I have very little play time as rev, though I understand the mechanics and I know the skills of each Legend well enough.

First suggestion is to allow the tablet to be moved through LoS, as long as it doesn’t travel the total distance it’s allowed without LoS (900 units). My reasoning is that sometimes an ally is just over a hill and you would need to go all the way around it just in order to place a tablet by them. Now, this issue can also be solved with communication, but that’s not always possible in the case of SoloQ. My intention with for this change is to make the tablet more accessible and easier to use.

Second suggestion is to buff Purifying Essence, or add a trait to aid in condition removal. My reasoning is that this skill can’t keep up with the rate that conditions are thrown around, even if I dodge and block as many as possible and use this skill as soon as someone bombs me. Maybe I’m just not using it right, but I honestly think it could just use a buff, or something else could be added to aid in conditions when using this Legend. I have three suggestions. The first is to lower the energy cost. The second is to increase the amount of conditions cleansed. And the third is to add a trait to help with conditions. The first idea for a trait is to buff Natural Abundance to cleanse a condition each time you pick up a fragment. The second idea is to replace Momentary Pacification with a trait that cleanses a conditions from nearby allies when a Ventari skill is used.

Third suggestion is to make fragments unaffected by projectile hate. I don’t know why these things are reflected/destroyed because they don’t harm enemies in any way. Sure it adds counterplay to healing, but come on…at least make them deal damage before making them projectiles.

Fourth suggestion is to replace or buff Momentary Pacification. When I look at this trait, I think, “this is a rune bonus”. Rune bonuses should not be GM traits. That’s all I’m going to say. My only suggestion for a change is to add the condition cleansing trait I suggested before.

That’s all for now. These may not solve the problems with Ventari. These are only coming from my limited experience playing it, so forgive me I miss the whole issue that Ventari even has. I understand that the tablet is “clunky” and my first suggestion is meant to help with that. The other suggestions are just to help against conditions or solve unnecessary mechanics or bad traits. Please, by all means make improved suggestions that solve more/other issues. These are just my ideas that I thought of after playing this Legend tonight. Also, try to refrain from stating the obvious. I know I’m bad at rev. Also, I know that alacrity is pointless on a profession that is more bound by a second recourse that can easily run out when you use skills more often. My point is, keep discussion related to improving Legendary Centaur Stance.

Edit: I thought on another problem with Ventari: no damage. Maybe there could be a couple traits that increase damage while a certain effect is active, or maybe a Ventari skill should deal some damage. Let’s say protective solace does damage. It’s an expensive skill that prevents you from using any other expensive healing skills without the risk of running out of energy too soon. The elite could also do some damage. Maybe the tablets could be picked up by enemies but they do damage. This would make Natural Abundance more powerful. Purifying Essence could be a condition transfer to enemies within 240 range of an affected ally, making conditions specs more useful with Ventari. To avoid too many conditions from being transfered, the skill could cleanse 2 conditions and transfer 1 per affected player. If an enemy isn’t in range of you, then no transfer occurs and the condition is instead cleansed as regularly. Or to make it even weaker, the condition isn’t removed at all. This would add counterplay with good positioning. So adding a little damage to Ventari will help the low damage situation (mind you, the damage should be low), but it’ll also help make it more useful with damage specs. And whether or not it’ll actually be used with those specs doesn’t matter because it’ll be useful with a support spec anyway.

Thanks for reading.

PlatinumMember.5274:

jessiestiles.9437:

Agreed. Not taking 3 months of this. Maybe devs will develop a clue by then.

They were probably working on new specializations.

If they put as much thought into those new specializations as they do into balance patches, we’re in for a LOT more powercreep.

We fail at making good juggernaughts not just because Reaper only gives 10% damage reduction from chilled foes, but because damage is so insanely high and easy to dish out. It’s why professions with frequent blocks/evades/immunities are the most powerful in recent metas. They’re the ones that can spec for high damage while also avoiding the high damage.

Well…he’s right that pets carrying Druid damage. For a spec that is meant to heal a lot and be difficult to kill and provide plenty of support, it sure does hit hard. And most of that damage comes from pets and Ancient Seeds hold you still so you can’t dodge any burst. So, a Druid is meant to support and heal, which means that it should be difficult to kill, but then it has a stun break and full condition cleanse on a 15 second CD and then it can stealth. And then they can pop their short CD pulsing stability, only countered by frequent boon strip/corruption, and never be controlled long enough to take damage. Plus they have excessive evades from S/D and staff (not the only profession guilty of this).

So yeah, hard to kill if they know what they’re doing. But then on top of all this, they have hard hitting, practically passive pets (alliteration no intended). And this is where the problem happens. It’s fine that they can be hard to kill, but hard to kill must come with the consequence of doing crap damage, and that is not happening in the case of Druids. Hell, even Tempests can do some pretty big damage with Overload Air and some well played bursts from Burning Speed, while being fairly hard to kill. But the damage of Tempest is active and easy to avoid, but you can’t avoid pets (exception being Bristleback activated skill which has plenty of counterplay). This is why I suggest that rangers themselves receive a damage buff and pets get nerfed. This makes a Druid’s damage more active so that if they want to do damage, they have to sacrifice using a survivability related skill.

This ties in with so many other professions who have skills that do high damage while also being defensive in nature. Ele’s Burning Speed is actually one It evades and does good damage for how fast it acts and how low the CD is. Scrappers are also a massive problem. Hammer has three skills that do something defensive while also doing damage, and they’re all on pretty low CDs, and they’re also all AoE. Let’s see, what else is there? Chronomancers have block that summons a phantasm which can be shattered twice. Though the phantasm summon can actually be dodged. Still, it’s a defensive skill that does something offensive. Berserkers can easily and frequently use Primal Bursts skills while maintain pulsing stability, and each burst give 15 seconds of pulsing healing and when any burst hits, the warrior is cleansed on 3 conditions. Now these are skills that do these effects baseline. Instead, this is an issue with traits have too much synergy with other traits and skills. But then they have stances that basically make them immune to damage for 4 seconds (8 with the passive proc trait) and conditions for 12 seconds.

Notice any commonalities with all these? Everything is too passive or requires very little activity to achieve a good reward. Basically, the risk/reward ratio for damage is out of whack. Druids risk very little to do damage (due to pets). Scrappers risk very little to do damage (due to constant defences). Warriors risk very little to do damage (due to low CDs). Chronomancers risk very little to do damage (due to illusion respawning). Some elite specs have to risk something. Support Tempests have to overload for a full 4 seconds to do their main damage, and most other damage skills are AoE, slow, easy to avoid, require facing your target etc. Reapers have so little defence that they have no choice but to avoid bursting when they’re too prone to damage. But then they have powerful, constant AoE bursts and condi bombs which are only risky when the enemy has enough CDs to cleanse or avoid the damage completely. Revs couldn’t just jump into a fight and expect to tank everything while doing a ton of damage. They had to line up their skills and set them up to do the most damage against a competent player. Yet, they also have constant evades/dodges/blocks. There are other professions, but this post is already getting too long, so I’ll cut it here and summarize my point.

There’s too much of everything, and it’s removing or slowly killing risks that players need to take in order to achieve a desired result.

Warriors can get top healing if they’re constantly fighting so that they’re almost always below 100% hp.

The rev spec is actually pretty nice. It’s a bit prone to CC but you can heal while CCed. And it still has plenty of weapon skill blocks/evades, plus soft CC and hard CC and the Centaur Stance elite is amazing and cheap and places tons of healing orbs that you and allies can easily collect and be healed for 1500+ per orb. You also have perma protection. The only issue is that it doesn’t do good damage like many other healing specs.

My suggestion for the trait is first, increase ICD to 20 seconds, and then reduce the duration to 3 seconds, and then lastly to reduce the hp of the roots so that that counterplay that anyone can do is more effective against it. Only then will I consider this trait balanced. I think it’s good that the requirements to make it proc are strict. Your target must be under some kind of CC and then you need to hit that target. So many auto procs just need you to hit something below a certain hp or just hit them at all and it’ll proc. So at least it has that keep it in check.

It could be not procing right away because of the ICD. So, it proced before and then only when you reached 10% hp did the ICD end and you received it again.

GS AAs and Gravedigger are still too insanely slow for PvP. The boon strip on #4 is nice, but something needs to be done about the rest of the weapon. #5 is nice but, but #3 and #2 feel too similar. One does damage and applies vulnerability and the other just does a ton of damage and takes a century to cast. What I think GS needs is first, slightly shorter cast times and/or aftercasts on AAs, and maybe a slight drop in Gravedigger damage and decreased cast time, so that the dps is the same, but it’s better in PvP. This will also help the GS trait which will do more damage with more Gravedigger hits (I think? Hopefully I’m not missing anything). Then, give #3 some additional utility because it’s still a pretty bad skill. The vulnerability is great with the crit trait, but that trait competes with the GS trait, so it seems counterproductive to have the two in the same tier. #5 could also use some more utility. Something team related would be great, like an effect on anything that was pulled that increases crit chance by x amount. Something. That was just a random idea to get the ball going.

Thief simply can’t get buffs or nerfs (with a few exceptions) until Trickery is nerfed and/or traits are made baseline. There are so many traits that are just far too mandatory in any thief build.

First, we have Sleight of Hand. This trait reduces Steal CD and gives Steal a 1 second daze. The CD reduction should be made baseline for the entire profession. Also, I think a single daze on one skill isn’t worthy of a GM spot so maybe find a way to make it a Master trait.

Preparedness is the next on the list. Just make this trait baseline for the whole profession like Sleight of Hand’s Steal CD reduction.

Next we have Lead Attacks. For some reason it was Trickery that needed the damage bonus, which just makes Trickery more mandatory. So, my suggestion is to change this trait to increase crit chance and move it to Critical Strikes.

Onward to Bountiful Theft. This trait was already the best one and then Anet buffed it to steal 3 boons. Now if there was any doubt on whether this was the best trait, there’s no denying it now. This could be a contender to swap with Sleight of Hand, but then you have the problem of this trait being too good over the other two GMs, but I think this is a problem with Quick Pockets and Bewildering Ambush being terrible GMs, much like how Sleight of Hand would be without the CD reduction.

The main things that must be done are baseline 20% CD reduction on steal and baseline 12 initiative. Start from there and see if thieves can finally spec into a different trait line.

FrostDraco.8306:

Must be a gaurdian main

You forgot that druids weren’t nerfed either. And they can blast a light field too. They used to be weak to conditions, but they might not quite so much anymore.

CETheLucid.3964:

Everything got buffed. Today is a good day to be an ele.

Unless you raid…which I don’t so I don’t care! ELES WERE BUFFED!!!!

I hate the patch because Scrapper and Druid can still spec for super defence while still doing high damage with little effort. Until scrapper has to choose between using a block/evade and doing damage when pressing one button, they’ll be OP (unless they receive crushing nerfs to numbers which would be kittened), and druids can still run away, spam stealth, root for dayz etc, while letting their pets do most of the work because pets are still OP. Buff ranger damage, nerf pet damage. Also, increase the godkitten shout heal CD because that kitten has a 16 second CD! Beast Mastery is already a required line so nerfing the heal CD and pet damage won’t make it more mandatory. Improving pets, no matter how good or bad they are, and lowering shout CDs (because other utilities are crap) will always be part of PvP builds without reworks.

Yeah! Ranger damage was buffed! Now to buff it even more and keep buffing it and THEN nerf pet damage into the ground. Gotta love it. All hail our Druid and Engi continued overlords. Oh well, I can’t complain. I main ele and we got some much needed CD buffs to skills that aren’t very powerful for how long their CDs were. Though some changes were unnecessary. Static Field doesn’t need a 30 second CD. Actually, I found it fine at 40. Instead, buffing different staff air skills would have been better, like Lightning Surge which has a day long cast time for crappy damage and blind in a small area on a 10 second CD. Gust could have used 5 seconds off the CD instead as well. Frozen only needed a 5 second CD reduction IMO. HR was a good buff. It’s a powerful skill and a very long lasting water field. What this patch really tells eles is that Anet wants to overbuff staff and other weapons instead of solving the spamming of high damage and high defence skills that still forces ele into the D/F support spec. As long as staff has mega long cast times and elite specs remain OP and allowing for both high damage and high defence in one spec, staff will never be truly viable in the top tier.

Gibbonz.7219:

XD well we all got our hopes up at least on the upside GS druid and mes got buffed xD

Because druids and mesmers needed a buff.

Well you have to admit the buffs to ele CDs were needed. Eles have insanely long CDs on skills that aren’t very powerful. I think Mist Form could have stayed at 75 seconds, but Armor of Earth was kitten with a 75 second CD. Now it’ll at least stand a chance at getting some use. Staff CDs were incredibly long too. Frozen Ground was a bit overbuffed (35 second CD would be fine IMO), and but HR is fine where it’s at. All they need to do to complete staff is make Shockwave good, lower the blast timer on Erupt, and drop down a few cast times. Part of why staff wasn’t used is because damage is so insane right now that you have to run focus for its lower CDs, faster casts, projectile protection and immunity. And this is also partly a problem with focus giving too much. It pretty much has a skill for every situation, and it’s just not healthy for the game to have one weapon do so much. It’s why SotM needed the damage nerf. It was one skill that did too much. Eles wouldn’t need to run their best weapon if the game’s design didn’t force them to. Lowering damage over would help give staff more of a presence because its damage would be comparable with others and you wouldn’t need to run the most defensive setup possible. And right now, eles can’t run scepter because scepter isn’t that great and dagger provides more defences and utilities. But since you are stuck running a melee range setup, you have to run Earth and Water with high healing to survive. These lowered CDs with staff are the right step to help make staff a more competitive and even defensive weapon. It helps give a ladder out of the pit that is the D/F support spec. But that ladder won’t reach down far enough until overall damage and spam that we see in today’s metas is reduced. And then Anet can reduce the quantity or strength of the more powerful blocks and evades and increase CDs on those skills.

Can you not queue outside of HotM anymore again?

Spammable (or nearly spammable) Headshot is more OP than PI. PI just makes the already OP Headshot even more absurd. I would like to see either Headshot brought up to 5 initiative or given a follow up skill if it interrupts and reduced to 3 initiative with a 1 or 2 cost for the follow up. And the follow up could be something good too, maybe even something that helps make P/P a better spec. Either of these will help reduce the overall damage from PI.

All non meta ele specs. All non meta rev specs (except the power build which used to be meta). Any warrior spec not running Defence, Discipline and Berserker. There are tons of weak specs and it’s one of the problems with HoT. Some specs are so insanely OP that it’s impossible to spec outside of them without becoming insanely weak in comparison.

Belorn.2659:

[…] evade the nerfs.

Thieves evade almost everything, so unless Anet places a Static Field around them on Tuesday, they’ll probably stay OP.

Supreme.3164:

This guy…..

“nerf resistance on warrior and nerf druid”…anything left to counter necro condi spam?

Yes, the counter to necro condi spam is Anet nerfing condi spamming. Condi warrior is also a culprit of condi spamming because Skull Grinder.

Also, nerfing resistance isn’t going to ruin warriors against condition specs because they can still cleanse 3 conditions when a primal burst skill hits. This is one reason why I want to see Berserk Mode changed to still work based on the three adrenaline stages. What would need to be done is changing Berserk Mode to double adrenaline from all sources. This way it takes a bit more time and effort to generate enough adrenaline for a full primal burst, but then a warrior can also use stage 1 or 2 primal bursts too. Part of what makes warrior damage OP is because they can easily get 10 adrenaline, use a powerful and then easily get that 10 adrenaline back before the CD is up.

Changes to other utilities can also help warriors deal with condis if Cleansing Ire gets nerfed along with Berserker Stance. Right now, those two things along with Defy Pain and Endure Pain are all mandatory on warrior and they carry because they’re so powerful, but also necessary because the other utilities are awful. Shouts are useless, banners are useless, etc. These 4 main things I mentioned are needed for survival and no other utilities provide the survival necessary in a meta with insane burst and insane sustain.

Everything being OP is not the same as balance. It looks like balance, but it’s not.

Abolutely NO with the Berserker Stance buff. Berserker Stance is already OP as is. It’s already plenty corruptible and besides, one extra second isn’t going to make Necros any more powerful against them. It really just means that they take one extra second of conditions per corrupt if the resistance is corrupted. Your suggestion is to make Necro more of a counter, but a Necro shouldn’t be required against one, which is what this change is going to do, whether you intend it or not. I often play warrior and I know Berserker Stance is OP and basically makes the warrior an unstoppable machine during/between (depending on timing) berserks. I would much rather see a reduced duration and CD, and then at least there are points where the warrior is vulnerable. But right now, a warrior can easily cleanse conditions during Berserk Mode and pop Berserker Stance afterward to be immune to conditions till the CD is up, or the warrior can pop it during Berserk Mode and be unkitable by anything without teleports. And in a way, Endure Pain and the trait proc on top of Berserker Stance makes the warrior immune to everything except CCs, which is only useful outside of zerking. This is the problem I have with warrior. The frame of vulnerability against them is too small, and they’re a high armour and high hp profession, and add on 900+ HPS and you get something that’s just too tanky, even with Berserker Amulet, which really is named for how powerful it makes a Berserker.

I would absolutely be ok with a nerf/change to Berserker Stance and a complete removal of the Endure Pain proc. But some compensation might need to be given since those two stances are carrying the profession, so something that helps with defences (maybe through trait changes or improving other utilities) without being so powerful that they rely on it to survive.

Though there should be a way to reward players for playing well. I think the easiest way to do it is to reduce how many points are lost based on how close the scores were. But, I’m sure there are flaws to this solution as well. It just sucks when you lose a bunch of points even if you lost with a score of 499-500.

SoloQ + 5 player only TeamQ. I think this would give the most competitive environment while also providing a team game environment. Also, weekly tournaments are a must, and those could be part of an improved league system. Season 5 was the most competitive season yet, excluding smurfing and match manipulators, which every season before had.

As soon as you do 2-5 player queue, you get players QQing about going against premades with their duo party. And I’m sorry, but if you don’t want that, ask for 5 player teamQ to be separate. Actually, just get rid of 2-4 player queues for ranked. Duo queue wasn’t healthy for the game and neither will any premade of any number of players going against a smaller group. If there must be queues for 2 players, 3 players and 4 players, they need to separate. And since the game doesn’t have a high enough player base to allow for 5 different queues, you are only left with SoloQ and 5 player TeamQ.

Just because a class is hard to play doesn’t mean it should be OP. It just means that it should be punishing if the enemy makes a mistake and lets you achieve a difficult combination perfectly. It’s not hard to do a ton of damage as a Thief and there are only a few ways to prevent them from sticking to you. If it was harder for a Thief to stay on a target, that would make them difficult to play and rewarding when you are on a target. But right now, Thieves can zip around, press a few buttons and crush you with ease. Yet, all a DH needs to do against them is press a few buttons and crush them while blocking their biggest attacks at the same time. There’s far too much reward for too little effort in this game.

Mesmers can summon illusions with a few buttons and resummon them simply by shattering. Chronophantasma still respawns a phantasm even if the first phantasm didn’t hit with the shatter. You are rewarded for the enemy doing the right thing. How is that good design? If the trait respawned all phantasms only if they hit, then the trait could have the daze removed and it would be a rewarding trait when used right by the Mesmer and rewarding for the enemy if they prevent it.

Scrapper’s hammer 3 evades and hits at the same time. You basically press a button and are rewarded by doing damage while not needing to worry about enemy burst. Now this skill has an except because the evade frames are split and there’s a gap between evades, but generally, only a good player can hit between those and this skill is still too rewarding in massive fight environments when most attacks won’t hit you yet you will also do high AoE damage. Hammer 4 is the same idea in that you do AoE damage (in front of you thankfully) while blocking everything.

Let’s take a look at Rev’s staff 5 (Surge of the Mists). This skill evades, does half decent damage and knocksback each hit. This is an example of a skill that is difficult to use but has a good payoff when used well. If you line yourself up wrong or the enemy lines itself up right, you CC for the full duration and do full damage. The evade is always the full duration, but offensively, the skill is difficult to use to its full potential, but its effectiveness can also be reduced by good enemy positioning. IMO, this is what makes a good skill.

Weak Spot isn’t meant to be a cover condition. Just because Overload Air applies vulnerability doesn’t mean the trait shouldn’t. If you aren’t running Tempest, the Air trait line won’t have vulnerability. Plus, Overload Air with this trait applies more vulnerability, and who doesn’t want that?

Harmonious Conduit just needs a change like the whole of Tempest needs a change. We can’t just change the one trait and call it a day. Tempest itself is terrible and only works in the current PvP meta if you are running Water and Earth.

Signet of Water is indeed terrible. However, Berserker Stance is OP as kitten, so I couldn’t live with myself if another profession could do the same thing.

FrownyClown.8402:

This is bad for a couple reasons.
1. the skill has no animation and is instant making it strong already
2. Core FA ele is not viable because of its lack of mobility outside combat and its unreliable burst damage.

What I would do is
1. reduce recharge of pheonix to 12s
2. reduce fiery greatsword to 60s (map mobility and dps potential)
3. reduce cast time of dragon tooth or make it so dodgeroll or stun/daze doesnt cancel the skill
4. increase water auto attack damage by 10%
5. increase damage of shatterstone by 150-200%

Phoenix hits extremely hard on its own (don’t deny it), and the burst it can do in combination with Lightning Strike and the trait proc is a crazy amount of damage. It’s really as high as I would suggest ever making burst go for any professions, so we should be asking for nerfs to GS Mesmers/Warriors and other massive burst damage specs. Pheonix could use a CD reduction and be made more as a utility skill than a burst skill, which means it need a damage nerf. Making Dragon’s Tooth hit more reliably will help compensate for the damage drop. Dragon’s Tooth should really just be instant and drop after a 1, maybe 1.5 seconds, because this ability is meant to do damage. Phoenix should do some damage, but it should be more utility than damage. With all that said. Phoenix changes I’d like to see:

- 15 second CD
- Cut damage by 50%
- Faster travel time
- Cures 2 conditions

There could be a condition aspect to it too. Let’s say it gains 10% damage for each target it hits up to 50%. The phoenix gains the damage bonus from contact with a target before it does damage, so this makes sure that it doesn’t hit one target and then next one takes 10% more damage. The first one would take the 10% bonus damage as well. These changes, along with a more reliable Dragon’s Tooth, will make Scepter more threatening in Fire.

In Water, Shatterstone shouldn’t exceed a 75% damage buff. I agree that the AA could use a small buff.

Air is fine. The AA was buffed, and it’s the attunement with the shortest CDs and can be refreshed with ease and used frequently.

Earth could use some changes. The follow up of #2 is far too similar to the AA, and the AA is too similar to the Water AA. If anything should change, the AA should just be redesigned so that it’s actually unique and interesting. If the projectile aspect is kept, then the Water AA should be unreflectable, but Earth AA should remain reflectable. Think of it as ice shards that pierce any defences.

Beware of anyone who says Rev loses to everything. They’re just too used to Rev being godly OP instead of just a little OP. Welcome to the Ele club.

JonnyForgotten.4276:

As a thief. . .

Stun+ big burst=dead thief

Just gotta time those evades.

As someone who has bought good Thieves, stunning is nearly impossible and if you somehow succeed, they break it quickly with their super short CD stunbreak block. Good Thieves know when you can stun and are ready to escape if you succeed at hitting them.

Phoenix isn’t the only burst. With a FA build, just swapping to Air does some and then skill 2 is likely off CD as well. This in combination with Phoenix actually creates one of the higher bursts I’ve seen by any build.

The changes I’d like to see is a CD reduction and damage reduction from Phoenix, slightly faster dropping Dragon’s Tooth almost no cast time, CD reduction on Water Trident, a significant damage buff to Shatterstone (none of this 10% BS), Dust Devil CD reduction or AoE effect, and a difference between Water and Earth AAs (they both shoot 3 projectiles and one does more damage and the other bleeds)

Focus itself does not need buffs. If anything, it needs nerfs. It has plenty of projectile hate, one of the best condition cleansing skills, IMO, in the game (Earth 4 cleanses 3 conditions on a short CD), and an immunity on too short of a CD still (this goes for many immune skills in the game). These are the most powerful things, but then there’s a chill skill, two CCs, an aura, and a long lasting fire field.

After that, OH dagger should gets some changes to make it a bit more defensive. Since Anet refuses to give back a nerfed Celestial Amulet, OH dagger is out of the question on all builds due to the lack of defensive skills.

But before any buffs are addressed, Anet should address the strength of other professions as well. Scepter can’t compete with Thieves because Thieves do too much damage, not because scepter does too little. Thieves also have more mobility, but that’s not because scepter eles have too little, but because Thieves have too much. Take a look at Scrapper. They have all the defences in the world and can still do comparable burst if they do it right. It’s not as easy to burst on Scrapper, but it’s pretty kittening high and frequent for something that can tank so much damage, heal so frequently and stay so mobile.

Once things are nerfed, which will never happen because that would be admitting that Anet made a mistake, scepter Ele might actually be fine and would really just need minor QoL buffs like a reduced cast time on Dragon’s Tooth or lower aftercasts and things like that.

You know what, I’m going to design my own Elite spec (ripping off some ideas from others of course!) and find ways to make fire and air support based and water and earth offence based, basically switching the attunements around. In fact, I’ll just change around the attunements entirely and that’ll be the profession skill change. Water will become Ice Attunement and apply chill and do heavy damage. Fire will become…something…I’ll need to think about how to do this. Air can be about shocking your allies back to life and can become a healing spec. It’ll be hard to figure out how to makes these work with current traits though. But imagine a healing FA spec. There are plenty of traits in Air that aren’t damage focused and can work with a healing spec.

If there were just more organized tournaments for teams, then there could be some real competition. Or make ranked strictly 5v5 and team based. Solo and Duo were more competitive than premades stomping unorganized teams. Of course not every premade was good and able to stomp everyone, but even those games weren’t competitive. They were just unorganized premades fighting against unorganized solo/duo/triple/quadruple queuers. Tournaments is where leagues should go if they want a competitive game mode. Leagues should be about the top teams. There could be weekly tournaments that affect your placement on the leaderboards and games during the week beforehand to practice, but offer rewards to encourage players to practice.

They can easily make sword a range weapon. It’s not like greatswords, weapons that are usually seen a melee in reality, are strictly melee weapons in game. Mesmer GS is a range weapon technically (though it hilariously does so much more damage up close), so why would they restrict sword to melee range?

I have no problem if they choose GS though since it’s just staff that actually has any good range out of all our weapons. Warhorn was a terrible weapon to choose because we already have two MH and two OH weapons, but only one 2H weapon. So adding another 2H will make sense that way. But if they want to give us another MH, I’m fine with that too, and it could easily be a 1200 range weapon, or even have a trait that adds 300 range to it.

It’s too easy to see inside mid. Part of what made Khylo interesting to me was that you couldn’t see the fight or exactly where anyone was from outside the building unless you looked at the mini map and it wasn’t too cluttered. The jumping puzzle is far too easy now too. A well used dodge jump could be why you made the final jump, but now you don’t have to do that. The map was really just dumbed down. And it’s so easy for ranged professions to hit things now with so much more room to maneuver and kite. It was a good map for professions who didn’t do as well on more open maps like Legacy. I haven’t noticed any changes with pathing aside from the red vs blue mid ledges bug, but if there was a drop, I think it might be good because teleports are too good in PvP overall, so teleports are just too mandatory. Fewer teleport spots (making sure that they make sense) I think is good for the game. Don’t eradicate them, but reduce them a little. For example, if a spot gives teleporters a massive advantage and it would take significantly longer for another profession to get to that same spot, then make teleporting to that spot impossible.

I’m mostly concerned on how easily ranged specs can hit things in middle. There’s no really good LoS around the point itself, so I’m afraid of Longbow Druids becoming even more powerful than they already are. Of course teams might just end up running excessive projectile hate to counter this.

Edit: scratch that. I just went into my arena and I see there are two big pillars surrounding the point! How I forgot about that I don’t know, but they’re there, so that’s good.

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