Guild Wars 2

Honestly, I’d just like to see Inscription moved out of Air. They have nothing to do with power damage and the synergy with that trait line is horrendous. Every glyph does something different and only one does any power damage. Inscription just feels so out of place in the Air line.

Why not put it in Arcane? I know that line has the Arcane skills trait, but so what? Inscription applies boons and Arcane has Elemental Enchantment. Arcane is also about enhancing all attunements, and glyphs do something different based on the attunements you are in when you cast them.

If it needs to be in a different line, why not Earth? Swap it with Written in Stone. We’re all stuck using Earth, Water and Tempest anyway, and nobody’s going to pick Inscription when going Air because it’s terrible for it’s spot and it sucks for the kind of build you’d run with Air.

Behold! A guild for Elementalists! This is a place for anything Ele. It’s basically an in game forum!

I was inspired to do this from the Thief and Mesmer forum guilds, [Teef] and [OMFG]. So should Elementalists be left out?

Anyone is welcome, as long as you’re willing to learn and help others.

There are ranks for every kind of player, from experienced teachers to the ones who just rolled an Ele today. And you don’t have to be an Elementalist to join. You can be whatever profession you want, and use this guild for learning how to combat Eles or to learn what skills do what. You can discuss what needs changing, buffing, nerfing, etc. So if you want a place to talk about Eles, join the Official Ele Forum Guild!

Rules and Guidelines:

- No trolling. You can joke around, but don’t troll.
- Be civil in any discussion. Insulting will get you a warning or a kick.
- Keep discussions about Elementalists or related to the profession if possible. If you want to talk about other professions, that’s fine, but don’t derail discussion about Eles.
- Try to answer any questions you know the answer to, even if it’s “stupid”.

How to apply:

In this thread, post your in game name, and what role you’d like to take on. These roles are not restrictions; they just help others know what you specialize in. You can also mention what your preferred game mode(s) are, the realm you’re on and any other info about you if you’d like. Below is the ideal format for a post:

- Name
- Role
- Game mode(s)
- Realm
- Other info

The roles are as follows:

- Teacher: You remember when Fireball was actually large, and you remember every Shatterstone buff. If you love passing on Ele knowledge, this will be your rank. This rank has three sub-ranks:
– PvE Teacher: For those who want to primarily teach PvE. Raid, Fractals, Dungeons, Open World.
– WvW Teacher: For those who want to primarily teach WvW. Roaming, Zerging.
– PvP Teacher: For those who want to primarily teach PvP. Learning to “git gud”.
- Tester: You love to experiment with new builds and to discover their viability in any game mode.
- Student: You’re new to Elementalist. You spam Fireball because it’s a friggin’ _ball of fire! This is also the rank for anyone who’s just here to learn about this fascinating and complex profession.

Ok, so there’s one person, so looks like there’ll be more interest. I’ll set things up later today and make a separate thread to get things started. I’ve learned a lot about Mesmers from the that guild, so it’ll be good to have one for Eles where players can learn, test, teach and discuss things in-game in a civil manner If we get enough players who are interested in an arena, we can set one up.

If someone else wants to take initiative on setting things up, by all means, go for it!

Edit: Made a guild and a post about it. Check it out and feel free to join!

I love how Ele plays, but I haven’t heard of any guilds dedicated to Eles. Rangers, Thieves and Mesmers have one. I’m in the Mesmer one (because I also love Mesmers and the theme), and the whole point of it is to be a place to learn about Mesmer, test builds, talk about issues, etc.

So what about Eles? Do we already have a place for such things or should I just make one?

Nobody likes fighting a PU Mes of any kind. It’s just cheap as kitten. It’s a problem with stealth really. Just throwing an idea out there, even though it’s probably terrible: make each stealth skill during stealth last 1 second less. This CD reduction is removed once you’re been out of stealth for 1 second. This means that you have to at least reveal yourself for 1 second in order to keep using long lasting stealth skills.

As you can see, I kittening HATE stealth spamming.

I love that they nerfed Retribution but not Devastation or Invocation… Those are the two trait lines that are making Revs do such crazy damage. Those and SotM, Sword AA, and Unrelenting Assault. Oh, there’s also the huge might stacking, and of course 100% crit with the Invocation trait.

But Retribution was what absolutely needed to be nerfed…

And yes, I agree that condi Rev is actually fairly balanced. The only really OP is torment, and that’s a problem with how the condi works and how long it lasts. I think Thieves would LOVE a nerf to torment lol.

Qori.9671:

it also , at least on the npcs in the mist , ignores its 5 sec ICD while the target is in down state . Dagger fire skill 1 will stack 2 burning stacks per projectile , so 6 stacks every AA lol, I could only get him to 24 stacks before he died tho.

I think this might apply to downed players too. A bug? I was easily applying 20+ burning stacks on downed players who attacked me with Fire Aura up while I overloaded fire over them. I would like to test this in game with a player to see how it works.

This isn’t going to kill power Rev. I won’t explain why; it’s obvious. ED was powerful, but it’s not the most powerful thing Revs have.

OriOri.8724:

MoD is the only good mantra, and it is why people think that mantras are incredibly overpowered. It honestly could use a bit of a nerf, which would then allow mantras as a whole to be changed to make the other ones good enough to carry

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, MoD is only OP with Confounding Suggestions. The CDs match perfectly and it ends up turning a daze mantra into a stun mantra. If MoD needs a nerf, do it indirectly by nerfing Confounding Suggestions.

The thing that needs to be considered with a CS nerf though is how it will affect other daze skills. It would still need to work well with Chaos Storm, Sword 4, and of course Diversion. And it also needs to work without MoD too. Really, it’s just MoD that makes CS so powerful. Perhaps a simple CD increase to, let’s say for the heck of it, 10 seconds will suffice. That way, if you want to stun with MoD, you have to wait for the 10 seconds. Increasing the CD keeps the synergy with all dazes, but it also reduces the frequency of the stun with MoD. It’s simple and perfect for Anet because it’s lazy! :P

When it comes to bring up other mantras to be as powerful as MoD, nerfing MoD only reduces how much the other mantras can be buffed, and it doesn’t solve the problem with CS and MoD’s too perfect synergy. It would still need to daze and then it would still stun on a 5 second CD.

Abelisk.4527:

Superior Rune of Balthazar + Signet of Fire + Glyph of Elemental Power + Cleansing Flames.

=0

Edit: I am so making a new build right now.

Can confirm. We will see nerf threads in a few days about burn Eles.

I’m trying out a build with D/F, Carrion Amulet/Balth Runes/Smoulder Signet, Earth/Water/Tempest, ER/CF/SoF/GoEP/Rebound. It’s a very selfish build. No good healing for allies or condition cleansing for them. But the burning burst is insane. My concern with its viability is how easily the utilities’ burning will be cleansed. Glint Revs will also heal through it easily unless you can bait out their heal. That’s how you’ll win fights. You need to bait their cleanses. SoF has a low CD and GoEP lasts a long time so you can maintain some decent burning even in Water Attunement. It’s pretty awesome. With the downstate change, Reaper viability will probably diminish, so we may not be as needed for a support role anymore, at least not for them.

Xyonon.3987:

Zintrothen.1056:

UnknownFreak.2805:

Edit: Also, it now copies 1 stack of might instead of the entire stack, or have it always been like that?

I noticed this too. Can someone confirm exactly how it used to work for might? Right now, it just copies 20+ seconds of one stack of might. SO MUCH MIGHT!!!!

It used to share up to 25stacks might with the duration you have on yourself. Right now it only shares ONE stack of might … it’s horrible …

I have to wonder if this was an intended change or an oversight. I can see this being 100% intended knowing Anet.

UnknownFreak.2805:

Edit: Also, it now copies 1 stack of might instead of the entire stack, or have it always been like that?

I noticed this too. Can someone confirm exactly how it used to work for might? Right now, it just copies 20+ seconds of one stack of might. SO MUCH MIGHT!!!!

Levetty.1279:

Phantasmal Disenchanter: The casting time of this ability has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1 second.
Phantasmal Defender: The casting time of this ability has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1 second.
Spatial Surge: The aftercast has been reduced by 0.3 seconds.

Loving the cast time reductions. Does the Spatial Surge change mean we won’t need to stop cast to do more damage?

I like the SoD idea. We already have a signet that helps our conditions (SoM), so why do we have two? Plus the signet trait is in the power damage line, but this signet is useless for power builds.

I disagree about MoP. That mantra just always felt faceroll to me. You charge it, and then spam it. Skillz! But I don’t know how it could be changed not to be faceroll while maintaining the burst aspect of it and not making it useless. Anet needs to be careful on how to buff Mesmer burst because it’s already crazy high when you can manage to pull of a burst. Buffing WoC and MoP is risky.

I’d love to see other utilities made competitive with Decoy, Blink, and other good utilities. I made a post earlier about how we could make blink not seem so required while keeping it competitive. (People are salty right now because they thought I was suggesting a nerf, so I’m just gonna let it die.)

This is so typical of Mesmers. They see a post that can be taken as either, “nerf this thing”, or, “buff everything else”, and they instantly bash you with, “DON’T NERF THIS THING”. Not once did I suggest that blink should be nerfed…although I can see why you saw it such a post. Saying, “without making it useless”, could be seen as a nerf suggestion, but this was just poor wording on my part. Blink will never be useless as Fay pointed out. That will only make Mesmers worse.

For the record, I main Mesmer. I don’t want to see us nerfed into uselessness, but I also don’t kittening take someone’s suggestions personally unless they are horrible ideas (think like “make Mirror Blade only bounce once!” It does too much damage and I don’t know how to dodge!". And if you haven’t noticed, I haven’t actually suggested anything.

I’ll just say this again so it’s drilled into your skulls, I do not want nerfs. What I want is a civilized discussion about how we can make blink not be mandatory or not feel mandatory (if that wording suits you better), preferably without nerfs and with buffs to actually useless utilities.

That better? Of course it isn’t. It never is with you people. And kitten right I’m on a kittening high horse.

I hate blink. I like how it works and how powerful it is. But I hate that it’s mandatory. It’s a 1200 range, stun breaking teleport on a 30 second CD.

So I want to start a discussion about Blink and why it’s mandatory and what can be changed to make it an optional utility without making it useless.

To give reference to other teleport/shadowstep skills:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator's_Signet
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Trap
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Merciful_Intervention
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Judge's_Intervention
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Flash
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Renewal_of_Air
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Search_and_Rescue!%22
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Walk
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flesh_Wurm
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Portal_Entre
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blink

If I missed any, let me know.

Discuss! How can we make blink optional without making it useless? And if for whatever reason it somehow isn’t actually mandatory, please show me a build that works against good players, doesn’t involve a pre nerfed Well of Precognition, and also doesn’t use blink.

Providing stability baseline would be too much. A trait could be good, but again, it might be too powerful. What I think is the simplest fix (though likely not the best one) is to shorten the cast times a little or just change how mantras work. And as mentioned above, you could also make them worth something when they’re channeled. I like the idea of giving more stacks baseline. It would definitely make the weaker ones a bit more useful. The healing mantra heals for so freaking little if you finally get to finish the cast time. Mantra of Resolve only cleanses 4-6 conditions and then you need to wait 15 seconds and then you need to pull off the massive cast again. Mantra of Concentration is nice, but the CD afterward is way too long for something that only starts recharging after you’ve used the charges. That’s one thing that could make mantras better. They were awesome when they bugged and recharged in the background.

Mantra of Distraction is, imo, the only balanced mantra. It’s only OP with Confounding Suggestions and that’s because Confounding Suggestions is poorly made and ends up being meh on it’s own but too powerful with MoD.

So, imo, the best changes are adding one extra charge baseline, and significantly lowering the CDs after using charges. I think 4 stacks would be too powerful, so HM would need to lose the extra stack, but in its place, they could add a 20% CD reduction.

That sounds just like the kind of idea Anet would think of instead of actually balancing the game.

Also, this could only work (if it could work in the first place) when the stacked professions are together on a map. Two DHs are separate parts of a map aren’t really that big of an issue. It’s when they’re together that their true strength is shown.

If larger team sized game modes were added, they will definitely need to scale down damage.

GS is designed to keep targets away from you. That’s why skill 5 is a knockback, not a pull!

Also, if skill 3 was a gap closer, it would need a much longer CD, or a much shorter range. Either way, it wouldn’t work because GS, again, is suppose to do more damage from range, so a gap closer defeats the whole purpose of the weapon.

The weapon still has flaws though. Skill 2 works better up close because the bounce can hit clones and only works within 600 range. The AA does more damage if you stop the cast before it finishes (seriously, why hasn’t this been changed?), and the trait is crap for a GM.

apharma.3741:

It’s still a thing as in people run it but it’s not anywhere near as effective as condition mesmer.

Condition mesmer bypasses endure pain, elixir S, signet of stone etc and can usually at least stalemate or force another person to run. Power on the other hand you need to be paying attention and don’t have any auto procs to save your bacon unless you pick up chaos for mirror of anguish but I’d hardly say it does much with short cool down CCs.

A lot of the best power builds have a lot of stealth and/or excessive regen and/or high block uptime.

This. There’s so much sustain in the game now that conditions are the only way to deal consistent, hard-to-heal damage. Power builds do more damage overall, but it’s far too easy to nullify their effects with perma protection and constant blocks, evades, and immunities. Though sustain can stop a condi attack from applying conditions in the first place, which is good, but if you’re struck with conditions, good luck surviving. If you’re hit with power attacks, you can block the next attacks, but if you’re hit with condi attacks, you can’t block the conditions from ticking. You either cleanse, or get resistance.

I like power because I personally just can’t stand staff anymore. The skill ceiling is far beyond GS and my computer is too slow for staff lol.

I agree. The build is practically designed to make the iDuelist apply as much bleeding as possible, and to not allow Duelist’s Discipline to be used at the same time as Phantasmal Fury harms the build. I don’t know about having two weapon traits in the same tier though. Fencer’s Finesse is a crit based trait so it can’t leave Dueling without being changed. So how could FF be dealt with while still moving DD to a master spot? FF isn’t a condi trait so it wouldn’t actually conflict in that area, but Dueling is also a hybrid line, so removing the ability to use FF I think would also harm the build. Some careful rearranging would need to be done to make a tier 2 DD work.

WvW reward tracks do take too long. It’s a longer game mode, but people still have lives outside of the game and it’s not there’s a subscription that gives Anet a good reason to make everything take forever to do.

Topher.5631:

It isn’t pure cancer. It has a counter, but it is more difficult to use than others so peeps call it OP. I do not play condi thief.

In reference to the photo, what were the team comps lol

Having one or two counters means it’s not OP? Do you know what makes something OP? The more counters something has, the more balanced it is, and then there’s a tipping point when it becomes UP with too many counters. Condi thief is not that. The counters are well timed power damage hits or well timed condi hits and then not attacking till the condis have ticked. That wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t do UNGODLY damage at the same time with all the non stop evading.

My point it, it’s absolutely pure cancer. Hell, kittening cancer itself has more treatments and is more pleasant than fighting a condi thief.

What? You’re gonna need to reword that and add some punctuation because I have no idea what you’re trying to get at. Something about changing Ranger and Engi resurrecting strength to be like Mesmer and Ele?

Huskyboy.1053:

jaded players who are tired of being insulted, either via whisper, map chat, or team chat.

That’s actually a better reason that you think. The community is unbelievable now. And the more players insult other players, the more players will turn off chat. Obviously turning off chat doesn’t solve the issue, but when you’re being insulted by some kitten with no patience, then of course they’re going to play alone. The solution isn’t to force team chat on anyone. It’s to make harsher punishments for those who insult. Fewer toxic players will lead to more players using team chat which leads to higher quality soloQ games. Forced team chat just leads to people leaving the game because now they have no escape from toxicity.

People don’t even get banned for AFKing. The justice system in this game is atrocious.

I think the only reason people voted yes is because they want good solo/duo queue experiences, not constantly fighting premades. They literally just need to bring back solo queue. That’s it. Bring that back, and this game will be improved just from that one change. The only answer we are given now is to disallow 3+ queues. It’s Anet’s way (and a terrible way at that) of making solo queue a more enjoyable experience. So what choice do we have? This change will go through and more players will leave PvP, or the game for good.

If they just gave an option on the vote to bring back SoloQ, that would definitely have the most votes.

Definitely an Imagined Burden change. The problem I feel with boon stripping is that it’s only useful if you take the trait before, and/or run a boon strip utility. It feels more limited. I’d rather just see GS changed so that the AA’s final tick happens at the very end of the cast. In a way, just add a extra tick. That way you don’t need to stop cast to do more damage. It’s far less clunky this way, and it was obviously not intended to do more damage when you stop cast. They could also just remove the portion of the cast that doesn’t do damage, and still make the final hit finish with the cast itself. This would help IB’s might stacking. I like the crippling, but that could be swapped with something else. Like maybe each attack strips a boon. Or instead of might, it stacks vulnerability, which suits the trait line better. I do like the idea of adding two might stacks to all attacks. That would definitely need to replace the crippling. You could also make the AA give a stack per hit.

It would be nice if Mental Anguish helped the other shatters somehow.

Another trait I’d like to see changed is Shattered Strength in Illusions. I’ve heard that torment on shatter actually does more damage, even with a power spec, than might on shatters. So maybe they could just change it to 2 stacks per illusion. This would work with the IB change giving might on all attacks.

I’d also like to see the whole conditions line moved out of Illusions. The line has illusion summoning skill recharge reduction, improved and shorter CD shatters, AND it boosts conditions. I guess they could move it to Chaos because that whole line just kind of suits conditions already, and move some defensive stuff over to Inspiration or spread it out to other trait lines. No idea what’s best here honestly, but right now, Illusions feels like Trickery for Thieves, or Soul Reaping for Necros. You either must have it or you’re making yourself weaker.

Get rid of condition cooldown reductions. Torch skills being lowered when you’re in stealth? Yeah doesn’t at all promote passive play… It also only really works well with PU, and God knows we should just remove that trait completely. There’s also Staff CDs reducing whenever you have Chaos Armor. There are plenty of ways to get it, but we shouldn’t have to give ourselves a terrible aura just to have shorter CDs. You either need to get rid of these type of CD reductions or give them to EVERYEONE on EVERYTHING that reduces CDs. It makes no sense to have them on some skills and not the rest.

If you aren’t going to make Chaos a condition line, then shift around some traits so that power specs have other options when no running staff. If you don’t run staff, you have to take Mirror of Anguish, and frankly, that trait sucks. It’s got a huge CD and gives a tiny benefit.

You could make Restorative Illusions a GM trait and make it remove a condition per illusion. Also, boost the heal power coefficient, and make it mean something when you shatter 3 illusions.

Restorative Mantras reduces mantra recharge. Make it happen! It’s terrible and mantras suck. Actually, just rework mantras. This game doesn’t allow long, easily interruptable casts anymore.

Now for things that need nerfs…

I already mentioned PU. I know it was already nerfed, but promoting passive, stealthy play, is not good for the game. It’s unfun to fight against, and honestly, for me, it’s not even fun to play as. Just scrap it already. You could even add another steal skill to compensate.

Chronophantasma needs to be one phantasm only. And then remove the daze. Clone generation with it is WAY too high right now.

This one I’m questioning…Mistrust hitting 5 targets. It’s a bit much imo. Confusion is an extremely powerful condition and confusion foes that weren’t actually interrupted just doesn’t…make sense.

Edit: Forgot a powerful trait that needs some changing…Counding Suggestions. 5 second CD 1.25 second stun is too much. I don’t know if a CD increase will help things. For an Adept trait, this is way too good. Swap it with the Signet trait or Furious Interruption (which is not worthy of a Master trait spot). Maybe even move IB to Master and CS to GM. IB would need a big buff to compete with the other two GMs.

Yeah, most of our traits are fine imo. A lot suck, some are too good. This is probably the case with every profession.

Good luck killing a Druid 1v1. If you reach them, they stealth. It’s on a 10 second CD and it’s extremely easy for them to refill their astral force with just passive healing.

I’d rather see concentration and expertise removed. They just make boon and condition builds unnecessarily strong, especially with conditions that are meant to be short lived, like confusion and especially torment. If you must keep those stats, you need to shorten the duration of the more powerful conditions. Confusion, torment, poison, and in some cases, bleeding and burning even have too much duration with expertise. And the only reason we don’t see the eternal boon builds we used to is because concentration only exists on two amulets that don’t have a single defensive stat. If they were on anything with either toughness, vitality or healing power, then boon builds would be better than ever, and their already strong. Same thing goes for condition builds that don’t use an expertise amulet. They’re already strong as is and adding to that strength is not going to help. Removing the option also doesn’t exactly help. So actually, don’t remove concentration and expertise. Just nerf conditions and boons…

You could always just duel your friends in a custom arena. It’s not a game mode that’ll give rewards, and it shouldn’t be imo. Some professions and specs are just too good at dueling. Others will never be seen, like Necros because they don’t start with shroud. Shroud is what helps Necros last long enough, but without it, they can’t win duels unless their opponent sucks. Hmm, actually, I think only Necros would be impossible to win with against good players, even as a good player. Mesmers, Rangers, Engis, anything with lots of sustain and survivability will come out on top, because that’s what wins fights in this game.

Once again someone is suggesting buffs to something that doesn’t need a buff. What needs to happen is boon spam needs a nerf. There’s no point in stripping protection or swiftness, etc., when they’ll almost instantly be reapplied. The only reason boon corruption works for Reapers is because it converts the boon into a condition. So if a boon is reapplied, at least you still see the effects of the corruption. With regular stripping, you’ll never know a boon was actually removed. It’ll be gone for a few seconds and then back again. This is especially true for boon pulsing skills like Berserker Stance and Glint utilities.

Kodama.6453:

Blind. Negating the next attack of the enemy who gets inflicted with it. Available for necromancers/reapers.

So basically, saying that necromancer doesn’t have any mechanic to negate attacks is false.

And how much blind can a Reaper get? Let’s see. There’s GS 4, Dagger 4, SoS, WoD, Plague 2, Fury boon corruption… Guess how many of those are used in the current meta?

The only thing used in the meta is signet corruptions. And it’s a bit RNG because you might not corrupt Fury. The only reliable way to blind as a Reaper right now is to make sure your target actually always has fury (which is bad because it increases their damage) and no more than 2-3 boons.

Nobody runs GS, SoS, WoD, Dagger 4. And the Corruptions line doesn’t allow the use of Plague Signet, and you don’t provide enough utility to make up for the lack of tankiness.

I’ve been saying this for a while now. There are too many powerful attacks and too many sustain skills. Every profession drops quickly when they run out of sustain skills if they aren’t being healed rapidly. This is especially true for Necros. The only reason Reapers are still meta is because they can survive with good team support and as long as they can survive well enough to continue pressuring, they are extremely threatening.

Given how hard it hits, it shouldn’t be much faster than it is. You can control a lot of space by placing it over a point. I think the main problem here is the same problem I’m always pointing out: too much sustain. With sustain, you can flat out ignore the giant, hard hitting, pointy, flaming thing about to drop on you. Sustain makes high damage skills no longer threatening.

A lot of skills will become better just by nerfing elite specs. With less of something, it becomes more skillful to use it well. With so much sustain, you don’t have to time it as well to win. And adding more unblockable skills does the same thing. You don’t have to time those skills with blocks. You can just use them whenever because you’ll always have one.

A good change would’ve been reducing the duration of the healing. 15 seconds is excessive and unnecessary. The healing provided did need a nerf too though, but with overall damage nerfs (like that’ll ever happen…), the nerf won’t feel so heavy.

It was because they don’t want you to hit with Backstab, obviously. So instead of fixing Trickery, reducing dagger AA damage, fixing P/P, making Thieves less reliant on non stop evades, reducing D/P 3 or Heartseeker damage (if they don’t nerf AA), they instead add a 1 second CD if backstab doesn’t hit. Yeah that’ll fix the damage problem…

Actually, the change could have been made because they want SA to be used more. Of course a better solution is to make Trickery not mandatory anymore.

Kiting DH is easy? Are you actually serious? You can’t kite a 1200 range weapon with an AA that can sometimes cripple you, and if you aren’t crippled, it still hits way too hard. DHs keep forgetting that traps aren’t the only OP thing they have. True Shot was nerfed, but it still hits hard. The AA is a bigger problem though, just like other AA that’s came with HoT or were buffed because of HoT (looking at you Thieve). You must have LoS or a teleport to escape a DH. And LoS only works so long because the DH can still run up to you and force you out with traps and insane damage. And Longbow 5 also hits behind LoS too.

So you’re either a bad DH, or you’re fighting extremely good players.

What exactly is the difference between Blur and Dodge? I thought Blurred Frenzy’s effect was called Blur because of the skill name, but Anet wants it to be something more? It would be interesting if blurring had added benefits from traits. It would make sword 2 even better than it already is. Maybe it would also prevent condition damage (just damage!). Who knows. I like the name a lot. Mirage to me is a great Mesmer name. But MH axe? I was really hoping for MH dagger. It’s just so much more of a caster weapon and it can still work as a range weapon. Axe, even on Necro seems weird to me as a range weapon. It would make more sense to swap the two around and make axe the melee/life stealing weapon and dagger the range power weapon.

The ideas going around about stealth make me think that our new utilities would be Deception skills. I’d love to see a skill that makes the target window, from an enemy’s perspective, on us look like a clone’s, and the clone’s looks like ours. We would still have all our effects, conditions, boons, etc., but this could confuse even players if you get good at acting like a clone. The clone could even be a special kind that has the same hp and toughness as us. It would be our only clone like that. This would make it even harder to tell who the real Mesmer is. This to me is what the Mesmer is about. It’s about pure confusion, and not just a condition that punishes attacking. I mean the confusion you get when so much is going on and you don’t know what’s real.

It’s totally gonna be condi because we’re not allowed to have two optional trait lines. Anet has to make sure that we always use an elite spec and Illusions line. That line already does three major things: reduces shatter CDs, boosts our powerful condis even more, and reduces illusion generating skills. And reducing clone generating skill CDs affects our weapon skill that generate clones too. The line is too good. It’s like Thieve’s Trickery. They have to run it or else whatever spec they’re running is weaker. It’d be nice if our condi trait line was another line instead, like chaos, and then make inspiration the defence/support one. So you have Domination for power damage and control, Dueling for crits and evasion, Chaos for conditions and boons, Inspiration for defence and support/healing, and Illusions for profession skills and faster illusion generation. Each line has two focuses. And of course you would spread out a few defence, power damage, condi damage traits across. Dueling has crit bleeding, Inspiration already has boon support and iDefender, and Domination has distortion on signet use. But each line should have two main focuses, and right now, Illusions has three, which again are illusion generation, condition damage, and profession skills

Your game’s dying Anet. I’m urging you to work on actually making it fun. Listen to the community, comment on posts, engage with players. You don’t have to apply every suggestion, but at least consider them. You honestly have nothing to lose at this point.

Good teammates…Which don’t exist anymore in SoloQ.

I liked Courtyard. The only reason people really hated it was because 5v5 deathmatch is too chaotic and fast, and it was forced on us when we wanted to play conquest. Make Deathmatch a separate PvP mode, just like Stronghold is. And also make Courtyard bigger to help adapt to the 5v5 system you have in place, or make Deathmatch a varying party size mode. Population is pretty small so it would probably just be good to start with 3v3 and then expand if the population gets higher (and I won’t get into why it won’t any time soon with the way you’re all handling things).

Played a few days at the beginning of the season. I was rusty and teammates were total kitten. I mean for the start of sapphire, it was unusually bad. SO many of them just ran into mid when the enemy team was there and none of us were able to join. These were basic PvP rules being broken in a tier that people were in because they reached Diamond and Legendary the previous season. So why were such AWFUL players reaching Diamond and Legendary? Why the hell was I able to get to Legendary? I certainly didn’t deserve it (well, the by the end of season 3 I wasn’t too bad, but more like a Diamond quality good). I ran into a lot of game throwers and thieves who constantly died. Here’s the thing, if you’re dying as a thief in Legendary, you shouldn’t be playing thief. You have a crap ton of tools to avoid dying. But I was the bad player according to them… Right, I’ll get right on that! That’s the kitten that makes people not want to get better. When it’s plainly obvious that the player complaining is worse than you. but they tell you to L2P. Ugh.

I’ll take a thief buff when they reduce the amount of evades they have. That goes for every profession. Reduce sustain, buff damage. But actually, nerf both. This game cannot be balanced without damage nerfs and sustain nerfs. Tempest received a healing nerf, which was good because their healing was a bit too high. But they also removed the only amulet that really made them viable, with the exception of Mender’s. Know why Scrappers are OP? Because they do crazy damage, but they can’t actually take a hit. The only reason they seem tanky is because they can avoid damage completely. Same thing goes for Chronomancers, Druids, Revs… and if they can’t constantly stop damage, they just heal through it. Berserkers, Druids again, Revs again, Tempests (they still can but it actually requires real skill now)…

I’m going to keep ranting about this until things change. This isn’t just a L2P issue. I do try to make myself better as best as possible, but I also recognize when kitten is kittened up. And I know when my own favourite professions are OP. I know that Mesmer is OP, I know that Warrior is OP, I know that Druid is OP, and I know that Tempest is OP (if played well).

SotM is fine? So the instant cast, hard hitting, evading CC is fine. Right.

Oh wait…no that’s not right…

It does SO much all in one skill, and only on a kittening 20 second CD! Anyone who thinks SotM is fine is massively biased. And this is not just any old opinion. The skill has two counter plays, a well timed evade, which aren’t always available, or stability, which also isn’t always available. And I know that players should save their dodges for important skills, but Revs has so many hard hitting skills that need to be dodged, that you’ll run out quickly. No profession should have that many skills that require dodging to survive for 2 seconds.

SotM either needs a significant damage nerf (15% is not near enough like the previous nerf), the evade removed so that teammates can interrupt, or remove the CC. I would suggest the damage nerf, since you want it to be a support weapon, and support weapons shouldn’t be doing so much kittening insane damage.

Seriously, I’m so sick of Revs defender OP skills. I’ll just go through all the OP skills revs have that either hit too hard, evade too much, heal too much, etc.

- Sword AA. This one’s obvious. No AA should be critting for more than 2k, even on a target with protection.
- Precision Strike. Completely unskillful ability. Press a button and instantly shoot homing missiles at your target. If you’re at range, they can dodge thankfully, but revs have plenty of ways to stay on top of you or keep you still. Removing the homing ability or increase the energy cost.
- Unrelenting Assault. See the theme here? All sword skills are OP! That’s right! The entirety of a whole MH weapon set is OP. That’s a problem. Anyway, UR is assault again for obvious reasons. Little cast time, does absolutely massive damage to a single target and high damage to multiple targets, and it evades. It has a similar problem that SotM has. It evades and does high damage. But unlike SotM, you don’t have to aim. You just press a button and do high damage while taking none.
- SotM. Already went over why this is the OP Rev skill. Doesn’t matter if it takes skill to use because you actually need to aim it. It’s OP because it does everything except provide support outside of peeling.

Here are some actual L2P issues!

- Glint Heal. This has counterplay! Stop attacking and the Rev doesn’t heal. Awesome! The only change I’d make is moving the cast time to the heal activation instead so you can’t use it while stunned. That way CCs can actually do something against it. That alone will add more counters to Rev and make them think before spamming a stun break.

- Both Elite skills. These has cast times and obvious tells. They can be dodged, prevented by stability, removed by stunbreaks… They have counters! Awesome!

What counters do Sword AA, PS, UR, and SotM have? Well AA just requires you to move away, but Revs have teleports, chill, and if a teammate CCs you, you’re screwed against an AAing rev. Plus NO AAs should EVER hit so hard that dodging or escaping is required against it. PS has a mega short cast time for such a hard hitting skill, but it’s a little predictable. Still, if you don’t dodge or block, you take a ton of damage. This would be fine if AA and UR didn’t hit as hard. UR can also be dodged and blocked. But that’s it. You can’t interrupt it while it’s going off and if you don’t dodge or block, you’re screwed. So that’s three things you need sustain for in order to survive. SotM is instant, evades, does high damage, but literally just requires you to aim yourself well enough. Again, you can’t interrupt it, and if you somehow still have a sustain skill up, you might be able to survive it. Blocking doesn’t even really work against it because all they need to do is use PT to you. If you see it coming, good for you, because that’s all you have against the ability.

Powerful skills should have more counters than just dodge. You should be able to interrupt them, heal through them, or hell, even reply back with more damage. But you can’t with UR or SotM because they also evade.

sPvP shouldn’t be a big competition. Only tPvP should. People solo queue because they are casual and that’s what SoloQ should be about. However, there should be a competitive game mode and that’s what leagues are for. But adding a PvE item to the most competitive PvP mode was a terrible idea. The League reward should have been a cool skin (like a weapon or maybe an outfit), not an actual item. Make a separate Legendary item for Unranked or maybe make a more casual version of leagues and then add a pro version made for those who want the greatest competition. It’s ok to add divisions, as long as it makes the game good, and I really don’t see how this could make the game bad. Casuals don’t like leagues, and in fact, casuals are what’s ruining leagues. High end players don’t want to fight lower end players, and you’ll never be able to separate them without an MMR reset and a good system in place to keep them apart.

Anet, I know this guy said not to listen to the community, but we have good suggestions. Learn to recognize the best ones, and consider ways to implement them. The time you shouldn’t be listening to the community is in the case of class balance, but even then, the general community can have some good suggestions about that. But let pros decide what the good suggestions are.

Things aren’t black and white and they never ever will be.

Higher quality games will drive more players to play which will shorten queue times. Reducing queue times only makes poor quality games which drive people away and therefore increase queue times, which again need to be shorted, leading to poorer games. It’s a downward spiral. Anet NEEDS to be make games more fun and better quality, or else more players will leave and queue times will never be short again.

The answer to every question anyone has about this game is because Anet doesn’t want this game to be good.

Let’s get MH dagger!