Guild Wars 2

You allmighty spvp player might battle against the armies of hell alone, but in every game there must be balance. Sure if a player is more skilled than the other, things are different. But on the same skill lvl or without a huge difference, some professions are op. I have met many builds dear friend and believe me, it was not fair. This topic is about balance, and as an ele player I am saying that my class is not balanced. But again, like in every topic, a chosen one comes and claims that his skill is vast. This is not about personal skill. Sure you can beat me, I can beat x.

Against double dots that should be triple, you can claim anything. But calling people who try to balance the professions for the others to enjoy scrubs, you really shown your personality. It is extremely sad for us to lose the chance to have a civilized conversation.

Not only in pve but also in wvw and pvp the ranger is becoming more and more useless. Every kitten thing in the game has some form of reflect. Everybody can contribute with some sort of skill or ability. You think rangers do good dps? The OP is right, Zerker ele can do 9+k damage with her meteor ( just a single shot from a meteor) while a ranger can only achieve 7.8 k with rapid shot. And it is bloody single target. Rangers are good? Nope, they are bull… Even in spvp when I see a ranger in opponent team, I feel relieved. This should not be.

DD ele and Mesmer (some builds) are op. Anyone who claims otherwise can go spvp or wvw with “another” class/char, and see the truth. My main is ele, but it is riddiculously powerful, like mesmer.

Pets…The dumbest things in the game. Even dumber than a rock. There are several issues with the ranger class, but the pet mechanic(s) is the most urgent one. There should be an option for a ranger to play and survive without pets at least. They are not improving pets AI, thats ok. Then take those pets, and give us another option.

Quick draw is good? Well, not bad I admit, but not very good either. Remorseless? Well it is a mediocre trait compared to lead the wind. Why? Because we have actually one chance to burst. Especially when you are fighting with a mesmer with perma stealth, you actually have less than 10 seconds to apply a decent burst with a good placed aoe and a fear from the pet. After that, it is done.

Only melee rangers are having some good time, and even they are limited in their builds too. Such a shame. I think Anet really dislikes the profession.

Scepter is fine if you play fresh air and act quickly. But i advise you to go scepter focus combo, where you can see the scepters power very well combined. For me it is strongee than dd ele, because dd feels boring to me. But all builds depend on your capability and love to play. Try evasive arcana+fresh air build.

Weapon swap on ele would destroy balance (it would be fun though ). What should be done is that the rebalancing of the bloody conjure weapon skills-trait synergy. This will help for people like you, who rightfully demands a flavor for his profession.

Maybe you can try knight set with pack runes, vulnerability sigil and staying on water attunement because of the vuln. damage. ( You can switch between water + earth )

Arcane
Fire
Water
Knight set, pack runes, vuln. on crit sigil

That can do some damage and might be fun. But will it last? I have no bloody idea

Try necro with well + corrupt boon. That hurts ele’s and many other classes very much. People do not worry about one or two condition on them that much, because of their old habit. And they certainly do not think about corrupt boon or well when they cast stability on themselves.

If you are going for zerg fights, you can use full zerker (but you must be careful) or you can use something like celestial/soldier type of thing with water+arcane to heal yourself and people around you. I personally use celestial staff to roam and spontaneous zerg fights. For planned ones I advice full zerker staff. But condi on staff can be a little weak. If you demand condition for staff, you can use condi on crit sigils etc with rabid or something like that I guess.

Or if you want to try, you can go dd, but I never liked dd that much anyway. For me, the archetype must use staff.

I run zerker weapons with cele build but again it is your taste. But zerker is more profitable. You can swap to full zerker if you need to defend behind doors or do insane dmg while being squishy though. I like switching between zerker and cele staff.

Not eles, dd eles. If ele gets nerfed altogether, it will become worthless.

Come to Ring of Fire. We are bad, and we should feel bad. But we dont. Why? Because we have a cool name.
Seriously we are bad. But we have fun.

Pack runes are more suitable for staff and scepter builds like others said. Depends on the build, you can use strength or hoelbrak. For me it is just a taste for defense vs agressiveness.

Every now and then, someone beats the crap out of their opponents in spvp, and sees how powerful their class is. When he hears the complaints about nerfs, he does not enrages, or fights. Quietly he opens a thread and claims his class is ok, not op. Because he thinks that it was not his class but him, that granted victory.

In many cases, sadly, it is true. A mesmer or a ele player with countless hours of practice, and experience wins a match. Then people starts to complain. Why? Because his class is strong. Then it bothers him. It was him that won all those matches, not a bloody “op” class. He is both right and wrong.

Mesmers and ele’s are op right now. Hush! Do not deny it, we both now it. I am an ele player too, who used to like playing dd ele. My close friend, whose main was a mesmer is in the same place with me. All these imbalanced things do give the profession a bad reputation. If any noob can take the character and press/kill easily, then what is the value of experience becomes? Everyone will say “omg op mesmer, op ele, burn guardian bugged…vb” and they are right. Because in another match, they saw a noob with a killing spree.

So my friend, our professions become worthless. Our loved builds become targets. In my opinion, Anet should balance things quickly, mesmer and dd ele are riddiculously powerful in some builds. Then all these new mesmers and ele’s will drop the profession and we will be happily playing. Before the patch mesmers were not bad, they were good. Ele’s were not bad, they were good. Because we could play it no matter what. Meta is just something designed for the “utttermost profit”. Any build can beat a meta if you know how to play very well.

By the way, I see nobody is arguing about the “limitedness” of professions. There are few meta builds and the rest is garbage. That bothers me too.

Diamond skin, as I said before, should be the last thing you worry about. Mesmer and dd ele problems are far worse than that.

Guy is right. Both guard and ele has no proper condi builds (every class should have for my opinion). I play ele and it is not burning but dd build that needs to be adjusted. It is nearly the only pvp build now that matters. There are some who plays df or sf (which was my fav, but weakened hellishly) or even dreamers like me who try to play staff and help team once a week (which is not a very good idea against any profession if you are not very experienced).
But no matter what you do you will never be in par with dd builds. Yes you can compensate but thats all. Maybe with the burning nerf there can be few buffs and nerfs to some builds to help freedom and variety. Both guardian and ele needs that.

As an ele player, if you are defending dd ele I say thay you are just power drunk. It is too strong and easy. It brings shame to profession, that everybody can easily memorize ait and win. There was some grace in it before at least.

Well Anet is very slow indeed. Some classes/builds are too strong for my taste to play. Dd ele, which is my main, became pretty boring. If this goes on people will get bored due to the imbalance like me. There are several people that left the game for good by the way. This is sad. What it is and what it could have are two very different things.

Dd ele is a little op at the moment. My main is ele and I gave up playing him because it was easy to play. I am not a very good spvp player but even I can take down most classes. Necro is fine, a little up. Rangers are ok with some builds but they feel up to me. Warriors are bloody strong and need to be toned down. Mesmers are strong and annoying. I hate their interrupt sound (which I call the song of erectile dysfunction) but they are strong. Engies are up and hard to playand a little boring for my taste. Guardian’s are ok but burning needs to be toned down for both them and ele.

By the way, why do necros still under the condi chain? Shouldn’t they be the no 1 condi class in game? My ele or ranger is way better than my necro at condi stacking and dmg

I main ele, and in pvp you must be a really new player or a strong premade team to take diamond skin. With all the sustain and skills, ele does not need that trait at all. Problem is the mechanics of dd ele. It is relatively easy to beat most classes.

Liches to liches, dust to dust indeed

I really like nightmare runes. It prevents the one shotter builds mostly, and gives you a nice buff on duration + damage. But undead runes are pretty awesome too, especially if you are going with the rabid set Sadly all these do work in wvw. Pvp is something else entirely.

I love playing condi char. As you say diamond skin is a little bit problematic but it is neither bugged nor op. This is a team pvp thing. There will be different counters for different builds. So if you suffer from that trait, either use carrion amulet to fight alone or call your team, reposition yourself, disengage or stay alive until your team mate comes. At least I do that. I plan ahead when I see an ele in opponent team. I talk with my team before start. I know it is not possible every time but it was meant to be a team pvp thing. So for my taste diamond skin is the least problematic one when it comes to ele. There are far worse problems…

Same here. Random disconnects and sudden lags in pvp and wvw. Some of my guildies have the same problem too. Started after the infamous “holy” patch.

As I said, it needs a skilled necromancer with a good knowledge on ele. But it might be my lack of skill too, all and all I can not claim that I am great. At tops I am above mediocre by a hair strand.
But all this balance changes with blinding ashes trait. It should be nerfed a little bit. By the way, hybrid necro builds are stronger after the patch. Have you tried it? It seems celestial can be meta for not only ele but many other classes due to the changes on stats and damage.

I have tested some of the things you said. First of all, rangers suck. We all know that. In a fair fight, ranger needs more skill to beat an ele (wvw is not included. It is an entirely different thing). But in spvp, clever ranger seems to be able to kill a celestial dd ele. All the players nearly had the same skill lvl with their professions in my test. Sorry for not giving a video of it but i really hate videos and recording.

Necro on the other hand, can kill successfully if she does not makes a mistake. Engi, without the grenade bug can also kill you but he must be a perfect engineer with good skills. Interrupt mesmers can kick ele’s tushy, they seem to be annoying now. Other mesmer builds can also do that. I do not know how, but warriors… Did they mutate or something? They are strong now. Not " nerf them omg wtf" but more like " be cautious, there is a warrior heading to you" type. Guardians are not very well balanced against ele it seems, but they do not give up easily. Thief’s are still perfectly well. Considering that it is not their job to go fair 1v1 with you. They can make fair fights unfair easily.

All and all, ele’s are powerful but not godly. Also they do require some skill and knowledge to play so most of the newbies will be killed after their second premature dodge.

In the end it really depends on the players knowledge of professions and her skill. What you were mistaken as imbalanced might be your experience on the profession/other players lack of experience in your or their profession. For my taste, except the blinding ashes trait, ele does not seem to be op at all. Can be put down by players who has knowledge on ele, or some specific builds like interrupt mesmer. But blindind ashes will be a problematic trait if other professions gets nerfed.

Thanks for making me test. It was fun playing several professions and conducting experiments. I can, with my own experience, say that dd ele is strong but not op. (Celestial staff seems to be weaker however)

It will be very easy when you get used to it. And in the higher tiers it will be horribly hard again, against opponents who know and read an elementalist will be your worst nightmare. But it is fun, just endure a little more. I love celestial staff, the build that no one likes or respects, but you can try it if you want.

To be able to make a generalization you should at least have 30 pvp matches at your disposal friend. I have met several engies in yesterdays pvp fun for example. 30 match and a good overall percent would be helpful.

Oh… Someone said this at last! That annoying mechanical sound that burns into my brains every cell. Sweet sound of silence, how I missed you! Please give us an option to save our temper. Some pets sound “really” annoying. Like " oh bloody hell, why would someone even think a sound like that".

It is a minor issue but critical for people like me and my friend in the previous post. There really should be an option.

Sadly I am not on NA but will test what you said. Best teacher is the experience they say, so to learn it truly I have to test and come back. I hope a fix comes anyway to pvp.

For the sake of conversation I will assume that you were not saying come and get me bro, but suggesting to purely demonstrate. But I will test what you said with my guildies. Like I said the burning dmg and blinding ashes are already problematic but lets see if other parts are too or not.

Do ele vs necro, interrupt mesmer, warrior and engi. Then we can understand the reality. Rangers are not in a good point nowadays (still better than video). But burning is a problem.

People are trying to tell you that rangers bad play effects things. It is underpowered now so you have to play good with ranger. What you did is like spamming auto attack and shadowshot with thief without other weapon skills. Anyway ele is neither the most bugged nor the most powerful. Pvp is effed altogether with the new patch. There should be some nerfs.

Ps: Interrupt mesmers are reallt a thing now.

I have never seen such a bad display of guardian and ranger. Sorry, you might be right at some points but these videos are just terrible. I do not play guardian at all, but even I know better than this. As for the ranger, it is really not good, friend.

As for the ele, I can understand that if you say the burning is op, it really is, for every class. Blinding Ashes is also a dangerous thing if you are not an engineer (immune to blindess thingy). But overall, this is not spvp that you have given us. One is just a duel, and not a very good one. Ranger just shooted you with twigs until you were bored.

Second one is I guess a bad display of pvp by guardians. I was never that lucky to meet those kinds of guardians.

For the TL/DR; Ele needs adjustments like every other class. But these videos are totally kitten . It would be better if you have never used the videos but only gave us your opinions (some of them I really agree by the way).

Thieves are fine but extremely boring now. I gave up my main thief because of that. It is either kill at first jump or die trying. More of a coin toss than pvp for me.

But yesterday I have seen a quite clever and tanky thief with a good sustain and heavy damage. So I guess some people are really adapting to some changes. I advise yoy to find a character that you are good with then thief, if you are really bothered with the changes like I did.

Oh how I missed the forum logic " lets take some parts from a speech and ignore the rest". Friends, personal experience matters greately in pvp. Also there are some classes/builds that are especially strong against your class, and there will be. You can not change this rock-paper-scissors logic in mmorpg. And sadly sometimes you have to run away from certain opponents, ask help from your team, or device a new strategy.

High sustain part is right, it is solid. But there are other professions that can reach this sustain and even put out a good damage. To be able to balance elementalist, other classes should be arranged too.

And that engineer turret thingy was a kitten by the way. This is an “ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SUBJECT FROM ELEMENTALISTS” but you are right. Turrets that suffer from bleed? How the bibbity bobbity kitten is this possible? Just like thief’s pistol, this was not just.

Like I said friends. If you are thinking that some profession/build is op at the moment. Just try it in spvp. You will have your true answer without any theorycrafting or meditating on the subject. My opinions are based on my playstyle, experience and knowledge. They might not suit your reality. Best way to learn is to experience it.

So there are macho guys constantly saying 1v1 again. Why? Why should a thief or a ranger go 1v1 in spvp? It is a team fight and your job is simple. Ele’s seem strong to many people because it was not the most powerful profession for quite some time. So only real ele fans played it and learned very well. What you are talking is experience and reading the situation. One guy playing a perfect game does not mean the class is strong. If you still think it is strong, open an ele and do spvp matches as a ele newbie. If you win constantly against everyone then you can ignore others and form your own true idea.
But remember, spvp is not about dueling. It is a bloody team fight.

If in this new meta-era you are losing constantly to elementalist profession, you should change your own class. Because it means that you are neither skilled, nor aware of the environment with it.

Ele’s are the last thing to worry. For the thieves, it is usually the easiest class to slay. Wait for ele to cast, then attack and deal damage like a truck. Easy it is. If it is dagger dagger, initiate, roll back, initiate again at the right time. Celestial amulets are the only option for the ele builds. With marauder/zerker, elementalist’s die too easy. And you are talking about stone heart? If the bloody elementalist stays in the earth attunement it is perfect! No burst, no heal, no condi cleanse, no stun… Too much defense never wins in Gw2 sadly. Timing is the most valuable asset for pvp. Before complaining about something (which is your uttermost right, I am not objecting it) maybe you should ask some advice from someone that uses your profession in the game. That always opens new paths and perspectives.

After few bugfixes, and balances, a lot of people will be saying that too I guess. There are several serious problematics at the moment with some classes however.

I am currently learning how to play with engineer, and will make it my main. After the idiotic changes for my precious thief and too much game with my ele, I was looking for a fun/supportive/jack of all trades class with lots of capabilities.

But when I saw the grenade thingy, I thought " it cannot be that bad, people are overreacting." Then I joined pvp, and insta-killed a bloody player with just one petty skill.

This cannot be. This is why I quit playing thief. If every idiot can kill this easily with a build, then there is something wrong with it. These kind of bugs or op’ness hurts the quality of the profession, and destroys the achievements of good players. Thief is already destroyed; every monkey with four buttons can kill easily now. But it is not too late to save engineer, just fix this bomb thingy and search engineer forums for more info about what should be fixed.

But I could not find any problems with the network. I am telling you, if i login with my previous characters all is fine. Only the new one after the patch is causing trouble every time.

Since yesterday, me and my friends are getting either network/server error, or connection failed error. I know that it is not my internet, because we are constantly on skype (for 2 years we have been playing like this), and when I get a error message, my wife seems to play without problems (we are sharing the same wi-fi as you can guess) and when she experiences an error, I seem to have a perfectly smooth game.

Most importantly we experience this problem when we are logged in with our new characters (created yesterday, which was also a painful process because of all those dc’s). And our other characters seem to run fine. Can anyone help me with this? Because it is really getting riddiculous, we can not play our new characters without interruption.

I am sorry friend, but the biggest mistake of this forum’s calculation is that it only consists “theory” but lacks “practicality”. Your calculations were made for warrior and mesmer. But consider using thief in this math, who has too few condition cleanse. I think it is the only class that is forced to play burst or die at the moment. But it is not because of the condition changes, but other nerfs.

I was not defending the ones who objects conditions. They are very powerful, and even before patch I could do 1v1 with my condition builds (necro, mesmer, ele and ranger ? have played.)

So are condition damages powerful now? Yes. Should they be more? Hell no. Should they be less? For some classes they should. But remember, if you are using condition damage, your other stats belong to you. You are not forced to go 3 stats together for one build. For myself, I think power builds should be nerfed a little more. No one should be forced to go " brain-dead-one-shot-build" to stay alive.

And I beg you, do not get stuck on this math. there are several variables that can negate/cure/reflect damage by nearly every class. That is why some players are complaining about condition damage, and some really do not care.

Hi there,

I know that the post patch brought many other problems and questions for the engineers, but for those who got time and will to help, I want to ask few questions. I have been playing GW2 for a time, played every profession except warrior and engi. My main was thief, but the trickyness went down the drain with the latest patch. As I have played Elementalist for a long time ( so pressing many buttons is not a problem for me), my wish is to support my team, use my wits to find a solution, and be ready for nearly anything. (It was very hard but fun doing that with Thief before patch).

Engineers seem to have a lot of options, but what build and play style is proper for this idea? I usually do WvW and PvP ( I am really bored with pve after all this time) and desire to play a profession according to that. So if someone can give me advice about those topics, it would be grand.

Problem for many people (I personally do not give kitten after my thief got destroyed) is that;

Power build: Needs power, precision and ferocity for the full build.

Condition Build: You only need condition damage. Other stats can be chosen as vitality and toughness, precision and healing power… so on.

So while a full power build can not add any hp or armor bonus to the build itself if it wants to do the highest damage, a condition build can go dmg + tank together. And with the stats adjusted, and hit points lowered ( 12k on thief and ele for example), people with power builds suffer greately. Most of their builds became burst-or-die.

There are some brilliant people who advices to “not to go full zerker, go soldier etc.” but i guess they are unaware of the fact that there are builds which rely on criticial damage and chance.

I don’t think this matters anymore. Everybody seems to change their main characters to adjust. So after a while it will all be ok. Anet, being a cunning group, will soon buff the leveling up process to help main-changing people. And then the new topic will be new specs for thief and ele. And I will remember my creative thief playing days with a smile on my face, when I see a bloody one-shotter thief.

I can answer your question friend.

Most of the thieves were focused on the tricky playstyle of the profession. With this patch, the builds become so forcefully stable that, the beauty of the thief is gone. Now you have just 3 buttons to push, and poof. Either your opponent or you died.

Thief is the easiest profession to counter in the game. Almost every class has a different type of condition removal, and bigger hp. With the latest patch, shadows embrace is nerfed, acrobatics traitline is nerfed. Thief’s hp is nerfed.

Why the first day op-ness you ask? Because everyone was trying to learn her own traits and skills, while thief had nothing to choose more than 66006 idiotic rush zerker build because of the nerfs. So untill a clever player activated her defenses, thieves killed many people. And I want to say, it is really easy. It is the new pew pew ranger.

So why dead now? Because everyone made their condi builds or power builds. With trickery, a thief has 5 condi removals. It seems enough, but it is not. Cd is too long for you to use 3 of them, and one is scorpion wire, a funny but useless tool in most situations because of the kitten animation ( easily dodgeable). If you have serious conditions on you, which even before the patch my ranger could deal easily with his basic condi build, you have to sacrifice your utility skills. No utility skills = no survival. Also no way to gain the upper hand.

What do we have is the worst fate possible; one shot burst or die thief. A tasteless, graceless build that every monkey can play. Is it powerful? Sometimes yes. But easily counterable. Is it fun? I could only play for 2 hours. Then it felt like I was polluting my dear thief with that disgusting play style.

I am currently searching for a new profession with surprises, creativity, and gusto. I hope these problems will be over soon, or many thieves like me will be forced to find a new path in their adventure.

Pfft, delete acro thief, delete pistol thief, stealth thief’s condi removal is garbage… So basically every thief build that requires more than 4 different skill usage is nerfed or gone. Only thing that works perfectly is the burst or die build. Maybe we should play something else; engineer, warrior, op-omg-wtf-mesmer or holycraparetheseconditionsreal-necro. You know, a profession that Anet likes.

Thief? What we have now is a glorified coin toss. You either burst or die. Useless, graceless, tasteless…

I think many of you disregard the fact that there are some rightful complaints about this new change. For example Thief’s pistol and shortbow got nerfed quite heavily. Acrobatics got nerfed also. So only thing we have is to build some crazy zerker stuff and click mindlessly. With the other classes, ele, ranger etc. I think this changes are fun. But with thief it limits your creativity, and removes two useful but already underpowered “WEAPONS” from the effectivity area.

It does not force you to find a unique build, but just the contrary, it forces you to follow a meta-style to be effective. Every non thief was complaining about “burst or die” thieves, and now every thief will be one of those mindless builds. Killing would be easy but boring. Like a tasteless meal.

So before calling people “whiner” or " idiot", please consider every fact. It may not bother you, or it may boost your power, style etc, but some of us got really the short stick.

Shortbow and pistol was already underpowered. Many people are angry about those two weapons getting nerfed. Only build we have now is the boring one. Please someone answer this guys question. All thief mained players are wondering about it.

It is not about only richochet. Acrobatics got nerfed quite hard too. So only viable option for thief’s is to become zerker-suicidal-burst or die thief. Which is extremely boring, and easy to play.