Guild Wars 2

Guys, there’s an in-game bug reporting feature, with a checkbox for ’exploit’.

Go to Game Menu -> Support -> Report a Bug

I highly doubt that staff are still unaware of the exploit in question (which I’ve even started seeing used on Skyhammer, as if the map wasn’t annoying enough already), but the best way to get it fixed isn’t to post it on the forums - sharing exploit info is against the ToS so will get threads deleted and the sharer possibly infracted. Submit a bug report when it happens.

Pretty sure that every res skill still has that issue - maybe the Glyph of Renewal in Water Attunement is immune to it (since that heals to max HP when it resses) but this would need testing.

One serious problem with this is the language barrier - 14 of the EU servers are vaguely english-language, but then we have 13 catering primarily to speakers of other languages (7 German, 5 French, 1 Spanish). It could work in organised groups, but for soloq a good number of EU teams would end up unable to communicate well enough to make it worthwhile.

For PvE/WvW, there’re other issues - do players choose which of party/team/squad/map to listen and speak to? Pretty sure implementing something like this would be overly complex when third-party programs already deal with this well enough.

zachzak.3185:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Remove aoe cap in PvP.

This. This is what we need.

Yeah I’ma QFT this as well. If minions are still going to meatshield every projectile attack, at least let AoEs hit them all - quite often I’m chucking down my fields and hoping that the damage is done to... whoever’s the biggest threat.

Not sure if AoE always targets players first (in the same manner as tab-targeting now does), but even if your skills are guaranteed to hit the enemy players... mesmer clones presumably still count towards the cap, so two mesmers can easily outnumber any AoE effect. Whether or not players are prioritised, it’s rather difficult to take down any important AI unit (flesh golem or spirit of nature, particularly) due to the daft numbers of other targets that can absorb the hits.

Right after the patch, I opened and salvaged a whole stack of reward chests - I got about 7.5k luck, and something like 30 unidentified dyes once I’d played with the Mystic Forge. Less MF than I might’ve gotten from PvE items, but not an insignificant amount.

CntrlAltDefeat, you’re really arguing about entirely different points to those I’m saying:

- interrupts of heals aren’t my problem. That warriors never have their heal on cooldown is the problem.

- healing generally isn’t just pressing the button whenever a) your skill is off cooldown, and b) you have less than x% health. There are very few instant-cast heals, none of which occupy slot 6.

A couple of (somewhat oversimplified, and possibly unlikely with current meta builds, but still hopefully accurate) examples of why use of a heal requires non-zero amounts of skill:

Example one: Player A uses their heal skill when they’re at 40% health. Player B, however, was almost dead, and Player A had skills they could’ve used to win the fight. Player B gets a pretty great chance to escape or heal up themselves now, and Player A has their heal on cooldown. Player A made a choice, that while definitely very basic, was still not zero-skill and required some awareness of their environment.

Example two: Player C is a ranger, with Healing Spring, a warhorn offhand, and a longbow that they can swap to. Player C’s ally, Player D, is in combat in a point - and not doing too well.
Player C could run in, place their water field, and blast it - heal up Player D enough that they can continue fighting instead of risking stopping to heal, but now Player C’s heal is on cooldown
Player C could instead swap to their longbow and try to knock back one of Player D’s attackers - safer for Player C, and buys Player D a bit of breathing room, but the attacker may notice this and dodge, or pop stability, then get right back to killing Player D - and Player C can’t swap back to their /Warhorn for another 10s.

Example three: Player E is a mesmer running Ether Feast. They have no illusions out, and their health is at 50%. They could heal now, gaining a small benefit but not healing by much, or they could try to set up a couple of clones or phantasms before healing.
If they use it without illusions, and stay under pressure, they no longer have a heal skill and they haven’t been throwing phantasm damage at their foes.
If they try to cast some illusions first, they may get burst down before able to use their healing skill.

There isn’t "mad skill" required to use a heal, but there is any skill at all. The new heals, especially, require awareness of environment and have the potential for counterplay - but healing signet’s passive is good enough that I’ve still not seen any warriors even trying the stance out in PvP.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

hence in gw1 the skill lined called, “fast casting” which is where you found all the interrupt skills that took .25 seconds to cast in the first place, all of which are absent from gw2. You may as well just posted a video of someone doing a 32 point parallel park instead.

Actually most of the interrupts on gw1 mesmers were in Domination, though the Fast Casting attribute line did shorten their cast times.

Much of the issue with Healing Signet’s high passive healing isn’t that it’s hard (okay, impossible) to interrupt, while other heals can be rupted – it’s that it’s always there, working away, and takes no skill to use, no sense of timing or awareness of situation. If a mesmer wastes their heal too early on (maybe anticipating a burst?), they’re going to be unable to top their HP up when they actually need to. If a necro stays in death shroud too long, they’ve wasted a good chunk of their sustain and will have a harder time holding out against the next foe who turns up.

With warriors never ever needing to activate their healing skill, they’re getting the powerful sustain that it gives without having to consider when to use it, thereby lowering the skill required to keep themselves alive compared to other, less naturally tanky, classes. Yes the war also has other skills that they need to use to play well, but that doesn’t excuse that they get to ignore the ‘when should I heal?’ aspect of play altogether.

Pixels: thanks for compiling this! Nice to see a bit of numerical data on class popularity and balance and I look forward to any updates – especially if we can get some data pre- and post-patches, when the largest shifts in the meta will occur.

As an EU player, you’ve inspired me, and I’ma start trying to get my own screencaps and seeing whether things are much different here – obviously a much larger sample than just 100 games will be needed for proper comparison, but a couple of months of steady play should provide that, especially if anyone else wants to help out? >:D

Because Deimos hadn’t made a thread for a few days, or people started pointing out that as someone who openly says "I don’t ranked matches" they need to stop commenting on balance with respect to ranked matches.

Deimos: If you want to discuss your games, maybe play a bunch more and save up your data - making one post with actual content is almost definitely more worthwhile than bumping a diary thread every time you play.

Biomanz

*previous post, look above*

I mostly know this because Geyser wasn’t affected by Blasting Staff (along with several other skills) when I started getting into PvP - about 8 months ago I think? - so I learned my EvArcana-earth aiming based on the low-radius Geyser.

A couple of patches over the latter half of last year slightly reduced cooldowns/aftercasts on staff skills and made the weapon generally more fun to play... more relevantly, a major update later in the year involved some reworking of traitlines but was focused mostly on improving trait-effect-transparency for all classes.
This patch improved a number of skills when traited with Blasting Staff, most noticeably Geyser and Static Field (which previously didn’t increase in range while traited), but also the AoE range on Fireball, the AoE range on each meteor from Meteor Shower, and the AoE range on EvArcana-fire.

Biomanz.9302:

If your water roll EA is on cooldown and need another heal, can still switch to Earth and roll within a geyser for a water blast while staying inside it. Of course, will need blasting staff.

Actually, a dodge from one edge of an untraited Geyser’s field (along its diameter) will stay within it. Dodges are 300 units* and the diameter of Geyser is 360 units.
I’ve not been running blasting staff in a while, mostly so I can play with the Arcane blasts Brilliance and Wave on shorter cooldowns - enjoying it so far!

*this is what wiki says, and I just tested to make sure - it’s definitely completely possible to dodge within a Geyser field and get the full benefit of its own heals, without blasting staff.

Slightly related: you can Burning Retreat from one edge of the Graveyard capture point in Foefire, and still stay within the point - just make sure you’re facing outwards, perpendicular to the tangent of the circle. Great distance from a foe, and you can get off a couple of CC skills or a heal before they close the gap.

Okay I’ve still not gotten round to watching your video, but I’m loving this thread - positive chat about the staff, and good advice/tips too!

I’ve not yet played with the Flame Axe conjure... at all, really. Still sticking with glyphs and trying to live without cantrips - it works, for the most part, since staff has Burning Retreat and all that CC should I need to disengage. And I love my glyphs.

Water fields are not unique to our class. Our ability to freely utilize them is.

This is so incredibly true. Geyser even has a quick cast and good healing on its own, so you can run in, lay it down, then EA-earth or Arcane Wave to bring someone well back from the brink - and you’ve still got a second field to do this later in the fight, along with your slot-heal of choice for your own difficult moments.

By the way, Engineers only get their water fields from the Healing Turret’s activated skill or its undeployed tool belt skill - the Supply Crate’s turrets can’t be overcharged - and the tool belt only gives a 1s field so requires a lot of coordination to get allies to land their own blasts in.
Staff Ele really is the only class who has reliable water fields they can freely share, particularly in the less-organised teams you’ll tend to find in soloq.

Aye, it’d be nice as a cone and 600 range, but that would be rather out of place on the all-1200-staff, and it’s far from useless now - time the skill for straight after a foe’s dodge when they’re running towards you, or combo it with a stun, immobilise or maybe a chill to get a bit of breathing room.

Blind, stability and invulnerability (just condi invuln is needed for necroes) are the only ways to safely get a stomp off on downed classes with interrupting skills.

EDIT: oh, and stealth against those that have to have a target, forgot that.

In solo queue, you should try to say hi, and hopefully get to discuss some strategy - but you’re playing with randoms, and can never rely on them for anything. Play your best, have fun, get kitten ed off when you get facerolled by a hard counter or OP FotM!

If you really want to have organised play, go to teamq. Even just making a lfg and ending up in a pick-up-premade is much more organised than you can expect in most soloq - and you’ll sooner or later make some friends/find a guild that you can regularly form proper teams with.

ryston.7640:

yea and an option to disable rallying.

This could be interesting, actually – players can’t rally on foe deaths, and need to actually be ressed to get back up.
Only thing I can think of that might require reworking is on warriors with their Vengeance (and the related trait).

Mbelch.9028:

Gorani.7205:

I have adapted to click twice now, but it does not the solve the problem of being useless under water. Unless I am in shallow water, I can’t target a foe and will just blast pretty textures on the sea bottom. That issue needs to be resolved.

An extremely, extremely good point. I unfortunately see this skill being removed from underwater play, though.

This is because balance for underwater combat isn’t going to be achieved at all quickly, so underwater skills just aren’t looked at – I expect if someone should find an exploit that uses one, they’ll get changed, but otherwise they’re really not a priority and standard combat gets most focus.

A revert for underwater Glyph of Renewal and Arcane Wave would definitely be nice though – both have moved from caster-centered to ground-targeted, and then become unusable underwater.

Yeah I’m not happy that this trait exists as it is, but with condition damage being so punishing to ele, with few blocks, evades and invulns compared to the other low-vitality professions... I’m going to run it for a while. I’m going to enjoy that invulnerability against people who can’t adapt, seeing as I’m playing a variety profession myself. I’m going to risk bringing it into teamfights, where any stray arrow or AoE can take me below that pretty measly 10% barrier, so that I can survive on my own without getting permafeared or bled down in moments.

Once again: if you can’t do 2k direct damage (at most, for an ele’s vitality), either:

1) balance your build a bit better and don’t run something from an extreme point on the spectrum
2) shut up about how things are OP that you’ve been facerolling for months already, and enjoy the flipside of the coin
3) play teamq with a group so they can do all the work and you can just chuck your condi wherever and hope it sticks

Hyperion.4638:

whiners who never played warrior

Hyperion.4638:

backstab doing 11k dmg

You… what?

...never considered this. I love the new functionality, but allowing ground-targeted skills to become auto-point-blank would be pretty useful in some situations - ctrl+right click turns it on, since they can’t be set to autoattack anyway?

Tman.6349:

Durzlla.6295:

I mean bro, Healing Spring is absolutely ridiculous it gives regen AND vigor AND condi removal all in one skill to all their allies and it’s a water field and it has a shorter CD than Healing Rain! Nerf!!

Healing spring does not give vigor and comparing it to healing rain is simply rediculous. You’re trying to compare a healing skill to a weapon skill. A weapon skill that can be traited and ALSO happens to have a group wide passive regen in the same trait line that isn’t a boon and therefore CANT even be removed or corrupted, not to mention this same atunement has access to plenty of aoe heals and condi removal. Ranger has few condi removals and a heal w/ 15 sec regen and remove 5 conds over time (assuming you can stay in it for the entire duration mind you) is by no means op or in need of a nerf. This is apples and oranges and completely out of context and with your cry for a Nerf seems very dishonest.

Okay I have no idea if you’re trolling or not, but just so nobody [else?] gets the wrong end of the stick:

The first two replies in this thread were taking the kitten . OP originally just said “HS” and didn’t specify Healing Signet, so we jumped in on this wonderful ‘nerf me moar bro’ warrior thread and gave examples of other skills often shortened to HS. OP then edited their post and ruined our fun somewhat.

Actually Heartseeker is really broken, it lets thieves close gaps really quickly and then they’re right next to me and, uh, um.

x Charlie.4820:

-Glass panels need to be removed or replaced with something which doesn’t win you the fight. I suggest something which could change the outcome of a fight but not to the point where people are prepared to change their build to knock people onto it. Small amount of damage, Perhaps a short stun which then deactivates that “panel” for a set amount of time.

One thing I’d quite like would be much less of the fall-to-your-death stuff, because that just feels… horrible. It’s not nearly as satisfying to blow someone off the edge as it is to have a good duel-and-stomp – and CC/stability isn’t even remotely balanced between professions so certain ones have a massive advantage over others and feel unfair to play against.

Instead of falls-to-death, why not falling to a teleporter that takes players out of combat? Or puts them in combat elsewhere:
- knocking someone off the skyhammer platform teleports them to a control point. Now position on the platform does matter, and folks can’t just chuck you anywhere – if you get tossed off the western side you can aid in defence of the western point, for example.
- the glass panels at the control points just lead to tunnels that you need to spend 10-15 seconds running back from. Enough time to decap (or even fully cap) a point, but not kill-points and not up-to-20-seconds-plus-running-back-time that the full death gives.

This’d make control still very important on the map, but folks can’t just mindlessly chuck their launches and knockbacks around and watch folks fall to their death over and over again.

(I still dislike the general idea of the map, but I’d like to see it become at least slightly playable if possible)

Malchior.5042:

Soilder.3607:

ahuba.6430:

welcome to “hard counter wars 2”

This is actually a very true statement. This game has some unfair hard counters. Warriors apecced for mass cd removal vs a cd necro is just one example.

If they’re Specced, that means they built their build in such a way to cover one of their obvious weaknesses.

That’s soft-counter. Hard-counter is when they AREN’T specced, and can utilize an individual setup to be at an advantage against ANY OTHER setup. The instances of these in GW 2 are very few.

Actually I’d define a hard counter as “a build that will very reliably win against another build” or maybe “a class for which most viable builds reliably win against most viable builds of another class”.

A general (non-hard) counter is a way to deal with a greater variety of foes but not necessarily win every fight with them.

Example: lots of cleanse, healing and vitality is a counter to condition builds, but overall immunity is a hard counter. The condition-only build is either rendered useless in the face of this opponent, or needs to change in a major way.

Somewhat Related Proper My Own Opinion Time: Diamond Skin is barely a general counter to condition-heavy builds, but it is a hard counter to entirely condition builds. If a necromancer can’t get through an elementalist’s DS, they can deal with it by speccing for a little power and timing their condi-bursts to hit between the ele’s health top-ups.

Yeah I run Cleric’s primarily, since I’m blasting 6-8 times every 30s so will get at least one off in each water field I lay down - can’t expect allies to be able to blast in fields you’re laying down when in the middle of a fight, much of the time, so should be ready to supply your own.

With Diamond Skin, it helps, since low vit but high heals means you can more reliably keep yourself above that all-important 90%, even if it takes a bit less work to get you below it too.

Zyter: ooh, nice idea, would mean punishment if folks burst down your summon so there was actually some kind of a decision there.

For what they’d do: Fire is damage/burning, Air is damage/weakness, Water is heal/chill, Earth is bleed/cripple? To be balanced appropriately, maybe vuln on air or water - gw1 Cracked Armour came from the Air and Water skills for ele.
EDIT: ohh or a smoke field on earth elementals (burst into dust or something iunno) - not even slightly frequent or reliable access to stealth, but a definite reason to watch out when killing the things.

The weapon traits could do with being combined, since the only issue I can think of (besides needing to give us new traits to fill the gaps) is that S/D builds would get both endurance regen and 10% movement speed - but as Rangers can already buff a combination of Torch, Axe, Dagger and Warhorn with one trait (Off-Hand Training, Wilderness Survival VII) and we don’t get to reduce weapon skill recharges without a bunch of MM traits, a case can probably be made.

aussieheals.6843:

Menno.6092:

So i recently switched from EU to NA servers and apparently your TPvP reward chests bug out if you do this.
I,m getting no reward chests after a tpvp win and according to another forum page
this can only be solved by winning the same amount of tourny’s on NA again before i start getting them again.
So in uther words, i need to win 1k+ macthes again! O_O
And ofcourse i don’t want to do this so i wrote a few support tickets to anet, and afetr sending a few i finnaly got a "non bot" respond wish littarly tells me "sorry we cant help you, just keep reporting buggs and sorry we cant give you a refund.
Realy anet? Thats how you fix problems?
WEAK!
Screenshot of the mail below ->

You were EU? YOU DESERVE NOTHING!!!! :P <3

You moved away from EU? YOU DESERVE NOTHING!!!! :P <3

Tornado in sPvP is for the damage boost or, if there are one or two allies around and the point needs decapping, to knock people out of a capture point then immediately switching back for your hard CC skills.
There is almost zero reason to stay transformed for the whole duration, since it locks you out of all your useful skills and you’re left vulnerable to ranged attacks.

You’ve got blasting staff on, which gives the incorrect tooltip - remove that trait and it’ll say 6 seconds.

You should check on the golems in Heart of the Mists, though - can’t remember how this one goes.

I’ve been staff since I started, and am sticking with it because I love how the weapon plays. It’s not some godlike superweapon, but is also not nearly as useless in sPvP as folks like to claim.

My current setup is similar to this, with a couple of possible changes:
- Arcana I (Arcane Mastery) for Arcana V (Blasting Staff) - less frequent blast finishers but larger AoE.
- Arcane Brilliance for Glyph of Elemental Harmony - more reliable self-heal, though you lose a blast in exchange for a boon. Makes Arcana I affect only one skill on your bar, so you may wish to change that trait for another.
- Earth III (Earth’s Embrace) for Earth VI (Stone Splinters) - lose a bit of defence for a bit more damage.
- Runes that give Vitality rather than Toughness - I quite like Ice for this. Also considering swapping out the amulet for Soldier’s with Cleric’s jewel, and bringing Healing Power runes - I’ve not done any real testing with this yet, so can’t say how easy it is to keep health high with much higher vit but lower heals.

Very low health, but high healing, means you need to rotate through your water fields and blast in them pretty regularly to stay topped up. You can hold out on your own for a while in most 1v1 fights, with finishing your foe a possibility in a number of them - but heavy burst and folks that can kite around the point staying out of your AoE rings (hello, shortbow rangers) tend to require tactical running the hell away rather than trying to bunker it out and getting yourself killed.
- Against condition-heavy builds you can often win a duel, or at least hold them off indefinitely.
- Glyph of Storms is your friend. Sandstorm gives several AoE blinds, shutting down minion builds and the rock dogs that everyone and their mum is summoning these days. Ice Storm chucks chill everywhere, and Lightning Storm is pewpewpew manyhits.
- Glyph of Elemental Power also helps with this, giving you a decent spread of chill or weakness. Depending on what you’re up against, you can pop it early in the fight or save it for the stunbreak.
- Get close to a foe when healing with Arcane Brilliance, if you possibly can. With just one nearby target, in a water field, you can heal back most of your health bar in one cast.

Groups are really where you get to have fun - while you can dish out a hefty amount of AoE damage, you can also apply might, swiftness, regen to allies and a number of controlling conditions to foes.
- If coming to a fight in progress, don’t rush in unless you have to. Chuck down some lovely circles first! Ciiiircles.
- While you’re more vulnerable in the middle of a team fight, you can also make full use of Evasive Arcana to heal/cleanse/blind/blast.
- Switch to earth when an ally near you is stomping without their own safe-stomp - you can then continue the skirmish or get running to elsewhere, rather than maybe have to mess about more with a downed foe.

Mobility-wise, you’re not too badly equipped.
- Burning Retreat takes you a good distance; this post explains how to easily use the skill to move forwards without making you dizzy.
- You’ve got a lot of hard and soft CC, with chills and stuns and a knockback and a wall. Don’t be afraid to use them to escape or hold up an enemy, just make sure you lead your Unsteady Ground far enough ahead of your foes.

tl;dr:
Anyway yeah, staff ele. I love it, I have success with it, I expect to continue to do so.
You can do a bit of pretty much everything and do it well, just can’t do any of it quite as crazily as anyone else.

Most of my problem with the map is that it’s pretty strongly biased towards classes with lots of CC and/or stability. Control is important in all matches, but on Skyhammer it’s often the primary means of dealing with foes.
As nobody gets to choose their team for solo queue, you’ve just got to hope that your group has more of the appropriate control skills (along with stability), and that the enemy... doesn’t.

Other issue: as it plays completely differently to other maps, I’ll often swap my entire build around for it. If I’m not already sitting (doing nothing) in the Heart of the Mists, I have two minutes to get to HotM, refund and redistribute my traits, then join the game and see what the matchup is like and if my team has been discussing strategy - can finish reallocating traits or swap over weapons/amulet/runes in the match map if need be.
After the game I then have to remember to reset my PvP setup back to something more reasonable for general combat... and hope that my next matchup isn’t on Skyhammer again. If I forget to do this, might end up playing my next match with a build that doesn’t fall off the edges but can’t kill anything in a skirmish on solid ground.
We need build storage/recall, if gimmicky maps that require specific playstyles are going to exist.

redslion.9675:

Make them better, and make them shut up in combat.

I hate when they keep spouting “Fire!” “Water!” ’n stuff…

Until I was in the same room as a friend, doing dungeons together, I never realised quite how vocal elementalists are. Every few seconds I hear from their speakers “Spark to flame!”, “Earth!” or maybe a generic boon one like “There’s the power!”, all of it from me.

I barely notice what my own character says most of the time, but they’re definitely very chattery when played by other people. An option to turn down all players’ chatter might be useful sometimes.

scerevisiae.1972:

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

I am yet to see an Elementalist, in any aspect of the game, since release, who is using a glyph build. Taking glyph of storms into AC exp by itself doesn’t count.

Hi, I’ve been running glyphs pretty much since I started, in all aspects of the game, and I enjoy them and find them useful. Just so’s you know that we do exist.

Quick Glyphs is pretty wonderful, requiring only 10 points in Air. I’d take Inscription if (as staff) it was worth putting another 10-20 points into the Air traitline, but I much prefer getting at the GM traits in the other trees right now.
For better Glyph-related traits... what are you after, P Fun Daddy? They can’t grant a generic boon whenever used (since they’re attunement-based already) and we’ve got Inscription for basic boons. Maybe a chance to inflict an additional condition on hit based on attunement? Or a recharge of Glyphs at 50% health? Not sure which trees these would go into though.

Conjures recently did see some love, with their 25 uses trait becoming very accessible and the weapons all receiving pretty decent buffs a couple of months ago. Pretty sure they don’t need anything changed right now.

The GS can be useful for the mobility (and it gives you a buff to power so can be used like Tornado with MS, though not to nearly the same extent)... sadly if you’re caught out on your own somewhere by a stealth-thief you’ll prolly not do very well with the mobility because you’re locked out of your weapon utility.

I tend to run with Tornado if I’m in a zerg, making sure to fall back while gaining its extra damage - staff ele is already pretty backliney, and it’s daft to stay far enough forward to be vulnerable when you’re only using this skill to buff existing AoE ticks.

When roaming, I go with the Glyph of Elementals, because an extra body can really help in a small skirmish and they have some useful (if unreliably activated) abilities. Earth Elemental can also take enough of a beating that soloing un-upgraded camps is a breeze, and it’s still possible to do an upgraded one if you pay attention and have enough time before enemy players turn up.

The Game Slayer.7632:

cheese.4739:

reikken.4961:

The Game Slayer.7632:

Whens the last time i used anti toxin spray, or .. LOL ... Tornado. Or even Glyph of Elemental power? When I say *use* I mean ’seriously’ use for pvp and consider it good and that i would want to use it again.

I’ve started taking Tornado in pvp. It’s pretty good with a full zerker build
haven’t tried glyph of elemental power, but I’m thinking it’s probably actually pretty good. you can get permanent weakness on your opponents with it, or huge uptime on chill. and it’s a stun break. which doesn’t really have good synergy with the rest of the skill at all, but hey

I run GoEP, it’s a relatively short cooldown on a stunbreak (especially when traited with Quick Glyphs) and can spread around a fair bit of condition from ground-targeted multi-tick skills. Also has synergy with Glyph of Storms, particularly the lightning storm with its large number of strikes - the storm attacks on conjured weapons might be similarly effective?

no, the reason GoEP sucks so bad (and you may not know this) is simply because it has kitten icd. You can’t do any of the things you said, even though, it would be pretty nice if it did. I may try it come dec 10th, but the 5s icd is seriously a killer on itself.

Oh yeah, aware of that - I learned to check out ICDs the hard way when I stayed specced to 30 water for cleanse on regen, only to find that it didn’t trigger most times I applied the boon. Tooltips could do with more of this sort of info.

Anyway, yeah, staff works best against (and with) larger groups, and it’s the hampering of multiple targets that I meant by ’spread around’ rather than maintaining condi on one.
I want some kind of buff for GoEP, yes (would kinda like to see blind instead of burning from fire, or some other defensive effect - maybe give the glyph a different length of ICD depending on which attunement it’s from to balance this?), but I’m going to keep seeing how it plays, anyway.

reikken.4961:

The Game Slayer.7632:

Whens the last time i used anti toxin spray, or .. LOL … Tornado. Or even Glyph of Elemental power? When I say use I mean ‘seriously’ use for pvp and consider it good and that i would want to use it again.

I’ve started taking Tornado in pvp. It’s pretty good with a full zerker build
haven’t tried glyph of elemental power, but I’m thinking it’s probably actually pretty good. you can get permanent weakness on your opponents with it, or huge uptime on chill. and it’s a stun break. which doesn’t really have good synergy with the rest of the skill at all, but hey

I run GoEP, it’s a relatively short cooldown on a stunbreak (especially when traited with Quick Glyphs) and can spread around a fair bit of condition from ground-targeted multi-tick skills. Also has synergy with Glyph of Storms, particularly the lightning storm with its large number of strikes – the storm attacks on conjured weapons might be similarly effective?

Actually, there are several classes you can res with the glyph pretty reliably (as long as you don’t get interrupted while casting):

Elementalists can Vapor Form
Thieves can Smoke Bomb
Warriors can Vengeance
Mesmsers can use Deception, which I’m pretty certain keeps them within range of Renewal of Earth, and possibly the other attunements’ Renewals as well

So that’s 4/8 classes who, if they know you’re running GoR, can be ressed at range before a stomp. These four classes can also be range-ressed by Engineers running Toss Elixir R if they stay in place.

I would definitely like to see this skill’s cooldown reduced a little, because the versatility of its being a Glyph doesn’t really matter if it’s not available in any of the specific situations you might want to use the thing.
I’m usually running Quick Glyphs anyway, but even traited with that it’s longer CD than Engineer’s res untraited - and while Ranger and Necromancer skills both have longer CDs, they’re also on skills that have passive effects during battle.

Oh, and the underwater version needs reverted, because the recent patch made it require ground-targeting, which... doesn’t work and makes it completely useless.

Sensotix.4106:

*Diamond Skin:* this trait is a 100% immunity to condi dmg which is never a good thing in a game (the question if it is good or not is not my main point here) my main point is that it doesn’t take any skill which can actually lead to a lower skilled player winning against a good player since you don’t even have to active it in a perfect moment

Yeah, I main ele, and will probably play with DS after the patch to see if it gives me any kind of a chance against the horrible condi meta.

If damaging conditions exist, they become horribly unfair in a game with varied base HP pools. I try not to play with triple cantrips (love my glyphs too much), and am toying at the moment with not speccing into water magic, but most builds that can apply multiple damaging conditions will just ruin me - they’re reapplied so very frequently, and that war, necro and engi builds tend to come with a bunch of CC on top of that means non-instant cleanses are often rendered useless.

So yeah, I’m looking forward to this skill to see what it does for ele viability and to counter the current urgh... but I still don’t like that it has to exist. I’d much rather a lowering of condition damage across the board, possibly:
- In the manner that Sensotix suggests, so that base damage is much less threatening and players actually have to spec heavily into condamage/conduration to use condi as their primary damage source.
- By reducing durations on a number of damaging conditions (especially autoattack ones), and/or reducing the number of different condis any particular class can apply. I’d suggest more cleanse, but that’s just letting the power creep stand up and start jogging rather than fixing the problem.
- By changing one or two conditions entirely - I love them as a source of control (though stacked immob is stupid now*) and would like more of this in the game. Not sure how this could happen practically with current ones (maybe bleed does less damage but each stack gives a chance of glancing blows?) and replacing then rebalancing with entirely new ones would be even more work. Not really expecting this to happen! :P

*I’d like immobilise to only stack extra over the end of the existing duration, if possible. For example: A player is immobilised and has 3s left, when a new 5s immob comes in. A is now unable to move for 5s. If a 2s immob had hit (instead of the 5s), only the original 3s would remain. Right now, unless you have anti-immob-specific skills in your build, it’s very easy for foes to stack it, use cover condis, and burst a player down who has no chance of reatreat.

Re: Torment, I love Sensotix’s suggestion - most classes really have to move about, and we already have ways to control enemy movement. If we have to keep this damaging condition, flip it round so that it’s no longer completely lethal to someone trying to dodge the next incoming fear.

Zomaarwat.3912:

The dyes you can make in PvP arent sellable as far as I know, and thats pretty much all there currently is.

The unidentified dyes you can forge are account-bound, yes – but if you identify them, they become standard dyes and can be put on the TP. Not even slightly reliable as a source of income, but if you hit on some of the rarer ones you can get a bit of gold back for your efforts.

alemfi.5107:

Mash Hog.5672:

Gorni.1764:

Mash Hog.5672:

Change the icons to small dots of the opponent team’s color. (Much like in WvW)
It would be nice knowing what class the opponent is, but there is already a LOT of clutter on the mini-map.

This way you can make a dot for each mesmer clone.

One thing is for sure though, if you want to keep the icons, you need to make them a LOT smaller.

this sounds reasonable but it would be misleading when you see 3+ dots on a point and think that there are 3 players but in fact it’s only one mesmer.

I thought of that, maybe we can have miniaturized dots with each color being a different class.
Purple: Mesmer
Blue: Guard
Green: Necro
Brown: Ranger
Ect...

This way we can have multiple purple dots for mesmers and clones and still not have them get mixed up with other classes.

Seems fairly reasonable. They already have associated class colors based on the pie chart of the pvp window.

This sounds great... but you need to be able to distinguish between teams. Maybe allies as they are now, with larger profession icons, and give foes these coloured dots? Means their mesmer clones are still relevant distraction, and we can see foes in combat, but it’s still very easy to locate allies by just glancing at the map.

With regards to stealth... the change is a bit strange, but if you’re going to be able to chase down a thief you’ll probably need direct line of sight when they come out of stealth anyway. Could become a problem if a well-organised team keeps track of enemy stealthers, but I’d rather this feature was removed for higher tier tournaments anyway.

runeblade.7514:

I prefer 8v8.

5v5 isn’t enough players. Most of the time I never fight anyone in a 5v5.

In a 8v8 setting, I know I can get into a decently sized battle.

The problem with a ’decently sized battle’ is that it removes much of the skill and reaction out of the fight, as there’s so much going on. Larger groups in combat usually end up just being ’who has the most AoE dmg/condi/CC/heals’ rather than test of actual ability.

It feels unfair to die in such a fight, and isn’t nearly as satisfying to win as a smaller skirmish.

If the icons were a bit smaller, this might be useful - but at present, I can’t see which of my allies is at any one point due to the clutter (only exacerbated by mesmer clones).

I can deal pretty well with just watching the party info for who was taking damage (and how they were holding up to it) and knowing where everyone was so I could run to support an appropriate area - if someone really needs help they can ping the map.
While in organised team matches, communication is usually good enough that I’m still aware where folks are, this increased communication tends to give me much more useful info on enemy movements than the map possibly can with red and blue blobs all meshed together.
In solo queue... urgh. Over the day I’ve rarely had any idea who was fighting at each point, or even which foes were there despite their indicators.

Some people might really like this feature, but I’d ask for both much smaller profession icons on the map, and a toggle to only disply ally icons as before. Definitely more of a hindrance than a help right now.

Glyph of Storms also has 3 other skills available - Lightning Storm makes twice as many strikes, for example, so will give you twice the damage output of the Glyph’s Ice Storm (though admittedly still not as much as Frost Bow’s Storm, if all strikes hit).

The Glyph is there for multi-purpose utility - you get to select the skill it functions as every time you cast it. It can be cast in about half the time (including Frost Bow summoning) and also while on the move.

It’s much more useful for controlling multiple foes with chill/blind, or if you want to chain your skills together without having to conjure then drop a weapon. The conjures and glyphs both give elementalists pretty great versatility, but conjures’ single, powerful, un-swappable skillsets function completely differently from the 4-attunement glyphs.

You can get them by salvaging the items from Tournament Reward Chests - you can also find Orrian armour skins in them.

The chests are given for winning ranked matches, both solo queue and teams.
For Halloween, rewards were changed to 5 trick-or-treat bags for solo queue winners (7 for team game winners) and 5 candy corn for non-winners. There are enough people complaining about the trick-or-treat bags, and it’s been all but guaranteed that we’ll be getting double tournament reward chests after this Tuesday’s patch since they’ve been unavailable for almost a month now.

So yeah, you have a few days to wait before it’s available again, but you can get the tokens by salvaging gear you win in ranked matches.

EDIT: typo

So I, like everyone else who’s had a go at it, am frustrated at solo queue much of the time. I’m really pleased that it now exists, and glad that y’alls are working to improve the matchmaking system, but it’s still really annoying to have most matches already decided before they’ve even begun.

So yeah: do teams get swapped about once they’re created? If not, is this a planned change for the near future?

Quite a lot of the time, I’ll see a team with several sub-r10 players, up against five post-r30s.
Are all teams created, matched against the closest avialable by whatever metrics are used, and then thrown into the match?
Particularly at quieter periods, I’ll find matchups to be horribly unfair - just came out of one in which my team were all aware of how to play, with our opponents consisting of three complete newbies, a r5, and an r42.

While it definitely wouldn’t make teams instantly better, I rather expect that after matching up two groups, doing a few more comparisons and balancing the players on each side (before inviting them to the match) would help a lot with the huge differences in ability that often show up across whole teams.

Elamentalist, Trait, Evasive Arcana
Creates AoE attunement-based effect at end of dodge
Heal from the Water Attunement dodge is 50% lower in PvP (1,302 + 1xHP normally, not sure if it’s absolute 50% decrease or just 1,302 + 0.5xHP)

Elementalist, Skill, Signet of Restoration
Signet Passive: Heal every time you cast a spell
Passive heal changes from (202 + 0.1xHP) to (168 + 0.08xHP) in PvP

For staying alive in PvE, I’d highly recommend Glyph of Storms. I often open fights in air (since I’m there for swiftness anyway) and draw aggro, then swap to earth and cast glyph of storms before chaining to as much pbAoE as possible.

There aren’t many PvE foes that attack frequently enough to do much damage through the several blinds of e-GoS. You need to be a bit more careful against the ranged ones, but if you choose your battlefield right - and pay attention to the foes you’re up against - the vast majority of the PvE open world can barely touch you. It’s not quite faceroll, but you should quickly develop a number of strategies to apply to different groups of enemies as you find them.

While the Regen is very useful, stopping damage from happening in the first place is (in most cases) a better choice. Your ability to share heals/regen is great with allies around, but on your own you should think about Blinds on foes, Protection (and Might, and any other boon you can manage) on yourself, and backing out to wait for skill recharge if you look like you might not make it.

PlatypusRex.3428:

ThiBash.5634:

The answer isn’t about balance or overpowered skills.

The answer is that it would effectively give us a 25-skills action bar and that’s not what the game is about. The reason there’s an internal cooldown is to give you limitations to make the game interesting. Would chess be fun if every piece could move to any square on the board?

I think the more accurate analogy would be chess, but you can only use the knight every 3rd move, not any piece any location.

Hm, trying to think of a way to keep the chess analogy even slightly accurate - how about ’you can choose which piece is the Queen each turn’? Not got anything better than that.

Anyway, the ’our skills have long recharges’ argument is daft. Yes, stronger skills have long cooldowns, how surprising.

Consider just the #2 skills on Staff:
Fire: Lava Font.
Water: Ice Spike.
Air: Lightning Surge.
Earth: Eruption.

Think of the chain here: you can set up your lava fonts with >60% uptime, with might-giving blasts going off every 7 seconds or so, and maintain 10 vulnerability on targets in that AoE.
Untraited.
And you have a bunch of CC and other utility in your remaining weapon skills, as well as the right half of your skill bar.

ICD on traits wouldn’t help with this. The only options to make zero-second attunement cooldown even remotely balanced are:
- making our short-cooldown skills very ineffectual
- increasing the recharges on every skill we have
Neither of these would be even slightly okay.

While I sometimes would like attunement recharge set at a constant, with arcana investment giving some other class-related bonus, there is no way to get zero-second attunement cooldown to function fairly.