Guild Wars 2

Because it’s relatively easy to make distance between yourself and a foe, and many bursty specs have high mobility.

If the out-of-combat timer was low, we’d get things like:

- turn up at a point
- try and gank the lone defender
- kill and cap if successful
- if unsuccessful, run away really fast, heal up while OOC
- chances are, your opponent’s key defensive skills will still be on cooldown when your key offensive skills have recharged; GOTO 10

Y’know how WvW is full of D/x Thief and Sw/W-GS War solo roamers? It’s because that kind of spec works better there for the above reasons - and because there’s very little need to stay put and hold position rather than run away. Burst-win or burst-fail-run-tryagain work far too well in the open playing field that is WvW. There are enough inexperienced players that even the Warrior run-away build can occasionally get a kill in, and kitten everyone off the rest of the time.

manveruppd.7601:

I know some people would hate this (I myself think it’s not ideal), but if you make it an option you enable in settings, and it only affects what YOU see on YOUR screen, the people who don’t like it are not affected in any way.

As I said earlier in the thread: I love having my asura characters, I enjoy playing as them… but if getting to see what my foes are doing means letting people ignore my carefully chosen armour/weapon/dye set and instead view me as a standardised human, so be it.

A fairer playing field means a lot more to PvP than some customisable skins.

If you still want to keep customisation in PvP, and keep it visible to everyone: allow it for humans.
Don’t reskin any human characters, unless for some reason a weapon or armour skin is introduced that ends up breaking the game (unlikely, but possible).
Soon enough…
- anyone that cares about their appearance to others will roll humans
- anyone who just wants to look pretty to themselves will stay as they are
- anyone who continues to roll asura for their readability/targeting/animation advantages will lose their edge in competitive play.

Wolf.5816:

*•Modified Amunition*: Increases Damage by 4% for each condition on your foe. Will increase damage by 8% when duel wielding Pistols.

Completely unrelated to the rest of your post, but since AR is regarded as pretty terrible now, how about for something like:

Automated Response: decrease incoming direct damage by x% for each unique condition on you.

or

Automated Response: for each unique condition on you, conditions deal 10% less damage to you.

Something that still allows snares and condition pressure against Engies running it, but also gives a pratical passive buff. With coordinated cleanses from allies, I could see the first one making a powerful point bunker.

PopeUrban.2578:

DeWolfe.2174:

Or, at least give us a funny "Meh" vocal for our character as we toss aside stolen skills so we ckittene steal again.

+1 OP

That’s funny, but it makes me wonder:

What if f3 just discarded the stolen item and reduced the steal cooldown in stead? Kinda like how engineers can pack up turrets when they’re not tactically sound. This would mean you could use steal (and its associated traits) more often but not actually get more stolen items, which might actually open up some more viable all-tricks sorts of builds as a better thief support spec. (e.g. stealing reduces recharge on all traps or something)

Hm, if the recharge could be reduced I’d support increasing the base recharge slightly - stealing happens crazy often enough as it is, and those classes best shut down by Thieves (Mesmers & Eles) both give stolen skills that are very good in combat with them.

The basic idea of letting players discard stolen items (or get a second, less powerful stolen skill)? I’m in favour of this.

Dahir.4158:

I still fail to see how Static Fields and Line of Wardings are able to block the path of someone in Mist Form.

We “morph into an invulnerable, vaporous mist for a brief time”. I’m sure that word in bold means to be immune to attacks i.e. incapable of being damaged or captured, so why is it that we always get caught?

Either fix this unintended bug A-net or continue adding skill tooltips as you are so very fond of doing. It bugs me to be blocked by a stupid line on the floor when I’m literally mist in the air.

An easy solution would be to add stability to the transform (stripped when transform ends, as with elite skills that grant it). Stability gets to ignore blocking lines.

Or, y’know, fix the skill properly or clarify that it is working as intended.

Nina.4317:

You have no clue …
You miss my point.

What’s the point to have made an asura then if everyone would see me as human?

I should have make a real cute human for the begining if i had known. Asura are ugly.

Now, you hear me?

Well, in PvP chances are you can reroll to human, fix your build, and just start playing – surely you have enough Tomes and Scrolls to unlock everything for a new character?

It still sounds like you rolled asura just for the size advantage, in which case you’re exploiting broken game mechanics and so aren’t owed anything should ANet ever fix it.

Evan Lesh.3295:

However, all melee attacks hit outside the visible animation for all races.

As others have said: the difference between asuran hitting outside the visible animation, and any other race, is huge. It’s much harder to calculate (or guess at) a safe range to be at when your foe is doing damage almost the entire animation’s distance away from the end of said animation.

I’ve gotten really used to my reverse-BR now, with about-face mapped to \ so I can tap it with my pinkie. It’s surprisingly easy to pick up, once you find a keybind for about-face that is comfortable.

The steps I take:
- release right-mouse (if holding it down)
- click somewhere with left-mouse (to unlock the camera’s view)
- about-face with \ (this shouldn’t change the camera’s orientation, just turn around the character so they’re facing the camera)
- press 4 for BR (which should go ’forwards’ away from the camera)
- at some point during the skill’s animation, hold down right-mouse again so the camera doesn’t go crazy at the end of the skill

Don’t even have to let go of W if you’re running somewhere - as long as I don’t mess up one of these steps I can very smoothly treat it as a gap-closer or way to retreat without backpedalling.

Note: it took me faaaar too long to realise that right-mouse always followed behind your character, and left-mouse was independent of them. Panning the camera for a quick look around with left-mouse can be very helpful when running somewhere in WvW or PvP!

cheshirefox.7026:

no clue.. this skill needs protection though so ‘elemental shielding’ would be a worthwhile trait for staff elementalists

Hm? The auramancy traits can actually work pretty well on Staff, if you’re willing to use blast finishers in that fun ice field to stack up AoE prot/swift/fury… but it’s really not worth taking this trait over Earth’s Embrace most of the time (especially not for just Magnetic Aura), since that gives both prot and stability and will proc cantrip traits too.

This came up in another thread, that appears to have been merged into the Skyhammer thread. Since every mention of that map gets chucked in there, I’ma just say now: I don’t want to discuss Skyhammer here. No matter what similarities there are between the two maps, this is not a thread about Skyhammer. This thread will look really out of place if merged into that thread, and we can’t have a disorganised forum now, can we?

Anyway: this thread is about Spirit Watch.

And why it’s seen as fit for Solo Queue but not Team Queue.

Surely if anything, the map would work better in teamq, as both teams could be expected to organise orbrunners (and counter-orbrunners) and have discussed builds to use beforehand in case the map popped?
In soloq it’s just “let’s see which team has an orbrunner” – and without concerted effort, it’s pretty kitten difficult to shut down a Warrior flying up those steps to homepoint.

So yeah, what reasons do you have for (or against) Spirit Watch being included in teamq? Do you think it should even stay in soloq?

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Skyhammer and Spirit Watch are weird. They both have the three side points and a massively more important secondary objective. That means that you need to split to four “points” at pretty much all times. That makes rotations a good bit harder, with communication being more important. For that reason, they might be better in team queue… wtf am I saying. The maps suck. plsno

The reason they’re so bad in soloq is because the secondary objectives (and on skyhammer most of the map) are much easier to deal with for certain classes – so while the overall balance aim in sPvP is to make nodefights fairer, it tends to ignore things like orbrun Warriors (whoosh!) and… everything Skyhammer.
Soloq matches are already heavily influenced by class balance, and when you add maps like these it just becomes Reroll Wars 2.

Acrisor.8097:

Do you know of any other MMO, where small characters (such as asuras and gnomes) get modified into humans or something else for better notice by players?

Do you know of any other MMO, where in PvP you are forced to play only the same large race because all characters must be the same sizes and animations?

Do you know of any other MMO, where such emphasis is put on reading animations and tells from your foes?

Do you know of any other MMO, where there is such a difference between clarity of animation between these races?

The argument isn’t that everyone has to play as a regular human – I love playing as my asura, and don’t want the race removed from the game – the argument is that we want to be able to view our enemies as all human (or spectate matches as if they were all human).

Customisability is important to the endgame, sure – gotta sink gold into skins – but I for one would much prefer some people to see me as a human (same gender, basic armour, team colours), and to have the choice myself of viewing enemies as these basic humans, than to have to try to see/read/click on all the miniscule asura out there.

Acotje.5689:

PvP:
Don’t PvP a lot, but I’m p sure it is Battle+Energy/Doom/Force/Accuracy(maybe even Fire or Air, but I’m not sure)

Depending on builds… usually Energy, so that permavigor+energy = lots and lots of dodges (and EA procs from them).
Battle is a common second (with Strength runes + 30 arcana it gives something like 9 permanent stacks of might from the boon duration buffs), or Air for 1v1 pressure, or Doom for anti-healing pressure.

Anyway yeah, OP: Battle and Energy are the on-swap sigils that are very, very frequently used by Ele builds. Doom is seen sometimes, but I’ve not run into many Eles with Geomancy or Hydromancy.
Dungeon speedrun meta builds aren’t likely to take them because party might stacking to 25 removes the need for personal might stacking, so other dps sigils are taken instead (as said by Acotje).

Conjure Earth Shield: this could really help the weapon. Currently it’s not used anywhere at all ever. Even a stunbreak with a 1/2 second cast time could make it more useful.

One with Air: no, not at all. It would be completely broken for anyone running Fresh Air, giving 80% superspeed uptime.
The trait is terrible right now (though definitely more useful than it was before), but I think it needs a rework to something more like “move 25% faster while attuned to air” and hopefully letting it work under Lingering Elements. The Adept Minor would become completely obsolete for anyone running that trait… but it’s really not useful now anyway.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I can’t think of a way to fix this off the top of my head without plastering ground decals all over the place or somehow making streak effects better show the attack arc. Any other ideas?

The main thing that we need is consistency.

If it’s possible to view all foes as a standard model (i.e. human) then it’ll be possible to judge the hitboxes for attacks much better. A tiny asura hitting things that look to be 5ft from the end of their blade is a lot harder to judge than a human with just 1ft of ‘extra’ reach.
Maybe streak effects showing the area affected might help with this… but it’d just look silly with asuran characters, due to the huge effects that model scaling has on animations vs hitboxes.
And even if we really, really can’t view all our enemies as human… can we at least get AoE rings from Plague/Tornado to scale properly? Those few skills with an actual visual indicator of range-from-player don’t even display this range accurately.

On top of hitbox stuff, there’s the very common complaint that these tiny asura, are utterly impossible to read in such a visually crowded game with flashy animations and AI units all over the place.

Lopez.7369:

I don’t do it, but I never fault anyone for just alt-tabbing or stepping away from the keyboard if Skyhammer pops. I actually recommend more people do it, since it could eventually get the developers’ attention.

Spirit Watch isn’t nearly as bad as everyone says it is, although the developers could take a significant step to balance the map if they just gave the orb its own abilities.

Its own abilities, armour class and hp pool. Turn it into a guild rush!

Apolo.5942:

GW2 has 16 minimum and has failed miserably, notice a trend there?.

16 minimum?

I think you’re forgetting that Healing Signet exists.

15 minimum!

(though then you’ve got trait procs for a bunch of other skills, and the hidden cooldowns on non-held weapon skills that complicates things a bit)

BlackBeard.2873:

4. Chill and condi burst when they leave water attunement. Many eles only cleanse outside of water are: perhaps 1 condi/10s from being crit (soothing disruption), ether renewal, and maybe cleansing fire (3 condis/40s).

*quick note: Soothing Wave is the trait that procs regen-when-crit every 10s. I’ve described Soothing Disruption below.

The Master-tier traits commonly taken in the Water tree both supply cleanse:
- Cleansing Wave: an AoE cleanse of one condition on attuning to Water (as you say, this is rendered useless by waiting to apply heavy condi until they leave that attunement).
- Soothing Disruption: grants Regen + Vigor on cantrip use (which procs the GM-trait Cleansing Water - "remove a condition whenever you apply Regeneration").
Soothing Disruption is an important one to be aware of - it kicks in with Cleansing Fire (meaning 4 conditions removed total), Armour of Earth, Lightning Flash and Mist Form. Armor of Earth is sually taken twice by Cele Eles, with the 0/0/2/6/6 build putting those 2 points in the Earth tree for an extra proc. Staff users may take Arcane Wave instead of one of these (because it’s a blast finisher so great for might stacking and healing combos), but the majority - certainly most running Cele builds - will have at least one and probably two cantrips that proc regen on use... along with the traited Armor of Earth proc.
If you don’t have repeat applications of your best shutdowns (immob/chill), try to bait the Ele out of their cantrips if you can, as well as paying attention to Water Attunement. Poor ones will probably pop them early anyway, but there’s always that fun extra proc of Armor of Earth that could pop out and let them get away (or try to counter your shutdown with a quick burst).

Sidenote: I find it HILARIOUS how many people keep firing away full-tilt with projectiles while magnetic aura is up. Just stop dps-ing for 4s, he’ll still die

Killing a Lich Form Necro because they just stood in a zerk Lava Font from me and hit 11111 into my Magnetic Aura? It honestly has made me laugh out loud a couple of times - people think the skill is so broken that they can pewpewpew without even looking around (or under) them or watching their health bar.
I do think the Lich Form AA is too powerful - with such high, long-range, piercing damage, and with the transform’s other attacks rarely getting a look-in - but against organised teams with good anti-projectile shielding it becomes much less of a threat. The issue is that like MM, turret Engi, and hambow - it is far too effective at lower skill levels compared to other setups.

While testing this, it might also be worth looking at whether height differences affect projectiles by a lot - tiny asura are already harder to spot and read in PvP than other races, but if they have higher projectile avoidance as well that’d be madness. The only pro to being bigger would be that you could cover smaller allies with a big reflective hitbox.

Anton.1769:

Skenderbeu.9102:

very difficult to play against. Especially the PU mesmers.

hotjoin?

OP mentions "s/tPvP" so presumably is talking about both hotjoin and ranked matches - and if you ever want to roam in WvW, it’s pretty important to be able to deal with PU Mesmers anyway, even if they’re never going to be viable in high-end conquest PvP.

Anyway yeah, Gokil’s post covers things clearly - Ele *can* do everything pretty well (while having to go farther and sacrifice more to perform more specific roles like S/D FAir Burst or Staff Nuker), and D/D Cele is especially versatile. Learning how best to support your team in different situations with your mixed bag of tools is the way to stay effective at higher ranks. Getting out of situations that you can’t help in is equally important to sticking around when you can!

I’d say that in any disorganised world boss event, your water fields are going to be wasted and the heals you supply to the mob will be relatively ineffective (compared to dps, and especially compared to doing enough damage to get credit dps for champs etc.). Stick with soldiers gear, take reasonable survivability traits, AoE might stacking, general dps stuff.

In any organised one... your water fields are going to be blasted mostly by other players, so your own healing abilities don’t matter nearly so much. Stick with the soldiers gear, dps traits... whether you spec specifically to stack might depends on the group you’re with (but as an Ele folks will probably assume it’s your job or a Guard’s job rather than theirs).

Lux.7169:

I’ve considered the self glyph but to my understanding it works instantly when downed. These players were usually downed for 3-7 seconds before mistforming and the revive happened after the mistform.

Also vs the eles that did this its extremely unlikely they would be using this unless the top tier meta for ele has changed significantly the last few days.

Then it’s probably a rally on a death far away, if happening with any regularity (or maybe a Ranger or Warrior popped their elite out of sight, seeing someone downed on the minimap?) – a bug might happen once or twice, but not likely more than that often. Could possibly be a level-up or other exploit (especially if rally happens during those 3s of safety in Vapor Form, so the player can mess about with inventory or whatever to do it) but accusing people of haxxx without any actual evidence isn’t really constructive.

Hollandse Warrior.4653:

Solo queue need teams based on total ranking of team. Otherwise teams will always be unbalanced.
Also would be better to add report system for afk/ppl not showing up or way to late or randomly leave.

Solo queue didn’t balance teams in the past (so two players with similar MMRs could queue together and sync up pretty well) but in one patch this was changed – the two teams are shuffled about to make overall as evenly ranked as possible.

We do really really need the other things you mention though.

It’s Glyph of Renewal in Fire Attunement, I expect? It gives a 15-second buff to the Ele that instantly resses them when downed... but it involves a >3 second cast. Maybe useful for bursters, and the other utility the skill provides is good, but the cast and cooldown really are horrible and there’s no real trait support for Glyphs.

Edit: oh yeah, you can tell it’s up because the buff from the Glyph is visible on the stats bar. If you see an Ele with that buff, don’t expect them to stop fighting at 0hp!

Dahir.4158:

Maybe give them off-hand dagger, who knows? I don’t understand why warriors are allowed to use longbow

Rifle on Warrior makes sense – it’s currently not as effective as other weapons, but that’s because PvE is “stack and AoE melee”, sPvP is hambow/evisbow/xbow, and WvW is S/W-GS run away time, or hammertrain. It still fits thematically with a heavily armoured, slow-but-dangerous melee fighter like the Warrior.

The longbow… doesn’t. They’re not an archer profession, so the theme doesn’t fit (none of the classes really sound like they should wield it besides Rangers, in my opinion), they’ve got sustain for getting into the fray and staying there, they should not be able to apply ranged pressure while having access to that sustain (through high armour, high health, immunities, high health regen, and mobility skills/traits).
Sure, it’s got highly telegraphed attacks… but only recently did the very powerful Pin Down become so, and the weapon still supplies huge AoE pressure and can be used for might stacking – and let’s not forget about that free Cleansing Ire proc.
Ugh longbow on Warriors. Someone get Deimos in here so they can explain how it’s fair and balanced and I can have a laugh.

johnpoc.8732:

Django.5923:

Hey! Skyhammer is great and you know why?

1. Its the only map where the points are the secondary objective

2. It makes engi viable

3. All unused pull, stealth, fear, stability builds\skills finnaly have a spot!

It makes engi viable? Engi is a relly strong class atm, maybe you should actually pvp a bit.
“All UNUSED pull, STEALTH, FEAR…” I’ll leave it there LOOOOL

See, from these first couple of numbered points (and ignoring post history) I couldn’t tell if Django was trolling or being sincere. I then read the rest of the post :p

Report them for botting. It makes you feel that tiny, tiny bit better, and then nothing ever gets done about the report. Ever.

(we have been told by dev posts to report for botting, by the way)

Tolmos.8395:

cheese.4739:

At comparable skill levels below upper tiers, though - and in an awful lot of soloq, since it’s much more effective to hold points there due to lower expected levels of communication - the amount of effort and skill needed to win with an AI build is much lower than that needed for others.

This sounds like a cop-out to me. It sounds like someone running a pet build beat you, and now you’re trying to claim they really have no skill because they have pets and you don’t.

It’s the same thing people do with thieves and their invis. "It takes no skill to run up invis on someone and insta-gib them before they can react!"

Nah, I definitely strugged with them but have improved at picking my battles (zerk staff ele: probably shouldn’t try too many 1v1s). Necro minions, especially, become much easier to deal with through good use of AoE CC and dps. I will still probably die to a MM if I just run in, sure, but they’re pretty vulnerable if distracted by an ally or if I don’t get myself stuck amongst the minions.

One AI build that I am very sick of, though, is the point-holding turret engineer. The most frequently suggested ways to deal with them is ’just ranged AoE!’, but ranged AoE can only hit one turret at a time if they’re spread out, and particularly if they’ve been plonked in daft places around a node (like up high around the side nodes on Niflhel - even a Meteor Shower will likely only be able to hit two turrets at once on those nodes).
With damage reduction on turrets, and their natural no-crit status, it’s not even enough to chuck down a Lava Font then back off and forget - it takes several attacks to destroy even one turret, while the Engi is dancing about applying all their CC (and their own power/condi/mixed damage) and the other turrets within range (and the turret I’m attacking) are pewpewpewing away.
The time it takes to destroy well-placed turrets, then move in to cap a point, does not feel fair compared to the time it takes to set those turrets up during a moment of peace and then hold said node.
I am very, very happy to take on board any suggestions for dealing with such builds without coordinated team setups/efforts (that just can’t be expected outside of teamqueue).

Liewec.2896:

i came up with what i think was a nice elite in another thread.

an elite which for a very short times grants you the bonuses of every attunement-specific trait you’ve specced in to regardless of the attunement you’re in.
so say you’d specced for stone-heart, you’d be crit immune in water attunement while the elite is active.

*Glyph of Elemental Attunement:*
Glyph: _Grants you the effects of all attunement-specific traits you have, regardless of current attunement._
Cast time: Instant
Duration: 10 seconds
Recharge: 60 seconds

The reason Lingering Elements only affects Adept Minor traits is because it’d be seen as too powerful to be allowed the other attunement-specific traits at once (+dmg while attuned to fire, +dmg while attuned to air, +dmg while attuned to water against vuln’d foes) for burst purposes.
As someone like a FAir burster usualy takes FGS or Glyph as their elite, and these don’t have full uptime anyway... a 60s cooldown crazy burster +dps elite skill lines up with the 40-second full FAir combo far too nicely. Not going to happen.

A Staff Ele that deals significant damage has two things:

1) very low survivability
2) very low damage on a kiting target

If they spec for condi cleanse/healing they shouldn’t be able to hurt you that much just by spamming AoEs, unless you try really hard to stand right in the middle of them all.

As Jekkt says: don’t try to contest the point if it’s too dangerous. They can’t leave it without risk of decap (and if they leave it to cast MS... you just walk out of the area, apply more pressure, move in to stomp once the shower finishes). As long as you don’t waste too long trying to kill them without decapping, you’ll make a net gain.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Paragon.5479:

i dont think is it fixed cause now i am rank 80 and i am not moving whatsoever

What mode did you play?

I’ve definitely been gaining rank points from both teamq and hotjoin since tonight’s patch, without having yet hit the hotjoin rewards cap. That doesn’t affect either coin or rank gain, does it? Coin has its own caps and rank is unlimited in HJ (though earned much slower than in the queues).

butch.8136:

Viewership:

- Difficult to cast/difficult to watch. (< b/c of fast-paced combat system, conquest and visual clutter)

This is a big issue for me. When playing, it’s hard to tell what’s going on. When spectating, you don’t have have one player (yourself) to follow properly. Sure, you can see their skillbar and what they’re doing, but if you watch the skillbar you don’t get to see much of what’s going on in the field (so the cluttered, flashy animations and all those AI units get even more confusing).

Ostricheggs.3742:

cheese.4739:

Ostricheggs.3742:

My favorite part about the entire skyhammer debacle was when they removed capricorn. Talk about clueless…

Until they do something about it I’ve just simply stopped solo queueing and solo in teamqueue now ;_;

I asked for Capricorn in soloq, but they didn’t put it in. I was so upset. So very, very, incredibly, very upset.

I’d rather take the trololol underwater combat than skyhammer in a queue. Haven’t none would be optimal, but evidently A-net was so impressed by skyhammer that they’re willing to let their community writh in agony.

Oh yes – underwater combat we could’ve hoped to actually become balanced ever, but something like Skyhammer won’t be while there are differences in CC and stability availability (falling to death) and invuln/stability (for surviving the hammer hit).

If the classes are going to be varied and different (huzzah) in these ways, a map that so very strongly relies on them can’t ever be fair.

Ostricheggs.3742:

My favorite part about the entire skyhammer debacle was when they removed capricorn. Talk about clueless…

Until they do something about it I’ve just simply stopped solo queueing and solo in teamqueue now ;_;

I asked for Capricorn in soloq, but they didn’t put it in. I was so upset. So very, very, incredibly, very upset.

Ulion.5476:

Curious what they would do for a warrior? Add a new auto attack combo per weapon set?

Yeah this is an interesting issue – unless there are brand-new weapon types released so that each class has at least one new 5-skill set, there’s nothing else that can be really given to Warriors – they can’t wield scepters, foci, staves, pistols without breaking their theme, so the only real option from current weapons is the Torch.

This thread has some interesting discussion on 30 Earth.

Diamond Skin is maybe worth a shot again, but things like Cele Eles and Cele Engies will apply their conditions reliably through the skin anyway - and an awful lot of Necromancers run power-based builds now too. Pure condi seems to be (finally) dying down, in sPvP at least.

I’m guessing this is related to the note in update #2 yesterday:
"Fixed a bug in which leveling beyond level 80 would cause a heal and knockback in PvP."

Someone broke r80 by fixing l80?

Wyrden.4713:

but ye in pve it can be great, but in pve we r too busy exploiting fgs into wall! (ik ik its not an exploit , but i like calling it that way)

It really is an exploit – such attacks should just stop when they hit a wall, rather than keep spinning and doing damage.
It’s certainly not a planned design feature!

ThiBash: I know you love your elite Glyph, and it really is incredible in open-world PvE… but in almost all dungeon scenarios, the FGS is better (or on cooldown since it just got used in an appropriate place).

In WvW, FGS is incredible (for roamers maybe even necessary) mobility, and the summons are far too vulnerable to kiting and chill/cripple. Tornado is great for a Meteor Shower damage boost in a zerg, or to fling people out of a sentry point (because we all do that a lot), but is otherwise rather useless.

In sPvP, they’ve all got pros and cons.
Tornado: damage booster, great control on a capture point, not reliable damage or effects at all (and entirely countered by smart dodges/blindspam/stability). Stability is nice for holding a point if you don’t get it boonstripped – but there’s no way to apply extra boons to yourself to cover it, so it’s going to be very vulnerable to that boonstripping.
FGS: strong AA (though it can be reflected), high damage, incredible mobility. Second copy for yourself or an ally! One of its hardest-hitting skills, #3, is unusable on many capture points since it’ll throw you way out of the very area you don’t want to leave
Glyph: different summons for different situations…
- Earth lasts a while, some cripple/weakness, damage is meh
- Ice has chill/ice field, great heals, a launch I think?
- Air has good dps, shares swiftness in combat, stuns
- Fire does loads of damage to stuff
However, you can’t control their abilities (so that lovely heal can come just after you’ve blown a bunch of cooldowns on sustaining yourself) and they’re really very vulnerable to getting focused down. Pretty much useless in teamfights, unless you can get really lucky and nobody spots your Air.

They’ve all got some good things and some bad things, but as has been pointed out: the Glyph is the only one that doesn’t lock out weapon skills while you gain the benefit of its effects.
Necromancers are in a similar boat (with their two transforms and a summon) but the Flesh Golem is on a much shorter cooldown, doesn’t expire after a time limit, and has a manually activated CC/damage attack… it’d still be great to have a Necro elite that wasn’t subject to the limitations of transforms and AI, just like Eles want.

Razor.6392:

when used against me, it kinda throws me off to know when exactly to dodge, even though I’ve played ele for so long…

I run into so many static fields. I put it down to lack of practice against other Staff Eles – it really felt like I was the only one in soloq for about 8 months after I got into pvp.

Chaotic.9742:

Zirith.6429:

Chaotic.9742:

If you are autobalanced, you auto-win

only if you volunteer

You lose the reward only if you hit “no I don’t want to volunteer.” If you ignore it or click balance me then you get full reward. Apologies for not being specific enough, thought this was well known enough by now.

Also, you get a small extra bonus on top of winner rewards (I think 25 rank points?) if you do volunteer and then get AB’d.

It’s not fun to get switched over and get repeatedly stomped by the dominating team (that you were part of), but at least your loot from the match doesn’t get unfairly reduced.

Carighan.6758:

Why would an entire tradeskill be declared meaningless for an entire game mode?

Why not… you know… balance the food instead? I mean let’s be honest, this is about the +40% and -40% food. Reduce the to 10% each for parity, and all done and over with.

Yeeeah:

Max stat for actual stats from food: +100
Comparable trait points (for that one stat): 2

Max stat for +condi duration food: 40%
Comparable trait points (for that one stat): 8

There’s no traited bonus for -condi duration, but even then it’s pretty clear that 40% is far too much. They need brought waaay into line.

BurrTheKing.8571:

You know what can be done about turrets? You could run one of the many that counters it including but not limited to:

* Staff Ele
* Skullcracker
* MM
* Power Necro
* Trap Ranger

You get the point.

People complain when the meta gets stale and then when something new comes around everyone wants it nerfed.

For an Engineer who plonks all their turrets on the point, sure - but they’re usually either new to the build and trying to hold a point alone, or they’re joining the big teamfights and using their turrets’ CC to knock back anyone without perma-stability.

AoE dps doesn’t mean anything when the Engineer can spread out their AI and keep it spread out - at least an MM Necro’s pets can be pulled (and critted*). Each turret takes a significant number of hits to take down (with reduced damage on top of the no-crits) and so the Engineer has time to prepare and time to get some allies back to help defend. Without a lot of stability and reflects, there’s no reasonable way for someone to effectively take out a smart Engi’s turrets.

* Some people who defend turrets say "they can’t be crit, no, but [b]they can’t get crits on enemies either[/i]..."
What’s the crit chance for other AI attacks, besides the profession-defining Mesmer and Ranger ones?
If you compare the increase in dps a Necro’s Minion gets from its crits (particularly with all that Fury and Might that their master shares), is it really that much compared to the crit-less Engi turrets that can be more effectively placed than most minions (greatly increasing their survivability), and can’t be crit themselves?

Sure, the turrets don’t proc on-crit sigil effects for their master - oh wait, minions don’t either. Minions can, however, have on-crit effects procced on *them*, like Fire and Air - which turrets are immune to.

Yeah I have some *special* feelings about turrets.

Ulion.5476:

Signet of arcana active is OP but I could not think of anything else that would be using within a 60s cd. Most elite signets have short cds. Arcana type skills are focus on direct damage but signets are defensive in natural.

If it’s going to have a short cooldown, it needs a reasonable cast time - at least 1s, maybe 2-2.5s. This would rule out things like an even crazier Fresh Air spike or rapid cleansing with Water Attunement, but still be useful for regaining access to locked-out skills after a rapid rotation.
Could even make it a stunbreak with a cast time, since an instant-cast attunement reset really would be OP but a long cast could be hard to work with while in combat.

Ulion.5476:

Signet of Arcana – reduce attunement cd by 1s. 60s cd On use all skills/attunement resets their cooldowns.

This is the most reasonable Elite Signet that anyone’s suggested – 1s reduction on attunement CDs means a lot, and would probably see use in builds with or without Arcana trait speccing.

Wyrden.4713:

i guess i am not the only one who loves staff air 2 :0

I don’t ’love’ it... but it’s far from the utterly useless skill that OP claims it to be! ^__^
I just tried to cover a wide variety of reasons why it’s *not* useless and why it’s been balanced the way it is (rather than with a faster cast or whatever), with some realistic examples of situations to use it in.

Blackjack.5621:

cheese.4739:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I just use gust on people that’re stomping and I use 2 as I’m charging into a fight while charging the skill, the blind at the start of the fight always comes in handy.
Nothing broken about those two skills, they’re just somewhat situational

Also, a well-timed Blinding Surge on someone in an invuln transform (Mist Form Ele, Mini Engi…) or timed block will get you a high-damage hit and a blind as they come out.

how can you time lightning surge when it casts 1,5 seconds? you simply can´t because it´s bad design, random blinds shouldn´t be in the game either.

Mist Form and Elixir S both transform the user for 3 seconds, and can’t be cancelled. Start your Blinding Surge 1.5 seconds in, and your foe will have to spend a dodge or take that big hit and a blind. It’s not random if used like that – you know exactly when the skill will land (or when your foe will spend a valuable dodge/block/etc).

Situational means ‘useful in certain situations’. Use it while running up to an enemy (start cast while out of that 1200 range) and so have them blinded for the start of your battle. Charge it up when they’re otherwise busy – like casting it just as a Warrior is coming out of their Endure Pain, since you probably can’t use many other attacks on them while they’re stanced anyway. I’ve even used it numerous times to blind a foe and give my ally a safestomp – that 1.5s cast time is surprisingly good for catching enemies who wait until the last moment to use their #2.

We don’t have many blinds as Elementalists, and most of them are instant-cast, yes… but just because this one isn’t, doesn’t mean it’s not useful. It’s non-projectile, non-ground-targeted, AoE damage (something that Staff has very little of – the only other being Flame Burst, which is condi rather than direct damage) – the blind is a great bonus on top of that. The skill’s not great when in a busy fight, no, but it’s certainly not without its uses.

If the skill was changed to be an instant/quick-cast blind, it would have to deal very little damage (if any at all) and would almost certainly end up being identical to Scepter Air #3 (oh look, variety in the skills available to weaponsets!). An AoE instant blind at Staff’s 1200 range would probably also have a much longer cooldown (wooo, another long cooldown to keep track of) and if you’re really desperate for that you should just take Signet of Air with its passive buff and short-cooldown stunbreak.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I just use gust on people that’re stomping and I use 2 as I’m charging into a fight while charging the skill, the blind at the start of the fight always comes in handy.
Nothing broken about those two skills, they’re just somewhat situational

Also, a well-timed Blinding Surge on someone in an invuln transform (Mist Form Ele, Mini Engi…) or timed block will get you a high-damage hit and a blind as they come out.

So I’ve not seen a bugs thread in a while, and we certainly still have enough bugs. One that particularly annoys me a at the moment:

- ‘wasting’ of downed skill #2
Our downed #2 is Vapor Form, one of the few downed skills that effectively prevents stomps (at least for the three-second duration of the skill, often longer). It has no cast time- this is very useful, as it means there’s no wind-up for people to see and dodge/block/stability/rupt like some other classes have.
In some previous patch (I think about this time last year, maybe earlier), a 1-second delay was put on the downed #2 skills so that they wouldn’t accidentally trigger if a player went down suddenly while in combat – #1 skills have no cooldown so aren’t really an issue, and #3/#4 both have initial cooldowns anyway. This delay doesn’t work for the instant-cast Vapor Form; it’s very easy, if already casting a #2 skill, to pop VF immediately upon getting downed. The delay is still there after that instant – if you don’t pop it immediately, the skill is locked out until that 1s has passed – but for some reason it’s not effective for a moment upon taking lethal damage.

I guess I’ll try to keep OP updated with a list of these? At least it (finally) won’t contain Lingering Elements – the trait still sucks, the Adept Minors still suck, but they at least work now and we’ve had a dev response saying that it’s never going to apply to actually useful ‘while attuned’ traits.

Vague Memory.2817:

Turrets should disappear when the engie gets out of a limited range. On the Spirit watch map setting up turrets around the orb and leaving them unattended is just wrong. Trying to take the orb is suicide for certain classes and builds if you are by yourself.

This would make me much happier – because they can’t be crit, they last for quite a few hits, and if they’re spread out well will take an appreciable amount of time to take down – and the engineer will get notified when the first one falls, if they weren’t already aware.

Turrets should become nonfunctional when their creator is >2000 units away, or thereabouts. They can start working again when the Engi gets back, sure, but not while they’re off applying pressure at another point.

It’s got mobility (Burning Retreat), two fire fields (Burning Retreat, Ring of Fire), great burning, ranged (and personal might stacking) AA, very short cooldown on a blast finisher, and a leap finisher.
It’s a conjure that actually provides a lot of utility - I quite enjoy running it in some Staff builds (with auramancy traits) since both finishers can grant auras and having two copies of Burning Retreat is great fun.
Then there’s the might stacking, as Iris Ng says! :P

One thing that is a bit bothersome: the fire fields aren’t affected by Persisting Flames. I’m not sure how the tooltip should be changed if they’re not meant to be - maybe "equipped weapons’ fire fields last longer", since a conjure is a held environmental weapon rather than an equipped one?