Guild Wars 2

I tried watching the tournament but had a similar experience. Just wasn’t entertaining to watch.

I know you used to be a fellow glass d/d Razor, how does the d/f compare? I’ve messed around with focus a little bit but never seriously tried it.

The combat system is fan kittening tastic. I haven’t enjoyed combat so much since DAoC. Sadly, much like DAoC, an unbelievable combat system has ended up in the hands of developers who have no idea what to do with it, and instead of the game getting better with every patch, it gets worse. I’m just waiting for the next living world update to be Trials of Cantha.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aether McLoud.1975, thanks for your input! As we just shipped a patch today, I suspect we will want to wait and see how the meta adapts before thinking about making any changes. Maybe with the changes we put out, bunker eles will feel better to play. Give it a little time, and maybe we can revisit this.

Bunker eles? How about glass eles? Have the devs already forgotten they destroyed glass d/d as collateral damage when nerfing the bunker build? All the talk of build diversity, and yet you guys ruined a niche yet viable build just because you couldn’t be bothered to treat it separately from a build that played completely differently.

All these months since the d/d nerfs, and you’ve done virtually nothing to fix glass d/d. Is this you taking it slow so you ‘get it right,’ or do you simply consider two builds (dps s/d and bunker d/d) a sufficient amount of build diversity for one of the most complex classes in the game?

Xsorus.2507:

Yea i know man..

Having Pets do stuff in a MMO, totally skill less..

Its not like there has been an MMO before that required vastly more skill to play than this game but at the same time..Had things similar to Spirit Ranger, Minion Master..

Nope..

Doesn’t exist

http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/content/class-library-theurgist

http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/content/class-library-bonedancer

Clearing Pets is for baddies am I right..

Seriously, You guys honestly wouldn’t last a day in 8v8 in DAOC.

you’d crap yourselves.

Did you forget that BDs and theurgs (especially theurgs) were among the most hated classes in the entire game specifically because of pet spam? And alb groups in general running theurg, sorc, sorc, minst? It was sort of possible to deal with pets (in a group setting, often not solo), but it sure as hell wasn’t enjoyable and no one thought it was good for the game.

The pvp devs don’t have any clue what they are doing. The game is no more balanced now than it was at release. If the game is going to be unbalanced no matter what, we might as well have more skills/traits to play with so at least it takes a little longer to get stale.

swinsk.6410:

These are just people who don’t know how to play.

What rank is the OP? 12? Seriously, shield block/aegis in conjunction with stealth end skills is balanced. What you are asking is a nerf to thief, again.

I think kitten near everyone who plays this game (except for cheese mode thieves) would be perfectly fine with thieves getting some buffs in exchange for their stealth mechanics getting significantly reduced.

Yep, this is one of the dumbest things in the game. Thieves always say how easy it is to avoid backstab and that a good player has plenty of ways to avoid it. And that’s true, there are a lot of ways to avoid backstab. But none of them matter. The thief just sits there and spams 1 until it lands with zero punishment. Skillful use of evade and block mean nothing.

And this crap about “well if you just avoid them for long enough they unstealth and then die super duper easy!!!” Do you seriously expect anyone to buy that? Have you actually tried fighting a d/p thief? If the first 10 backstab attempts don’t land, no problem, they have infinite stealth. Even /d thieves can stealth fairly reliably. And all thieves have easy access to stealth in utilities.

Even if you outlast the initial stealth, it means nothing because the thief can either stay in stealth indefinitely (kitten d/p), or just restealth in four seconds (four seconds where they WON’T be letting you hit them).

This is the problem with thieves. It isn’t their overall power level, it’s that they are so incredibly coddled by the game mechanics and stealth.

Kodiak.3281:

Stealth.9324:

Is that all we can do? Roam in Zerg….Sad…

Do you mean to imply actually contributing meaningful progression of the map with the ability to take points as part of a larger group (let alone our continued solid role in said groups) should somehow be looked down upon compared to solo roaming and contributing absolutely nothing except to the number of kitten waving videos on youtube?

For balancing, absolutely. Zerging is mindless facemashing and balance means absolutely nothing there since no one is playing even remotely close to well and victory is determined by numbers rather than skill. That’s why people can zerg with upleveled characters and do perfectly fine, whereas in an even numbered fight with lower numbers they would get immediately destroyed and cause their group to lose (assuming equal skill levels).

Not much point in advertising spvp until it’s actually worth playing for the players this might attract.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Are you running a D/D fresh air build in pvp? Can you post a link to your build with runes and amulet? Or did you just switch the scepter for dagger in zoose’s build?

I’d love to have a viable D/D damage build in pvp.

This is what I run:

30 air – zephyr’s, alacrity, tempest defense
10 earth – elemental shielding
30 arcane – elemental attunement, renewing stamina, evasive arcana

Arcane shield/mist form, arcane blast, lightning flash, ether renewal.

Knights/zerker in wvw, berserker amulet with soldier jewel in spvp. Mix of beryl/ruby jewels on the armor in wvw, scholar’s runes in spvp.

This is not an easy build to play, and probably not as strong overall as semi dps builds that still run high water, but if you want to be a real glass cannon d/d, this is the best build I’ve found for it.

DevonCarver.5370:

WvW is about many things, but one of the biggest of them is siege weapons. We will continue to make changes and additions to the game to make siege weapons more varied and more interesting while also changing other aspects of the game. But it will always be a game type that uses siege weapons and uses them a lot. It is part of what makes WvW unique and the strategy involved is important. And before you mention it, I have died to many, many arrow carts.

It’s a shame that you have such a limited, noncompetitive view of open world fighting. I don’t know if no one at Anet played DAoC, or if you were all just god awful at it, but you are missing out on so much potential because you are so focused on driving wvw into a mindless zerging siege fest.

If instead of intentionally pushing the skilled players out of wvw you had encouraged small group play, GW2 would have the best roaming pvp scene since DAoC, but instead it’s a joke.

But hey, on the upside, maybe if you continue to ruin wvw more and more with every patch, hopefully eventually you will be forced to actually put some resources into spvp.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I guesss what I’m getting at is, what is it about changing your spec that you do not like? Is it just having to learn how to play a different spec, or is it the idea of having to click all those buttons and change your gear around (ie helped with templates)?

It’s being forced to play something you don’t want to play because on this map and only this map it is useless. As others have said, I can play the class and build I enjoy on all of the other maps at an acceptable level. On Skyhammer? Nope.

Because it’s a terrible map. Either you play one of the good classes for it, or you contribute absolutely nothing. It’s quite possibly the least build diverse map in the game.

I really just don’t get it. This map obviously has zero competitive potential and is just ‘for fun’. So if anet is going to make for fun maps, why can’t they just stop being kitten suckers and give us a nice wide open deathmatch map and keep it out of the tournament rotation.

Since you seem to be lumping wvw into pvp, I will add my experience.

I strongly dislike pve. I try to avoid it as much as possible. I also hate zerging and don’t do that either. However, I still prefer wvw over spvp in general. The different stats is certainly part of it. I run a strange build and being able to tweak my stats to fit it really makes a difference. But more than anything, I’m an old DAoCer, and roaming has been and will always be the epitome of pvp. Doing repetitive arena matches doesn’t even come close to roaming.

If I could get the gear system from pve (but still free from a vendor) and a Dark Age like battleground, I would be about as happy as can be.

I’m still rank31 and play spvp regularly, but it’s more because of the problems with wvw (especially the gear grind) rather than the good things about spvp.

Funny how everyone seems to forget rtl locks all your skills when talking about how great it is.

If you don’t think d/p thieves are overpowered in the roaming game, you don’t have any business telling people what is or isn’t overpowered.

Friend offered to cover my transfer expenses back to Mag if I decided to start playing again, but from reading this thread, it looks like T3 is even worse than when I left. Shame.

oZii.2864:

Most thieves don’t know anything about other classes.

Go into WvW find random thief watch him pop his basilisk venom you pop your armor of earth in plain sight you know rocks floating all around you and he will still try to basilisk you rofl.

That doesn’t mean they’re balanced. A well played d/p thief is just so insanely kittening stupid that it blows my mind the devs haven’t done anything about it. They were strong but mostly handleable before, but now that anet decided blind was underpowered and needed buffs, the build is just insane, and even marginally competent players border on god mode.

RTL really does need to be reverted. Everything about d/d screams melee mage assassin, and yet Anet takes away the mobility that makes it possible without giving them any other assassin tools. The D/D build should be high mobility, high damage, high risk. And yet, anet is stupid, and so now it’s just mediocre mobility, mediocre damage, very high risk.

There was nothing wrong with RTL. The problem was the mobile bunker. If the pvp devs weren’t clueless, they would have left mobility alone and nerfed d/d bunker out of viability, and boosted staff bunker back up. End result would have been the burst builds still having the mobility they need to do their job, and the bunker build being strong yet immobile.

But, the pvp devs are clueless, so the ele is in the state it is, and that probably won’t change for a year or more with the pace they work. And yes, I’m salty.

I was surprised to actually get a few good fights today. Maybe there’s at least a little competition.

Decided to log on to try the ele changes. Nice, but my build is still severely underpowered. I doubt there’s more than five other people in the world running it, and wouldn’t be surprised if there were none, and I really couldn’t blame them at this point.

The thing that really frustrates me isn’t just being generally weaker, but that trash that I wouldn’t even think twice about before is now a really hard fight. I still virtually never die 1v1, but instead of killing these people even 1v2, 1v3, now I die.

WZ, Deth, and a couple other guilds. I would have liked to run into you guys before Anet destroyed my build.

Running around wvw is really a double edged sword. On one hand, the level of competition is ungodly low. On the other hand, I can actually run my completely destroyed build and still beat just about everyone I fight.

I keep logging on for a night every 2-3 weeks to get my MMO fix, but it’s always disappointing. Hopefully this big patch on the 25th improves things, but I doubt it.

Caffynated.5713:

This is about as “glassy” as I can play and beat any rank 50+ on the leader boards.

http://tinyurl.com/dyfybxm

Weapon sigils should be energy/force and (of course) they want to nerf energy. Bwahaha. sigh

Ya, I don’t think it’s possible to get much glassier than that these days. Dumb and frustrating, but apparently anet wants every ele to run bunker and not bother trying to kill things.

Blackhat.4016:

Tbh there is no need to look for a “new” build.

Thousands of players have looked for a viable “DPS D/D” build for months and couldn’t find it. Since nothing has changed since then (in terms of buffs) chances are ~0% to suddenly find the almighty damage build.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun to create your own builds but don’t expect to find a new meta changing build.

DPS d/d was perfectly good before all the nerfs.

Well, I give up. I got a build dialed in that’s about as strong as possible, and it’s just pointless. I have less damage, less mobility, less survivability, less healing, than every single popular spec right now. DPS d/d ele literally has nothing at all going for it right now. It used to be a high risk high reward build, now it’s just pointless. Anet ruined the build, and there’s just no point playing it in anything more competitive than hotjoins.

Xsorus.2507:

skinnyb.5920:

Dub.1273:

When i see a ranger as ele i would RTL away.

Are you guys kidding me here? It’s a freaking ranger! No matter what gimmick bunker build they’re running, it’s still a freaking ranger and therefore a free kill.

Rofl, ahh I use to love Elementalist before PI nerf, Was so funny watching them die in seconds.

Now it takes a little longer, but it still ends the same

Sadly, I could beat you before anet kitten my glass d/d, but I don’t think I’d have any chance now.

autoduck.2837:

I find it extremely hard to play glassy dd ele without cantrips in our current state. The moment you jump in to a team fight doing aoe-burst you will be targeted straight away. I used to play 0/20/0/20/30 with zerker amu for good dps but since I relied heavily on RTL on survival I’ve changed to the cantrip build + zerk amulet. The damage is not that good though..

So frustrating for me at the moment, cannot seem to find that “perfect” dps dd ele build.

Ya this is the problem. I prefer arcane over cantrips, but I just can’t make it work without the mobility. I can definitely see glass ele still working with a coordinated team to support it. If I had a guardian giving me protection and stability and condition clears I’d be golden, but playing it alone just doesn’t seem to work anymore.

I tried the elemental surge build, and while it works, it’s still kind of meh in large fights. I can land spells better, but I’m still blowing up instantly and not able to get out once I unload my combo. It was, admittedly, a game full of rangers and /p mesmers so the daze/stun spam was pretty ridiculous, but still.

I really enjoyed 30 earth when I was experimenting with it, so I think I’m going to look at that again and see if I can work something out that doesn’t completely destroy my damage.

Raging Soul Beta.6845:

Thats the current build I am running:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;0J0B2-U0c4-N-Z0;9;5O-ET;150;24;005BIo0;3sV2DsV2D5BC

I won’t say is OP or something (in fact … its very glassy) but its easier to land churning earth/fire grab thx to the Elemental surge trait while in earth using arcane skills

I’m going to give this a try. I really didn’t want to give up Grounded, but the problem I’m having is landing my damage, not doing too little damage, and this may fix that.

Played a while today to check things out, and I’m pretty frustrated with the state of the glass d/d. It maybe wasn’t the absolute strongest build before, but it was still very viable. Now, I can’t beat anyone that is even close in skill level. I’ve tried probably 20 different specs, lots of amulets/jewels, tons of utilities, and it just isn’t working.

Has anyone found a way to viably play the glass d/d ele after all the nerfs? Is there some build or way of playing that I missed that makes it work? I don’t mean hotjoins or zergs in wvw, I mean against skilled players.

styx.7294:

dreztina.4820:

After not playing for a couple months and getting nerfed repeatedly while gone….

There’s still a woeful lack of competition in this game.

Dunno who you are but sorry you’re so good that it’s makin you sad! One day maybe I can be as good as you are ’cept not be unhappy.

If you were as good as I am, you’d be sad too.

After not playing for a couple months and getting nerfed repeatedly while gone….

There’s still a woeful lack of competition in this game.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Facts:

• MMOs cost tons of money to upkeep
• Most MMOs ameliorate those costs with subscription fees
• GW2 doesn’t have a subscription fee
• GW2 needs to make money to keep themselves afloat as a company and keep the servers running
• GW2 uses microtransactions to ameliorate those costs

There is nothing greedy here. Custom arenas are not required for you to enjoy the game, and if they are because you can’t live without them for whatever reason, well just join someone else’s! Playing in them is free, it’s hosting your own that costs gems. Seriously, this is a perfectly legitimate setup ANet has going on, and there’s nothing shady or greed-driven about it.

Consider the alternative: you play another MMO that has a subscription fee but free custom arenas. Great, you and every one of your friends pay $15 a month to play, and you get to play with each other in your arenas for free. Let’s say you have 5 friends. That means in one month, the company has made $75 from you and your friends playing in a custom arena. It sure as hell won’t cost you $75 to open and maintain that same custom arena on GW2 for a month, so in the end you’re paying less. What’s the complaint, again?

So where are the fees for playing pve? Where is the dungeon that you have to pay gems to get initial access to and then pay every month to continue going in?

This is just another case of anet treating their pvpers like second class citizens by charging them for basic features while pve’ers actually enjoy their buy to play game. Anet, and other game devs, are going to continue treating pvpers like they are worth less than pve’ers until pvpers like you stop making it easy for them.

Welp, glad I quit the game a while back. Anet devs either don’t have the first clue what they’re doing when it comes to ele, or they secretly want everyone to run full bunker and nothing else. Again they nerf us in a way that barely affects bunkers but prison kitten everything else.

Heh, I check the forums after not playing for a while and elementalists here are still as clueless as ever. I ran glass d/d in spvp and wvw and it is 100% viable. Saying it only works vs. bad players is incorrect. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you think that, you are the one who is bad.

Such a joke that this costs money. What content do pve players have to pay real money to access? When was the announcement that pvp players would have to pay a monthly fee in this buy to play game? Didn’t you learn anything from the paid tpvp debacle? You need to stop trying to take advantage of the already too small pvp community by forcing people to pay, and instead fix the game so people actually want to pay for it.

JonathanSharp.7094:

So you guys know, we already split some skills. And, what’s most pertinent to the current thread, we plan to do this even more.

When we first shipped, it was awesome to have a lot of the balance be the same between PvE/WvW/PvP. But, as you guys have really started to push the game types to their limits, classes and specs that work in one areas of the game are sometimes ineffectual in others.

Due to this, we’ll have to do more splitting of skills to better balance the various areas of the game.

TL:DR – We already do this, and we’ll be using it even more in order to balance the different areas of the game effectively.

Are you finally going to give wvw separate balance from pve, or just keep pretending spvp is the only place people want competitive pvp and ignore balance in wvw?

Pretty amazing play Tsarazi, although I still think mesmers are op as fk. :p

I went I think 1-5 vs. Hoppenheimer, so hopefully that will be encouragement to others when I post looking for fights. Was good fights though, and I enjoy those win or lose.

If anyone else would like to try their hand at a glass d/d ele let me know and I’ll log back on.

Fizzlepip.5218:

dreztina.4820:

If it helps, I’m not at 100% atm, so you may actually have a chance to beat me now. Surely there’s at least one person confident enough in their ability to tell me to stuff it and then back it up?

If you’re part of the DR zerg in IoJ BL, you won’t find a challenger. I seem to remember just getting whacked by Vapor Blade a bit harder than most d/d Eles seem to ever hit for…

I’m up for it tho.

Um no, I don’t run in zergs and am not logged on currently. If you are serious I’ll log on unless you’re that bunker condition mesmer in your guild. Got tired of being in a stalemate and just left when we finally got a clean 1v1.

dreztina.4820:

Is there anyone out there that thinks they can beat a glass d/d ele 1v1? If so I’ll log on and we can have some fun.

If it helps, I’m not at 100% atm, so you may actually have a chance to beat me now. Surely there’s at least one person confident enough in their ability to tell me to stuff it and then back it up?

Is there anyone out there that thinks they can beat a glass d/d ele 1v1? If so I’ll log on and we can have some fun.

DAoC was and is a far better game than GW2. Wvw is not even in the same universe as rvr, especially since Anet tailors wvw towards no skill zergers more and more with every patch. If there were anything left for me to do in DAoC, I’d still be playing it instead of this mediocre diluted hand me down of a game. I played DAoC on and off over a stretch of 10 years. I’m already barely playing GW2 anymore.

Its years away and probably not going to be what I want, but I’m keeping an eye on CU with the hope that MJ will do justice to the best game I ever played.

I’ve never played a game that required or even significantly benefited from a “gaming” mouse or keyboard, and GW2 is simpler than most. Unless you have some handicap that limits your functionality, I wouldn’t recommend spending the money.

Straegen.2938:

krippler.9826:

The “dimension” it adds to the game is just one of randomness and luckiness to be downed at the right time. It’s a dumb one.

Not really. Lots of players pick fights near NPCs for just this reason. Good players use this to their advantage. Mediocre or worse players, get lucky. Without this mechanic, pretty much nobody would rally on their own aside from eles that mist form in front of keeps.

Ya right. Good players don’t crutch on pve rally in pvp fights.

You know there’s something wrong with the game when no one even bothers to attack the player that downed them and instead turns and immediately starts attacking any nearby mobs. I don’t like the downstate at all, but if it has to exists, there should absolutely be a separation between pvp/pve for rallies.

Actually I’d prefer spvp to get the wvw gear system, except without the grind. Spvp would be significantly more enjoyable if it allowed the level of customization you can get from full gear and food.

I haven’t played in days but I still read this thread regularly because it’s so amusing. AD is like the OG of t6, except with 2-3 groups. I don’t trash talk anymore, but it’s fun watching you guys keep it going.

It’s definitely frustrating being a pvper interested in GW2. There’s so much potential in the combat system, but I sit here watching pvp get neglected month after month while pve constantly gets huge updates. If Anet put even a third the resources into pvp as they’ve put into pve, this game would be one of the best pvp titles on the market. But they won’t, and the pvp continues to be mediocre.

zastari.1730:

This thread is beautiful. It makes me want to transfer down and win 1vX fights over and over till the forums hit critical QQ. Too bad the hardest decision is whether I transfer to DR to play with dreztina or to IoJ to duel him.

I do find the trash talk in this thread fairly amusing. I’m really not playing much these days, but if you did transfer to IoJ I’d log in to fight ya. :p