Guild Wars 2

Is weakness only a 50% reduction? Doesn’t it make so half your attacks fumble and therefore cannot crit as well? So you essentially lose half of your crit chance as well which is completely crippling for berserker builds (why they nerfed necro weakness). It is basically another condition that is a must cleanse or run from

Just wanted to point out that

S/D – IS > FS > LS > Slice

Should be

S/D – FS(precast) > IS > Slice > LS > Slice > FS > Slice > LS > Slice… Well you get the idea

More DPS, less init cost, may be able to use init regen for smith else
Otherwise looks interesting

Dabrixmgp.4758:

after reading every class forums it seems every class is nerfed and everyone should just reroll. so if every class is useless what do you reroll to?

um… maybe u haven’t looked in the guardian forums then lol

The real problem is that players deliberately stack the teams many games in a row because it lets you pick which side to join; or worse, abuse spectate/autobalance til they GET on the stacked team. This makes it pretty unfun for the poor newbs that keep getting stuck on the losing side (and whoever gets stuck with them) b/c they don’t spam the correctly colored join key

Okay I agree that it should interrupt anything you are doing to activate, much like dodge/weapon swap do.

I have played a lot of thief and must say I am always delighted to find elementalists on the opposing team. In WvW I have run into one or two that I have not been able to kill, but that’s only because they always escape to the safety of their keep first.

People aren’t playing bunkerish eles in pvp, usually valk or berserkers because they need to get something done before they run out of cooldowns. Problem is ele doesn’t have defenses like war or thief or even mesmer if they get focused without giving up dagger offhand (which comprises half their aoe and mobility). Armor of earth is like throwing a wet rag on a bonfire and mist form locks you out of all your skills, and let’s be honest, doesn’t make us curse like we do when a warrior uses endure pain.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been immobilized as ele and frantically cycled all of my cleanses only to die still stuck to the ground. Lightning flash is only half a shadowstep, doesn’t stunbreak or remove condi, yet has almost the same cooldown, and is still one of our best escapes used by a huge number of builds. That shows you how desperate the situation is.

Travlane.5948:

s/d isnt playable in spvp. ive tried it and it really opens up thief to alot of dmg and telegraphs his skills. HELLO im doing this…free hits. come n get em! ive been interrupted a few times too. ill make a video of it if requested but thats more for anet bc all true thieves knowwhats up.

This is just… Not true. Berserk s/d is still our highest DPS set, and reliable bc boon strip hits stability/prot first. I wouldn’t run it if the other team has a thief because it’s too risky, and rightfully so, otherwise it would just be superior to everything.

I would disagree that we have bad teamplay, ele can spam several heals/cleanses in a row albeit with pitiful radius) and push out some impressive aoe (albeit on huge cooldown). The rest is more or less true, the original plan to make ele “hybrid” seems to have caused this disease. We can’t spec for hybrid damage because all of our skills are designed for one or the other, resulting in a string of subpar abilities in a row. We can’t spec full condi because there is no way to reliably spam several at a time or often apply them at all. At least with power specs we can stick to the abilities that hit hard or have utility.

Elementalists have basically two routes to survival- attempt to blast the enemy away with fresh air (the only attack with low cooldown) or spam many small heals to keep themselves in the fight. Anet is apparently super worried about our ability to sustain too much and nerfs healing into oblivion, however this should be exactly what we are good at

Xillllix.3485:

Cleansing fire does nothing unless you have the cantrip equipped, then it uses it for you. The reason why someone would want this is beyond my understanding.

That isn’t right I don’t think? The trait has a separate cooldown and has nothing to do with the utility. You probably didn’t notice because it is such a garbage trait and activates at often silly/useless times then goes on cooldown.

Edit:^or it’s bugged, haven’t tested

Strategy is basically counter him with another bunker on your own team so he is the one wasting time or use communication and hit him with all your DPS players at the same time (ie. portal bomb or w/e).

If you can CC and neut the point then many builds can beat him 1v1 and can be just left to deal with him. (DPS ele, engies, rangers, some necro, etc)

Only one of those that can even pseudo bunk is necro. Don’t ask me how it’s done tho. Ele cannot bunk anymore, just support

Yeah fire trait is pretty hilarious when it activates on the first tick of a 3-5 tick aoe spam skill. Most players don’t even open up a fight with their biggest condi burst for the exact reason of making players waste removal early… And in this case we don’t even have a choice in the matter

Omg I think you are right. I once made a lengthy guide/post about daze builds that got deleted then everything about the build was nerfed.

Mug got nerfed cause we all included it when we talked about how hard our d/d backstab combos(which are now laughable) hit, which they even stated as the reason for the nerf even though it worked 10x better with heartseeker

I have more but I need to go edit some posts cause this is just insanespiracy

Edit: lol no seriously larc strike was def. too strong

I’ve skillfully interrupted many earthshakers with shadow shot and b.theft/sleight as well.

Maybe you don’t realize how much dmg u can crank out with s/d that makes it still worth the risk. Here’s a tip-thief sword auto attack #1 has almost no windup, so stop spamming 3 so hard and get 1 swing in between button presses (I’m still pretty sure this is not intended as it allows for some comedy with certain builds)

Engi/war/necro density increases greatly as you move up the rankings maybe they are just more fun profession for experienced players??

d/d never had such luxury(read:crutches) but i recommend x/p for blind or s/p for stun evade spam. Dodge once in a while too that helps

s/d might still have best deeps in pvp but if WvW is ur tea ur better off 1 shottin with backstabs and let teammates aoe 4u

Edit: lol shortbow 3 with new init regen so silly, u ever try to hit a thief w/ shortbow out?

Gotta keep the other 7 professions honest with their amulet choices, lots of new players uknow

Erm wat. Nev use other wpn set, u dont no wat to do??!?

Well if you want a glass ele to be your main DPS and you have 2x bunker spamming heals on them, they should actually do much better than normal since they could basically stand in the condi kittenstorm that is on points and ignore most of it.

What were we talking about again? I seem to have forgotten while I got distracted

Evasive arcana pretty much IS mandatory.

There is no choice because an ele that can’t sustain is a dead ele. You will never kill somebody on your first rotation anymore, what are you gonna do while it’s on cooldown, pop armor of earth and run in circles hoping not to die? Already have to lose 5sec of DPS if you want to use ether renewal, and are lucky to break even on hp if you are getting hit during this time (I mean if you have 20 in arcane for protection it’s more likely, but we aren’t supposed to need arcane)

The only build that can pressure and therefore survive without some healing is fresh air because it can escape the rotation hell other ele are stuck in

The only thing that will lead ele out of water/arcane is if they remove the healing traits and make the water weapon skills actually do real healing.

Ele is not thief or mesmer, they cannot survive without a means of healing, much like guardian, who is also forced to trait heavily for healing and/or condi removal

I think he means the droves of (new) newbs running berserkers amulets and the droves of tryhards stacking the other team to farm them

pistolwhip hits quite hard in max power setup and is now spammable cause we have infinity initiative. 1/4 second less delay before evade seems like a good place. Damage is still probably lower than s/d strike cause of its double hit shenanigans but it is much safer.

Thief doesn’t have anything to offer besides burstiness to a team so its unlikely acrobatics or w/e will ever gain traction

too bad about that haste nerf, haste pw was the kitten

These should be the #1 priority as something which virtually every player would make extensive use of and be indispensable to competitive play, plus adding the possibility of adding premade templates for new players. If these are not high priority I would be very surprised.

However this job does not belong to the pvp dev team and anet does not want to take their coveted manpower away from pve for some UI/coding for the lower class

Aye down for me too. I think it’s a bit early to be about the update

I think he is referring to being able to use shortbow 3 evade meaningfully because it doesn’t interrupt auto attack…. Or does it?

Yeah it’s a bit misleading and makes hitting that fire grab well.. Hit or miss

D/D Aura share with tempest defense is very appealing of course; only useful WvW for small team roaming while s/d fresh air is great all around for its ranged single target DPS.

Most ele will give up 1 small heal to spec into the new traits, either from not putting 15 in water or 30 in arcane. I think aura share is probably the route to go here as it will probably save more damage to your team than evasive arcana can heal (I’ve whiffed that dodge roll too many times, or only hit 1 teammate) as well as giving them fury.

Could always just keep the same build of course

Probably use lyssa runes instead of hoelbrak, they work very well with absolute resolution (you don’t have to spam elite immediately after cleanse). I don’t know about the purity runes tbh, you are losing a bit of DPS or could just use energy runes for an extra dodge, and you get a random cleanse every 10s if you are lucky.

Stability from virtue is generally better than stunbreak because it lets you stomp/revive, or just put those 10 points somewhere else, tons of great traits lying around.

Barbarian amulet is basically never used, because vitality is just not worth as much as the other stats. You should either just go zerk or soldiers (still decent DPS because of fury).

Otherwise this is the direction meditation builds are heading, we don’t need any points in radiance now that we can use 2 handers with fury from meditations. You might consider hammer instead of greatsword, but they are pretty similar without judges intervention

Hype x8 rank points acquired before skyhammer

Alissah.9281:

The community in pvp is horrible, and is the reason why i took many many many breaks.

Every time I come back, its just the same story again with people raging… I have more on my block list tan friends list… almost trpple, actually.

Haha yeah, lots of ppl get their kicks from blocking somebody then sending them whispers(why this even works I have no idea), I just block them then unblock everyone every so often so it doesn’t get cluttered. It’s not like anybody remembers after 5 minutes anyway

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

I have noticed the worst players trash talk most. And for some reason their sentences always start with “OMG”

I explain this for myself like this: if they blame someone else for the loss of the team, then nobody will notice they’re bad players. So they just pick up a victim, usually a necro or thief and start to harass them. However, what makes me more mad is the silent approval of the others. If someone start to harass a teammate please tell him to kitten. Don’t be silent and grateful he hasn’t picked you.

Unfortunately player skill has nothing to do with whether they talk trash or not. Some very skilled players are still insecure and feel the need to point out why they lost so that they can feel assured their reputation(self ego image) is minimally affected by the loss of any individual match.

Chokolata.1870:

It is, the amount of healing is OP and there is no activation to interrupt .

Yeah no kidding. I would be fine if it healed 10k when used and they cut the regen in half. It would probably still end up healing less per fight.

To OP, they are buffing those damage traits specifically because guardian DPS is already weak compared to warrior(or other DPS classes), so why should they lower it back down again?

Edit: also that trait does not effect greatsword at all, only 1hand

I think there is just too much incentive to steamroll and end the match quickly. Coming from games like quake I find that many people are generally happy to sit out and make an even game where there is no reward involved. Perhaps anet should add the “sit out” option which, like hotjoin, gives you the win bonus regardless of the outcome.

My guess would be s/d since new arcane wave will become part of your ranged burst instead of melee. I guess this is a slight buff to fresh air.

Anet has a design philosophy of balancing traits by comparing them to what other professions can get for the investment, but this has left the adept attunement traits needlessly weak and uninspiring, even though attuning should really be giving opponents something to think about.

Suggestion: buff the 5 point adept traits significantly, reworking traits they replace

Fire: replace with geomancers freedom (recover from chill, cripple, immob 33% faster), with a different name
Air: as suggested in another thread (forgot who, sorry!), +25% movement speed: this is something nearly every class has better access to and could bring ele into line
Water: make it tic slightly faster and slightly increase the overall healing amount (to encourage use of poison)
Earth: keep the improved toughness and add a retal or chance to proc bleed on attackers

These are not oppressively strong by any means, but do encourage a bit of trait flexibility for some nice perks (as we see a LOT on guardian, who has very strong minor adepts). They make ele a lot more fun and interesting, and give opponents a reason to care what attunement you are. Ele is not on the same scale as other professions, and as this is a huge class feature, I believe there is no need to attempt to balance these traits by the same rules

Unfortunately thief will not see buffs because in pvp they will always be the best at killing other glass cannons out of nowhere, and there are tons of thieves running around to make sure nobody can play those builds. Now the thieves just spend all day trying to kill each other instead (I’ve even moved away from full glass thief to give me an edge over them).

They only seem weak because they have forced themselves out of the meta by being too efficient at taking out their prey.

Muchacho.2390:

ens.9854:

I wonder how much hp you can get off the passive from a full lifeforce bar.

At least it is slightly better than healing signet, for which it is literally ALWAYS incorrect to use the active mode

#hypepassiveplay

Maybe as skill desgin, but not in numbers.

it was sarcasm, pointing out how blatantly overpowered healing signet is

I wonder how much hp you can get off the passive from a full lifeforce bar.

At least it is slightly better than healing signet, for which it is literally ALWAYS incorrect to use the active mode

#hypepassiveplay

since yesterday it has been ATROCIOUS, nearly half of my games somebody on one of the sides leaves

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

snip

I’m sorry you’ve gotten matches you don’t enjoy. We’re working on addressing the skill gap on multiple fronts.

In the mean time, have you tried Team Arena? You may find it more your speed.

I hope you are doing something to address the blatant team stacking that that often occurs in hotjoin, it really is sad how many innocent noobies get forced onto the same team only to get steamrolled.

Lordrosicky.5813:

People dont go into trait lines for the stats. Except the bottom lines.

That’s my point, ele requires the heal spamming that comes from 30 arcane or water to actually keep their health up, running 30 earth means they not only lose out on the very heals they need for diamond skin but also any hope of getting damage traits from fire or air.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Diamond skin on the other hand is a blanket hard counter with zero counter play.

Are you really worried about 30 earth elementalists? All this trait does is make a viable anti condi bunker when combined with water/arcane, and it’s about kitten time condi burst actually had a counter so maybe we won’t see 2-3 necro/engi every game and I can run my bunker guard with less than 6 cleanses.

There is 0 chance you will die to an ele with 30 earth, and if you played ele and realized how bad off they have it you’d understand.

If we don’t have condi meta then why does every build run more cleanse than stunbreak

I remember when stunbreaks were the only thing that mattered… Back when the game was fast paced and like…. fun

The only reason you don’t notice condi meta is that the hammer warrior meta is covering it up sometimes

So what happens if a team goes 5 necro and every aoe you try to use on them hits YOU for 1700 dmg?

Didn’t we already go through this with the massive line of retaliation duration nerfs?

Lighter.5631:

personally i’ve been top 500+, played zerker only on ele thief and warrior, after so many 4v5 in a role, teams full of zerker and low ranks running all around the place leaving points uncapped, i just play bunker now…

Most of my pvp only friends stopped qing and only do hotjoins now, that’s probably what i’ll do as well.

but that’s probably because of the finals season.

and i’ve notice the ridiculously increased amount of a thieves too..there’s atleast 4 thieves per match the last time when i played pvp…i hate to say this, because i play thief too, but i hate seeing any other thief beside myself with another zerker class in a team, i can bare with 2 thieves and 3 tanky but this.. mostly because their inability of play…base on the past experience, i find myself hardly trusting any thief, only if i know them…

Strange, I have the opposite problem. Playing bunker is a recipe for a good headache as I watch my team struggle to down a single player. Everybody is using durable “meta” builds and nobody has any dps.

I’d much rather play burst in the blind because at least you can pull some clutch plays instead of reviving a player that’s going to be downed right away again, or worse being left in a 1vX forever, losing your point, and not being able to get it back cause you’re a bunker and your team can’t do squat. Too many times I’ve helped my team struggle to cap middle in foefire (basically winning the match) only for them to all run to far point for some 4v2 and lose mid a minute later tossing the game.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

to combat gold farming in hotjoin, solo arena, team arena, maybe can consider introducing “first win of the day” bonus rewards?

same like the “one dungeon path per day” bonus gold reward for PvE dungeons.

so, truly casual sPvP players can just play one mode or one of each and call it a day.
x1 hotjoin “first hotjoin win of the day” bonus gold
x1 solo arena “first solo arena win of the day” bonus gold
x1 team arena “first team arena win of the day” bonus gold

then the repeatable “end of match rewards” must be at a certain amount such that it discourages A F K or botting farming methods.

I like this idea, it might be enough to tie it into dailies. Some people already come to pvp for dailies with very minimal rewards, and requiring a tournament win vs participation is a reasonable way to keep total newbs out of team queue.

Mostly I’m just worried about hot join becoming Botwars 2.

I do 99% spvp and 1% WvW and have 150 unused skill points on each of my 2 mains. Especially with the ability to buy tomes of knowledge and with nothing else to spend skill points on it seems fine. Pvp players can start feeling like they are part of the game again with some of the new changes.

Skills are not being designed just for pvp. Skills have a viability rate of like 25% or less on most professions so I think we are in for some major disappointment if we are worrying about this stuff

Variance happens, especially with a relatively small pool of players. Don’t be results oriented, there are too many factors that contribute to game wins/losses. Just focus on your own play, analyze it objectively(don’t let trash talk get to you but don’t feel like you need to constantly reassure yourself either), and keep goin.

Some of the heals, the guardian one in particular, look like strictly pve where you are guaranteed to have 5 willing targets to DPS. In general, I don’t think that heals which your opponent can play around are going to be viable. Hell, venoms are already lost half of the time to evade/block/blind without anybody trying; does anybody expect this to be viable in pvp?

The ele heal, if it’s real might be viable, but again it looks pve balanced. Unless you are fighting a bunch of pets or mesmer illusions you will likely miss half your targets anyhow.