The devs have nothing personal for or against any class. Seriously.
I note that nobody provided a link to the hypothetical “overpowered” build. “There existed a post once in the WvW forum” is hardly a reference.
The class that beats you is overpowered. The class that falls to you easily needs a buff. This thread is full of such reactionary nonsense.
-Jeff
I’ve been using a signet build in WvW, which has worked out well for me so far. But I like variety, so I want to try something new.
The problem is signet of earth – I easily get 50% of kills because I root someone in range of the zerg, or root them with dragon’s tooth and phoenix incoming.
What can I replace it with? I don’t want to go staff – I use that in keep defenses, but I’ve never really been comfortable with staff in the open field.
-Jeff
P.S. I’m a pretty casual lvl 80, slowly maxing out my gear (I have a few exotics, rest rare, maybe one piece green). I just login for an hour, find the closest commander, and run with the pack.
I used D/F as my solo Orr build, with an ice focus. It’s what finally allowed me to turn the corner and start getting equipped.
In WvW, I use S/D in the field and switch to staff at the usual times. I use this in orr now that I’m better equipped.
People go out to the playground and shoot hoops because shooting hoops is fun…not for fame, fortune, or anything else. Same goes with any other sport, or fps, or board game.
I think the issue here is that a lot of WvW is running about and waiting. That time lost needs to be compensated for somehow, or a lot of people will simply lose interest over time.
-Jeff
I have a thought…maybe we could call it a “battleground” and have one keep in the middle of the map?
DAoC is calling you!
-Jeff
P.S. I’m very much in favor of this idea, in truth. One day resets, open up a new one the next day if the queues were long the day before (but if one side doesn’t have queues, no new instance), and let it count for points.
consume conditions is an awesome heal. The spectral skills are great, as is epidemic and so on. You don’t need pets.
I have a lvl 80 elementalist. dabbled with a lvl 30 warrior, 25 engi, some others, then tried necro. At lvl 10 I brought him into WvW and loved him.
I think most WvW issues for people are about style. It’s not tPvP, where you need to perfect your tactics…wvw is more arbitrary, and you need a build to match that.
I’m lvl 28 now. I’m using spectral walk, spectral armor (? is that the name) as my escapes. I swap between staff and scepter/focus as needed, always tossing my controls first (scepter 2, staff 3). I’m poor, so i’m using my crafted armor and whatever weapons i can get my hands on cheaply.
Am I getting tons of kills? No. Am I killing more than dying? By a long shot. I never felt so survivable on my elementalist, and those guys have a lot of active survival skills.
-Jeff
To address some points in this thread:
- survivability is about the active defense – stealth, speed, clones, dodging…things like that. Toughness is neat, vitaility a distant last place. A few thousand health more or less won’t save you.
- I hate mesmers – their clones, etc drive me batty in WvW. But unbalanced? Not in the tactical sense. Any fight with a mesmer is long-term affair, and that’s fine.
Thieves are overpowered. They have the best burst damage, among the best defensive options, and fantastic mobility (which is both offensive and defensive). The idea that they have a smaller health pool and so-on is a smokescreen that has little to nothing to do with this conversation. Health pool is not defense.
-Jeff
P.S. Said from the POV of an elementalist and budding necromancer.
To the OP, for instant action PvP, try sPvP. I know it gets a bad rap by forum elitists, but it’s actually quite a bit of fun when you only 15-30 mins and just want to kill people. You’ll have to deal with the occasional unbalanced game, but otherwise it’s what you’re asking for – you jump in right away.
-Jeff
P.S. I love WvW and play it often, but when I’m sick of the walking I’ll jump into sPvP.
Coming from an elementalist, I’m finding the necro generally more towards my style. Tougher, more focused. However, like the elementalist there’s a lot of traits that need help. Beyond that, the bugs are pretty glaring and I really think the axe is woefully underpowered.
-Jeff
Staff 1 pierces. It can be amazing under some circumstances.
Bottom line is that staff is a long range, aoe weapon.
Agreed – this has been a fun fight. My zerg has gotten spanked hard when we acted like idiots, and rewarded for flanking manuevers and speed.
Good fights, good opponents.
Thieves, as built, are fishbowl warriors. They pick their targets at their leisure, without any chance of getting hurt unless they chose.
The rest of us are the fish.
-Jeff
earth 5 trait is a problem, i think. 80 toughness is a drop in the bucket. Needs to be around 4-5x as big, I think.
“Every time they damage you they will pop out of stealth for at least 3 seconds. When he does you can lock him down and kill him. "
Thieves are the 2nd hardest class to lock down in the game (mesmers #1).
Use it when someone piles up a bunch of mobs in front of you. Or cast one of your blinds first, then flame breath away.
FWIW, I agree that the outmanned buff is not doing what it should. I was pointing out that the population issue is two-sided – the winners and losers have a problem.
I don’t think the solution is to improve the buff. I think the solution is to deal with the population problems more directly. Part of that is simply waiting for people to level and for the ranking system to go to work. Part of that is probably to give bonuses to guilds that transfer to “losing” servers. I think many other ideas have been put forth as well.
-Jeff
Why the need to make everyone craft…jump to vistas…do hearts…etc? Because the devs decided it would be neat to reward players who did it all.
There are aspects of the game that I’m not a fan of; that doesn’t mean I’m going to ask for a special handicap for my particular style of play.
Anything overpowered in PvP is overpowered in PvE. This conversation is just another version of “let me keep my IWIN button”.
-Jeff
That is so far from the truth. Confusion, which is very powerful in PVP, is a rather weak source of damage in PVE (unless you can stack it with the bugged Mesmer trident) because monsters attack much slower than players. Feedback, another Mesmer skill, is quite strong in WvW when you can slap it on a party of ranged players and watch them kill themselbes, but is not nearly as powerful in PVE, except as a source of temporary damaged mitigation, because you do not encounter that many throngs of enemies that rapidly spam ranged attacks.
Neither confusion nor feedback are overpowered in PvP.
But as a gesture, I concede that one day you’ll find an exception or two. But splitting the skills based on exceptions is silly. Name the skill that was nerfed recently that wasn’t overpowered in PvE.
-Jeff
Anything overpowered in PvP is overpowered in PvE. This conversation is just another version of “let me keep my IWIN button”.
-Jeff
Putting aside the buffs, the other side stinks too. Logging into WvW finding all keeps owned by your side sucks the fun out of the thing too. You run about, hoping to find a fight, and get nothing. Once in awhile the enemy puts together a zerg, steamrolls a few locations (and those of us puttering about looking for a fight), and then the zerg winds down.
One thing I’d like to see is killing mobs give a huge magic find bonus. Give people a reason to run around farming mobs…making them targets for pioneering teams of killers. :-)
- If you expected to have fun melting faces with fire (a laudable goal), you can’t.
by competitive content i mean people who are trying to do sPvP or dungeons
i anecdotal evidence by level 30 players demonstrates nothing on actual balance, and assuming our profession is only support/bunker is also wrong
im trying my hardest not to insult the 2 people above me but dam your just flat out silly
What’s silly about what I said? In guild wars I, you could make a fire build and gleefully run around melting faces. Very straight-forward, lots of fun.
You can’t possibly be that effective with only fire in PvP, whatever the version. Elementalists are built to use many tools, not just fire, to be effective.
-Jeff
Thieves are vastly overpowered – a good thief will not lose to you.
Furthermore, a staff s the worst weapon choice you could have made against a thief.
That said, where’s your mist form, etc? You’ll only survive if you bring and use some defensive utilities. You need to clear your conditions, blind that thief, make him fight on top of your lava font, etc.
Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun.
Huh?
Assume you’ve specced fire, all-out. You blow your cooldowns. In your world, you spam 1 for awhile doing puppy damage waiting for the cooldowns to dome back.
In another world, you switch. In the 15s (un-traited) that fire is cooling down, you switch to a couple of the others and blow a few heavy cooldowns, then merrily switch back to fire and continue.
This is completely ignoring the strategy of tossing the most combo fields you can, btw. You could toss 1 from fire, 2 from water, 2 from earth, and 1 from air in pretty short order. Get the timing right (e.g. use the water fields and announce on vent/TS/mumble so everyone knows), and you have something smart. Sure, your dps may not be top, but the number of buffs you’ll create for the group is pretty high. It’s not a way I want to play personally, but ignoring it as your post seems to do is silly, IMO.
-Jeff
Buy lvl 71-78 exotics (look at the prices, be smart). They are almost as good, but of course everyone dumps them for lvl 80 gear.
Exotic >>> Masterwork(80).
No. I think they don’t suck, but…
- You need to work a lot to achieve results.
- AoE damage is not the cure to all evils.
- I think they are on the wrong side of the armor curve…if your stats are bad for your level, it’s much worse than a warrior whose stats are bad for their level.
- If you expected to have fun melting faces with fire (a laudable goal), you can’t.
- conjures are far too clunky. They should have been magical kits with cooldowns, not charges.
If I were the devs doing balancing, I would do the following:
- Make a trait pass. For example, adept(5) water is good; adept(5) earth is not.
- Simplify conjures – no charges, just a cooldown when you switch away from it (like 120s)
- Adjust lava axe. I haven’t played with the earth shield, but frost bow and lightning hammer seem to be in a good place.
Then sit back and watch. I think the people who are tired of doing so much work will pick a kit and run with it. Fixing adept(5) earth with help with the armor situation.
-Jeff
I just played my first couple of matches today, and I’m a bit confused on two fronts:
1) I’m playing, game ends, I start reading scoreboard, people keep fighting behind it and kill me. What’s up with that? Did i just give someone free points simply because I wanted to read?
2) After that, i’m immediately queued up…so I play again, repeat…and I leave before the match begins. I’m worried because maybe I left the team down a man?
I sorta thought I’d play a match, it would end, I’d read the score nice and slow, then go back to the lobby and repeat.
-Jeff
Thanks for the suggestions. It’s funny, I’ve tried D/D & S/D with good success, and use the staff in some situations in WvW. I then moved to D/F in Orr.
Never once did I consider S/F, the obvious combo. :-)
I like my l80 elementalist, but in practice the others are better, and many of the traits and skills are empirically worse (or less appropriate) than other classes’ versions. For example:
elementalist, traits with 20% cooldown reduction to whatever (fire/earth/etc).
mesmer, traits with 20% cooldown reduction to whatever (GS/staff/etc) +50 xxxx (e.g. power/malice/tough)
or
soothing mist (PBAOE HOT, stacks with regen) vs stone flesh (+80 toughness…oooooh) both 5pt traits, the first vastly better than the second.
signet of shadows vs signet of air; both are movement passive, blind active. I would swap them in a heartbeat.
I honestly think that if someone were to do a trait pass, buffing some, changing some, moving some, etc…we’d be a better class.
I have a lvl 80 elementalist that I’m comfy with; not great, just comfy. I’m in the camp that says elementalists need some help (though I think a lot of it would be fixed by a pass through the traits), but honestly I can do a bunch of stuff in one build that others can’t.
But I’m at a loss how to help a young (l23) elementalist. I said “just try some obvious combos, like air4, f1, fire4, fire5…then add more buttons. Try a few different things and you’ll get the hang of it.”
I got back “but where’s the survivability…how do you fight multiples?”
At my level, I’m dagger/focus, and have a bunch of traits that help me survive. But how do I teach all that to someone who’s lvl 23? They can’t really have a build at that point.
-Jeff
P.S. This person has a l60 or so ranger, so it’s not inexperience.
Adding my voice in favor of this. It’s annoying to have my focus end up somewhere random, and then have to search for the dang thing when I want to switch back.
This would be a big deal in WvW, btw. Into the keep, pull out the staff. Charge out into the field, bring out the double-whammy.
-Jeff
Lots of peeps have requested auto loot, and I’ve read that the devs rejected this during beta on technical grounds.
So fine, if you can’t stick it in the inventory, then just mail the unclaimed loot to us…especially the puppy marks!
Jeff
P.s. dogs > cats :-)
Thanks for this thread – I just tested things, and yes, elite supplies is bugged (or mislabeled), and the range increase from rifled turrets is very small.
What can mortar+GM trait do that grenade+GM trait do? I understand that the mortar GM trait also buffs regular turrets, but I really see more advantage to grenades at this point.
No charges. No dropped weapon. 30s cooldown if you drop the conjured weapon.
You’re already trading-in your versatility for single weapon, it might as well be simple.
-Jeff
P.S. Yes, GS will be used then. That’s not a bad thing, it is an elite skill.
I like the style, but my 80 elementalist is shelved for now as he’s simply not as effective as the rangers, warriors, and thieves that I see running round the ruins of Orr. Fine, ltp, whatever. Or learn to play another class.
The reason you see so many mesmers, I think, is that a lot of people want to play a caster (thematically), and realized that mesmer is a lot closer to the mental image than the elementalist, and a lot easier to play (believe it or not).
Conjured weapons are just kits for Elementalists, and should not have charges.
-Jeff