Guild Wars 2

First it does not work out of combat (see the wiki).

Second, your max endurance regeneration is capped at 100%. So it will not stack with the Vigor boon.

Not every skill is epic for every build.

I have it perma-slotted for WvW on my staff ele for two (probably obvious) reasons:

1. Blast finisher
2. Heal goes way up in intensity if you’re surrounded by foes

Item #2 works even better if your a D/D ele — more so than a staff ele. I get benefit because I’m rolling with the melee team on my staff ele.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Anyone else find it interesting that the topic in the Balance forums was removed yet this one has stayed? Could very well be a sign they are interested in our views of it, even if its not 100% real

No way would the Passive have a 30second+ ICD. That would make it even less than useless. I would go with 1second base Quickness with 10second ICD. Even then, i am not sure if it would be “elite” worthy.

It just means nobody from ANet reads the ele forums.

Agreed with the ICD. For this signet to be elite it needs to be 1s Quckness with 10s ICD OR BETTER.

In other words, at least 10% max quickness up-time. Given that it’s on attunement switch, this is not going to lead to massive DPS increases from skill spam. Your best “burst” on staff is switching to Fire and spamming 1+2. However switching away from Fire you get what?

Since it’s on attunement change, you can design for 1s Quickness on lower ICD values, as opposed to 2s Quickness on higher ICD values. This prevents the DPS spam.

You could go as low as 1s Quickness on 5s ICD. This is 20% MAX up-time, but consider that this is 1s in any attunement. You have to wait about 10 seconds to get back to that same attunement. So the net result is 10% MAX in any single attunement.

Anyway I’m sure I confused the tah out of people, but think about the fact it’s tied to attunement switching (and therefore the attunement cooldown) and you’ll see that more quickness is not 1:1 more DPS on the high DPS ele builds.

EDIT: I forgot about “Fresh Air” and boon duration buffs. I think the best we can hope for on this elite is 1s Quickness on 8s ICD.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

cheese.4739:

So you want the burning to not be a condition, but some other effect? I really don’t see how this could possibly work if it’s to do this faster damage with the burning condition. Burning doesn’t stack, and it never will, from any source.

Again, i have no idea what you are even trying to say.
ALL i have said that Drake’s Breath should stack intensity rather than duration of burning. NOTHING else. We have plenty of other access to burning to get Fire Grab off as well so i don’t really consider that as a reason why its duration over intensity.

I will repeat: Intensity on this skill ONLY. No other skills changed, no other classes affected. I could maybe see it needing a few extra seconds cool down but i would take that if it meant that the Burning was 4 stacks for 3 seconds rather than 1 stack for 12 seconds.

He’s saying that Burning doesn’t work the way you describe… ever. It never stacks intensity.

In short, you are creating a new effect just for Drake’s Breath. Some special effect that stacks in intensity, but is not the Burning condition.

You understand that it makes zero sense for ANet to code Burning such that it stacks in duration for every skill except Drake’s Breath where it would magically stack in intensity?

eleshazar.6902:

I wish the question hadn’t just been about which classes need buffs, and rather which classes all around need balancing. Pretty sure the top vote would have been warrior then…

It was exactly about balancing… not buffs. I thought it was pretty clear from the original forum post, but I suspect most people assumed it was what profs to buff.

Two of my three votes were profs that I felt needed to be toned down.

Micro Hard.3601:

Oh my, there must be lots of trolls in this thread. Lets recap on quickenss with this link:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness

All activate-able quickness utilities/elites range from 50s upwards to 210s and the shortest trait specific one is ranger pet swap (I think it’s 20s when pet is alive, 40s if dead and must be traited). Seeing as how this is not a trait related elite and incredibly easy to manage/line up an opening combo, it will definitely not be anywhere close to 10s and more along the lines of 30-40seconds to align with every other quickness related ability; especially if anyone looks back to how long the cds are on any other quickness ability linked in the wiki.

I’d love to see a lower ICD than +30s, but you’d have to be a fool to believe it would go any lower. It’s as clear as day when you extrapolate and look at the current quickness ability list that the CD’s are meant to be high and would inversely mean this elites ICD will be too.

Except when you read more than just the cooldown you’ll see the duration is typically 1s for every 10s of cooldown (i.e. 6s of Quickness for a 60s cooldown skill).

So you could imagine this elite granting 1s of quickness on a 10s ICD. Now it’s completely in line with the other skills listed on the wiki website.

Keep in mind most of the skills on the wiki are NOT elites. So there is room on this new signet for slightly better performance over the non-elite skills.

Finally you need a small ICD on this skill because every elementalist is changing attunements, typically more than once every 10 seconds. A large ICD makes the passive worthless as NOBODY will hold their attunement switch in order to time the quickness.

EDIT: revised some wording that was kitten filtered (“wiki” followed by “Keep”… really? That seems like real old school bigot stuff, and it was separated by punctuation!).

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

juno.1840:

As has been stated already, the issue with stealth stomping is it completely negates some downed skills — in short any skill which requires a target and cannot be used otherwise.

A stomp is essentially an attack, but it doesn’t remove the player from stealth until the attack is complete. There have been many suggestions to break stealth when an attack starts (not when it hits). That would apply to any attack, not just stomps.

Stability and invulnerability stomps negate other professions downed state skills so why are we just picking on stealth stomps then?

I have no problem with a stealth stomper getting revealed after said stomp has been completed so that it follows the stealth rules of other skills which apply a revealed after an attack from stealth. I’m not for having revealed apply when the attack starts, only after said stomp was successfully completed.

So use stability or invulnerability like everyone else (queue “I have no stability” QQ).

I’m not saying thieves are in a good place — in fact I think the design is flawed resulting in a horribly underpowered class if stealth is nerfed in any way. I am for a reworking of stealth and thieves in general (which is why I voted for it in the recent CDI poll).

Until the class is overhauled, these discussions are moot. The mechanic is broken — defend stealth stomping all you want, but it’s cheese at its finest.

My Top Three:

(1) An elite that is NOT a pet, and does NOT take away my weapon skills (i.e. no kits, no transforms)

(2) Raise our base HP to match Mesmer/Engi/Ranger

(3) Utility skill reworks on Signet Actives and all Glyphs. I suspect these are the least used skills in our tool chest.

As has been stated already, the issue with stealth stomping is it completely negates some downed skills — in short any skill which requires a target and cannot be used otherwise.

A stomp is essentially an attack, but it doesn’t remove the player from stealth until the attack is complete. There have been many suggestions to break stealth when an attack starts (not when it hits). That would apply to any attack, not just stomps.

sorrow.2364:

The Primary.6371:

I don’t use it anymore, sigil of energy works way better.

And giving up on Sigil of Battle? No, thanks.

Also, as most here have already said, I’m all up of making Renewing Stamina a minor trait and take the nerf. Being forced to pick that minor trait for survivability reasons is just bad.
I really want to pick Windborne Dagger, Final Shielding, Arcane Master or Blasting Staff, but if I don’t pick Renewing Stamina, I will just die.

In March you can have both Sigil of Energy and Battle — although I think energy is a better sigil, but that’s just my opinion.

Lastly I’d rather have a 5pt vigor trait on 10s cooldown, instead of a 10pt vigor trait on 5s cooldown. The 10/20/30 point traits are too valuable and I’d rather get it for free on the 5/15/25 pt traits. So I totally agree with you here.

Totally agree Fuxxion.

The nice thing about Quickness is it benefits all play styles (DPS, support, control). I can see benefits in getting off faster MS so I’m not locked in place as long… faster blinding flash (as it casts soooo slow) for damage avoidance… faster static field placement… it goes on and on.

I engaged in 5v5 GvG in OS last night on my staff ele (0/0/20/30/20).

I was having a great time, we won 4 of 6 matches. Anyway, long story short, I had that happy feeling that often accompanied my Monk in GW1 after a good run, helping to keep my team alive.

After some post-match reflection, I thought “hey, this is sorta like my monk”. I was passing out regeneration and protection boons. I was blasting my own water fields. I was removing conditions, group healing, group damage mitigation, etc.

That was on top of the awesome CC that staff brings (arguably it’s greatest strength in PvP).

Anyway, thought I’d share some happy thoughts. Cheers!

After thinking about it for a few days, I like this elite signet (assuming it’s real). I get little use out of our current elites:

FGS — useful for sieging a door in WvW, little other use in WvW
Elemental — useful for solo or very small team play in WvW, little use otherwise
Tornado — total waste, even with MS gimmick. Keeps me from using other skills which my team sorely needs in WvW combat.

This elite would actually be used (as it has a passive). If it does not have an ICD larger than 1s and the quickness is 2s, this is a good passive. The active is situational, but I can imagine using it when my team needs a water field and I’ve just rolled out of water to earth.

EDIT: I want to emphasize that the internal cooldown and the quickness duration will determine if this skill is truly elite. If we’re looking anything less than 2s of quickness or an ICD greater than 1s, then the passive will be lack luster. The design might require the quickness duration be less-than or equal to the ICD. If this is true, then the range of 1s/1s to 2s/2s would be considered elite imho.

1. Elementalist
2. Thief
3. Mesmer

Keep in mind “help with balance” can mean over-powered as easily as under-powered.

Fire doesn’t stack so 2 stacks of 6s is the exact same as 1 stack for 12 seconds.

If this elite is real and it has an internal cooldown, it will pretty much blow (unless the ICD is 1 second, the same as the GCD on the attunements themselves). Otherwise you’ll be missing out on your quickness with a quick series of attunement changes (which does happen in real play). If you miss out on one attunement change due to the ICD, then you lost out on the quickness for the duration of that attunement’s cooldown.

Allie Murdock.8152:

So, it looks like Meteor Shower should have a red circle. Is there a chance that it is being culled out in the situations you experienced?

This is a great example of “test it before talking about it”. Nobody I know (including myself) has ever seen a red circle for meteor shower. Now the developers look like they don’t know their own game which doesn’t do them any favors.

That has to be the worst set of elites I’ve seen. My favorite is the mesmer where you can beat up your foes with “illusionary hands”.

Celtus.8456:

To be consistent with the rest of the game design, yes maybe it should have a single large red circle. But there are other hostile abilities in the game that do not have red outlines (and much worse telegraphs…come on, meteor shower is one of the best telegraphed abilities in Gw2), and elementalist is currently on the lower end of the power spectrum in this game. So, why now?

Edit: OP, you do make a very good point about the confusion over friendly fire. As a staff elementalist, it is annoying to be in a group fight vs another staff ele. I am sure there is alot of confusion for both sides about which meteor shower is allied and which is hostile.

Because some players are building full glass and abusing Tornado to pump up the damage of Meteor Shower in WvW (you can even find “look at me!” videos in this forum section on it).

Honestly if it comes down to a damage nerf, or little red circles, I’d go with the circles. Wouldn’t you?

Just like a red circle breaks every other AoE?

Seriously, stop complaining. I use staff exclusively on my ele in WvW and I’m not threatened in the slightest by red circles for MS. If staff is only MS for you then maybe you should find something else to do.

Farming Flats.5370:

ROFL… you want a conversion tokens system because BoH rain from achievement chest. If BoH was not given in the achievements chest , what would you do ?? If you can’t do Arah its because you don’t like dungeons … if you don’t like dungeons your probably don’t do WvW either … so rub your hands and start to work for real instead of spamming skill #1 in killing stuff with very bad AI and crying to have every fancy skin for free. Do you want map completion removed from WvW lol ??

You really have no clue about my behaviors in game other than my distaste for Arah (and only because I posted it above). I could be like some other forum kittens and report your post as offensive, but I’m rather thick skinned.

I have WvW badges coming out my ears (and not from achievement chest rewards). WvW is actually the most enjoyable part of the game to me. I spend little time in PvE.

I was quite disappointed to see BoH drop like rain from the achievement chests. However what’s done is done. The dichotomy exists… it should be fixed. Since you can’t take badges away, then open up alternate methods to manage my currency.

Vol.7601:

That would defeat the purpose of said items. Those items show that you have done the required work.

Yep, absolutely that’s my objective. Badges of Honor rain down like water if you complete achievements (not even that many to get 1000+ badges). Yet I have to toil through a garbage dungeon (obviously my opinion on Arah) to grind out my 500. I’d feel different if it was actually fun (again, another flagrant opinion).

I’m up to 200 now, and yes I’ll finish before any sniff of a change comes my way.

However let me pop back to the WvW connection again. So you don’t have to engage in WvW to get the badges… that’s nice (honestly). Let’s have the same option for dungeon tokens. You can also trade laurels for WvW rank — again you don’t need to do any WvW to complete that goal.

I don’t approve of the dichotomy that is Badges of Honor vs. Dungeon tokens.

Throw some of these babies into my achievement chests like all the Badges of Honor. Better yet, let me exchange my Badges of Honor for any dungeon token (on some conversion rate, 1:1:, 2:1, whatever, doesn’t matter).

I honestly hate Arah — that dungeon is a pill, finding a team is a pill, the whole experience blows. I enjoy WvW the best, let me do a conversion or something.

Heezdedjim.8902:

And the only thing this really changes is that now everyone who likes only certain aspects of the game is going to have to spend a non-trivial amount of time doing at least some things they don’t like in order to get one without buying it straight up.

WTB 500 Arah tokens… pst

Rank only implies how much time you spent participating in WvW — and only loosely.

Pop your birthday booster and you’ll get that rank in 5 hours with a decent zerg. That’s less time than 9 arah runs (which take at least 3 days due to time gating).

I think you’d be better off taking the most desirable Arcana Traits and busting them up into the other trait lines.

For example, instead of Elemental Attunement, give the boon to the associated 5pt Adept Minor on each trait line (i.e. 5pts into Fire gives you might when activing Fire attunement).

Another example, instead of Evasive Arcana, give the dodge effect to the associated 15pt Master Minor on each trait line (i.e. 15pts into Water gives you Cleaning Wave on dodge when in Water attunement).

Granted you want something special for Grand Master traits in Arcana. Right now, much of Arcana is still “must have” for most Elementalists.

I don’t want to run Arah nine times to get Bifrost — can someone code me a work-around?

BlackDevil.9268:

Thats the problem with a ’’freetoplay’’ game. Everything just goes so slow. Especially with ncsoft not allowing arenanet to make expansions. This game gets worse every patch.

It’s not F2P. The the acronym you’re looking for is B2P.

zero

I have no problem that it’s remained for over a year — I don’t find it broken. I wish other professions had something as useful as mistform. It actually makes sense for an ele thematically.

Again, the only time you are thwarted is the limited scenario of mist-forming into a keep. It’s not a surprise, it’s not unexpected, and it’s not usable outside of that scenario. Everywhere else in WvW mist-form merely delays the stomp. That should not be a problem — especially considering ele is the lower armor, lowest HP profession in the game.

As I also mentioned in this topic, I find stealth-stomping (and other gimmicks like teleport stomping) to be a bigger problem. You mentioned Mez #2 requiring a target, making stealth-stops a 100% hard counter — yet this isn’t a concern?

runeblade.7514:

Nikkinella.8254:

You people do realize that you can stop the ele from entering a tower in vapor form right? Line of warding CAN’T be crossed in vapor form. They nerfed vapor form awhile ago. You can be feared, stunned, knocked down, and immobilized while in vapor form. This is a L2P issue. Ele doesn’t need to be nerfed any further than it already has been. It something that you can easily stop if you bother slotting something besides pure offensive abilities and use a little CC or area blocking abilities. Throw a line of warding or fear wall right on top of the portal and the ele can’t go in. This nerf that they did to vapor form seems to occasionally affect mist form as well because that will sometimes bug out and you can get cced while in mist form. So thanks whiners for messing that up too as they’re unlikely to fix it ever.

I like how you pulled a L2P card when there is nothing about it being L2P. I don’t care about CCing a downed ele, I don’t care about ele going through doors. I want to stomp them like every other profession, through a protected and secured stomp.

So Are you telling me that there is a way for me to stomp through vapor form? No? Then it isn’t a L2P.

I’m sure you realize, as it’s been stated many times now, that mist form simply delays the stomp — just like most of the other #2 skills. Thief stealth and mesmer stealth/clone do exactly the same (you cannot prevent it, but it only delays the stomp).

The exception is mist-forming into a keep. I don’t have a problem with this either as it’s a simple fight reset. There are other situations where fights are reset (stealth anyone). If your WvW experience is ruined because a downed ele misted back into a keep, then you probably need to find something else to do.

Seriously, this is the highest priority problem you found to discuss in the forums?

EDIT: Also it’s been stated many times that you can CC the ele before the mist form (it’s not a surprise, you know it’s coming right?). It’s not brainless, but it’s possible with well timed play. So yeah, there’s a counter.

Mochann.5298:

Vayne.8563:

If they have to make a separate precursor quest for each and every precursor and they’re all to be different….considering how hard and how long it should take, it would probably be a prohibitive amount of work.

Can’t be much harder than making a Living World story about Scarlet.

Seriously, why point that out? ANet is the game developer, they should care about doing things right, not doing things the easy way. A simple mystic forge recipe or Crafting with Ascended Crafting style grind is just that: an easy way out to provide “content” that is basically boring yawn-inducing farming. There is no need to ape the stupid time-gated mechanics of something like WoW; GW2 is trying to be its own game and the best way to do that is to scrap stupid mechanics like this.

Let Anet figure out how to do it right with their manpower. It’s a lot of work, sure, but ANet has its work cut out for it.

Because there’s already a way to get precursors — adding anything else is a time/value equation.

Jocksy.3415:

When I’m looking for equal fight, I go duelling in PvP…

WvW is the Wild… Never know what to expect, one way or the other…

Keep it that way.

And it stays that way with stat normalization… as you’ve said yourself “it makes little difference”. If you don’t want me putting words in your mouth, maybe you shouldn’t speak them to begin with.

Jocksy.3415:

I enjoy having a time-based advantage.
When fighting people who have a greater time-based advantage, I do not see much difference than when fighting someone who does not.

I do not intend to grind for ascended, but for those who put time in it, they deserve to get it.
I do have WvW ranks enough to have defense and offense bonus, but most of the time, I do not chase guards to get it. I have a sigil weapon equipped, and others that don’t in my inventory, but I forget to swap 99% of the time.
Does not change much in my fights…
But those who go through the trouble of getting them, and using them properly do, imho, deserve the so-called “advantage”.

I feel like it’s ok that someone who’s been playing longer has something to show for it.

How you use it is irrelevant — my point is it exists. You should win your fights because you’re more skillful or your team employs better strategy. This isn’t war where the biggest gun matters… it’s a competitive mode in a game.

Ask yourself if you want your win “tainted” by the stigma of having higher stats than your opponent. Do you want someone to say “hey you only won that fight because you had guard stacks and ascended gear”? It doesn’t matter if that’s the reason you won or not — the point is the advantage existed.

If you feel you need those advantages, then maybe you shouldn’t be playing the competitive modes to begin with.

Agree that the other attunements don’t encourage sticking around. I switch to others to drop CC, fields, etc. (which is very important). Staying in those attunements doesn’t feel useful however. You could argue that Water auto is nice for the 500+ pt heal it generates per attack. Using it on the door of a keep helps keep them rams alive in WvW.

There are times I really want to hang out in earth because the auto-attack adds weakness. However the skill does not hit hard enough, nor travel fast enough, to make it worth while as a valid single-target DPS attunement.

runeblade.7514:

Carighan.6758:

But really thing is: why does it need to be balanced. Escaping into the tower I could see as an issue because as you say it gets problematic when a large amount of elementalists get organized. But beyond that, why would I want to reduce class uniqueness?

Because stomping is annoying and clunky, what is more annoying is to be forced to stomp twice. The only saving grace is that there is a way to secure the stomp for every profession other than elementalist. I rather elementalist be rebalanced and have a way to be stomped in vapor form than an unstompable vapor form.

Just remove the stomp mechanic — it’s not useful anyway.

@Boonprot: The proposal does NOT take away your ability to mix-and-match your gear set. All it does it make stats independent of item rarity (so ascended == exotic == rare).

Regardless of the severity of the gear bias, it exists. Simply eliminate it. Nobody should be upset about this unless they enjoy having a time-based power advantage. So far not a single Player in this topic has said “I want an advantage over other players with lesser gear and WxP points”.

BrunoBRS.5178:

yeah, this mechanic is totally undesired. it programmed itself without the devs’ consent. happens all the time.

Keep reading…

I think WvW is unique because of the format — not because you ground out some gear over time.

Your example on D/D ele is good, but not because of “the ability to tailor your gear piece by piece”. It’s more likely due to point-capture, small environment vs. open field, large environment.

To everyone that says the time-based power bonuses are “not determinant” regarding winning and losing — then as Elmo so nicely put it:

“…why not just get rid of it alltogther then? Since it does nothing it’s a useless addition to the game. Right?”

If you want to win due to skill (and time invested in getting more skillful), then remove all other advantages from the equation. Regardless of you how spin it, unequal stats provide an advantage. Whether or not you think the advantage is impacting is meaningless — it still exists.

My point with the comment on “desired” is based upon the development of GW2 that we’ve experienced to date. There have been effects, combinations, special skill usage that was not planned or foreseen by ANet. To assume that “Consume Plasma” was intended for competitive play may be a stretch (Consume Plasma is available in PvE from some ghostly mobs).

You can find numerous examples where ANet went “whoops, that’s not right” and subsequently nerfed something into the ground.

To further support this line of thought, I specifically said you don’t have any other sources of profession-based stability. This indirectly supports the line of thinking of “mistake” regarding Consume Plasma in competitive play.

Nope it’s not conclusive… just facts that may suggest my point of view.

Izaya.2906:

Fror.2163:

Regarding the time to get it:
- the quest should be soulbound. One per character. The precursor should be account-bound as someone said above. This will minimize the impact on the TP.
- it shouldn’t take longer than getting the gold to buy the precursor by playing the game not the TP obviously.
- If you want 40 hours rather than 20, I’m all in, but careful to not make it too long or people will say “just buy it off TP”.
- The scaling shouldn’t make it so it takes less time by grouping. Groups should have more fun going in together, but it shouldn’t make it easier as well.

Your suggestion is simply not practical from an economist point of view.

Anet already stated they don’t want to hurt the precursor market & there is a good reasoning behind it.

Let’s be honest here, people will do the alternative only if it’s for dusk & other high priced precursors.

That being said, precursors being easily accessible is actually a bad thing for the economy. Your suggestion of ~40 hours is peanuts compared to 170+ hours for Dusk(assuming you do ~5g an hour) and would totally destroy the market.

It will increase the number of the precursors in the game(even if its non tradeable), then more people will think “oh now I can make a legendary”.

That will translate to higher demand on T6 mats, lodestones etc. tied to making a legendary to the point where totals would end roughly the same pre introduction of an alternative way to acquire dusk,etc. UNLESS its comparable to the grind/rng method in terms of time sink/how annoying it can be.

But the problem is those T6 mats, lodestones etc. are also tied to other stuff like making exotic gears, nice looking non-legendary skins, leveling crafts to 500, ascended items etc. which will just inflate prices more.

Then you’re stuck with having to grind more gold to get those T6’s, lodestones etc. with the added bonus of higher prices for everything else you wanna do(exotic/ascended crafting, etc.).

They cannot make the alternative easily the better choice(because it takes way less time) vs paying for it with gold/flushing.

A more realistic expectation is actually “I can spend 170 hours grinding gold and buy it off the TP or spend 170 hours on this glorious quest/puzzle”

+1 — exactly this. If you didn’t read Lzaya’s post before, then read it now (don’t be lazy!).

evilapprentice.6379:

Thank you for inching us 1 skill closer to the “Every single skill/ability/trait associated with thief is OP” singularity.

Honestly, just please, stop coming to the boards every time strike you as unfair on paper. Go, roll a thief, and then tell me how consume plasma turns you into an unstoppable killing machine.

If you were meant to have all boons in competitive play, don’t you think you’d be given an option other than stealing against a mesmer?

Just because you have it via steal doesn’t make it correct or desired. If it is a “desired” mechanic, then I would imagine thieves everywhere would be screaming “I need Consume Plasma when fighting every profession, not just mesmers!”. I’m sure you can guess the response you’d get to that…

I agree it’s over the top. All the boons alone are rather epic. It also gives an innate advantage to a Thief vs. Mesmer 1v1. Other professions do not have professions specific effects on any skill/trait/etc.

If anything, Steal in competitive play should provide a common effect across all professions.

KarsaiB.9475:

2/ For thief :
They already have loads of evades and stealth. Being able to access stability and protection by themselves every 60 seconds is way, way over the top.

You realize that one steal from a mesmer and they get all boons right?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Plasma

MonMalthias.4763:

Let’s start on the Signets, because in my opinion, most of the Signet skills across most of the classes are amongst the worst designed skills in the game.

Sorry but I don’t like your signet changes for a few reasons:

Having options that are redundant to traits provides build diversity. Someone can have the IMS without traiting for it simply by slotting Signet of Air. Your changes provide advantages only to players that want signets AND also have the corresponding redundant traits. I personally like the Air and Fire signets because the complement my builds that don’t have IMS or high precision via traits/gear.

Secondly signet passives do not need a counter. Very few signets out there have passives that can be countered. In short passives are not epic enough to require a counter. It’s the actives that you should focus your attention on. The actives should be meaningful enough that you want to use them and your opponents want to counter them.

I salute your creativity, but please leave my signets passives alone. Focus your efforts on the signet actives and our other lack-luster traits/skills.

We can have this discussion after ANet prevents stomping from stealth…

Blaze.4726:

stop ragging so hard! when did he say my build is better than yours or vise versa! He saw something kool and wanted to share!! and i LOVE IT! and it depends on preference to me staff is kool and what he doing is awesome. Calm down and get a life.

There’s no rage (unless I include your rageful anti-rage post).

The issue is if you’re going to “toot your own horn” do it for something that was skillful, where people go “wow, I wish I could play that good!”.

Don’t do it for pressing two buttons and posting a video about how epic it is.

Finally real staff elementalists are upset because it draws the wrong kind of attention to staff ele. Does anyone honestly think that staff is OP damage wise? Videos like this reinforce the opposite… not good for us.

They made this already — it’s the achievement panel.

Fror.2163:

- If you want 40 hours rather than 20, I’m all in, but careful to not make it too long or people will say “just buy it off TP”.

I think that’s the point. It will effect the TP and precursor market unless the quest (and crafting for that option) is suitably painful. I know everyone is looking forward to getting a precursor without having to pay 600+ gold. I firmly believe that the quest/craft option will extract 600g in time, frustration, and pain.

I can see why ANet is not excited to push this feature out fast. One segment of the game population will be upset (the players who’ve invested 600+ into obtaining their precursor, or the players who are like “wha? I have to do all this for my precursor?”). Either way, someone is fuming mad.

In short you support my argument Jocksy. You want to win because you were better, not because you had an advantage because you invested more time in WvW than your competition.

It’s a dangerous mentality to fall into… “I spent more time here so I deserve to be better… I deserve an advantage… I earned it”. Games like LotRO cater to that, rewarding the time investment (as opposed to the player skill).

GW2 is not bad like I’ve seen in LotRO or other games. However some mechanics are trending in that direction (guard stacks and ascended). There’s no good reason to include those time-based advantages in competitive play. You could view it as pay-to-win, where you spent time instead of money.

I fully support the desire to be individual, to craft your appearance, your build, your role. My proposal doesn’t inhibit that.