Guild Wars 2

TyPin.9860:

I just encountered a Hammer/GS Warrior, while I was roaming on my Mesmer. He was fairly tanky and of course, any time his life got to around 50% (took ages to get there) he ran away and waited until he healed up.

Some stuff that comes to my mind:

• [Dolyak Signet](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dolyak_Signet)
• [Thick Skin](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thick_Skin)
• [Dogged March](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March) Regeneration (your iZerker applies cripple)
• [Adrenal Health](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Adrenal_Health)
• [Vigorous Shouts](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Shouts)
• you already stated he was running -condition duration food, but sometimes I encounter warriors using [Mango Pie](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mango_Pie) or [Omnomberry Pie](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Omnomberry_Pie) instead

Did the warrior run Sigil of Intelligence by any chance? That’d explain why he 1-shotted your phantasms but then couldn’t really harm your character.

(Well… seems as if markdown syntax doesn’t work too well – sorry for the misformatted links above)

Chris.3290:

Condi meta already forces warriors to run tankier than many of them would like.

/laugh if you’d run more offensive stats, things would die even faster. If it wasn’t for stupid random-proc conditions from traits, runes and sigils, all classes (even your beloved warrior) would be able to mitigate much condition damage and effects by just playing smart. No need for -condition duration if you’d deal with condition stuff like you do with direct damage.

Chris.3290:

The lack of focus on conditions at launch was one of the brighter spots. No one used – condition food at the beginning, now it’s a must have.

I’m running Omnomberry Pie or Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew on most of my power-based builds because it benefits me more even against condition trolls. Lemongrass / Leek soup is great on melee tanks (especially in bigger groups) to reduce soft CC duration, but for offensive specs you’re better off with other food in most cases.

Conditions and condition management are both broken, yes (so are the + and – duration foods). Especially in 1vs1 up to – I’d say – 4vs4 in some compositions conditions can be the most efficient source of damage or method to guarantee damage, and if it is, it’s usually condition spam which is rather annoying (most condition builds don’t work too well if you try to use conditions wisely). I’m on the same boat here.
But just as stupid as all the on-proc condition stuff is (which are the source of most anti-condition discussions), this also applies to sigil of air and fire, which allow crits on auto attacks to make those more viable than most burst skills.

Still voting for reducing duration gain and reduction on food because they not only make condition spam builds even more efficient (they’re mostly annoying and we all know that players who play those builds don’t do so to play competively), but because they also allow for annoying lockdown for power-based builds (yeay, never ending immobilize, chill, cripple, poison and weakness!).

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Dogged March will only respond to the first time any 4 of those conditions hit as well, with a 10 second internal CD.

The ICD only affects the regeneration buff. The -condition duration is a permanent effect.

Still no condi meta except for some fights with less than 5 on each side. Conditions are very powerful, yes. Annoying as well. Some builds are borderline stupid (aka faceroll press-1-to-win), but at the end of the day, it’s mostly power, hybrid, support and control builds which decide the fights for your team.

On that matter: +condition duration on some power builds is even more laughable: iLeap or Dark Pact immobilize with +40% duration, and you got a guaranteed down…

And then we’ve got some skills, traits and runes which don’t even need +duration to be totally broken in their base condition duration anyways, e.g. Hammer Shock, Impale, iCounter, Chill of Death, Incendiary Powder, Runes of Balthazar and so on.

This stuff is broken or borderline overpowered (even in power or hybrid builds), and I agree with everyone demanding a nerf to the + and – condition duration food, but there still is no condition meta in higher level WvW group roaming and PvP.

That’s all well and good, but has nothing to do with the stuff you quoted from my post.

As a publisher of online games with in-game purchases it is in the best interest of NCSoft’s stakeholders if they can milk their cash cows as efficiently and long as possible. If a part of the customers, who are willing to buy stuff with real money from the gem shop, cannot play the game in a way which they enjoy anylonger, there’s no profit to be made in the near future with said customers. (Let’s not speak about how poorly it reflects on the PvP modes for now, which is obviously another part they should consider: much lag -> less players -> less or bad eSport publicity -> less franchise profits and sponsoring)

There needs to be a balance between spreadsheet profit margins and customer satisfaction for a healthy and ongoing b2c relationship, which I was referring to. They obviously don’t have to handle stuff in such ways, but it might be in their interest to make a few calls nonetheless.

Btw: I’ve opened a support ticket yesterday and already got some responses. If I have any news which may help others, I will sure let you guys know.

abomally.2694:

That’s probably the case. However, Anet has no control of these routers (the same with the “level 3” node problems). They also can’t control the route that a packet takes to get to/from their servers to/from a person’s computer.

You’re right here. They can, however, talk to their carriers and data center businesses, or ask their affiliates to do so. This is an issue which reflects poorly on their game, which then results in less customers / customer activity and also less revenue.

Even if Anet can’t fix it themselves, they sure have some ways to contact 3rd-party-businesses who are in charge, and ask for support or at least a simple line check to verify it’s not their fault.

Beldin.5498:

People in ALL games complain constantly about lag .. because .. its the INTERNET.

I guess we should restart the internet router then…

You couldn’t be more wrong in your assertion, btw. IPTV is mostly done via broadcasting protocols (which reduce load quite a lot) and traditional video streaming and the likes contribute just a small fraction of all the traffic.

Last time so many players experienced extreme latency issues, it was because of an issue in the traffic routing of Level3 for GW2. Maybe we now have another similar issue with one of the peering providers?

It’s a waste of an otherwise much needed utility slot against any decent group of enemies. If one of us sees an Ele dropping an Ice Bow, we only have to mitigate his #5 (if the player thinks he’s clever) and then wreck him because he lacks at least one escape utility. (usually called out as early focus target in our roaming group, just like longbow rangers, power necros and shatter mesmers)

The bigger the group you can hide in, the more “efficient” it becomes, though (read: in a big enough group everything goes).

More and more zerg busting groups, run eles with the frost bow because it allows for even harder nukes (more dead enemies faster), but as stated above: free fodder for anyone with a brain and the right skill set at her/his finger tips…

Jarrix.8234:

Ice bow has no maximum targets.

Yes, it does. Each dart (20 of them for a full channel) can hit up to 5 targets.

Jarrix.8234:

You’ll tag everyone than instantly die to retaliation.

You deserve to go down if you spam your AoE onto a fully buffed melee ball…

After giving it some thought over the last few weeks (because even though most condition builds don’t bother me too much, I find them unfun to play against), my thought process always ended in the assertion that every possible condition build on necro, engineer, ranger and thief won’t be able to keep up with a direct damage or hybrid build; So you might want to say that condition damage is still way weaker than direct damage even in 1vs1 scenarios.
What really bothers me, is that most condition builds rely on sigil and rune procs to overload a target or area with so many conditions, that you are unable to react properly. This unfortunately does not only relate to condition procs from sigils and runes, but also to stuff like sigil of air and sigil of fire, which boost your damage to stupid amounts even when spamming your auto attacking.

A big step in a better direction (at least imho) would be to get rid of most direct damage and condition applying sigils. Doom and Hydromancy seem fine to me and add utility (not that I’m using any of those, but I think they have some counter play mechanisms).

Even though I don’t like to play condition damage builds myself, I’d support a severe buff in condition damage if some of the awkward mechanics would be reworked. If conditions would work without overloading a target with auto-procs out, it would be much more fun to fight a condition build. Some ideas:

• Confusion damage is buffed significantly, but — just like blindness — the whole stack is removed once you activate a spell OR
• Confusion damage is buffed slightly. Every skill activation deals confusion damage according to the number of stacks, but it also removes one stack (the shortest duration one) of it afterwards
• Torment… You can’t stand still in this game, or you die. Why is this condition even in there?
• Immobilize is important to both direct as well as condition damage builds, but immobilize stacking is no fun in a PvP environment. Immobilize should either have a 50% chance to break on hit, or it shouldn’t stack in the first place.
• Blind is a decent way of mitigating damage without wasting blocks and evades. I’d like to see it changed to have a chance of mitigating melee damage (< 130 units) by ~90% only, nonetheless, because I think it would make fighting some builds more fun and engaging for both sides. As much as I love to C’n’D-blind an earthshaker when traited in Shadow Arts on my thief, I find it ridiculous to shut down some builds and play styles so efficiently

Also some closing words: If a condition damage build cannot work without cover conditions thru sigils and runes (conditions, which the profession wouldn’t have access to otherwise), something is really going the wrong way…

I got lag spikes of up to 5 seconds during the last days and nights. Sometimes it’s just some minor rubber banding but yesterday was horrible during prime time as well as off-time without any large clashes on the map. At one time I was — what seemed to be — insta-downed, then after 3 seconds I saw all the animations which caused my death (damage was accumulated and visible way before the animations were shown to me).

I only roam in small groups or solo and did not participate in large clashes and try to rely on my reflexes and player-on-player interaction to have nice fights, which is rendered useless if my skills and evades are delayed by a significant amount of time. Also I think that I’m rubber-banding for my enemies sometimes, which makes it unfair to them as well. It’s no fun at all

Open world PvE seems to be not affected by this (not doing too much), and most dungeon runs are pretty okay. PvP is lagging for me sometimes, tho. There is no connectivity issue on my end (FttB, one of the major net nodes in close proximity) that I’m aware of (no problems and latency issues / packet drops with other real-time applications & games).

Hi Zaragoz!

D/D is the most popular choice for eles in both WvW roaming and PvP, so it’s a good starting point. Staff is most often used for capture point in organized PvP teams and large scale combat in WvW, while scepter is rarely used outside of gimmickry (burst) builds. Focus is a pretty strong dueling weapon but lacks sustain and utility in group fights.

A well-rounded starter build for D/D ele (while not highly efficient in 1vs1 and high level group combat) may be this one (assuming your buddy can’t get ascended gear, except for some trinkets, yet).
The traits and utilities are very common (0/2/0/6/6): Cantrips and water-traits for self-sustain, arcana-traits support a fluent and agile play style, and air adds a small punch. The stats achieved by the gear composition above are far from optimal, though I think they are a good starting point until your friend can get some ascended weapons and some gold for “better” runes.

Some stats one should aim for on D/D ele for small scale fights are:
– 2k+ Power (with food) – the more, the merrier
– 30%+ Critical Chance
– 180%+ Critical Damage
– 2.2k-2.4k Toughness
– 16k+ HP
– ~400 Healing Power

Full-celestial and the over-abused PvP-meta-build suck kittens against any decent enemy. Your friend should not fall victim to some self-proclaimed pro-gamers and believe that he could kill anyone decent with it.

In 1vs1 most D/D ele builds are pretty cheesy (i.e. I don’t take myself too serious when dueling with my build because one can out-sustain anything but a decent PU condition mesmer or a better ele while tormenting the enemy with perma-burning and strong control effects), however in group fights it gets interesting and the supportive and offensive nature of such a build really blows.

philheat.3956:

And i’d rework whirl finisher (it’s pretty bad like it is now) or add new combo finisher.

It is one of the best combo effects in a group fight if you know when to use it.

In group fights stealth is not that big of an issue — none for which I’d like to have such a hard counter anyways (though “Sick ’em!” is a nice single-target niche skill). Most party compositions can live without access to stealth and still deal with it efficiently. All classes which allow a party to gain stealth (thief, mesmer & engineer in land combat) are easily locked down by both hard and soft CC after they used their long-cooldown defensive spells. The initial burst from stealth can be overwhelming sometimes, but most times one is crying about stealth it is just a l2p issue, bad team composition, or an outnumbered fight which is always in favour of the team outnumbering their enemies anyways. In every other situation stealth is fine imho (or at least manageable with anti-stealth traps if we’re talking about D/P SA thieves hiding in keeps in WvW).

You can block a player to then find their account name in your block-list.

One of the huge issues of solo-roaming is, that balance and certain game mechanics reduce fights on being kinda RPS (assuming equal skill level on both ends). Also it currently boils down to some sort of PU condition or PU phantasm mesmer, P/D condition or D/P backstab thief, stunlock, condition or Nike warrior or perplexity necromancer. All of these specs are no fun to fight 1vs1…

I usually like to solo-roam, but it’s even more fun to roam the borderlands with a friend or some, which enables your team to utilize group synergies and to cover your team mates’ weaknesses to certain degrees — This is what the game is balanced for after all (and except for some cheesey stuff, Anet did a pretty good job in balancing stuff for small team fights in my opinion).

From my own experience solo-roaming can be quite frustrating because you can’t find single enemies or small groups which are willing to fight, but so far we’ve always found a solution for this: ask politely (/join party), visit the OS arena or make “friends” on other servers (always nice to have some random role playing going on with transformation tonics) so you’ll get recognized as a fair and honorable solo roamer on the borderlands. It won’t deter gank squads and zergs from steamrolling you, but it makes things alot easier and more fun in my experience.

Usually, if we are in a group and encounter a lone roamer, we don’t engage first. If an enemy abuses a cheesy build, acted dishonorable before, actively engages or threatens one of our low levels / dolyaks / camps / sentries, he’s in trouble nonetheless.

Anything goes.
That said, I had great times with a support guard while playing a power or hybrid D/D ele: one can take a punch and one can deliver some. You both share aggro (which can’t be said about duos with a mesmer or thief) and have superior boon and heal support. Might is easily stacked while maintaining protection and regeneration nearly all the time when using well-rounded builds.

No Walking.6349:

1) Make the loot equivalent to a world boss chest

While I agree that the loot from the chest could be improved (superior blueprints, maybe?), I don’t think that rares and exotics are the way to go here. That would only bring more PvE farmers to the site.

No Walking.6349:

2) Make all red/green/blue servers go into the same OS map, EOTM style.

Please, no! There’s already so much ganking and zerging going on in the spawn area, it isn’t funny. Overflowing OS would be the death sentence for duels and small scale fights because of constant zerging in the arena and at choke points of the jumping puzzle.

echo.2053:

bro our teammates already make up our lacking area which is running into multiples with our majority 1 target skills.

There are several weapons on other professions which only hit single targets with most abilities except for 1 or 2 skills, but well – yeah, let’s forget that. Also let us forget that those spells usually hit quite hard or have some great utility.

echo.2053:

Clearly you choose ele, guard and teef because you know how insane op damaging time warp, veil, and portal are.

Most good mesmer players I play with or against usually slot none or at most one of those utilities / elites. Go figure.
And yes, I chose my main professions because they don’t have time warp, veil and portals

btw: TW is awesome for nukes, confusion bombs and disco fox (chaos armor)

echo.2053:

lol lockdown mesmer, a war with a hammer can do that role far superiorly and have better survivability

Hammer warriors are predictable and easily countered by stability and protection. A well played lock-down / boon-shatter mesmer is not, has good range pressure and a well rounded mix of hard- and soft-CC and at least one instant interrupt and invulnerability (with IP).
I also think mesmers – if played correctly – have far superior survivability compared to warriors in team fights. That’s just my experience from extensive roaming (2-5 vs eq). YMMV.

zest.4192:

what if clones could only be damaged by their main target and were hazy, insubstantial, and tinted some color for all other enemies

While I think this is a creative and interesting idea, there are some inherent weaknesses to it: Does every enemy has his own three illusions to fight? If not, what happens to unbound enemies if Debilitating Dissipation triggers, are they changed to be single-target? Who can kill unbound clones from Deceptive Evasion and the likes? Etc, etc.

Velektrian.5491:

I would love to see this, A Mesmer Frontal Fighter.

Yeah, a caster class steamrolling everything… /shrug

The game is —fortunately -- not balanced around zerg game-play. In small scale (team death-match, duels, roaming funzies, etc) and coordinated large scale combat (GvG, open field) mesmers can fill several niches: boon stripping, interrupts, lock-down, diversion and heavy (single target) damage. I experienced how efficient a mesmer can be in shutting down other players (including me), and I also played with mesmers in a focus group which did not only help in locking down the enemies’ focus groups, support builds and range damage dealers, but also dealt stupid amounts of damage.

If all you want is zerging (i.e. pain train steamrolling), mesmer may just not be your thing: go GWEN.
In every other, more competitive mode and scheme you’ll find a role which mesmers can excel at. You don’t play this game on your own but with team mates who should provide support in situations in which your build is lacking (e.g. condition removal, baseline damage mitigation, etc). Please stop trying to argue you’d need 6/6/6/6/6, hard-hitting illusions with stupid amounts of HP or even more or stronger lock-down mechanisms to be competitive. Mesmers are in a good place right now, it’s just that PU condi, PU phantasm and dueling shatter (assassin/zerker gear) builds aren’t that efficient (almost-insta-kills, condition spam, perma-lockdown, etc) in team environments like PvP and small scale WvW if the other team runs a well-rounded setup and knows how to play and communicate.

Staff Eles can be squishy if built squishy. Sth like this (Poor man’s staff ele) or this (if you got enough coin to spend) will give you ridiculous amounts of survivability if played correctly. You can even go Valkyrie-glass (no additional toughness) if you feel like it without ever dying. Staff ele has by far the strongest crowd control abilities in mid to large scale fights, and if you don’t focus on pure damage you’ll find that attunement dancing is not only viable for D/D builds but also on staff.
Every #2 spell in every attunement deals stupid amounts of damage and should be on cooldown most of the time; #3 and #4 are mostly for minor support or self-sustain and #5 is the go-to damage, go-to water combo field, go-to hard-CC and go-to soft-CC.

If you think any other class can be more versatile or deliver better control on a large scale, you might want to look into staff ele again in detail, before stating it would be too squishy. Also positioning and situational awareness, plus a supportive team environment will compensate for every lack of passive defense (specially armor) and allows for strong offensive capabilities and even stronger area control from 1200 units distance.

I don’t mind dying when trying to engage superior numbers, and I think any stat bonuses wouldn’t be fair nor fun.

The only thing bothering me is that every enemy who walked over my character’s face has a chance of getting a precursor. I wouldn’t mind if the drop chance for items of players with the outnumbered buff would be either zero, or if the only lootable items were guaranteed to be grey ones. XP and WXP may still be given to everyone, but I would feel so much more comfortable, knowing that the kill was not rewarding in any other way.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Then you specific stated that you have no problem with IP in builds.

Yes, I don’t have severe problems dealing with most engineer condition builds which use IP because I put several condition removal tools into most of my builds, and am able to mitigate most of the nasty stuff which would otherwise be actively applied (also includes direct damage burst). Also most players using the goto FotM builds are just bad and provide no challenge whatsoever, even when they run very powerful builds.

Anyways, this doesn’t change my point that IP and its passive nature are bad mechanics for the reasons already mentioned. It is beyond my grasp that some of you seem to think such mechanics are good and needed for balanced and fun fights, instead of asking for changes, or discussing what doesn’t work without IP and how Anet could buff such builds and play styles in a more engaging manner.

coglin.1867:

With all of the traits out there on every profession, on crit/hit % sigils, and on hit % chance runes, it sure seems particularly bias of you to single this trait out to crusade against.

Go ahead and open topics on sigil of fire / air, sharper images, etc if you think they should be reworked, and I’ll try to provide some input there as well. This thread happens to be about IP, so I shared my opinion about it. I’m really sorry bout that.

You can nit-pick all day long about stuff which has nothing to do with the topic and ignore any argument I provide, but please take note that I’ll just leave this conversation in this case, because it won’t get us any further.

maeggle.6021:

you can use kits, turrets, gadgets or other skills of your main weapon set, you know?

Please excuse my brain fart right there. Does it make more sense to you now?

dancingmonkey.4902:

The devs stated previously one of the intended values of this trait is to offer subsequent damage for the weak weapons damage on build that do not run kits. This was posted after the discussion that stemmed from the dev posted balancing philosophies in which they stated, the engineers under powered weapons was an intended design.

I read such statements in the past, but I don’t agree with the approach. It would make more sense to me if they made some skills, which aren’t used often with multi-kit-builds, more valuable instead of advertising random proc traits to compensate for lack of weapon skills damage.

Andy.9137:

So you are saying the engineers sole purpose is to proc IP during a fight and that there’s nothing else they are doing that’s killing you?

We can do the cherry picking all night long if you so desire. Let us not discuss the topic but assert some random stuff which doesn’t provide anything for both of us.
To be honest I don’t have many problems with p/s + bk + ip builds while roaming in WvW, but I still think the trait sucks big time. I don’t like fighting randomness, it does not promote clever gameplay for both parties — as stated several times already.
And obviously the answer to your question would be: no.

Where exactly did I talk about weapon swaps on engineers and what has that to do with IP?

dancingmonkey.4902:

So maeggle, what your saying is, that in a very unreasonable build that no one uses, that is specifically build by you as an example, makes the trait OP?

Please go to the engineer forum for an up to date list of FotM p/s + BK builds. I just chose some common traits and gear because I didn’t bother. It doesn’t really matter because my point was and still stands that you cannot avoid IP like any other burst skill. Even backstabs (QQ skill #1) can be dodged by observing and listening. Eviscerate, burning speed, shatters, etc are obvious skills and can be dodged or mitigated via boons and skills pretty reliably.

If so much comes from a mere master trait, maybe it would be wise to ask for buffs to other aspects of the engineers’ skills and utilities instead of defending a random proc from one trait.

dancingmonkey.4902:

sigh No, actually the engineer cannot. That is in no way how it works.

That is exactly how it works. You also got toolbelt skills, btw.

dancingmonkey.4902:

B) Kits take a limited utility slot limiting a condition cleanse or stun break options

Other classes also have to pick either defensive or offensive utilities… Your point is?

dancingmonkey.4902:

C) Now your crying fowl with IP by presuming no one is permitted to run a full turret build (has no weapon swap), all elixir HgH build (has no weapon swap), and gadgeteer build (has no weapon swap).

I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me here, because nothing of what you wrote relates to anything I stated. You’re free to run all of those builds. Btw, I’d really like to see some of the skills involved to be buffed slightly.
What I don’t agree on, though, is that IP should be necessary to be on-par with other players and builds (which already is the case to be honest). The trait has no skill-reliant counter, thus it is a bad one.

coglin.1867:

Wow, yet your perfectly fine with 1000 auto attacks that Are cleave on other professions in soldiers gear. But your completely against an engineer with a auto attack of 150 + 2s bleed for a total 400ish getting a trait designed to subsequent it’s damge? That sure seems biased.

sigh you can use kits, turrets, gadgets or other skills on your main weapon set, you know?

dancingmonkey.4902:

This sure seems to be a poorly thought out statement. The devs stated before this trait allows subsequent damage for the weak weapons damage on build that do not run kits. So how you came to your assessment is beyond me.

Please read again, or just read along if you didn’t get my point yet:
Off-hand pistol, rocket boots and flame turrets (as well as the supply crate) can be used to apply burning on a slow rate without relying on kits. If you want to have better access to burning you can throw a BK and the FT toolbelt skill into the mix.
I do not quite see the necessity for putting the most reliable and most efficient way of getting an opponent burnt on a trait. As I already stated there is no counter play to it like you’d have by evading / LoSing / blocking / blinding / interrupting certain skills with certain effects. IP just cannot be avoided (except for killing the engineer before he can land a single crit), thus it promotes no skilled gameplay.

dancingmonkey.4902:

If you take a full dire gear engineer with trait points invested for IP compared to a warrior with hammer, axe, mace, or greatsword, in all soldiers gear, and of those auto attacks by themselves, significantly out damage the pistol or rifle auto attack on the engineer with IP.

Yes, please more of this AA-till-dead nonsense! … Don’t mind range, don’t mind utility and mitigation skills, don’t mind conditions and damage coefficients on #2-#5, don’t mind anything which goes beyond raw numbers.

What build do you run on your engineer? I mean, you are telling us what they can and cannot do, so it is reasonable to share your build. What seems odd, is that you refer to the profession in terms of “them” instead of “us”, which displays a clear and defined biased against the profession as a whole.

When I’m on my engineer I like to run my rifle hgh build, cause I don’t like playing condition builds (even tho my ele relies on burning and bleeds for some additional damage and utility, and my guardian can also put some more pressure on opponents via burning), but well, that’s totally unrelated to IP. I was speaking of full condition or hybrid engineer builds….

dancingmonkey.4902:

This whole angle of what conditions a profession can apply or reapply is irrelevant. The only thing that matters, is how much those skills do in damage over time when added up and totaled, in comparison to a comparable direct damage build.

It starts to matter if you can mitigate the one but not the other. As stated above, I don’t mind reapplication or strong condition pressure as long as I can deal with it in a manner which requires me to use my own and my characters abilities to deal with it. You seem to be keen on trying to twist my words here and relate to the stupid “conditions are OP discussion” while they are not. We can’t have a serious and constructive discussion by reducing everything to common catch-phrases (“conditions OP”, “thieves OP”, “warriors OP”, etc instead of trying to single out stuff which allows some builds to become over the top).

So… if it is redundant, why leave it? Auto procs dumb down fights because there is nothing to mitigate it reliably. Even ranged auto attacks can crit once in a while, which puts another 4 to 6 seconds of burning every 10ish seconds on you.
Engineers already have great access to several conditions (confusion is one of them, btw) and cover conditions via traits and low-cooldown-spells.
Why give them traits like IP when most condition and hybrid engineer builds already can reapply strong conditions faster then necros while having better access to defensive spells and boons? I don’t see how IP improves overall gameplay, player skill and fun for all players involved.

Well, Ele is on-par and can be ahead of guardians in terms of defensive boon support, and also provides severeal offensive boons (both only if traited for it) as well as stupid amounts of combo fields and effects. No guardian can do that no matter how you build it.

• Warriors can provide strong offensive boons (shouts / banners), boon removal (shouts & warhorn), heavy crowd control and supportive combo finishers on most weapons.
• Necros are superior in terms of boon removal & boon corruption and supports via disabling your enemies.
• Mesmers support via AoE-cap-abuse, heavy CC, boon sharing and boon removal (if built for it).
• Engineers provide awesome support via elixirs, toolkits, CC and stupid amounts of blast finishers.
• Thieves provides support via stealth & stomp interruption while still dealing massive damage.
• Rangers are masters of regeneration & swiftness while running rather selfish builds. Spirits provide the team with stupidly strong buffs, and they may use short cooldown shouts for some more support and condition removal.

Some of those classes may not shine in the current sPvP meta, but all of them have very good support at their fingertips. Some have to build for it, others have it by default. None is superior over the other whatsoever in terms of support. Every class can fill its supportive niche and can be great at it.

tl;dr: Support != defensive boon provision…

Personally I love to roam with my thief (burst or interrupt build) and / or guardian (buff bot tank) buddies. Also ele + ele can be fun in a trollish manner because you can’t be killed without some organized and simultaneous spikes.

What didn’t work out that great when duo-roaming was with

• mesmers (shatter, boon shatter and phantasm) because you get focused pretty much exclusively while mesmer utilities are rather selfish and they lack spike capabilities (well, at least it requires setup and time).
• Medi guard builds rely on your boon support when it should be the other way round; They can’t do anything better than a good thief (damage-wise) and need their active defense skills to survive themselves. Also they lack sustain in long team fights…
• DPS warriors – too much focus on you while the warrior whirls around like crazy. Meanwhile you have to sustain severe condition focus all by yourself. Not so much fun.
• HGH direct damage Engi – mh… may be fun, but only if your buddy uses his throw-elixir-skills wisely
• Condi necros love the perma-burning, long duration bleeds and chill you can stack on opponents, but it can be quite hard to sustain both of you while still trying to keep pressure when the necro gets focused
• Rangers can be great in supporting a group, but I’d rather have a boon support guardian with me than a ranger when you prefer duo-over full-group-roaming.

After all everything goes and can be equally fun. That said I like me some boon support or some reliable stealth in outnumbered fights, so I’d chose support guardian or direct damage thieves…

Only downside in bringing a char from 1 to 80 with tomes would be the lack of experience and comfort with certain playstyles of the class.

Not sure about the reduction of the skill duration (I think there should be some kind of wind-up phase even without the stun) and thus the reduction of ini investment.

What I think would work is if the stun was replaced by cripple application for the normal duration of the skill or a short-term immobilize if the first wind-up connects (I hate immobilizes, so let’s just ignore the latter). Most players already walk or dodge out after the stun wore off, so slowing them down while pistol-whipping seems just as reasonable to ensure some damage without leaving it be a 3-in-1 skill (damage, control & (self-)support → lowering the control aspect → … → profit!).

While I agree that conditions have several faults (and the original post being slightly amusing), the direct damage reduction won’t affect us WvWers (roamers, zerglings, raiders, etc) that much, because the actual effective damage done even with full berserker builds is much lower compared to e.g. dungeon speed run builds (which usually involve banners, offensive party auras, offensive buff food, etc). In WvW most balanced builds cannot utilize all of that stuff, which makes an overall reduction of critical damage only hurting for those who rely on few big numbers instead of being able to deal with enemies fighting back (zerker GS warriors with stupid survivability and annoying D/P milquetoasts come to mind). Yes, if we don’t adapt those will take longer to take down even on my more balanced builds (which already utilize some active and armor- and HP-pool-defense).

One thing is never considered, tho: If an enemy is less threatening (i.e. less direct damage) I can slightly reduce the investment in stats which raise my defense against direct damage (i.e. more power, more healing power or more HP), which ultimately help me to deal against condi builds as well.

There are several issues with conditions right now: namely spammability, auto-procs, immobilize-stacking, perplexity runes (still), torment, etc. Overall conditions provide too much utility and damage (especially with +duration food) for low investment, even in group fights, which this game is all about.
This stuff has to be fixed, yes; Once the feature patch is delivered we have to continue to make noise. I don’t think intruducing ferocity / reducing overall +crit damage is a bad thing, though — imho it is a good step even for PvP in WvW because it levels the ground between builds which require you to feed on defensive stats and their biggest offenders, which usually only needed to push offensive stats without investing into defensive ones. (Also: Sigil of Generosity + Battle on ele, anyone? )

First person view was available during the EotM tests, I think. They have the option available on their test clients but I guess there are still some major issues with a PoV camera (e.g. wall clipping, orientation problems, effects overload, etc) which they could not resolve by now.

Maybe some day we can craft superior siege blueprints via crafting stations (lvl 0 items which yield zero crafting experience ofc) instead of using the mystic toilet…

The knockback on the tornado elite does not ignore stability on foes. If you happen to have stability up you won’t get knocked around and the “immune” message is shown to the ele.

May you have been fallen victim to Sigil of Nullification?

Engineers may also harass the enemy’s backline (rifle elixir builds are awesome) which helps your zerg / group to take down their meatball which then lacks support.
’Nades are fun (so is the flamethrower, but it lacks damage and utility in large scale combat), but they are not always the best choice.

Please don’t try to fit every class into being an AoE tank in large scale combat. You can be far more efficient as an engineer by not going for the stacked melee train.

As I said, more armor won’t better what I’d define as our weak spots.
Armor in general should not be too important for us, because we need to dodge key skills anyways (again: a serious issue stems from unavoidable auto procs of traits in condition builds) and rely on kiting and distance (300+ on dagger mainhand, 300 to 900 on scepter mainhand and 1200+ with staff). If armor is what you crave for, then I think you should change your overall playstyle.

We’re in a good spot right now, other classes and builds aren’t.

We’re casters — casters have low armor and high DPS (we really have) and awesome utility.

Also armor is nothing which helps us too much. We’re just too vulnerable to hard and soft CC (lockdown), interrupts and condition overload (due to the low base hp) and rely heavily on boons (protection, regeneration, vigor) for self-sustain, thus being at a disadvantage against the current PvP meta (hambow & stunlock warriors, boon hate, condition builds).

If you compare the increase in medium armor against low armor, you’ll see that it only increases the effective HP by ~7%. Compare that to protection (we’ve good access to it) which grants us -30% direct damage input. If you play staff or dagger-offhand you also have frost aura for another 10% direct damage reduction. This is far more than all thieves and most engineer and ranger builds can achieve.

Ljiona.9142:

It should have been a necro only spell. Since they have the worse mobility, they should have gotten a decent spell that causes immobility.

Good point! It’s stupid to get tormented by warriors, thieves and mesmers alike, who also happen to be the most mobile classes in-combat…

Not sure about your thoughts about possible mechanics, but I guess we don’t have to think about any fine-tuning unless condition management gets a serious overhaul anyways.

This was a feature in the EotM tests which was assessed as a nice feature by many of my fellow players and myself. Everyone else can see the indicator, so why should’t the commander be able to locate him- or herself in a pile of people as well?

Also it reduces the risk of running around tagged-up because you forgot to turn it off after changing maps and stuff. Really, it’s just a nice QoL feature which will be followed by more changes to the squad system in near future hopefully.

WilnerGW.3275:

So i guess, its better for a new GW2 player like me, play a mesmer than wasting my time on an Ele, right?

Mesmer can be easy mode. If you want to go that way, just choose warrior instead because they are even easier to play.

If you do well on ele nowadays, you probably have a pretty good understanding of game mechanics and all the other classes (speaking about WvW small- and mid-scale combat) and will do fine on every other class because you know stuff many others don’t “need” to bother with.

Some mesmer builds are very efficient and easy to play while providing the player with some room for mistakes (invulnerability, evade and block skills on short cooldowns, stealth and stealth plus the Prismatic Understanding trait, teleports and clones).

There are some ele builds which may also be used to trash mobs fast or to faceroll inexperienced players, but overall the mechanics don’t provide a huge margin for errors because of the lack of effective active defense on offensive weapon sets, as well as high cooldowns on utilities which are slotted to compensate for this very reason.

Elementalists aren’t in a bad spot, can dish out some heavy numbers and survive nuclear wars (even after all the nerfs we received), but we’re also easy prey once CC’d and prone to condition bombing. Mesmers have more ways to avoid any of that passively by sacrificing a clone or two, or by blowing a skill on short cooldown.

At least it’s way easier to play a mesmer with an offensive spec than an ele since the active defense part on mesmer is easier to learn than it is on ele, I guess…

Since I will forget to mention some (most) of my thoughts about possible balance adjustments I’ll put the disclaimer upfront. I’ll start with some comments on the previewed elementalist changes and will then go over to some more general stuff which I think could help in levelling things out.

In my opinion the Ele can be used as a baseline for balance: All weapon sets have nice trade offs between damage, control and support. The damage scaling is okay and one is able to build skill rotations which boost certain playstyles / builds (strategies, combos, skill synergies, rotations, burst setup, etc). Our burst requires a setup in most cases (neither do I like fresh air burst builds nor do I think that burning speed into lightning flash should be left in the game because it counters what I like about the elementalist) which can be countered, but if the burst lands it can hurt quite a bit. We are able to boost our sustain with defensive boons (protection, vigor and regeneration) while raising our direct and condition damage with might stacks and having a high fury uptime. We can be great team players with all the boon distribution, combo and skill effects. Our gameplay requires attention and commitment (except for some gimmick builds which have no sustain whatsoever). That said…

Karl McLain.5604:

• Signet of Restoration
• Armor of Earth
• Water Trident

All 3 seem fair to me. The stability is nice, but I don’t see this as a must-have.
I also like the addition of an active trigger to Cleansing Water on scepter, which will improve S/D sustain a little, and boosts S/F ability to counterplay condition builds even more.

Karl McLain.5604:

• Burning Speed

BS already is very strong. I don’t see how the evade effect would help us in any way, but it would make one of our spike skills or burst setups overpowered, thus probably subject to hard nerfs in the future. Please refrain from adding an evasion frame to this skill. It hits hard, it has utility, so let it be interruptable without the need for wards or shocking auras. Please just fix the teleport-glitch on this skill, which allows abusive gameplay.

Karl McLain.5604:

• Frozen Burst

In my opinion this addition sounds nice because it broadens possible skill rotations on both D/D and D/F.

We have great sustain and good damage, but what bothers me is the vulnerability to both soft and hard CC. A long-duration immobilize (1.5+ seconds) enables our opponents to put heavy pressure on us while we cannot counterplay in some way (cannot turn, cannot hit what is behind uns, etc), this is especially true against condition builds, which will melt us if played properly.

There are some suggestions and thoughts floating through my head which could improve conditions and the control aspects of fights in GW2:

Immobilize breaks on hit OR Immobilize has a chance of 50% to break on hit
Immobilize is a very strong CC condition which allows for setting up bursts. It should not guarantee to land complex burst rotations but only help in setting them up. It would also mitigate the current problems with immobilize stacking. We’d still be able to disable a foe for some time to close the gap or to create one, but it would reduce the face roll gameplay which some builds currently are.

Confusion damage is raised significantly, but all stacks vanish once the confusion damage is applied
Confusion is an indirect CC condition in that it allows a player to decide if he wants to trade damage for damage. There is no need to punish a player more than once if confusion damage would be raised, and it would make fights against certain mesmer and engineer builds much more fun and engaging than it currently is. There is a certain attitude that confusion would counter skill spam. That is only partly true, in that it currently locks out most builds from an active fight. If confusion damage would be applied only once (while getting higher damage ofc) it would be a much better counter to mindless skill spam but still allow for active play.

Condition burst triggered on-crit should go
I understand with bleed stacks on critical hits; they boost overall damage output just like direct damage crits would. On mesmers with clones and illusions or any other build with pets or minions it gets kinda stupid, but that’s another case. What I don’t like are triggers for burning on crit. It seems rather stupid to me to put burst capabilities on random procs without tells. A good way to adjust such traits was presented by you guys by binding it to DS#1. Engineers don’t need IP because they already have access to burning on certain weapon and kit skills. If they want to set their opponents on fire, they can use those.

I also had some thoughts on hard crowd control and such stuff, but it’s getting late and I feel inapt to write them down right now.

Maybe Anet should think about enabling the “outnumbered” buff on PvE maps…

(And as seen in the video: immobilize stacking kills kittens and puppies)

Ins.7139:

ZBs […] although we outnumbered you most the time

That had to be a huuuuge zerg you had there. Never seen a ZBs raid with less than 30+ players so far…

Eloquence.5207:

I wish this game has crosshair aiming instead of tab-targeting.

Every cleaving, and most projectile skills can be used without a target. I use this on my ele all the time to hit stuff which cannot be hit when targetted, to hit stuff which is out of range, or to avoid the kittenty movement-tracking (hey, let’s shoot the moon because the target is jumping like an Asura! …) on staff, and to hit what I’m facing when I’m on D/D. Ofcourse there are skills which require either a ground target (most of the fields would be stupid if I couldn’t place them freely) or a visual target (e.g. flame burst, lightning surge and comet), but the latter are rare and wouldn’t either make much sense if they’d be ground-targetted or PbAoE, or they’d become too powerful.

Iavra.8510:

Yeah, that’s why i’m for keeping the downed state as is and remove hardressing in combat.

I’ve mixed feelings about it, since it’s also a mechanism which we sometimes utilize when roaming with 3+ gals and guys. If the opponents does not disturb the healer, I think it’s their fault. What I already suggested in another topic is DR the more people ressurect one player. For small groups this wouldn’t change anything, but it would make it harder for bigger groups to hard-rez their folks.

Due to the sometimes strange OOC-determinition, it wouldn’t make much sense to only allow hard-rezzing when OOC, because in small scale fights you sometimes have to travel half the map until you get out of combat, but in large zerg fights you are 2 steps away from your opponents and suddenly get out of it. Until they fix the sometimes weird OOC-conditions this would benefit large zergs even more.

Iavra.8510:

But good to hear that we have fans now, Jathres will be pleased, i guess ^^

A big step forward towards conquering the world, I guess…

You (OP) obviously have absolutely no clue about “skilled” gameplay when you talk about zerg busting as if it was something which required special talents and abilities. Get off your high horse and broaden your insight a little, maybe we can then talk about skillful play… /shrug

lavra: As a fan of your group I expected a different view on the subject, as some of your group’s clips show how you utilize the rallying mechanisms in your favour against superior forces…

• CC already is over the top.
• Downed state helps both sides alike (even the most prominent guild groups take at least 2 banner warriors with them, if we are talking about large scale combat)
• AoE limits are there for some reasons, and abandoning such limits would hurt “organized” groups even more (because most guild groups know how to leverage the capping, which wouldn’t be possible with unlimited AoE effects). If you’d implement uncapped AoE, it would outperform every kind of cleave and would also require unlimited boon application, condition removal and combo effects. That would make for some interesting fights… yeah… no. It wouldn’t lead to anything but even more mindless spamming and bunkering.

Ikaros.7812:

Everyone else is either perma-stealthed or talking to the armor repair NPC at their home spawn.

:D this

Aberrant.6749:

It really doesn’t help smaller groups nearly as much as it does larger ones.

You can’t expect to win every outnumbered encounter if your opponents are not afk-ing.
If my / our opponents are clever, experienced or good enough, or just have plain more luck, then so be it. I don’t get why some are expecting to win every 1vs5 and 20vs80 — it may work every once in a while if your opponent lets it happen, but if they get their act together even when individually not too skilled / experienced, then they are offered the same chances you have, just with more people on their side, in which case it is just fair if you cannot beat their group.

The amount of CC and spammability of disabling / limiting conditions is something I think should be reduced (e.g. DR or breaking immobilize on dmg, etc) in a way which favours soft gameplay skills and not only the amount of disabling spells. But in the end we just use the same mechanics, and limiting such abilities would just reduce chances of winning when beeing outnumbered even more.
Imho a change to rally mechanics and maybe even sth. like a logarithmic reduction on HP-gain from each additional healer (more than one) would be nice, but I haven’t thought about benefits and drawbacks of the latter too much yet.