Guild Wars 2

Erzian.5218:

The basic skills: positioning, timing your abilities and dodges and rotating between capture points are pretty similar for every class, skill rotations are not particularly hard and you learn them in a couple of hours.

Thief is somewhat different (that is probably while many people find it hard to play or play against): It does not have cool downs but instead you have to manage your initiative and as a result it profits less from weapon swapping.
Going from thief to anything else is a “world of difference” too, no more evade spam, no more abusing teleports, no more absurdly high mobility etc, Mesmer is probably closest to thief in terms of abusing game mechanics.

Many people seem to measure how “easy” or “difficult” a class/build is by the amount of hits it can take, however, I think that it is wrong because you also have to take into account the amount of active defense you can afford to fail and how many skills you have to save your butt when you do a crucial mistake. For instance: Thief has much more dodges/evades (teleports can serve as evades too), therefore it less dramatic if you waste one as for instance a Necromancer. Every class that has a blink (Nec only if you have placed the Wurm in a decent spot before you engaged) can afford to get caught out of position more often than for instance an engineer or even warrior. Everyone that runs two stun breaks (or skills that can serve the same purpose e.g. lightning flash, mesmer staff 3 etc.), can afford to get stunned more often than people who have only one and so on.

This post has it right imo.

People don’t like to lose, many people become emotionally invested in “their” class.

The biggest issue is people don’t like losing and value “1v1” to much.

MMO especially WvW “Roaming” isn’t a game mode WvW is a sandbox and people have put personal rules on “Roaming”. Some are widely used like “bow” for duels still many can’t remember that everything goes in WvW.

The rules go out the window if you where fighting and get ran over by a zerg or someone jumps in then it’s OK to be a sandbox environment nothing is OP because you got ran over by 20 people, it’s ok that “stuff happens” in that scenario.

There is all kinds of divides in this game

D/D ele vs non-arcana Eles.
Non-PU vs PU
Soldier Warriors vs Zerk
Bunker vs DPS
Zergers vs Roamers
Shadows arts thieves vs Non Shadow arts thieves
Direct damage vs Condi damage
Perplexity Engi vs Non perplexity Engi
Condi necro vs Power necro
Pro Dhuumfire vs Anti Dhuumfire

It goes on and on I am in alot of different forums for the classes I play mostly in Ele forums.

It doesn’t just happen with one class vs another alot of times it’s same class vs same clkittene.

I looked at sPvp where celestial ammy Eles are doing well. Obviously this is with rune of strength help but the same can be done with hoelbrak and a sigil of force.

I dropped a lot of my crit damage but my weakness was other ele’s with crit damage so I put on a few celestial pieces to raise crit damage and healing. I noticed a difference with the sustain just from duels it was much better. I think the main stats to look at celestial for is some healing power, some vit, and some crit damage.

The sigil seems fine to me it just wasn’t great with the old gcd on sigils if you had to chose. I ran this on my engi with great it’s on hit not crit seems good to. You notice when procs.

It depends on if you cared about damage/crit damage more then the other stats. Every crit damage set was nerfed celestial was nerfed more then the other crit damage sets because it had less power to start.

You could still make celestial to round out some of your stats and slot trinkets for more damage and vice versa.

It’s up to you but if you where to say do celestial armor soldiers trinkets or soldiers armor and celestial trinkets you would see that your numbers are pretty close to the same. No matter how you split it up now the stats are about the same.

Celestial trinkets where bad but now they aren’t to bad.

The celestial amulet gives more then the top, the rings give more then the weapons. I am running celestial amulet, 1 ring, 1 accessory now.

This was on reddit about a day or so ago just posting it incase anyone is interested. This is ARMOR only not mix and match or any of that jazz.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/249pc7/effective_power_and_effective_health_of_all/

Just remember this is a guide not law especially for PvP/WvW.

Quote from the Creator on how to read the chart

I have calculated the percentage of the maximum. So a 50% Effective power means that set (all other things being equal) do half the damage of the highest DPS.

Effective power

Nomen E Power EHP

Berserker 100% 35.46%
Assassin 91.88% 35.46%
Zealots 88.25% 35.46%
Rampager 78.15% 35.46%
Valkyrie 76.53% 59.91%
Soldiers 75.21% 84.22%
Knight 73.19% 56.46%
Caviler 63.46% 56.46%
Sentinel 62.36% 100.00%
Carrion 62.36% 59.91%
Cleric 62.36% 49.85%
Celestial 61.84% 63.91%
Magi 40.36% 59.91%
Rabid 40.36% 49.85%
Dire 34.41% 84.22%
Shaman 34.41% 71.13%
Settler 34.41% 56.46%
Giver 34.41% 56.46%
Apothecary 34.41% 49.85%

Effective Health

Sentinel 62.36% 100.00%
Soldiers 75.21% 84.22%
Dire 34.41% 84.22%
Shaman 34.41% 71.13%
Celestial 61.84% 63.91%
Valkyrie 76.53% 59.91%
Carrion 62.36% 59.91%
Magi 40.36% 59.91%
Knight 73.19% 56.46%
Caviler 63.46% 56.46%
Settler 34.41% 56.46%
Giver 34.41% 56.46%
Cleric 62.36% 49.85%
Rabid 40.36% 49.85%
Apothecary 34.41% 49.85%
Berserker 100% 35.46%
Assassin 91.88% 35.46%
Zealots 88.25% 35.46%
Rampager 78.15% 35.46%

SonOfKrypton.4357:

Mbelch.9028:

How does your ele feel to you now? Have you changed your look a lot?

Here is my Ele after the wardrobe patch!

Regarding how Ele feels to me now, I feel like my Ele hasn’t really changed at all. I have always been really good at Elementalist and the game in general. Pre-patch I could win all of my 1v1s so this patch has really just opened up doors for me to 1v3 or be a 1 man havoc-squad etc.

So glad to hear you’re enjoying the patch! xx

ATTUNE your not pale anymore

The Rune is high priced because it is good in WvW/PvE supply and demand. In PvE it was all about Scholar runes now Rune of strength is a valid choice for PvE meta.

They went up in price as soon as DnT released a post on reddit with dps calculations to back it up. If Rune of the Grove was the top dps rune and DnT released a post on reddit the price would have done the same thing. Reddit posts affect your TP prices if any of you didn’t know that.

Sigil of water spiked high one day because of a reddit post. I made rune of strength go up in price when I posted the 6/6 was fixed a few months back.

Not everyone checks the GW2 reddit but it has a big impact on the GW2 game and economoy.

This is a spvp issue and still it’s just 1 class and still it isn’t like teams are running 4 engis.

The OP is also the author of threads such as “Rune of strength: the cookie cutter”.

Ok Nerf 1 rune set because of 1 class? I don’t understand the forums sometimes.

Nerf strength runes because to much damage everyone can use the rune but still nerf it because it’s to much damage. Nerf Balthazar because of 1 class that sounds silly if top teams start running 5 engi’s then we should sit down and talk about the runes if 5 balthazaar engi’s becomes a thing.

Dee Jay.2460:

Welcome to condition wars mate. It’s all about passive play and condition spam. Gone are the days of active combat where glass cannons fought each other in fast-paced but thrilling duels. Now it’s all about how fast you can apply how many conditions and how fast your enemy can remove them.

And idk about you, but Engineers were already very dominant before the patch. So they aren’t really “rising” anywhere if they are already on top.

And 45% Burn duration is a joke when the food alone add 40% duration to ALL conditions.

Yes, ANet for some reason has decided to take the worst aspects of their combat design and emphasize it even more.

Why are you copying and pasting? This is PvP not about WvW Engi’s are running grenth, perplexity, balthazaar, anti-toxin with AR, aristocracy runes in WvW.

Make a WvW thread and complain about solo roaming in another thread and how balance solo roaming should be.

Nerf Rune of the Trooper because they are the best runes for shout guardians in PvP.

dancingmonkey.4902:

bobomb.5209:

What other stat can literally double your damage? It’s called Ferocity. but doubling condition damage isn’t dependent on precision as well.

You mean like condition duration, that increases condition damage by 100% ? But you wish to ignore precision which in its weakest case is a 22% total damage increase? I assume your aware of the damage percentage increase of precision on condition builds right? I mean it is posted on the thread in which it was broke down. Yet you declare a solid 122% at minimum damage increase has no value?

Lucentfir.7430:

The application is spammable

Can I ask you to define for us the difference that suggest conditions are “spam” while every direct damage button mashing or consistent repeat of attacks is called what? I mean you have a generic buzz word for both cases right? Or is it just spam as well?

Buzzword! OP

For PvP

Lets do a quick comparison.

Rune of Hoelbrak vs Rune of Strength

• Sigil of battle: 20 second of might base

• Battle w/ Hoelbrak = 26 seconds
• Battle w/ Strength = 29 seconds

Blast finisher is the same as above

4th Piece for Hoelbrak vs Strength

• Hoelbrak= 13 seconds of might when you get struck
• Strength= 14.5 seconds of might when struck

OMG Strength gives so much more might we should nerf that down to +5% might durations! Inb4 the old durations where fine. Seriously though the difference is tiny.

Do I need -20% condition duration? Depends on class and build not everyone needs that 6/6.

Rune of Hoelbrak would still give you -20% condition duration comparable might stacks, throw on a sigil of battle + sigil of force and there you go very close to Rune of Strength. Hoelbrak is better in PvP if you sacrifice a sigil slot for sigil of force your dps difference to a Strength user is small. You could do the same thing with strength and go sigil of force but you can’t get the -20% condition duration. This is where the sacrifice comes into play.

We should prepare a rune of hoelbrak nerf thread? Also get a nerf sigil of force thread ready too.

If you nerf rune of strengths 7% damage modifier then hoelbrak becomes the winner especially in PvP. Hoelbrak stacks comparable might to strength, you have to give up a sigil for force to stay close to strength damage. Nothing has changed because power is still the most important stat to damage.

CptAurellian.9537:

It obviously isn’t. Let me re-quote what build he claimed was doing the stuff:

Lucente.5071:

Try running Celestial gear with a 0/0/6/6/2 setup and exuberance runes. It basically Min/Maxes all the stats a guard needs while being tanky and having great dps.

Ahh I must have missed that. I thought for sure it was that link the stats are similar just the HP is off thought the spread was pretty good.

This isn’t actually bad if you take that same build change it to celestial runes of exhuberence.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARSl0ApcoFCxaIEENR8QVVAgdS8fV61HRQkDA-TBCBABRv/gjKBJV9HAeCAmp8TFNJpojghLBAZA0HDA-e

NinjaEd.3946:

Many topics on this, really hope a moderator condenses it soon :/

Anywho, this rune set is a problem imo. Why? Because its way to passive and doesn’t require thinking to get many of the bonuses. The 6th bonus is naturally permanent from this rune unless the enemy never hits you. Granted boon stealing/ripping can counter this, not everyone is going to have that (mesmers would be the only one who would have it from either null field or sword or gs which all mesmers seem to have atleast 1 of). I don’t think this rune set should be nerfed to oblivion but there should be some tweaking done so that it leans on certain builds like

(1): 25 power
(2): 5% might duration
(3): 50 power
(4): 15% might duration; gain might for 10 seconds if you take more than 10% of your health from a single attack (5 second ICD)
(5): 100 power
(6): 20% might duration; +7% damage when over 6 stacks of might.

Simply being hit by anything to gain a boon is like saying “here, just have it”. Atleast this would focus more on specific builds who have to maintain stacks of might and not reward people for something they never have to think about.

So change it into special snowflake rune? This rune is a issue in your opinion because it’s to passive have you never looked at other runes in the game? I’m sure you have and maybe you could make a new topic on how you would rebalance all the runes. It might happen in a expansion. This is about rune of strength which doesn’t follow any special snowflake rules that are any different then any other rune set in the game.

Neko.9021:

sorrychief.2563:

So hard to catch a sword/x GS warrior with bull’s charge and lemongrass + dogged march.

Good thing that build doesn’t really do anything other than run away really fast.

Yea and they know it. Warriors running that who are actually roaming are only trolling and want you to chase them. I always laugh when a warrior engages me with a power sword build it just does no damage at all.

SkylightMoon.1980:

I have a build with those exact stats but the traits are 0/0/30/30/10. The power is 1800 though, not 2k. I don’t know how he’d get 2k power, I spent quite a bit of time rebalancing stats and what not to try to find the perfect balance.

This is the build they are talking about

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARSl0ApcoFCxaIEENR8QVVAgdS8fV61HRQkDA-TBDBwAGVewTdClKxWYCCwTAAnKLq0kkSHBjLBQCzPTUCKb/ByAoPGA-e

The rune of the dolyak gives great defensive stat spread if you don’t mind the terrible 6/6.

haviz.1340:

oZii.2864:

I haven’t tested it myself there was a thread on reddit one of DnT’s guides. Someone asked what is a option for Mesmer and Nike said Rune of Ranger is good for Ranger’s and Mesmers. I asked him if the 6/6 worked for Mesmer’s he said seems it does. Not sure if it is fixed or a bug but this was a few days after the patch.

Runes of the ranger gives you +7% dmg increase while having a minipet.

Oooo so vague and mysterious!. Apparently it’s more with a mistfire wolf since I said apparently I’m stating this as fact obviously.

That is a good read just saw it today and soldier’s gear looks even better now.

Cygnus.6903:

laquito.5269:

Cygnus.6903:

Is there any other choice to make as a power oriented spec though? Really?

Yes there is. Ogre, Scholar, Eagle, Air, Fire, Pack, Rage – just to name a few.

OT: Balanced until conditionspam gets nerfed.

So you’re saying those runes are equally viable?

Just naming Ogre, Rage, Air and Fire is pointless. Those are nowhere close to Strength.

For all but the most niche specs, Strength is the absolute go to right now. An awesome team with great communication can do with a few other runes, but you still need it.

If we go back Pre-Patch you best DPS rune was Scholar this was instagib Rune and really only good on thieves maybe some shatter builds, gimmick S/D burst Eles.

There was no ruby orbs so people took Ogre which was top dps for PvP purposes maybe throw on Strength Runes once they where fixed(after about a year) and Divinity runes for Raw stats. Then you had the Lyssa Runes. Those where really all anybody ran maybe a 2/2/2 might stacker HGH build for Engi’s.

Support runes: Soldier, Mercy and ?

Condition Runes: Nightmare and ?

Those are pretty much the meta runes, the game has been out for 2+ years now. We know how damage works whats important people are ignorant anymore in thinking the Sigil of Rage is hot and trying to kill everyone with haste.

There never was any real Rune diversity in s/tPvP you could do some gimmick build with gimmick runes to be “different” but Ogre was pretty much top for pvp damage because it reliably gave you the damage bonus.

Post patch we have Strength/pack mostly strength runes, the condition runes nightmare and balthazaar, trooper(shouts), mercy there maybe some new setups that come forward but my guess those would be support or condi setup.

Power/precision/crit damage power is more important then ever now and people that played for a long time knew it would be this way before the patch even hit. There was a ton of theorycrafting stating that the importance of power would be greater post patch.

The crit damage nerf made precision less valuable and power even more valuable then before. Precision runes, and crit damage runes don’t stand a chance against any power rune unless they give those crit damage and precision runes more power. They are there as filler lyssa was an exception only because of it’s 6/6.

LordByron.8369:

Ozii do really mesmer runes works for mesmer?
In the wiki it says the opposite.

@paavotar:
What about melandru runes?
What about hoelbrack?
No counterplay.
What about Water runes?

90% runes have passive bonuses why only power runes are OP now?

I haven’t tested it myself there was a thread on reddit one of DnT’s guides. Someone asked what is a option for Mesmer and Nike said Rune of Ranger is good for Ranger’s and Mesmers. I asked him if the 6/6 worked for Mesmer’s he said seems it does. Not sure if it is fixed or a bug but this was a few days after the patch.

Paavotar.3971:

LordByron.8369:

And you can see other runes do the same with chilling, fire, defense, and much more.

Simply the ferocity nerf push people into a search for the lost DPS and this was theeasier answer.

For example i don t get all people getting these runes and then using lemongrass in WWW….

The problem is that the runes offer you pretty much 100% uptime on that 7% extra damage while the ones with chill, fire etc are way harder to keep up because those conditions are harder to apply than might AND they are conditions so they are easier to cleanse denying the extra damage. Also they are conditions which doesn’t synergy as well with extra direct damage than might which is one of the most common and easiest to apply boons in the game.

Also the fact that the rune set itself offers 10s (without duration add) might on hit with 5s cooldown means that you will more than likely maintain the extra 7% through the runes itself already without the need of any synergy from your build or your teammates.

I think I start to lean towards the fact that the proc on hit is the thing that makes the rune set a bit too strong. Without it professions that could stip boons could actually have atleast some way to control the +7% dmg on the enemy.

Ranger Runes! So is it unfair that Rangers get +7% damage pretty much all the time? Apparently they also work for Mesmers so they would get that too. So now you need AI to use those Runes. Burn isn’t hard for a power engineer, chill would be easy on a power necro. Might is just more common as in many classes can usually get might in some form or from teammates.

Cygnus.6903:

I feel they are over the top. It is not that everybody has access to them that makes them balanced, but rather not every class can utilize them well that makes it a bit unbalanced.

I for one expect the nerf before conditions are getting a real one.

Yet this thread claims EVERYONE is using them. You have a team you get might from your team and you may have blast finisher but no fire fields. It all works out.

Arkimedes.8730:

Highchu.3806:

Whether its overpowered or not its starting to become a problem as its further diminishing our already small diversity in gear choices.

That’s the definition of overpowered. Games are competitions of ambiguous decision making. The rune allows you to trait tanky and deal high damage, which reduces the number of viable builds that can face players with this rune. Some classes utilize the runes more effectively than others, reducing the number of classes that meaningfully impact the game.

These runes remove real choice from the game, and that’s bad for everyone.

What choice is there? How would you take 16 power runes, 5 Precision main stat runes, 3 critical damage runes, and other, lets throw divinity and infiltration on there and make them equal for all classes for all builds?

So take 24 direct damage runes and change them to be equally good. It sounds easy to say there is a perceived problem, then pick the easy solution(nerf rune of strength) but it won’t fix the 23 other possible direct damage runes.

When you look at basically 20+ direct damage runes or those that “could” work for direct damage builds how do you make those runes good on every class, on every build? It isn’t that simple and Anet knew that there was probably going to be “best”. Powerr even stated that there will still be “best” runes.

You want damage you pick damage, people want regen they pick dwayna, they don’t pick dolyak runes.

The fact that you can build tanky and still do good damage as you put it is more builds not less. So pre-patch it was Orgre, Divinity, Lyssa(more for condi clear then DPS), maybe old strength runes with a 2/2/2 setup and?

Paavotar.3971:

The problem with the rune set in my mind is that it increases might duration by a huge 45% which makes might stacking really easy without much additional boon duration. 30% would be better here.

I have also a bit of problem with the hit proc that you get 10s (actually 14,5s with runes own duration add) pretty much every 5s. Thats one low CD right there, compare it to the Rune of Rage which has the same proc expect its 15s of fury with 30s CD. Maybe increase the CD into 15s or atleast 10s so you have a bit harder time to keep the sixth bonus up with only the runes or if someone strips your boons.

Then the 7% damage increase. I suppose it could stay as is, the 2% reduction I was thinking wouldn’t change that much, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it a bit lower.

All in all, I think it gives a tad too much.

These are fair points but the problem is Fury v Might. Fury is 420 precision which is 12 stacks of might if you compared them straight up to get 420 extra Power.

The potency depends on your build, modifiers critical damage, crit chance as to which you benefit more from. It’s obvious Strength is better then Rage because it has Power BUT if Rage was Power/Fury like Rune of the Citadel is and still had it’s 5% damage modifier the while under Fury it would be much stronger. Citadel has a terrible 6 piece so that is what hurts it other wise it would be better then Rage. If Rune of Citadel didn’t have a bomb for 6/6 then People would probably complain about both. Really who wants to summon a bomb for their 6/6?

My issue is creativity with the Runes like citadel the 6/6 should have been changed to something better or just take rages 6/6. Instead they kept it as a bomb. Rages only problem is that it doesn’t have power Citadel runes problem is that it has power but a bomb for 6/6. Everyone knows power>crit chance>critical damage generally this isn’t new. DPS choices are Strength and Pack in PvP because they provide the best damage you can get reliably. Easy to see just glossing over the runes and didn’t take long.

Since it is the best DPS rune for power builds does that really make it bad or need to be nerfed? Not really imo, all that will happen is the lines are a little closer between it and say Pack or some other Rune and then you maybe have 2-3 best runes for pvp dps builds? Didn’t really impact much people will just run around with Perma fury with Pack with maybe Ele’s using Strength still. In PvP Pack would then probably let you kill much faster a full team running pack will have permanent fury and maybe let players drop the popular fury traits they all run for something else like another flat damage bonus or more defensive traits.

They aren’t anything alike. I know people say they are similar but they just aren’t.

Freedom imo is the biggest difference between the 2. I have both at 80 and they are my 2 favorite classes. The engi flows more then the Elementalist which is restricted because of the cd on attunements. The engi has it on the fly.

I haven’t played power engi so I can’t compare that.

I’d like to see more videos if you have them Cryo.

Paavotar.3971:

Every class can spec to condition if they want, others have better synergy than others but the same thing goes with power builds as well. Also, every class has skills or means to interrupt a foe so confusion on interrupt would be doable on every class in that sense as well.

And no, I didn’t start playing this game yesterday, I have been playing quite long already. Also, I main Warrior so in sense I should be super happy for the runes but I can still see the OP’ness of the set.

The rune set gives too easy access to +7% damage increase which is huge add.

If something is available to everyone it doesn’t make it balanced.

So which is it you have a problem with the extra 15% might duration over other runes or the 7% damage bonus? You know it use to give 5% so your telling me that +2% damage buff when every power build received a crit damage nerf is huge? You aren’t playing with your old levels of damage even in s/tPvP. The 2% extra damage buff it received probably doesn’t make up for the crit damage you use to have. The might stacks let you get that damage back but it takes build up you don’t have it at the start. Front loaded vs backloaded and removable damage vs your old permanent damage levels.

rhodoc.2381:

I can confirm that i CCed im middle burning speed.

What kind of CC? If it is a stun like Engi shield 5, shocking aura, static field then you will always get cc’d by those evade doesn’t work on them. If your talking anything else I’m not sure been running across alot of mesmers today and BS if they get me with the iLeap blurred combo and I evade everything.

Also clone death traits are undodgeable/evadeable.

Asomal.6453:

So you guys think conditions are balanced, eh? Lets throw some numbers, shall we? Pick your typical condibunker engineer with Balth Runes + Incendiary Powder. Equip your Doom Sigil and then use one single auto attack (if it crits, and that easy). Count your total damage and you’ll find you are doing 6k+ if it’s not clean.

Lol really? That’s weak very weak.

Let a direct damage thief stand there and auto attack the target in the same time it takes for that 6k damage to happen and see who does more damage, lets give him a sigil of air to match your doom, give him 1 damage modifier to match incendiary powder, give him whatever power runes you want. DOT =/= direct damage. It’s called direct damage for a reason.

Your example is bad because you think they are comparable damage types. That’s like saying healing and toughness are the same thing and comparing them based on which keeps you alive on their own when toughness is the same across the board and healing is ability specific. Since they both are considered in the “Defense” category you can compare them easily with a 2k healing power vs 2k armor comparison.

Talking with my guild mate Potato plant that some might know we came to the conclusion that Pack is better then rune of rage because the raw power stat makes pack better to go along with 6% crit chance then add a stack of might+fury.

The downtime on Rage is 15 seconds the down time on Pack is 10 seconds this is with no boon duration consideration.

Pack is actually better then rune of strength if all you can build is 3-4 stacks of might. If you proc the fury that rune gives you 525 precision for 10 seconds that is more then 7% extra damage.

There are counters in the game to this if you look outside of the box. What punishes boon stackers? Necromancer’s focus, 4 spite, minions removing boon, sigil of nullification, s/d thieves with 4 in trickery, guardian applying burning removing boons.

What you might see is necromancer’s focused on on corrupting/removing boons, Sigil of Nullification being taken over sigil of air, s/d thieves with 4 trickery. Necromancers and shatter Mesmer are more key imo to punish this then any other classes.

Instead of nerf nerf because your current setup can’t do anything about it at least find what can strip those boons and see if this becomes a counter. That takes time and patience many players are very smart.

People will attempt to counter this they are probably working on that now instead of coming to the forums to ask for the Devs to do the work for them.

Divinity runes got wrecked but celestial is still a solid choice. If you think celestial was destroyed then you cared about the critical damage the most the gap between celestial and zerker is smaller now but zerker has more critical damage. Every critical damage gear was nerfed though.

Snoxx.7943:

Intersting fact about Balthazar Runes:
The aoe burn not only procs when you use a mantra charge to heal, but also when you recharge your healing mantra
(many other “on heal” effects don’t trigger from that)

Not a fan of this on a Mesmer but it should also be unblockable, dodgeable, and unblindable. Grenth runes have the same heal bonus with chill instead of burn and I was running them on my Engi a few days post patch so balth should probably be the same. Still not a fan of this setup on a mesmer especially with that heal type but to each his own.

xFireize.6318:

I prefer runes of the pack. Perfect for my boon duration Bunker DPS.

Pack runes are soo good on guards they always have been but it’s much better now.

hooma.9642:

so its more a sum of changes. but the question is the same. where shave without cutting other builds?

2 weeks already and we are looking to shave celestial D/D ele? People are never happy and if something is good it’s bad has to be looked at. They say alot of pvp players (in any game with pvp) always think something is wrong and enjoy trying to balance it.

Nothing needs to be shaved on the D/D celestial ele. It will still fold to condition pressure but the hit to dhuumfire means less necros’ . When necro’s figure out what they are doing whats best to run then you will see D/D celestial Ele’s differently.

The D/D celestial ele might seem strong if nobody is bringing anything to counter it specifically and everyone is mostly running the same comps anyway. You need the “new meta” to settle then people will bring the counter or work on the counter. I would hold off on D/D celestial Ele’s are OP until the NA ToL. Even still the sample size is to small probably.

You have to give players a little credit this didn’t sneak up on anyone because people tested it quickly.

If you been playing ele long enough you know Rune of Strength was always a good rune for Ele it’s even in Zelyhn’s PvE thread stickied up top when I told him that the 6/6 didn’t work. It was a rune set he wanted to run but didn’t because the 6/6 was bugged.

I did some testing that the rune was fixed, posted it on this very forum and including reddit causing the price to jump to 2g pre-patch, the dps was backed with testing from DnT that it is comparable damage to ruby orbs but not better then Rune of the Ogre (pre-patch). This was many months ago. This didn’t sneak up on anyone and neither did that rune.

You hear the words Celestial the first 3 classes you think about are Engineer, Guardian, and Elementalist if you been playing long enough.

Anyway more to the point is that boon heavy ele’s relying on damage will get countered by boon strippers many 30 trick S/D thieves and necros will make celestial ele’s lives rough when they find their way. Necro’s start running focus, 4 in spite, WoC and or/ minions boon stripping, maybe bring sigil of nullification then get back to me on celestial eles and their might stacking.

Sometimes the perceived power of something (especially 2 weeks after a big patch) is an illusion if the counter is there but no one bothered to look yet. 2 weeks after patch nobody is looking for celestial ele counters because it isn’t important. The first thing people do is see if their OLD safe, I been playing this for 2 years build still works then they try new stuff.

More necros’ and shatter mesmers will probably be the counter IF celestial ele is indeed a stable in the meta. If TCG didn’t win with a Celestial Ele I don’t know if people would even think anything about Ele at all. Less necro’s means more ele’s since necros’ and guardians counter each other Ele gets caught in the cross fire the cleansing water change+nerf to dhumfire means you will see more Ele’s less necro’s and more engis doing condi pressure instead of necros.

It was the second lowest represented class in the tournament just above mesmer.

This is why nothing about balance ever seems coherent. Top level player says it’s power meta, other player says nah it’s condi’s. Other player wants balthazar runes nerfed/engineers nerfed, top level player brings up strength runes implying they should be nerfed.

Which one is it? How can anybody possibly figure that out. The normal way a company balances is for the Top Tier not bottom with a few exceptions. 4 gate was nerfed because of lower tier play in Starcraft 2 100 blades with frenzy, or quickness in general was nerfed because of lower tier play.

Either way this doesn’t have traction this is the 3rd thread that has mentioned this rune and they die quickly.

People like damage and power even though sPvP took less of a crit damage hit then pve/wvw it still took one regardless but people want to reduce damage even more?

Still there is a divide even among people that agree. Is the duration the problem or the 6 piece the problem? I am willing to bet whatever your fighting died before the last 20% might was even a factor mights base duration is already long and it doesn’t take much to get a boost.

I don’t get it why does it seem like if something is good it is bad. 5% extra damage and 7% is 2% damage difference you think that really hurt the damage or increased it that much? It’s like trying to adjust the rune just to adjust it cause if it’s good there has to be a problem.

The 7% damage modifier is not exclusive to the rune. Ranger runes give it to rangers and apparently Mesmers also, Rune of ice, Flame Legion.

The 20% extra might duration is it’s unique feature regardless this doesn’t do anything if the goal is to not make it the best direct damage rune in PvP. 30% duration and -2% damage reduction.

If the devs came out and said we are reducing backstab damage by 2% people would say lolwut!

Actually the icd is very strong because every chill skill in game has just as long or longer cooldown most have longer cooldowns.

Burning isn’t common on many condition builds except engi, necro(even less now), ele trap ranger?

The engi is the only other class that can rival elementalist burn up time, and you need someone that fights inside the burning bomb or engi needs flamethrower and rocket boots. Removing their burning really cripples engi condi pressure. I don’t think many necro’s are running dhuumfire anymore and they can’t keep the uptime like before because it relies on life blast.

A good engi for example will cover the burns you blowing cantrips to cleanse works in his favor. When I fight a ele on my engi I expect the initial burn and confusion to be cleansed it’s the second app that sticks and usually I load the burning on second app. Stop drop would remove that. Remember also these are both duration stackers so multiple sources attempting to load you with either can be wiped in 1 dodge.

Still standard 30 water works for general purposes but against a engineer or necro with a staff and focus this trait is much better. Also keep in mind 30 trick thieves who steal every 21 1/2 second hitting you with a 10 second ice spike it’s a death sentence.

My opinion:

Sigil of Doom: I wouldn’t run this in WvW because your main target for this is a Warrior most will run the -duration food. Your second target might be thief and he will remove the poison right away with HIS or just going in stealth. Any Meditation Guard will want the poison for smite conditions and any shout guard will probably laugh it off and also be running -duration. So maybe another Ele? Fighting a mesmer you may proc off clones. Just not very practical in WvW roaming imo.

Sigil of Air: I love this sigil I have another dagger with this on it and it is hard to ignore the dps increase this sigil provides.

Sigil of Generosity: I have a dagger with this sigil on it also. I was fighting a Long bow warrior the other day and sent the immobilize from pin down back had me chuckling. This sigil is effectively cleansing wave or cleansing water on your weapon if you proc off cooldown. Purity will be more consistent because it is “ON hit” but it doesn’t give the condi back which means no possible extra condi dps.

Air and Generosity are very solid choices, purity if you don’t have the gold and just want cleanses. If I had to chose between Generosity or Air I would take Air personally the DPS is just that good. Like you said if your fighting power you might not get any uses out of generosity but Air’s dps will always be welcomed.

You have Ether Renewal with rock solid and diamond skin so I think that would overkill. You sigil of air will benefit from your stone splinters and enduring damage modifiers also. I would go Air using your build.

Reckless.6325:

It would seem like a very viable trait choice now. Im thinking this and the one that reduces cantrip cooldowns would be a great combo for 20 water. Especially with ether renewal to handle other condis

With ether renewal your biggest issue is going to be getting interrupted but if it isn’t up this can be a fail safe. A engi is going to want to keep burning and confusion on you as much as possible but the difference between engi and necro is that engineers rely alot on burning dps in their condition builds because they can’t stack bleeds like a necro unless you afk into their grenades.

You always have cleansing flame as a back up emergency button if you want to run that too.

Also they fixed the trait it use to go on cooldown even if you didn’t have those conditions on you and dodge rolled it no longer does this only on cooldown if you remove those conditions.

I wanted to bring this trait up for Elementalist to give it another look. Especially in sPvP dhuumfire and incendiary powder both have 10 second cooldown. Stop drop and roll also has a 10 second cooldown. It removes the conditions as soon as you initiate the dodge roll not at the end or mid way. If your running 30 points in Water and need some selfish condition management I would give this another look. It doesn’t require you to be in water either which is a plus to hold off on water attunement even longer.

We all know how much chill hurts a Ele bleeds we can manage, poison we can manage, confusion hurts us alot but if you have these 2 condis on you, a dodge roll swap into water should remove those 3 conditions regularly. You don’t have to worry about vulnerability covering these 2 harmful conditions.

Im trying it out in WvW for a few days with 20 in water to see if this makes a difference over cleansing wave.

Of every chill skill I can think of in the game this will be up before that will so you can keep it off of you all the time. Burning is a different story with engineers but burning is a big part of engi dps and as long as they arent running flamethrower you should also be able to keep this off you if you aren’t fighting them inside of the burning bomb or next to flame turret.

Eternum.1706:

Do you still run Force + Battle sigils? I feel with Runes of Strength that Battle is even more mandatory than it is on the vast majority of Ele builds, but what are some other alternatives to Force? I’m currently using Force, but I was thinking if other sigils like Strength, Air, or something like that could work out. Don’t know too much about the sigils and how they’ve changed.

Battle and Energy or I would recommend Battle and Air the damage is 900+ every 3 seconds hard to ignore.

I don’t think it will every happen it’s been brought up for about 1.5 years now. It always comes up again when a new balance patch approaches but they havent reverted it. If Eles have indeed made it back into the meta then they definitely won’t revert it.

What Neko said is probably why this is off the table even more so now. I just put 20 in air now take the cooldown reduction. Shocking aura is up every 20 seconds RTL is 32 with no hit it’s not so bad but it isn’t the old RTL but it works.

So I have been messing around with more Celestial trinkets and I think it’s still viable and actually a pretty good trinket set now. Right now running celestial earrings and rings with a cav ammy cav back so far I am enjoying it. Sustain is good to go along with the condition damage from might stacking.

I dropped all my crit damage or most of it in the original video and found that win I would fight other d/d eles I didn’t have enough damage. Right now I am trying to find a good WvW stat setup similar to the sPvP celestial amulet will probably be more armor and a little less healing about 100-150 each.

A big part of learning elementalist or even another class and playing it effectively is to know your opponents and what they are capable of.

Some people play only 1-2 classes or maybe more but don’t really dig into them deep. Everytime I try a new trait on any of my classes I hit the wiki because alot of times there are facts that aren’t on the tooltip. I’ll google search discussions about that trait vs other options. You can get just about anything for gw2 with a search of “elemental attunement vs arcane mastery” as an example and the discussions are usually great. I read alot on this game and the 1 thing I’ll say is that to get better you must know what your fighting and the tools you have or don’t have to fight it.

sinject.4607:

you’re beyond saving. you’re so convinced that you’re right about conditions being balanced and yet you’re never able to prove otherwise.

im seriously waiting for the post where you prove through any bit of logic that conditions are not overpowered.

Oh was this your thread or the one crying about incendiary powder based upon your assessment of dhuumfire? Sorry I provide good counter arguments to your one-liners “Conditions OP YO!” and that’s all you provide.

Even in your vague incendiary powder thread I say my opinion then other people echo similar counters. I don’t know them in person, we are aren’t bunk mates. You look like a fool for comparing 1 trait that has been around since launch vs one that came just mid last year but they do burning. So since they both do burning it’s bad.

If I go into your post history will I find a thread or post by you crying about incendiary powder before necro’s got dhuumfire? Probably not.

Fyi I main elementalist and would never run a condition build on it. I also would never put one on my Warrior. I do run them on 3 other classes from time to time and my engi and necro are exclusive condition builds. I have 7 classes at 80 and only 2 of those classes have builds where conditions are my favorite builds for them.

I was anti condition camp about a month or so ago. You can check that in my post history saying the same things I seen said by you and others. My angle was ease of application Dranour, Carighan, and Coglin’s posts and counters to my angle made me look at it differently. I’m not stubborn or biased if you can present something solid then I have no problem agreeing and even changing sides on the debate. The anti-condition chant isn’t solid it’s basically the same thing in different threads and as vague as possible 9/10. I do duel but never cared about it that much that I think it’s something that should be balanced on.

Yes you will have 1v1’s but do you call for help from a teammate? You should and this will happen no matter what you face because you and the other team built to counter specifics of each others builds.

Are you trying to win or be a 1v1 star? You need teammates otherwise a team of 5 rangers would be just as viable as a team of 5 guardians nobody would need to make hard choices in build decisions because they can handle everything 1v1. This goes for direct and condi.

If you had 1 build on 1 class out of the 8 that can handle every type of fight 1v1 how do you think that would work against of 5 of those same builds? People wanting to win would all roll and run that comp. That has no depth instead you have 5 people who build to compliment their team, take utilities incase their teammates go down(which they will) help their team heal up(which they will need) and cleanse conditions on teammates if their personal condi removal isn’t up(which they will also need). The team is a machine not a group of awesome 1v1 stars doing their own thing. 1v1’s happen but they aren’t the most important thing in balance.

sinject.4607:

please tell me in what context is passively applying one of the strongest conditions in the game okay? it seems you’re trying to justify it without actually going into any detail by just attacking necro.

You started your argument against incendiary powder based on Necromancer with dhuumfire what are you talking about? You did say

i fail to see how anyone can consider dhuumfire problematic and yet be okay with how anet leaves incen powder completely alone and then goes on to make it even stronger with balthazaar runes.

You laid your argument foundation but I am the one attacking the necro? You didn’t give any details I gave details into some of the things that makes a necro DIFFERNT then a engineer. Your whole topic is based on Dhuumfire is bad on Necromancers therefore it’s bad on Engineers when engineers had this since LAUNCH.

I don’t need to provide details for defense you made the claim with little details then ask me for more details. The only detail that needs to be said to counter your claim is Necromancer doesn’t equal a Engineer Period. I didn’t attack Necromancer’s I have a Necro and a Engineer and when I made my engineer with in a few hours of play it was clear how their condition damage builds differ and why many Necromancers said Necro’s never needed to have burning. I didn’t realize this until I made my Engineer though and I disagreed with them until I had played my Engineer.

Go take a necromancer put 30 in curses go to the mist stack 25 bleeds now attempt that with a Engineer and it should be easy to figure out why blanket statements of Dhuum is bad so Incendiary is bad don’t fit.

sinject.4607:

i fail to see how anyone can consider dhuumfire problematic and yet be okay with how anet leaves incen powder completely alone and then goes on to make it even stronger with balthazaar runes.

It could be because you also fail to realize that a necromancer =/= engineer. The engi always had good access to burning you know since launch. The necromancer always had better access to bleeds you know since launch. The necromancer also has fear, terror, can corrupt your boons turn them into conditions, better chill uptime, transfer your conditions back to you so even if you have +300% burning duration the necro had no burning he could give it back to you.

I could go on but the point is that simply a engineer =/= necromancer. Sure if you just started playing the gamer AFTEr necro’s received burning you might think differently but engineers always had access to it. People just started complaining about burning across the game once Necro’s had access to it. Then magically burning became OP and everything that deals with burning should be nerfed, including a class that always had access to it prior but nobody complained about that until Necro’s received burning.

Some just need to take a break from Dueling you can’t beat everything. Condition builds are not all the same and you can’t just blanket them with “condi-spam”

Who cares about Napalm Cat because you can ignore Napalm Cat you can literally sheath your weapon and walk away at normal run speed no swiftness and you won’t die. You wouldn’t do that same thing to anyone running a direct damage power build except maybe a guardian running healway.

What is the list of Conditions builds running around in WvW? Not variations with a trait change but essentially the same build.

Necro terrormancer
Thief P/D
Engi P/S or P/P
Mesmer PU
Warrior S/S
Ranger traps
Maybe Maybe a condition Ele but they are rare.

Thats it those are the most common condition builds out roaming in WvW and dueling in Sanctum. Those are running rampant? Those are ruining the game? The list of direct damage builds probably double that number if not triple it but according to this thread everyone is running around in condi builds. Really put together a good list of your classes viable WvW builds that you sincerely feel are different from another build and I would bet you have more direct damage builds then conditions.

Maybe it’s just that you can’t beat them, aren’t built to, and don’t like the fact that you can’t.

I would also be willing to bet depending on your build that the problems you have beating one of those builds doesn’t apply to all of them just like direct damage. My problems with a mace/shield gs glass warrior on my ele aren’t the same problems I have with a direct damage mesmer. Same thing applies here.

You fight the condition ranger your not having the same problems you do when you fight the condition warrior or the p/d thief heck the ranger has a pet out the whole time.

Not enough specifics it’s just alot of condition builds “are spammy”. The fight isn’t even the same against all the condition builds just like it isn’t for direct damage. It makes no sense to throw out the whole class it’s mechanics label it condi-spam then present your argument.

It isn’t done with direct damage the people crying about thieves don’t forget that the thief has stealth, the people crying about mesmer don’t forget they have invulnerability, the people crying about warriors don’t forget about endure pains and zerker stance, but condi spam DUDE it’s condi spam.