Guild Wars 2

I’ve spent some time playing ele and mesmer.

I like mesmer because its a funky class.

I like D/D ele because it’s the most unique playstyle i’ve seen in a while, but D/D is the ONLY build that ele has that’s this funky.

I started playing eng and am intrigued by the toolkit i’m seeing so far.

I’d love to see some feedback from some vets on the niches this profession has – and the builds most commonly used to fill those niches.

please no downer-posting. I know people consider eng “screwed” and “weak”, but I’ve always been an expert at making very tasty margaritas from lemons in other games, and enjoy that challenge.

ComeAndSee.1356:

There’s no reason to nerf Guardian AOE because they have serious drawbacks.

• Greatsword AOE requires you to be in melee range. That isn’t going to happen zerg vs zerg.
• Scepter and Staff AOE does poultry amount of damage.

Classes like Elementalist have long-range spammable AOE skills.

Elementalists have almost ALL aoe skills. they all have considerable cooldowns.

Elementalist damage is also pathetic because 30 water is required due to terrible innate survivability.

killcannon.2576:

Palador.2170:

killcannon.2576:

Should engies then have portals?

Actually….yeah. On this ONE, I would have to say “yes”. Engineers should have some kind of portal-like ability. Maybe a “blast catapult” or something.

There’s at least two places in-game where NPC engineers can launch your character. One in Lion’s Arch (to reach a vista), and the catapult/cowtapult. Giving engineers a portal-ish ability with different mechanics to it would be a great improvement.

Just don’t make it a kit that equips you with a white, gun-like device that you use to generate the portals. It would be fun, but Valve might sue.

You can buy the portal gun from a NPC, and I have no clue how to make the cattlepault small and mobile.

please keep things on topic, this is a topic on AOE.

Hilda Raven.8641:

If something immune to burning makes your entire class useless you should quit guild wars 2.

welcome to elementalist.

about half their damage is burning or dependent on the enemy being on fire.

Please, no.

mesmers suck in pve because they’re so powerful in wvw due to portals.

giving portals to ele is like the kiss of death for all other aspects of the game.

Be ready to portal-bot.

Other things that don’t belong in the game in addition to portals:
quickness

I want to see structures able to bleed – because that would be logically hilarious and make necro worth playing for me.

Kacigarka.5176:

Direksone.3867:

ArenaNet isn’t simply nerfing everything. They are bringing damage down of some things, because they are simply too powerful and it makes the game unbalanced. Call it nerfing, I call it balancing. Also some of the issues you point out that you find crap are things that are also not working as intended, such as the WP system. It makes people lazy and sloppy. This ought to make it more difficult as there is less room for error.

If you would actually read and listen to them carefully, they wish to have no differences between PvP/WvW and PvE for a character so people get familiar with them and the character operates everywhere the same. Sometimes this means a certain class is very good in a certain instance, this is looked at, and mostly, corrected.

No offense, but if you in the future post threads like this, make it more easy to read and watch your spelling. I’m not being some grammar freak, but it takes the credibility out of your post, at least it did for me.

totally agree here.

Aoe nerf is just balancing. Nothing else

Wayponint thing will just make players finally think and play better in dungeons. Now doesnt matter if you fail, you just ress and run. EZmode… nothing else

’’WHIT’’

Yes, before their Q&A session, i kept seeing non-stop posts about how overpowered AOE was… wait.. I didn’t.. I kept seeing “guild warriors two” “not playing wvw until thief burst is lowered” .

Single target burst was the problem, and aoe based classes are forced to bunker due to lack of viable single-target damage, and they come out saying they’re going to nerf aoe and make single target “stand out MORE”.

Reminds me of certain euro-politicians “you know what killed our economy, the rich don’t have enough money and are too regulated.. you can tell because they crashed said economy with unregulated securities”

Revan.6259:

I guess I don’t really agree – I think the point is that it’s healthier for the game if people AREN’T able to move all the time. It’s not just ANet being greedy, this is just the right move. They’ve always planned to charge, they just haven’t yet because guesting wasn’t available.

Please tell this to anyone who is on a low pop server, or a server where everyone is in the fractals and nobody in the zones.

This happened to me. The game experience on my server 3 weeks after the lost shore’s patch was so miserable I didn’t log in for ages, and finally camped out one night until 4 am when sea of sorrows opened.

If sea of sorrows shifts to this state over the course of next year, I want the option to go where the PEOPLE are in an MMORPG, without having to pay a second time for the game.

If they ask more than 10 real dollars worth of money to do this to ANY server, I will put in a refund ticket for the game instead.

Cowrex.9564:

Removing money is like removing incentives in the game. Without it, everyone might as well have the same gear from the market. No sense of difference, uniqueness or achievement either. I think that by removing money would render a game…. bland and tasteless.

Or you could tie gear to achievements?

All money does is make what is popular expensive – and therefore attainable with “pay to win”.

Additionally, making very few “cool skins” and making them ludicriously expensive rather than making many different skins that are cool for different reasons is a sign of dev laziness.

Each skin should have its own skill requirement and epic storyline behind it.

TLDR version:

The targeted end result is that glass cannon builds should be doing enough damage to be “worth it” and have enough active-survival to be dungeon-viable for those who are capable of putting themselves into defense or evasive state at the right times – and the key to this is having abilities in “offensive” attunements on short enough cooldowns to provide this without being overpowered. The adjusments to regen are to neuter some of the passive obscene-regen that makes bunker-builds ridiculous.

Any fixes to elementalists should involve both of these happening at the same time:

1 – considerably reducing PERSONAL passive healing through regeneration (the group-wide stuff should not be touched).

2 – adding active evasions and reflections to weapon skills (particularly in fire and air — D/D and scepter — more kiting tools to staff)

3 – compensating some additional damage for the reduced passive survival. +15% across the board, and +10-15%(more) for 30 point investment each in fire and air. (ele damage is pitiful compared to thief/warrior/guardian – the “massive damage nerf” was over-nerf )

Long version:

We need a little history here:
- during the BWE’s, eles used to do a lot more damage. This provided, at one time, a tradeoff for the complete and utter lack of survival tools provided by most weapons. Thus, if you ignored water for offense, you were rewarded with massive numbers for a brief existence as an assassin (trading your life for your target’s like a thief).

No Longer

- After the “massive damage nerf”, eles who spec 30/30/0/0/0 are few and far between because, unlike mesmer, there are precious few active survival tools in their weapon sets, those few are on ridiculous cooldowns comparatively, and eles have a lot less base HP to boot!. Being two-shot by non-vets is not engaging gameplay, thus most eles spec heavily into water for the only survival eles get (no matter how utterly boring and un-engaging it is): gobs and gobs of regeneration.

Prime candidates for regen reduction:

water III – remove the regen from cantrip use – replace with something less potent (this should limit regen to water attunment, thus putting an effective 10 second cooldown on the boon)

(if necessary after watching balance on water 3 change) water 5 point minor – this could apply to party but not yourself.

Thoughts – set by set:

dagger/dagger – burning speed and ride the lightning should provide evasion for their duraiton the same way updraft does – shocking aura could block 3 attacks like arcane shield. (if you spec 30/30/0/0/0 glass cannon, and use daggers, you’re like a backstab/death blossom thief, you have 10k hp, can be one-shot by nearly everything, and NEED this kind of evasion just to stay alive with your jolt-induced super-twitchiness — once you’ve used them, you are everyone’s food)

scepter – make blinding flash aoe, phoenix should grant distortion the way 1h sword does for mesmer.

staff – gust should cripple, as should the fire field in burning retreat, all fields which cause status effects should cause them to people within, not just if they enter it, and should be triggered around a target rather than point-casted.

focus is fine for defense.

Thoughts?

killcannon.2576:

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It’s generally used to stop piracy, not bots. The counter measures used by the dev team make it harder to bot. The reports that people give make it harder to bot. Believe it or not there has been a drastic decrease in bots, and I believe it’s because of the dev teams efforts in this regard. If I must suffer through a few months of a few side effects that don’t break the game for me in order to have a stable game down the road, I am more than happy to.

Funny you mention that… DRM does the same thing for legitimate users vs pirates that DR does for legitimate users vs bots.

Oneira -

I primarily pve (which you seem to be worrying about here) and find arcane shield very useful (despite not being a cantrip), but it is personal preference. It’s probably more useful to me because there are fewer stuns flying around in pve.

The build most definitely favors cantrips.

Oneira.1495:

Hey Daphoenix:

I tried using the D/D setup leveling a newbie Ele. I really tried, but I’m losing constantly. Maybe I’m just not familiar enough with the setup, maybe it’s not meant for low level Eles.

Using Mist Form + Cleansing Fire. Usual rotation is Burning Speed-Ring of Fire-Fire Grab-Earthquake.

Especially with multi-mobs, I’m just losing health too fast. I can’t keep up with the damage. Down half my health before I know it. Any suggestions on what I’m doing wrong?

updraft – > shocking aura -> (optional if very twitchy- touch for weakness) -> burning speed -> fire grab – > fire ring -> earthquake -> arcane shield -> churning earth will net you more damage while keeping as many knocked down or stunned for as long as possible.

Arcane shield toward then end will cover you as you use churning earth to finish anything off (it tunes down as you level, but at low levels churning earth is absolutely devastating, as its less gear dependent then)

important traits in order:

1 – zephyr’s boon
2 – water 5
3 – arcane 10 (drop water 5 for 5 levels at that point)
4 – fill in water to end
5 – fill in arcane to end.

(at least until ANET slaughters this build and its children the way they promised in the last Q&A)

Zonzai.2341:

Oldbugga.7029:

This is what I am saying…it seems AoE is being singled out as the prime issue where it is not….and certainly not the only issue that warrants it being targeted.

I agree completely. Unfortunately, they see all AoE as preventing reviving.

As it should.

The only thing more unimaginative in pvp than zerging is IMMORTAL zerging. How else do you stop 4 people from ressing their buddy than aoe them?

Cousland.2187:

Seriously I couldn’t help but noticed that there’s alot of hatred towards Warriors in this topic.

LOLOLOLOL 25k HB ANYONE!?! WARZ ARE SO OP!! /sarcasm

You’d have to sacrifice alot of survivability in order to pull off that amount of damage and from my experience inside dungeons, glass cannons tend to be quite a burden on the team.

So instead of complaining about Warriors, demanding ArenaNet to nerf them… why not look for alternatives because I know for a fact that condition builds needs some loving. Like removing the 25 debuff/buff cap in PvE for starters would be nice. Win/win for everyone in my opinion.

If an ele sacrifices their surivivability, they get 1/2 the damage from their highest cooldowns, have half the HP, and take multiple times more damage.

One of these things is not like the other.

Specific ideas:

Remove regeneration from water 3 and replace with something else less potent.

to compensate:

more evasion and protection on weapon skills (for example, RTL and burning speed should count as dodges, staff should get some reflects, scepter some distortion (like mesmer sword) )

— this shifts more survivability into active skills and away from passive regeneration of health.

a 15% damage boost to weapon skills across the board. (ele damage is garbage compared to guardian, thief, and warrior)

another 15% increase to damage for full investment each in air and fire trait lines (through revision to those traits).

Any balancing from there should be about tweaking the PASSIVE PERSONAL SURVIVAL knob for 30 in water DOWN while bringing up the damage and mobility knobs on fire and air respectively and, where necessary, adding more active tools to evade damage.

a 30/30/0/0/0 D/D ele should play like a backstab/death blossom thief and have similar results.

Navzar.2938:

Intigo.1653:

And how stupidly strong would our class be without the ‘massive damage nerf’?

So strong that even drag’s tooth>flamestrike>fire grab can be a killing burst. The thing is about it though, is that it was just a blanket nerf to all damage down to ~54% instead of individually evaluating each skill. So it could have been done a bit better imo.

I did not participate in BWE’s, but when I first made my ele ages ago, the impression I got from how freakin ridiculously squishy they were was that they once did a lot more damage, were nerfed, and are now stuck without enough damage to justify the terrible survivability.

I’m glad to see the hard numbers to confirm I was correct.

They have no business nerfing D/D eles. People should be faced with choices in their utilities, and there are utilities out there that can dispatch D/D quickly.

Corrupt boon at the right time swats them like flies, as do a few well placed CC’s.

The damage of D/D bunkers is pathetic as-is, hurting the survival does not make the more offensive builds more viable, it just makes the whole weapon set worthless.

This is the reason why i’m so disappointed with the devs “watching” d/d ele.

This build should be the gold standard not only for other ele builds, but for all other builds in the game.

If it has aspects that are too powerful, counter-mechanics should be buffed or made more prolific, but the synergy of this build should not be broken. Doing so just makes it yet another non-viable build atop the dung heap of many across the entire game.

by giving the utility skills everyone has some teeth in this regard (as counters to the synergies that make specific types of builds powerful), you’d have less discussion about braindead combat and more arguments over whether it’s batter to be a bunker-buster, a single-target assassin, an area pressure, or a bunker. (and there would be MASSIVE arguments over which utility skills were the best – not only on their own rights but in combination).

I still think this is possible with time, but only if ANet grows a pair, stops caving to nerf-calls, and works diligently instead to bring forth as many viable builds as possible rather than breaking synergies because other players are essentially jealous.

Allow me to use the same skill as an example ursan:

contemplation of purity. You put it up on your bars and charge into battle. Nobody ever focuses on loading you with conditions.

You have a useless skill on your bar.

This is what I mean by strategic vs tactical.

Tactical weapons in the military are versatile.
The MA2 can be used against troop formations, structures, or light armor, and will be a go-to for semi-mobile defense.

strategic weapons are not.
a nuke does one thing: destroy vast swaths of countryside. It will be the go-to only when you’ve lost everything else. contemplation of purity is like the nuke.. it’s useful in only one situation, use outside that situation gets you marginal results, to the point you simply don’t use it otherwise.

Now lets make another comparison:
shield block vs mesmer scepter block -

mesmer scepter block is still used tactically, and if you waste it you will be punished for it, but it will be used multiple times a fight.

you will not use shield block very often, and its deployment will not dovetail fluidly with a fight, because it will be down more often than not when you really want it. it’s strategic, not tactical.

Calsifer:

So what you’re saying is anyone who doesn’t spec condition to get maximum killing blows can go hose themselves?

The tagging system is certainly broken, but basing it on killing blows only makes that worse.

I like to play support.

I built a mesmer around control and projectile reflects and received very few loots while my aoe-happy friends received plenty.

I build my ele with cleric’s gear and keep people alive.

I was going to build a guardian symbol support build, but they nerfed SoW and hammer looks really stupid on human females.

They need to factor healing and hampering of units in combat in their reward system, though, not nerf aoe.

Ursan.7846:

plasmacutter.2709:

When you push a cooldown near the 40 second mark or further, you have crossed the boundary from tactical to strategic. The likelihood of a 40 second cooldown coming back up in a fight is pretty low, and cooldowns that high are generally rationed rather than used where the situation calls for it.

Right. Exactly. The chance that you’ll be able to use this skill is very limited. Hence you better choose the best time to use it.

Which is what I’m saying. Longer CDs means players learn to use a certain skill better, in the appropriate situations. Which is good. More “tactical”.

You are twisting my words and I don’t appreciate it.

When you approach 40 seconds, that ability feels like “one time use”. You are no longer playing tactically, you’re either using it as an “oh kitten i’m going to die” button, or you’re simply guessing, and the latter is not a matter of skill, but luck.

Ursan.7846:

plasmacutter.2709:

If you make CD’s too long on blocks or CC, there’s a point where people will not try to use them for fear of losing them when they’re “really needed” —- because they never know when they’re “really needed”. (this is why a lot of guardians say shield sucks and swear by any other offhand)

So you didn’t really answer my question. Why are shorter CDs more tactical? You’re talking about how CDs effect the usefulness of the skill, not how tactical it is.

Part of the “skill” in this game is knowing the best time to use these skills. Longer CDs makes it so that lack of said skill is punished harder. My question to you is why you think shorter CDs, in your viewpoint, would be more “tactical.”

I believe you are confusing strategic with tactical.

Tactical implies regular use as a method of either initiating or countering attacks. Tactical can be and is often used regularly through the course of a single fight.

Strategic implies use either with careful calculation or when certain preconditions are met. For example, the US would use its nukes only when all else appeared lost. Strategies are generally implied only once per fight (and often once per war, because enemy commanders learn). Examples of obviously strategic spells: elementalist cantrips, every elite, save yourselves.

When you push a cooldown near the 40 second mark or further, you have crossed the boundary from tactical to strategic. The likelihood of a 40 second cooldown coming back up in a fight is pretty low, and cooldowns that high are generally rationed rather than used where the situation calls for it.

When beneficial durations are as short as they are with most weapon skill cooldowns (to the point you can mis-time them and still get hit with the wind-up you’re trying to block), you need the cooldown you’re using to be considerably lower to make it “tactical”.

This will go against the grain, but I thought Orr’s “density” was fine. It was my PvE build testing grounds. If Orr’s going to be too “easy”, whats the point or feeling of dread of being in such an ugly/evil/supposedly dangerous area?

Make the enemies smarter. Instead of ridiculous density, have them patrol in small packs of 2-3.

one attacks directly, one attempts to lock you down, one tries to flank you, etc.

I want to see more coordination in opposing units instead of just throwing lots and lots of them our way.

of course, they’d have to adjust drop rates up considerably to stop the economy from becoming insane and crafting from becoming utterly ludicrous.

Nihevil.8024:

I agree with your opinions. You’re probably going to be torn apart by white knights that think the game is pretty much perfect the way it is and/or a moderator will probably ninja delete your thread(like they did mine) or lock it.

I’m waiting for the original post to be infracted. It states what is wrong and needs to be fixed but is too bitter.

I give it a couple hours before infraction or lock.

Ursan.7846:

digiowl.9620:

Sounds like they will be upping the cooldown on a bunch of them to avoid spam.

If you want precedence for that claim, just look at “CC” and shield skills. Short duration, long cooldowns. For ANet that is somehow “tactical”.

Well, yes. Forces the players to use them when they’re actually needed, instead of just spam spam spam. It punishes those who throw away skills mindlessly more. Why would shorter CDs be more tactical, in your view?

If you make CD’s too long on blocks or CC, there’s a point where people will not try to use them for fear of losing them when they’re “really needed” —- because they never know when they’re “really needed”. (this is why a lot of guardians say shield sucks and swear by any other offhand)

On AOE, it makes zero sense —- while many aoe hit close to single-target numbers, a longer cooldown will not make them more tactical because of insane mob health. As it is, if you can’t spam aoe when its needed, then there’s no real point to aoe, you may as well just ctrl+t and call out to mumble.

They are incredibly boring..

I always played necro-like classes in MMOs but I find myself ignoring my poor necro.

I’m not feeling drunk with malefic power or devious glee when I play it.

The whole kit does not merge into a greater whole, it just feels like you pile a bunch of random abilities into an enemy or area and hope something dies.

This is very different than, say, elementalist, where you have to cc something to land churning earth, or the target must be burning for fire grab, or you need to finish your own combos to properly heal groups.

digiowl.9620:

dulfy.1493:

Dresden.1736:

Seriously, no talk about the AoE nerf? I was hoping to see some stammering and backpeddling…

Yes there are actually some stuff on AoE nerf.

AoEs in WvW

• Guys working on skll balance are still trying to decide what to do. Some of it will be going through and evaluating all the AoEs in the game and trying to pick out a couple that are over the top and making some tweaks.
• We don’t want AoEs to be as strong or more powerful than a single target damage spell in the same amount of time when it has the capacity to hit 5 people instead of 1.
• There are some skills right now that you always use no matter what and they are not necessarily situational or you time them properly. We want there to be a lot of tactics and thought that goes into the things that you do. That will be part of the strategy when we look through the AoE skills.
• We don’t want to make them useless, we just want to make them working as intended and we noticed that there are a couple right now that are not.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/19/gw2-colin-johanson-mmorpg-livestream-transcript-jan-18/

Sounds like they will be upping the cooldown on a bunch of them to avoid spam.

If you want precedence for that claim, just look at “CC” and shield skills. Short duration, long cooldowns. For ANet that is somehow “tactical”.

How is guardian greatsword going to work when “spinning” no longer leads “2 win”. It already has two slots dedicated to utility abilities (one pull, one leap).

Because it makes sense that AOE should be good at tackling large groups of enemies whilst single target attacks should be more effective in terms of damage because they only target a single enemy.

It’s a totally valid reason to balance it.

Not in a game where you have 10 weapon skills, 4 utilities, 1 elite, and can’t swap them out in combat. making any of these slot abilities (weapon or utility) useless in an encounter pushes depth-of-play over a cliff.

They already do this with eles (where about half the abilities on our weapon sets are useless, so they’re just for show), and that profession suffers from fewer viable builds because of it.

I don’t want to spam 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 over and over because an aoe does pathetic damage.

Calsifer.6079:

JonathanSharp.7094:

No prob. Some classes have a ton of AOE, while others don’t have as much. So we’re not just going to do a blanket nerf to all AOE – that’s not fair to all classes. We’ll go on a class by class, weapon by weapon basis.

And as I’ve said, we may need to tone something down in one area of the game, but it may be totally fine in another area.

For some weapon sets, the AOE options may be too strong compared to the single target options, which is what we aim to address.

We have to remember that this sin’t a blanket nerf!

Stop treating it like it is one!

They need to re-design their meta game to reduce enemy density, increase loot reward per defeated unit, and increase the intelligence of enemy units.

THEN we can talk about weakening AOE, but really it wouldn’t need to be weakened then.

For example, i’ve run into a few dungeon pulls where it feels like the vets are played by humans, to the point I always accompany my churning earth with stability, because if I don’t I get interrupted in some way.

THAT is how aoe should be countered. It should not be adjustments to spells, it should be adjustments to AI and an increased proliferation of counter-mechanics.

These two things make gameplay more interesting rather than making people feel less powerful in a game where high enemy hp and any gear that’s not berserker make you feel pretty pathetic.

I feel very bad for D/D eles at this point. They huddled into the build because their damage did not match their horrific survivability, so they had to adopt control and toughness to survive. If fire grab and churning earth take a hit, they may as well hang it up and re-roll, because those are the only things that really do decent single-target damage these days, and theyre.. you guessed it.. aoe.

The classes that most need a look: in order:

Thief – this profession needs more innate survival without being crutched on buggy stealth and a “kill them before they kill you” burst damage gimmick that does NOT work with the insane health pools in pve and damage flying everywhere in pvp. They need to be made less gimmicky and more devious.

elementalist – this profession needs more innate survival without having to crutch on the extra vitality and healing of 30 water. Everyone specs D/D bunker because its the only thing they have, and they have to tank it up because their damage rewards for sacrificing that survival (in both aspects of the game) are simply not up to par.

Necro – this class is a MAJOR snoozer to play, it’s the first profession I tried, and I kept retrying it because I like the image behind it, but its just BORING.. to TEARS.. it makes me want to watch campaign ads from the whole 2012 election over and over.

Engineer: This profession needs more dynamic gameplay, just like the necro. It should be moved in the direction of D/D elementalist attunement swapping.

Vanillea.5764:

http://www.twitch.tv/mmorpgcom/b/358339359

So they discussed various topics in detail. I really recommend watching it. IF you are ele’s fan, you might want to skip around 25-30 when they talk about AoE and some balance.

From what Colin said, they select a few AoE that is too strong and bring them back to balance. I might be a little optimistic but I think Staff Ele is safe from the upcoming change. None of Staff skill is too strong or “can be used all the time”. Staff skills usually have high opportunity cost because of their high cast time or activation time and high CD.

If you know about the coefficient. Staff skill have low coefficient. The only two that potentially be strong are Lava Font (with above 3 coefficient if all hit connects) and Meteor Shower. However, Lava has 1 sec activation time and really small AoE (with or without blasting staff). Thus, it is very easy to dodge. Even in choke point or very small area, it is mostly impossible to connect all hits. Meteor Shower is random and I don’t see it as a problem at all.

I think these change might be directed toward burst AoE skills . Sad but true, Fire Grab and Churning Earth are potentially in danger. I think Warrior’s Hundred Blade is also one of the burst AoE skill. ( Yes it is AoE).

I think we should calm down a bit about the upcoming change.

Fire grab and churning earth are the only really useful attacks eles have, and they don’t even compare to thief auto attacks. Nerf that and you basically make D/D some kind of hired “dancer” in any real combat situation (in either pvp or pve)

Goettel.4389:

Yes, they listen (read) everything, evidently.

Being listened to and getting things your way are separate things, for anyone who needs a reminder – keep things in perspective: being a gamer doesn’t qualify you for a position of “game designer by proxy”.

I have every confidence ANet is trying hard to keep improving the game where they feel it’s needed, based on feedback, but ultimately based on their obvious experience in designing the finest MMO so far.

Lost shores was such a great patch, right?

When you design a meta around numerous spawns and high aoe damage for years, including professions and weapon sets specializing in this, this is not something to simply develop buyer’s remorse over and abandon in the blink of an eye.

It will, guaranteed, cause more balance issues in the change than exist today, and in the process place in irrelevance for long periods those professions and weapon sets which once provided powerful aoe.

I agree with the conspiracy theory: it’s about once again lowering loot from large pulls to push people to the cash shop.

I will wait for one more patch, and if I see it show the level of customer-neglect i’ve seen in the past two, i’m putting in a refund ticket and packing on my way.

Draemos.8045:

It’s not enough problem that they should be focusing on it , they are playing with fire as some of their class designs are almost entirely AoE centric and have really poor single target options; and they are liable to make a lot of folks extremely upset.

I know a more important aspect to much of the community is actually overbearing single target burst damage, (aka thiefs). I don’t quite get how Anet has keyed in on AoE as being a bigger problem when almost nobody actually complains about it.

It just doesn’t seem like a smart change to me. I don’t see very many people coming away from that update without having a really bad taste in their mouth.

This is absolute truth.

The entire meta is based around AOE, in addition to professions, weapons are classified by single-target vs aoe (so entire weapon sets will simply become new costume brawl props).

The “bad taste in their mouth” issue is dead-on here.

Nobody likes to be made less powerful without good reason – and with the lost shores patch: once bitten, twice shy.

smezmer.1206:

Gehenna.3625:

Mobs in GW2 are more hp heavy than in GW1. This means it takes longer to kill individual mobs. This gets annoying, so people will tend to want to get the whole group and aoe the crap out of them.

If people use aoe all the time even when not needed, it is a sign also of how uninteresting the skill set is. Nerfing aoe is one way of dealing it. Another is making other skills more useful…..but oh noes PvP will be affected.

PvP balance is a big problem for PvE.

Agree wholeheartedly. Rather than nerfing aoe they should really be reconsidering how single target skill function and damage. They should also take a close look at mob clusters and respawn rates.

I want to see fewer, much smarter mobs.

I want to see dungeon pulls like many pulls seen in CoE (both story and explorable) more often. I want to be compelled to use my utility slots.

I want ANet to let go of this anal compulsion to wince when I use AOE spells on a single target because neither the player nor the mob care that it’s aoe.

Right now, I seek out this challenge by finding champion mark 3 golems to face (the ones that hit like trucks and can’t really be dodged well)

I think being zerged down by 300 mobs in one second is “dumb” gameplay, and have seen examples in this game where ANet has done better. I want to see more of those examples.

dani.1956:

After watching that video and you still think ele are not OP , daaamnnn !

If someone in a charger is asleep and the charger is parked, the guy in the nissan leaf is going to win the drag race.

how about you play an ele instead of a thief.

Stupid people who can’t use stability, dodge, or cc and stand around to die in AOE deserve to die.

It was a matter less of their skill but more of their 30 opponents’ lack of skill.

Those 30 deserved to die, just like romney deserved to lose.

dani.1956:

Thiefs quited the game coz of the nerfs , now eles will quit the game ( hope to got aoe nerf will only affect them , as it should ) ! The game gets better , mi liky ! I know the the ele got alot more fans and as you all can see the Q.q on the forums are more than when the thief got the nerf ! Enjoy the last month of your OP’ness eles ! TC BB !

Let me know what the game is like when you’re the only person playing it.

Daendur.2357:

AoE is a brainless, effortless, riskyless way to play.
AoE nerf will be more than welcome.

it’s riskless to stand as a 5 man team against 30 or 40?

zerging is brainless, effortless, and riskless — just like bullying the unpopular kid in school.

nerfing the counter to zerging is the stupidest thing to do.

I was about to give anet 20 more dollars after going a couple months without handing them anything over lost shores and their continued DR system. Now I’m shopping for new titles. I will not stick around if this goes live.

even WOW does a better job of countering zerging.

Gehenna.3625:

Mobs in GW2 are more hp heavy than in GW1. This means it takes longer to kill individual mobs. This gets annoying, so people will tend to want to get the whole group and aoe the crap out of them.

If people use aoe all the time even when not needed, it is a sign also of how uninteresting the skill set is. Nerfing aoe is one way of dealing it. Another is making other skills more useful…..but oh noes PvP will be affected.

PvP balance is a big problem for PvE.

If they improve the AI they can make it more difficult to use AOE where they don’t want it used.

I’ve seen some pulls where the npc’s had great coordination to lock down my toon. They’re capable of doing this more often instead of being lazy and nerfing aoe.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

What some peoplee perhaps forget, in terms of W3, is the number of AoE players vs. CC. I hardly doubt that several AoE players overpower a zerg rush, in the general case.

Nerfing AoE will just make players reasses their gamestyle and focus towards CC.

Unless CC starts lasting 10 seconds, you’re not going to see CC counter a zerg.

AOE counters a zerg by punishing them severely for grouping up and charging a defended position with no other plan than to shout “BRAINS” as they push the barricades.

people who put a few aoe-ers on a choke point deserve their wins against idiots who don’t bypass them or put in some stealthies to act as “sappers” behind the lines.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

AoE will get nerfed, followed by QQing going up. Then another class will get nerfed, followed by more QQing…get my drift?

We can use GW2LFG for non-veteran skritt caves in queensdale!

Death Reincarnated.3570:

@ plasmacutter.2709 Sorry, meant in my case, but yes, in general, every weapon pretty much.

@Zantetsuken.9051 Sorry, I don’t follow.

This nerfing looks to be because several instances of players, found that they can overpower zergs with AoE. This gets nerfed, then players will focus on another offensive character attribute – and watch how this will also get nerfed. In the end all ANet is doing, in general, is nerfing the gameplay as a whole. This is not the first time such a nerfing occured.

This is what is absolutely hilarious to me.

The playerbase found solutions to zerging, and instead of letting it play out and STOP the zerging problem, ANET is killing it.

It’s the dumbest thing i’ve seen since the cataclysm healing fiasco.

IComeInPeace.1768:

Eles are extremly OP in wvw.. I play one and just own so much. It’s actually boring to play one becuase I can:

1. Get away at will
2. Kill anyone 1v1
3. With another skilled Ele – kill a 5 man easy.
4. With 4 Eles – oh boy – were talking 10 to 15 easy.

Plus

If we dont like the fight — we run away.

least thiefs only kill one person at a time. I can kill 3 to 4 easy.

I wouldnt mind more single target DD. I mean it’s easy being OP -

D/D is supposed to counter glass cannon burst specs. If you remove this counter, you simply legitimize hasted heartseeker and MUG+backstab builds.

D/D bunkers do absolute crap damage, and either spam CC or strip their boons and they get squished like bugs.

If anything, they should add more ready boon removal, they should not be destroying the synergy or already piddly damage of D/D as a build.

It’s not something to be abhorred, the 0/x/x/30/30 build for ele should be an example of how other builds should work, not dismantled more made useless.

wildcode.5403:

From what I understand, AoE is getting nerfed because it is being used in situations where single target skills should be used instead. While I do not see any complaints about AoE, but lots about thieves, I get the impression that the developers have a box that says “this is how this class should be played” and playing the class outside of that box is not how they intended it to be played and therefore will be nerfed.

I have an answer to that:

Was anyone complaining about aoes being used on single targets? (NO)

then who cares?!

We have entire trait lines not working, we have elementalists clinging for dear life to the last viable build that they now want to nerf (like many other professions that are not thief, guardian, or warrior), and they are getting anal about the fact that we are making good and full use of the toolkits provided to us?

IComeInPeace.1768:

Mass AE from large groups is the problem.

AE should be used for CC or mass low damage annoyance.

AE is skilless

Start grouping in a 5 man and roam instead of zerging.

AOE should be used for point control and punishing people who can’t coordinate.

AOE demonstrates the ability to use strategy in W2 and W3.

Strong AOE discourages “packing up” and “zerging” by punishing people for standing together in big red circles.

the cap of 5 should be removed in AOE to force the playerbase into being more intelligent than night of the living dead (now with swiftness!). — for the record, the cap of 5 on healing is fine.. it helps to prevent “immortal zerging”--

THM.2036:

-1

They aren’t nerfing it because people are using it too much. They are nerfing it because there is an imbalance in terms of damage compared to single target attacks.

Did you read the blog and transcripts?

In pvp:
target limit of 5
if you stand in the large red circle you deserve to get gibbed
without a potent way to attack groups, choke points on maps are meaningless, and zerging becomes even MORE of an issue.

in pve:
AI can be made to wait out and prefer aoe abilities for interrupt or cc if you consider an encounter ‘too easy with aoe’.
otherwise.. who the **** cares, computer generated AI doesn’t pay your bills, the people playing who LIKE aoe do.

In general:
Nobody has any business discouraging a playstyle unless it’s substantively ruining the days of a significant fraction of the (skilled) playerbase.

Given a choice between clean, impersonal game metrics and all of that, I’d want ArenaNet to focus on metrics, too.

This isn’t a question of metrics, this is ANet making “value judgments” on our individual playstyles.

they’re not pointing to metrics showing that the fact that they used an AOE here instead of a single target affected the outcome of this match, or that AOE trivializes encounters, they just came forward and said “we think people are using too many aoe abilities”, and that’s just not good enough to justify robbing people of the way they want to play.

Good reasons include:
- this is breaking the game by making things too easy, and we can’t balance it any other way besides nerfing the damage (protip, you CAN, by making the packs use more CC, and making their AI more intelligent about interrupts)

-this is breaking the game by ruining the day of a significant and unintended portion of the playerbase (if this were the case, the forum posts wouldn’t be about thief backstab or perma-stealth all the time)

They need to make the red circles fully shaded red, then have the spine to stand up to players and say “you didn’t dodge out of the giant red zone, L2P noob, not nerfing them”

Window-lickers should not be allowed to cry to devs and break the entire balance of the game by destroying the viability of AOE.

It’s simple: if it’s not utterly ruining the days of a significant portion of the playerbase, ANet has absolutely no business pushing people away from a preferred playstyle – it is uselessly diminishing variety in the game and I get the feeling these are famous last words on the same order as ghostcrawler’s famous “we’re making radical changes to healing in cataclysm” that resulted in a 20% drop in big blue’s playerbase.

ANet is lost in their own numbers and not paying attention to their design and to the wants of the community.

There are entire specs based around AOE, the meta has been balanced around AOE over the entire development of the game, AOE tends to be focused into specific weapons (which means nerfing aoe means the irrelevance of these weapons). Even player balance is based on aoe (without strong aoe, the perma-stealth thief bunker becomes even MORE opd as it can’t be targeted!).

Nerfing AOE in general will completely destroy the balance of their game.

Then there are the other factors:

Nobody likes to feel significantly less powerful.
Many professions have a LOT of aoe skills, more mediocre single target, and players LIKE this variety.
Professions that do primarily single-target are already powerful and don’t need yet more buffs.

After the aoe nerf and ANet destroys the bunker spec that IS the only really viable and non-boring ele spec, Ele will be in worse shape than engi.

At least engi has survivability.