Guild Wars 2

I don’t have a problem with the switches itself (i probably would run 20+ arcane even with the damage/cooldown buffs), but for the reason why we currently switch: as a part of the damage rotation. I’m just saying that better auto-attacks would lead to more tactical switches, because it would no longer required to switch for damage alone.

I actually like it. It has the defensive water/arcane core with some nice twist in the fire traits specially for the staff. 2 comments

• I prefer Fiery Greatsword as elite, which is a nice damage boost. You can use 3 and 4 against gates (4 without a target) to deal many damage ticks to them. The whirl (#3) counts also as a long evade. Whirl through an enemy zerg, if you dare :P

• Coordinated zergs will stop to stack might before attacking. With 30 points in Fire (and trait XI: Persisting Flames) your fire fields (lava font) will last longer and you also grant fury in addition to might with a blast finisher in a fire field. If you can afford to lose a cantrip, use Arcane Wave as an additional blast finisher (the other blast finisher is staff-earth-2, eruption). It’s your decision if you want to trade survivability for offensive support.

Wryog.5073:

I don’t even want to list the boons/conditions that we don’t have.

Boons (9 total):

1. Retaliation
2. Aegis

Conditions (12 Total):

1. Confusion
2. Fear
3. Poison
4. Torment

Yes, we don’t have a viable condition build, but whining about access to boons is just ridiculous.

2 Questions:

1. Why is there no Fresh Earth?
2. What does Fresh Arcane do?
3. Bonus Question: What does the new Fresh Air do?

TGSlasher.1458:

I like this idea a lot, but Mesmers would still be annoying (4 Mesmer icons in your fight)

Easy fix: only the real Mesmer gets the profession icon (yay, revert 4 months’ worth of patches)

TGSlasher.1458:

OP -> worst in game (via general opinion) -> OP -> worst in game (via general opinion)

The funny thing is only 2 things happened between worst and OP:

1. Eles built bunker as a reaction of the glass canon meta
2. self-stuns on dagger (magnetic grasp and rtl) have been fixed.

1) Okay, that I was mistaken with the normal weapon swap cooldown. That Arcane Fury and Elemental Attunement are unique effects are justified because they are traits. (I don’t get the complaint about Arcane Fury anyway, because Ranger’s Furious Grip gives a higher fury uptime than Arcane Fury). Also, fix #1 promotes fewer switches, so on-switch traits would be overall weaker.

2) Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but fix #2 means that attunements have no cooldown besides a global cooldown of 1 second (comparable to 3 kit engineers). Not to mention fix #1 and fix #2 are mutually exclusive.

Super Riceman.8702:

Freezing Gust: Freeze the target for 2 sec. (similar to frost bow 5 )
I think a second daze or stun would be redundant. I’d say give it a bit of direct damage increase the chill duration a bit

Flamewall: removes a boon each second -OR- grant 3s stability to allies the first time they cross it
That gave me the idea of another way to make it a supporty move: it grants (the new) fire aura (+ trait effects) on allies passing through. Problem is, that fire aura is already on focus =/

Water Blast: Make it ground target-able.
No. No no no. No ground-targeted “auto” attack. Healing and damage is laughable anyway. Maybe make it a 100% projectile finisher to give it some niche use?

Conjure Lightning Hammer: Make Static Swing and Thunderclap not count towards charges used
I’d rather see that the auto-attacks don’t use charges on any conjured weapon

Glyph of Elemental Storms: Also removes 3 conditions
Seems as random as the stun breaker on GoEP. I like it as a satire, but I would rather not have it on my skill bar.

Tornado: Keep the stability when exiting the transform
I know, that was the only use of tornado in the past, but I want the actual tornado to be useful.

Good ideas overall (especially the Diamond Skin), I just added a few comments in bold

Just a side note: Water staff is good for the water fields (coordinated zergs use blast finishers for AoE heals), but not for the small direct or regeneration heals which have the standard AoE cap of 5 anyway. I wouldn’t use any healing power gear on the ele right now (the golden age of ele self-heal bunkers has ended).

It’s not just dagger auto attacks, but any auto attack.
It’s not just auto attacks, but any weapon skill.
It’s not just weapon skills, but any skill.

I feel that ele skills generally deal too less damage or have too high cooldowns for their effect. But this can be fixed with some number tweaks.

I know, that especially the auto-attacks have low damage to promote attunement switching. The problem is, that that undermines the goal of switching. Instead of changing roles and adapting to the combat situation, you are forced to switch to fill the damage role decently. Attunements – the most interesting class mechanic imo – have degenerated to a tool that artificially bloats the standard damage rotation: other classes equivalent of 11123 is F1-23 F2-23 F3-23 F4-23 for the ele. It doesn’t add any depth, just APM.

I see 2 possible fixes for this:

1) Make each attunement bar comparable to other classes’ weapon skills in terms of damage (auto attacks) and cooldowns (skills 2-5). Just a reminder: without investment the Arcane line, our attunement cooldowns are about the double of the weapon switch cooldowns. Having double skills for double cooldown seems fair. Investing into the primary attribute to do something better than other classes seems also fair. Being able to ignore the last trait line for raw damage is also something any other class can do. Edit: Oops, somehow I thought that normal weapon swap is 7 seconds)

2) Attunement switching has no cooldowns besides a global cooldown of 1 second, comparable to the engi kits. Switching is still part of a damage rotation, but it’s possible to use the emergency skills when you need them and not when you are coincidentally in the right attunement as part of your rotation. That way, the skills can stay the same as they are now, but it would require a class overhaul, as on-switch traits and the Arcana bonus need to be replaced by something new.

I think #2 is more work for devs, but it’s a safer option than #1. #1 is in principle a flat buff to weapon sets and it’s hard to find the sweet spot between sub-par damage and beta-facerolling.

Edit: Can’t believe what my short ranting-post has become…

Ele is in GW2 is in the same spot as in GW1: It has nice spike-options for PvP, subpar and generally overrated damage options in PvE, but is actually one of the best supporters. How comes that you don’t like that in GW2?

Better get used to it – syncing has never been fixed in GW1.

One PvE trick:

Fiery Greatsword 4 leaves a fiery trail behind you that ticks damage. If you run against a wall (without target) the trail stacks into one point and ticks 20+ times. Use that for mobs/bosses pulled against a wall or damage gates in wvw with it.

Tired of walls? Do it without a wall with lightning flash. Cast fiery rush (again without target) and then immediately port with lightning flash into (or right before) your enemy. You’ll stop at the end of your teleport.

Maybe some mechanic to discourage spamming the same skill. Each subsequent skill use costs additional 1/2/3/ initiative. Or, it could scale with the base cost: + 50%/+ 100%/+ 150%/…

That would give thieves the option to burn the initiative for a burst (or using multiple evades in an emergency), but bringing down an opponent to “burstable” health would require a “rotation” of at least 2 skills.

Oxygen.5918:

Chill could simply affect initiative at 1/4th the rate it’d affect other classes cooldowns. Why? On anyone else, 4 skills is the most chilled can affect.

So, about a ~17% reduction on initiative generation.

Okay once again: Chill does affect skills used during the chill. The new cooldowns recharge slower until the chill ends.

Also, I don’t get your logic for the 1/4th rate. Elementalists have 16 weapon skills which are affected by chill – should they only get a 1/16th of the normal chill penalty?

Okay, my thoughts on chill and why thieves should get the full pentalty on initiative regen.

• Chill durations are balanced around the 66% recharge penalty. That’s why chill lasts shorter than cripple

• Every class gets the full 66% penalty on skill recharges. Giving thieves a 66% initiative penalty is mechanically equivalent.

• Thieves still have skills and traits that grant initiative regeneration by fixed amounts (1 or 2 initiative per 10 seconds) or even as a proc effect (initiative on crit). I made a nice post that converts x additional initiative / 10 seconds in effective cooldown recharge traits.

• The counter-argument mobility/survivability: There are other classes which are dependent on mobility for survival (elementalist and any full-glass spec to a degree) which get the full recharge and movement penalty from chill. Also stealth, evades and shadow steps still work while chilled.

Edit: Here is the breakdown on init/10sec vs cooldown reduction

Softspoken.2410:

it would slow down the ‘recharge’ of every weapon skill (besides 1) for a thief.

Congrats, you realized how chill works for any other class. If someone uses a skill under chill, they have to wait longer until the skill is ready again. That has the exact same effect if initiative would be chillable.

Glass? Not really. I run near-full zerker with some soldier, but I trait rather defensive 0/10/10/30/20 and have supporty runes (4 altruism, 2 water). I use a rather generic build because I switch weapons quite often.

D/F? Sometimes. I use it in dungeons when the bosses are melee-able, but have some nasty projectiles: Bloomhunger in jungle fractal and the wurm in twilight’s arbor (swirling winds = ignore all the red circles.)

Umrae.5124:

Guild mission activation control
I don’t mind it the way it is atm, just don’t give the rights to morons :l

You missed the point and/or are not aware of the following bug: The mission control right only controls the right to activate a guild mission from the guild panel. That’s okay for bounty and treck (they start immediately), but activating puzzle, challenge and rush only unlocks a ~5hour time window where the mission can actually be started. In that window, anyone in the guild can actually start the puzzle/challenge/rush with the ~15min time limit.

Another simple suggestion to fix that problem: Stealth should not stack.

LordByron.8369:

single target DPS weapon with mobility.

I think D/D should fill that niche. That also means, that we never get a better dps/mobility weapon than D/D.

That said, I really like the idea of conditionals (Mind XXX and Glowing XXX skills from GW1) and I don’t mind if conditional effects become a core in elementalist gameplay. Some random examples from GW1:

single-target damage, aoe if target is burning/“chilled” (water hex in gw1-speak)
burn when target is hit by fire damage
damage, blind to burning enemies
knockdown to blinded enemies
burn to knockdowned enemies
knockdown to weakened enemies

But when I look at the cooldowns of our conditional skills (RtL, Fire Grab) it’s probably a bad idea to request more of them.

The regeneration from Undercurrent (Trident-Water-4) does not remove a condition with the Cleansing Water (Water-XI) trait. Tested in PvE. Not sure if that’s a skill or a trait bug.

Staff is primary a support/cc weapon. I use it in PvE for heavy condition removal or if I’m forced to go max range. Staff is also a good weapon for WvW zerging. A well placed static field or frozen ground can decide a ZvZ encounter. But honestly I wouldn’t use a staff primary for damage or “tanking”.

Alkaholic.3875:

Early it was burst…“WORST META EVER”
then it was bunkers…“WORST META EVER”
now it’s condi’s…“WORST META EVER”

Prediction: new meta consists of supporters: many small heals/regen, (AoE?) cleansing conditions. (Also the WORST META EVER). Supporters are perfectly countered by … burst – the last and first WORST META EVER. Maybe then the playerbase learns to build balanced teams (at least one of each).

Raven.9603:

the best underwater elite

It locks all weapon skills, utlities, even attunement swap (for a heal or protection during whirlpool), requires melee range and deals pityful “damage”. The only good thing is the unreliable AoE pull. Before it’s 33% nerf it was a high risk/high reward skill (and I admit it may have been too strong for PvP) but now it’s a low risk/low reward skill.

I’d slot a 4th utility over the elite at any time. (and it’s kind of sad that I would say the same about land combat as well)

/daily ele rant

Can confirm this bug. Also: Focus is underrated.

Linnael.1069:

Thieves- No cooldown evasion makes it impossible to compare uptime.

You could use the initiative regen as effective coodown. Base regen is 1 initiative per 1.33s, so you multiply the initiative cost by 4/3 to get the cooldown. That cooldown is the absolute maximum cd, since there are many initiative regenerating skills and traits.

Here a list of initiative regeneration with additional initiative every 10 seconds:

• 10/(10*3/4 + 0) = 1.33 (base regen, no additional initiative)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 1) = 1.17 (Infiltrator’s Signet)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 2) = 1.05 (Quick Recovery = 20% cooldown reduction on all weapon skills)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 3) = 0.95 (Infiltrator’s Signet + Quick Recovery)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 4) = 0.87 (4 crits every 10 seconds … sounds reasonable)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 5) = 0.80 (still easily archieved with skills and traits)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 6) = 0.74 (cd changed from 4s per 3 initiative cost to to 3s/4init)
• 10/(10*3/4 + 7.5) = 2/3 (magic point where cooldowns are halved)

I actually like focus. But there’s something wrong if a full-defensive weapon offers 5 sec invuln every 50 seconds, when another class has 2 second invuln + damage on a 10 sec cooldown on an offensive weapon. Even spamming Mist Form + Obsidian Flesh on cooldown offers a worse invuln uptime than Blurred Frenzy alone.

I think GW2 has a scaling problem. Yes, it is nice for damage calculations that everything scales directly with power (+10% power = +10% damage), but the downside is, that skills with high base damage automatically have high skill coeffictients (damage per point in power).

Currently, damage is calculated by:
skill coefficient * weapon strength * power * crit modifiers

Most other MMOs/MOBAs use a formula with a separated base damage and skill coefficient:
(base damage + skill coefficient * weapon strength * power) * crit modifiers
or
(base damage * weapon strength + skill coefficient * power) * crit modifiers.

With the new formulas, the scaling will be flatter: the damage will not double if double power. This brings direct damage in line with condition damage (which also have the form base + coeff * condition damage) and defensive attributes (doubling toughness does not halve the damage, because there is a base armor, healing is also calculated by base + coeff * healing power)

Another problem is that there are three attributes which increase direct damage AND stack multiplicatively AND are available as a 3-stat combination.

Prediction: The burst situation in WvW will get worse with every ascended item ANet introduces.

Edit: Forgot to say that I bolded the variables for a reason: With the new formulas, each skill gets two variables to balance instead of only one. It is possible to town down the scaling and leave the base damage unaffected.

A visual feedback if I hit a stealthed enemy with cleaving/aoe would be more than enough. Or, alternatively: stealth should not stack.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

forgot about passion flower?

Yes.

Metallus.7690:

Something like “reforging” from WoW would be very much appreciated.

Maybe, in order not to destroy the market (since some popular sets like berserker and rabid are sold for more than other stats combinations), you could implement the possibility to change only one of the 2 minor stats.

This would add a lot more customization and open new doors to builds that are currently imperfect without the correct stats combination.

Both reforging and changing one minor stat would add flexibility, but there would be still constraints. As long as there not all combinations available, there will some minority whining about why exactly THAT SINGLE combination is not possible.

For the market: Rabid may suffer and fall to mat costs, because it is currently not craftable. Berserker prices will remain, because the price difference between 5 blood and 3 blood/1 fang/1 claw is minimal. Tbh, I think the opposite will happen: the mat prices needed for berserker/rabid will rise to match the higher demand of crafted armor with that stats.

Campalishous.9076:

Great idea, but ANet seems hesitant to pump out different stat sets for whatever reason.

I think it’s for balance reasons (until Giver’s, boon and condition duration has only been available as runesets and via traits), but if certain stat combinations would break the game, it just means that the attributes itself are unbalanced.

Campalishous.9076:

An alternative using your idea would be let crafting be the only way to get 4 stat gear outside of the Ascended items. ANet can limit it to just a handful of combinations but it would give crafting some actual usefulness & uniqueness at max level.

If you mean by 4 stat gear something like this, you can make an exotic replica by placing a beryl/valkyrie jewel in a ruby/berserker ring. Before one of the patches summed the attributes up, you could see the berserker part and the valkyrie part (old wiki entry)

Material to Attribute Assignment

For Goal 1, each Attribute needs two corresponding (T6) materials: one for weapons and armor and the other for trinkets.
After you have decided which attributes you want to have, just have a look at this list:

1. Power: Blood, Ruby
2. Precision: Claw, Coral
3. Vitality: Bone, Azurite (?)
4. Toughness: Scale, Emerald
5. Crit Damage: Fang, Beryl
6. Condition Damage: Venom Sac, Chrysocola
7. Condition Duration: Karka Shell for both (?)
8. Healing Power: Totem, Sapphire
9. Boon Duration: Snowflake for both (?)
10. Magic Find: Dust (?), Opal

Yes, we have too less materials for a 1:1 assignment. Azurite and Snowflakes are not available anymore an Karka Shells have too different droprates compared to T6 materials. I see three solutions:

• Make Snowflakes, Karka Shells and Azurite available the whole year round and tune droprates accordingly.
• Make 2 attributes unavailable for customized combinations (Boon/Condition Duration?) so that the current materials suffice
• Introduce new materials.

Yes, each of those hurt Goal 2, but it must be done.

TL;DR: Assigned crafting materials to attributes, it’s not perfect

Recipe Templates

Now, to the core of the suggestion: the recipe templates. At first we need “empty” crafting products due to the four-ingredients-limit.

Empty Gossamer Insignia

• 5 Bolt of Gossamer
• 20 Spools of Gossamer Thread
• 5 Glob of Ectoplasm

Empty Orichalcum Imbued Inscription

• 5 Orichalcum Plated Dowel
• 5 Globs of Ectoplasm

Empty Orichalcum Amulet/Ring/Earring

• 1 Orichalcum Chain/Band/Hook
• 1 Orichalcum Setting

Since in my beta-list Karka Shells are considered a gem, it needs a jewel recipe:

Exquisite Karka Jewel

• 1 Karka Shell
• 1 Orichalcum Filigree
• 1 Glob of Ectoplasm

And here are the customized stat recipes:

Customized Gossamer Insignia

• 1 Empty Gossamer Insignia
• 3 [T6 Mats for the big stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the first small stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the second small stat]

Customized Imbued Orichalcum Inscription

• 1 Empty Orichalcum Imbued Inscription
• 3 [T6 Mats for the big stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the first small stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the second small stat]

Customized Orichalcum Amulet/Ring/Earring

• 1 Empty Orichalcum Amulet/Ring/Earring
• 3 [Exquisite Jewels for the big stat]
• 1 [Exquisite Jewels for the first small stat]
• 1 [Exquisite Jewels for the second small stat]

The trinkets are crafted directly, the insignias/inscriptions can be used for any armor/weapon like any of the current insignias/inscriptions.

TL;DR: Sorry, recipe lists can’t be any shorter – except for that meta-template:

Customized Insignia/Inscription/Trinket

• 1 Empty Insignia/Inscription/Trinket (new recipes)
• 3 T6 Mats / Exquisite Jewels for the big stat
• 1 T6 Mats / Exquisite Jewels for the 1st small stat
• 1 T6 Mats / Exquisite Jewels for the 2nd small stat

Introduction

Something that bothers me in GW2 is the lack of stat combinations. We have 10 attributes, excluding agony resistance and the professional specifics:

1. Power
2. Precision
3. Vitality
4. Toughness
5. Crit Damage
6. Condition Damage
7. Condition Duration
8. Healing Power
9. Boon Duration
10. Magic Find

With the current stat pattern (1 big stat + 2 smaller ones) that would make 360 different combinations (10 * (combinations of 2 elements out of 9). How much do we have ingame? 10? 15? Maybe 20 including the odd unnamed stat combinations only available for some ascended items.

Yes, some stat combinations have been added with content updates (Giver’s, Apothecary’s…), but it would take a long time until all 360 combinations are available. Therefore, I propose a new set of recipes that makes all combinations available. Think of the possibilities:

• Condition Damage + Condition Duration gear
• Boon Duration gear
• Magicfind no eating not the big stat on your items.

TL;DR: There are 360 possible stat combinations and here are recipe-templates to make them all available at once

Goals

1. The recipes should follow a logical pattern. It would be impossible to remember 360 different recipes. They should give a “mix and match” feeling, building an item with customized stats should not be more difficult than thinking about 3 stats.
2. The recipes should be easy to implement. That means, that the recipes consist of at most 4 ingredients and re-use existing crafting materials. Also, they should not clash with existing recipes.
3. The new recipes should cost material-wise as much as existing recipes.
4. Ultimately, this should make crafting disciplines more desirable. I think the customized stat items should be Account-Bound, Soulbound-on-equip. If they are not account bound, anybody could just buy the new stat combinations from the TP.

TL;DR: Read the italics

I can really imagine to swap from 0/10/0/30/30 to 0/30/0/30/10 in PvE. I don’t mind the high attunement cool downs if I can switch back to a damaging attunement quickly. Yes, not having perma-vigor and evasive arcane will hurt, but I can’t live without the option of aura sharing or crazy condition removal.

Some ideas:

• You have bleed-stacking traits but no condition damage on your armor. If you go for bleeds, add Carrion/Rampager’s armor and some Rabid marks/condition runes. If condition damage is not important to you, you could take one of the defensive earth traits (Earth’s Embrace, Geomancer’s freedom) or Strength of Stone for direct damage instead.

• I think Written in Stone is not worth it for only one signet. Not losing 90 toughness for 30 seconds is a waste for a grandmaster trait. Rock Solid is the better choice in that build. Or, take 10 points away from earth.

• You can invest the 10 points in Air (Inscription or Air Training) or Water (Soothing Water and Cleansing Wave)

• Arcane Resurrection is a bit too situational, imo. I’d run Elemental Attunement and only change to Arcane Resurrection if rezzing is actually needed.

• If you deal enough crits or don’t use the scepter, you can use Renewing Stamina instead of Vigorous Scepter

To be honest, I like that the living story content is only temporary availaible. It gives the impression that the ingame-time progresses. Why would anyone invent the new Dragon Festival during the Molten Alliance crysis?

The worst offender in that regard is Orr imo. I’d really like to see a “Winds of Change”-y cleansing of Orr so that Orr is finally risen-free. But I understand Anet cannot do that, since the risen are so integrated in the personal story.

There’s also a more pragmatic argument for temporary content. In WoW, all/most old content is still ingame, but it’s dead because players ingore it. Why would anyone to the oldschool lvl 60 raids, if the first random lvl 61 blue item is better? In WoW all content for not-max-level and Tier(max-2) equipment is defacto removed. ANet just choose to remove old content by themselves.

PvE ele needs just a ultra-high-damage, low-utlility weapon that is clunky enough that it’s unusable in PvP. Something warrior-greatswordy. If the new uber-weapon is never used in PvP it’ll never get nerfed in PvE.

PvE problem solved, PvP balance unaffected.

It’s the first time I read that idea and I like it.

+1

Redscope.6215:

So eles get the one nerf patch that brings them into line EIGHT MONTHS after release and it’s a knee-jerk reaction?

You forget the months where RtL and Magnetic Grasp have been unbreakable 3-second self-stuns and every patch “finally solved” that problem.

Redscope.6215:

Try and make an argument for consistent burst cleansing of all your conditions at will

Simple. Since conditions are armor-ignoring, there are 2 forms of defense against conditions: high health pool and cleansing. Since eles don’t have the former, clensing is the only viable option.

Redscope.6215:

or a bugged RtL that travelled 350 further than it should have and was on a shorter cooldown than any other movement skill of its type.

The range fix is justified, but even BEFORE that bug-fix and cd-nerf there have been better skills around. Rush has also 1200 range, 20s cooldown and since it is affected by movement speed modifiers, it has 1600 range under Swiftness. Ranger Swoop is even better: 1100 range (1466 with swiftness) on 12 second cooldown.

The regeneration on Undercurrent (trident water 4) does not work with the Cleansing Water trait (Water-XI)

TheGuy.3568:

Never compare DPS to warrior. The warrior will compare healing to you.e healing. DD eles do need more DPS but not number is the range of warrior or thief.

Compare everything with a warrior, since warriors are “at the balancing sweet spot”. (Although I’ll never understand how a class with the most life and armor can also have the skills with the highest base damage … and be called it balanced). Heals are not to compensate lousy dps, but low base health and armor.

ARM.3912:

Anyone d/d ele who doesnt feel this nerf wasnt playing right to begin with.

So, charging away every 20 seconds was the “right” method to play?

I never understood what’s the big deal with RtL anyway (neither the crying of other classes pre-nerf nor the crying here post-nerf). I think RtL in its current form is a good compromise: For its intended use it hasn’t been nerfed at all (I’ll consider the range a fix, not a nerf) and if you misuse RtL as escape tool, you suffer a high cooldown which is actually in the range of other emergency cooldowns.

The elementalist class has more important issues than a cooldown of a single skill:

• Traits which are active only 1/4 of time
• Mostly seless traits outside the water and arcane line
• Auras as the only cross-traitline synergy
• Dependence on arcane trait points to make the class actually playable
• Dependence on cantrips for survival
• Air is described as single-target damage element, but is usually outclassed by fire skills. Buffs to air skills added even an AoE element (lightning whip, arc lightning)
• I’m sure, I’ve missed something obvious, but it’s late…

It’s a balanced balance update imo. The RtL nerf should not do much in PvP (it’s still possible to charge in, do damage and charge out) it just makes wandering around in open PvE a bit slower. The slow for carrying orbs was needed and even elementalist players (me incloded) agreed that an unslowed RtL when carrying orbs is OP. I like the buffs for Glyph of Storms for PvE and the rest of the buffs is just fine-tuning.

TL;DR: No major nerfs, some minor buffs, we still have only one viable build. It could be worse.

Just came to say that the Behemoth in the infographic looks like a Haunter

Great and well-thought suggestions.

To summarise: RtL should work like any other movement skill on a class with perma-swiftness and crazy condition removal? That would increase the average range of RtL. I’m okay with that.

Tei.1704:

You’re ignoring the fact that engineer is the only profession that has to sacrifice a utility slot for a weapon swap. Every kit that they use is something that could have been a condition removal, stun break, or whatever.

A 3 kit engineer would still have the same amount of weapon skills compared to an ele + a free utility with toolbelt skill. Then again, my post was only half-serious and I have to agree with you (also with the rest of your post I didn’t quote).

Kardiamond.6952:

Yeah, let’s just give Elementalist the engineer unique abilities of using kit.

Should Engineer have Attunement then?

They don’t need to because the kits are superior to attunements (at least on paper, not considering the actual skills). Compare an elementalist and a 4 kit engineer:

• Both have 4 weapon bars (from attunements vs kits)

• 1 heal + 3 utilities (6-9 on elementalist, F1-F4 on engineer)

• 4 “weapon switches” (F1-F4 on elementalist, 6-9 on engineer)

• Engineers have only 1 second cooldown until they can switch back to the same kit (9-15 seconds on ele)

• Engineers have a fifth weapon bar from … weapons.

(yay, trolling with facts)

I think it’s the other way round: the matchmaking is bad because of the small pool of players. When there are more players around, there should be automatically better matches. It’s just anecdotal, but on patch day I was in two matches with equally “skilled” teams: full random, rank 7~18.

Whirlpool? Really? That thing that barely kills anyone in in the full (10s?) duration. The damage is low, easy to avoid, melee range and you lose your weapon and utility skills. Since the damage nerf (by 33%) it’s one of those high risk – low reward skills.