Guild Wars 2

Eurhetemec.9052:

My god. Read the words you quoted. Symptom not cause. You understand what the difference is?

Since gear has no effect on a playstyle it’s neither a symptom nor a cause. In this game you achieve playstyle diversity through a choice of your traits and skills. This has been repeated a thousand of times.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Gear diversity matters because it’s a symptom of play-style diversity, which is inarguably a good thing, of there being more than one way to win in a reasonable fashion.

Except gear doesn’t impact play-style. But that was said a million times and some people just won’t accept it.

I believe in Karl.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Elemental Attunement definitely changes the way you play, even if you haven’t outright noticed it (probably because you’ve always used it). I’d say it’s pretty build-defining, as such it fits a grandmaster trait.

In pvp, the only viable builds swap attunements constantly. The design of the profession favours it as well. The builds that do not incentivize swapping attunements are among the troll builds category like lava tomb build.

Astralporing.1957:

No, the real problem is that going glass cannon does not significantly reduce survivability, but it certainly significantly increases damage dealt. There would have been no problem at all, if offensive, defensive and utility stats were balanced against each other. You’d need to make a meaningful choice then when selecting your stats.
Too bad that the system Anet designed doesn’t really allow for it.

It doesn’t reduce survivability but going nomad does increase it significantly. Even a gear with balanced stats (celestial) in conjuction with defensive traits is very survivable.

Cynz.9437:

whew, i am glad that it wasn’t thieves that got traps specialization
i wonder what the range on guardian attacks will be though, hopefully not another 2k snipes

Why would thieves get traps? They already have them.

MattyP.6954:

In context (that is important, you know), calling someone out for not “removing training wheels” by running a build with Toughness (or Survivability in general) is kind of a crappy thing to do. It comes down to a group of players insisting that every player play like they play and bow to the Zerker dungeon Meta, and the comment that they “need to learn the combat system” is hilarious given that the dungeon strategy du jour involves exploiting level design to stand in a corner and dps race the mobs. That is even less active and requires less skill than a WoW 5-man.

You must be really heavy to carry if that’s what you do.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I never understood why they insist on giving conjures charges and limited time when we only use them for one skill then ditch them (ok maybe not LH).

Because with great power comes great responsibility.

MattyP.6954:

Selective reading of my comment is selective. O.o

I’m not sure how it is selective. Berserker’s gear works best against normal enemies and Sinister works best against heavy armoured enemies. Support is already there and isn’t dependant on your gear.

Arioso.8519:

You have to admit, that comes off as a tad hostile. Or at least a bit elitist. Telling someone they’re a “Bad Player” for “keeping their training wheels on” may not be outright hostile, but you can see how people might take it that way, right?

Is this some kind of new correctness to not tell anyone about their performance? Especially that after playing for some time you should remove those training wheels.

Dungeons:
Pull your own weight

Open world content:
Be a dead weight who won’t even use a wp when he’s dead only to scale up an event

serenke.4806:

Stacking in a corner or on (around, next to, etc.) the boss is still the same in regards to the whole post here.

Then how do you expect people to melee a boss? Attacking from an alternate universe with attacks that can penetrate the fabric of the universe?

inb4 melee too much rewarding

Leo G.4501:

Well what if the percentage of the trait were something like 20%? So if your build got like 1000 healing power, you’d get like 200 ferocity from the trait. I also wouldn’t mind an addition to the trait like 10% outgoing healing while you have fury or something.

I’m sure 0,78% or 3,6% dps increase is totally worth that significant dealbreaking change.

No.

This trait is an epitome of bad design, to say the least. It needs to be scrapped and replaced by something that actually is about dealing damage since this specialisation is about dealing damage/cc.

Wethospu.6437:

I think min-max is a bit wrong term here. It’s more like understanding the basics.

Min-maxing basics.

Velho.7123:

I have a reliable source that told me this change is intended, and there is no one that works(spends company time) on these dungeons anymore. By the way, don’t forget to bring Smoke Screen and Swirling Winds after the Guardian’s Wall goes down.
(bye Necro solos, sorry spoj :/)
I was about to learn how to solo it, but oh well :/

If no one works on dungeons who makes those little changes? Skritts?

Sina.9208:

If you are ranged and spread out you don’t need any reflects, just the ability to dodge, which is doable, if the projectile has to actually travel a bit to reach you. (and Lupi will choose fairly random targets for it too, unlike how it would hit a stacked “meleeblob”)

That’s what I said.

But if you go ranged it takes much longer than just melee+reflects. Or just one shot him.

If that was living story the patch would be in an hour. Are you certain this doesn’t have higher priority than you might believe?

Foefaller.1082:

What about Cleric’s or Magi?

If you put everything into healing power this trait will give you around 10% critical damage which for cleric’s would be about 0.39% damage increase and for magi’s it’s around 1.8%. In other words, anyone who even thought it would be a good idea to commit such a change to a demo build should contemplate why it even got out of his mind.

Sina.9208:

Personally I think not all fights need to be melee friendly. Ranged Lupi is kind of fun, I had a good time ranging him when gw2 was new, those were the days .. :p

That’s just makes reflects even more required for that fight, nothing else. You go ranged when you have profession like necros who lacks evades and projectile defense.

Jerus.4350:

PS war doesn’t get you 100% fury uptime though. Still want an Ele with fire fields for that, or other professions that can fill in and worth with PS war to fill the 66% gap in their up time.

Ranger should give a lot of fury.

Iris Ng.9845:

If Bolt to the Heart and Air Training are to be still the same, S/x Fresh Air ele will be too OP in sPvP.

In the current balance state, surely but everyone gets buffed significantly. Thieves with executioner, panic strike, residual venoms and sleight of hand or resilience of shadows. That just reeks of being potently OP.

That’s a disadvantage because they punish eles for it with longer cooldowns.

Shame that other professions gets so many traits as baseline (I cried seeing engineers having like 5-6 traits incorporating into traitless character), e.g illusionary persona or dagger training yet ele gets blasting staff…

Maybe we should get lingering elements as baseline to prolong this joke of a trait.

Neko.9021:

I very much believe this is intentional. I think that ANet wants to push Warrior support (making Shout Heals and Phalanx Strength much stronger builds in the PvP and PvE game modes respectively) and this is their way of doing it. They want Ele to either be full dps or a healing sort of role. I think they’re trying to gently nudge Ele out of the offensive-support role – it’s something they see that belongs more to Warriors than to Eles. Mind you, when you look at the game as a whole (including PvE, WvW, and PvP), what with the rise of Cele Ele in PvP, I think I can understand why they are taking this stance.

A profession whose profession’s mechanic makes it a literal jack-of-all-trades should be polarised? That would be extremely shortsighted.

Ferocious Wind in the current iteration gives literally 0% dps increase. I wouldn’t really want to comment on it without using invectives.

Stacking isn’t meta, playing in melee range is.

It’s dhuumfire patch all again. Anet simply shows that they have absolutely no clue what makes ele tick and in the pursuit of diversity they will push ele out of meta yet again. That’s a literal pendulum of being OP and UP. See ya in a year (unless tempest will change it).

A solid trait for a solid profession.

FrownyClown.8402:

thats only true in pvp.

In pve anet is making sure staff is the only used weapon.

Supreme.3164:

That would still be overly strong, because you don’t have to necessarily use ER in front of a crowd, or under heavy pressure, including the casting time, that would still be 6s regen/vigor every 15s.

There are a lot of overly strong stuff upcoming with the balance patch.

Supreme.3164:

I strongly doubt they would leave Ether renewal as it is, as I could have 6s regen/vigor every 12s with the buffed soothing disruption

Unless they made those boons appear only after a full cast of ER.

I wonder what’s the point of tomes then, if you already have the maximum numbers of characters or simply don’t want to create another one.

If they make it a cantrip why do you expect it to be an instant? Heal as one or healing breeze will be non-instant shouts, just as “Guard Me” is. Or you have a non-instant stance, a meditation or an arcane.

There probably won’t be much of a rebalancing because the only reason they want to categorise skills is to make them affected by traits and runes so they can compete with other skills.

Michal.4513:

1st
FGS as any other Flame walls didnt work as itnended, they mealt “things” if they stay in them, Anet clearly state tha was not working as intended. It was bug that was fixed stop cry bcos we could abuse it.

I guess burning speed and burning retreat were completely broken while at the same time whirlwind attack isn’t.

Michal.4513:

Eles is broken only in PvE and no near balance. The Icebow and AOE AFK Hitboxes. Place AOE frome 600y go afk and you will do 80k dmg in few seconds… while you stack fury/might and swiftness, Give good AoE blind, provide Deep frost and Ice Bow etc etc. If you compare other profesion they either have dmg or support, or at leas balance dmg with support. There is no other “such balanced” profession that can provide so much dmg/support to table at once.

And it’s going to be even more broken because staff ele which is the most broken ele gets buffs while other builds are getting nerfed.

While you wield a conjure weapon you basically lose your profession mechanics and you can’t swap weapons to use a defensive utility. Therefore, conjures need to offer something potent, either it’s a damage or utility.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I am so disappointed at the changes to the air trait line that I cannot bring myself to think about how to save DF

It’s basically unsalvageable. Staff is simply better.

Velimere.7685:

Because competent teams focus Celestial specs first, right? The last time that I checked, Berserker specs got focused first. Also, you know an argument is weak when it has to decline into a point of over-specific convenience in order to even attempt dispute in the first place. Let alone the fact that your argument is self-defeating by proper team-fighting conduct (read: break glass first), it’s very exclusive and narrow to begin with.

Often you focus shoutwar if he still hasn’t use his banner. Med guard has a high amount of blocks while thief is simply too elusive.

gin.7158:

any thought about thief? what weapon and trait combo will get the most dps?

Same as before, they were simply buffed, like baseline dagger training, top kek, since daggers obviously need more damage to be competitive,

Velimere.7685:

This is however incorrect as a flat 20% damage-reduction more than negates the power-creep other classes will experience and will further solidify Celestial D/D into the meta.

Have you seen bark skin + oakheart salve?

It’s funny engie gets a blast on dodge while ele got it removed because it was deemed too strong. Doesn’t matter that both has a kittenload amount of combo fields.

Zenith.7301:

Staff ele wasn’t nerfed though. Sure you’re losing ice bow but staff ele is competitive even with a buffed thief and does far more aoe DPS on top of his many blast fields and versatile utility.

Probably gonna be the guard displacing the mesmer, warrior, one ele, one thief.

What’s clear is if any class gets replaced, it will be the warrior or mesmer or even guardian but certainly not the ele or thief, they simply excel far above the others at what they do best (ele for strong single target and the best aoe ingame, and thief as the undisputed single target DPS class).

That’s the point, staff eles wasn’t nerfed much while other, less efficient builds like d/f were nerfed harder and now lose to staff build by a large margin since you cannot take btth. Plus, staff ele is extremely boring to play, hence most likely not too confusing for new players.

Ryn.6459:

yes thief warrior engi and guards are the winners. Ele stll will be on the meta, but I dont think we will stack them anymore.

One ele for perma fury? Since warrior can stack mights more easily and thief does more damage.

Ryn.6459:

engi got a blast finisher on dodge? oh man, this is going to be fun

to me ele got a hit, goodbye dagger and scepter builds, and even staff lost damagae.modifiers…

sad about mesmers

Ele won’t do so much damage as before but thieves might deal even more damage.

Jerus.4350:

Nice on Vital Striking, and while BttH is 20% when active, it’s only active 1/3 of the time, so we’re looking at an average of like 6-7%, so it’s only 16% we’re losing or there abouts, you’d need 8 boons to match that. If they gave us Air Training back, we’d only be having to make up 6-7% which wouldn’t be all that bad needing just 4 boons.

They said they would likely modify the threshold to match the effectiveness of close to death and executioner. That will make staff damage even higher than daggers builds.

Overall, staff builds will probably have very similar traits as dagger except FA → BttH.

Yes, older eles (pre april feature pack) have blasting staff trait bugged.

Isn’t tempest a set of skills? Like signets.

Kodiak.3281:

When you look at that complete picture that’s why it’s baffling to me. Why treat moderate advice as if you are recommending the other extreme? Why pretend that a Knight/Zerker mix (or similar) is the same as full Nomads or that the same Knight/Zerker mix (or similar) is really that far stats wise from full Zerker?

No one here is extreme, it’s just a mix of knight/zerker will have like 5-10% damage reduction which is hardly noticeable for a profession that eats dirt really fast if you try to tank hits. Imo, actives are much better, at least their effects are much more visible (though that would be a problem in teams that like to play meta).

Neko.9021:

For what it’s worth, I think people ought to leave be, and realize that when you PUG, you basically forfeit the right to complain about how terrible everyone is. If it’s that bad, you should run with a guild. Of course PUGing will lead to people playing terrible builds and strats. And it irks me that it’s a constant fascination of a lot of the people who run dungeons a lot to keep ragging on PUGs all the time. PUGs are terrible, duh. Welcome to the internet.

I don’t recall doing that but if I ever pug it’s usually to complete a roster and that means I have a full control over my team squad. If someone doesn’t pull his weight, he’s just thrown overboard. Simple as that.

Leo G.4501:

Ah, so you parced the fight? Well done. Can I see the spreadsheet and combat logs?

He lost about 10% of his entire health, a major contribution indeed.