Guild Wars 2

Rebound has cool-down.

Viiktor.7523:

I would also suggest upping the damage on the Blue guys AoE attack to force people to know the mechanic better. Because right now it barely deals any damage thats significant at all and can be ignored at the beginning.

It one-shots glassy eles. Consider the difference in hp between necro/warrior and ele/thief/guardian.

Ganathar.4956:

It is a pretty strong word but it is quite fitting. Overloads without stability are a big “interrupt me” button and it was a major drawback. In addition, overload air and earth were vastly improved in BWE3 and they are so much better now. Finally, the stunbreak is just amazing and really helps with the flow of the tempest.

Exactly, the stunbreak is amazing which means it’s going away. Just like boon-rip, boon-share and aoe stunbreaks.

So basically you take 3 defensive spec lines and kill your opponents by out sustaining them?

Evapor.6849:

Yeah no-one has pushed 50%

With 1:39 time limit.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Icebow 5 removes full breakbar in 1 hit. A bit op for a 10 man “end game”.

For removing breakbar icebow isn’t even the strongest CC. There are at least 2 skills that can daze for 6 seconds and one that CCs continuously.

We have dungeons speed run leaderboards. Look how many people care about it.

Zenith.7301:

Which it shouldn’t have anyways. 10 sec icd on 3 vulnerability stacks is pathetic. Basically only makes it useful when in a group of 5 people fighting in proximity.

1000 radius is now small proximity?

Zenith.7301:

On top of the highest single target and aoe DPS currently in game. Even if engineer beats ele in DPS, ele brings so much utility besides DPS it will always be meta.

Actually, it’s engineer who brings more utility than ele. Ele is mostly damage and fury, that’s hardly “utility”.

Maybe the more fitting name would be Fractals & Raids?

Jski.6180:

Meh it was going to go one way or another this way is the easy way and i guess less op perma auras are a bit much now only if they make aura’s effect stronger. Maybe something with do with earthen proxy?

Jski after every patch nerfing tempest: “Nah it was going to be OP anyway”. xDDDD

Ele will never have a condie elite spec because of its core mechanic. Each attunement needs to be distinct and offer a different play-style. You can’t possibly hope for a single trait line to change that completely because of how other traitlines interact with attunements.

It’s the same with ranger, no elite spec will ever remove its pet because of how many traits affect it.

Overloads have mechanical issues, strapping a simple numerical buffs and calling a day won’t cut it.

Overloads are the only skills that are interrupted by an attunement swap.
Overloads are easily interruptible.
5 seconds is way too long for defensive overloads (which you usually need as fast as possible).

Serophous.9085:

World – unchanged, because anyone can help anybody. And for major events where you have 50+ people, vit and toughness mean nothing with the scaling.
WvW – unchanged
Spvp – unchanged
Dungeons – unchanged
Raids – will need a support, no zerk meta.

It most likely won’t be so-called zerk meta for an average raider, especially near the launch. However, the only support that requires a gear to be stronger is reactive one, in other words healing. Every other proactive support is not gear-dependant (except runes/sigils). Like they say, prevention is better than cure.

I’d be more scared about required coordination and skill level rather than a simple mathematical gear.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Do you think having a healer also allows you to turn noob again?

I’m not sure I follow.

Yes protection helps and perma weakness on the enemy as well (hi, necro’s)

The weakness will reduce incoming dmg to 75% and no more crits and the protection reduces it by 33% combining the 2 gives you 50% remaining dmg, 0% chance of crits with 12% reduction leaving something in the 44% or so… Then you can be healed. Until that point where people understand these requirements I think maybe full soldiers and good fails is a must for people. Or not thinking of raids at all …

Active defence…. and intelligent use of blasts… Protection is way weaker then Weakness.. but combined they shine.

I’m not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that weakness is way stronger than protection. Last time I checked, 25% is lower than 33%. Even so, stacking protection is easier since it can be stacked up to 9 times while weakness only 5.

Last thing, weakness doesn’t reduce critical chance to 0%.

Torolan.5816:

Protip: Even seasoned berserk players fall then and when when facing the Ettin/Shaman combo or the Fireshaman/Diviner/Giant Ice Elemental in fractals and they don´t pay at least good attention. Please don´t tell me it does not happen, we both know it does.

Depending on the difficulty of the raid, you will probably be surprised how many people who think they can play actually can´t play that well. But hey, maybe I am wrong, then good for you. I am actually anxious to visit the forums in some months and see how things have developed.^^

Of course they fail, humans aren’t machines and are prone to mistakes. People that think otherwise are in for a rough awakening.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Healers? At least 6 proffesions will have easy acces to decent group support and heals….
The only thing you’ll need is some healing 781? 1361? or more in your stats somewhere

Tanks? No this game doesn’t support TANKS, but you can make a group much more sustainable by adding 200-400 toughness to all builds

Being TANKY helps the HEALERS HEAL…. You can ONLY heal so much… Making sure you take less damage then they can heal is the the sweetspot, and it will be faceroll from then on… From this point it’s just making sure you still have DPS and DOT for kills and when you get more comfortable and know to time dodges you’ll be easier to heal, and consequnetly you can drop toughness casuse you’ll be able to sustain yourself longer…. and lowering the dedicated healers in party to a lowr number…

There is your trinity enveloped in your own builds…

---

You can still be DPS, but with 200-400 toughness somewhere (few cavalier’s pieces or maybe a couple of knight’s)

---

You an still be DPS support, but buff it by changing the trinkets of a zealot armor from zerk to clerics… you’ll be done and have an instant tanky DPShealer….

---

You can still be condi but change your armor or your trinkets from sinister to rabid or dire and You’ll be done and you’ll instantly have a tanky Condition user…

---

Proper stacking of might and fury, banner use, spotter and strength in numbers will fullfill all your other needs… and light classes will still have 50% crit chance and ~3000 power or 2500 condition dmg, and last but not least 2500-2600 armor… and enough heal to face all the dragons at once… As for skills, CC’s and Reflects I think we will see….. after they’ve been released…

You’ll have 10 tanky builds with heals, DPS, DOT and I think it will solve a lot…
Like dungeos we will see shifts lowering the amount of armor when experience grows….

400 toughness gives 12% damage reduction for light armoured professions, not that much if you think about that. It’s much more effective to have a team that has almost 100% uptime of protection.

Labjax.2465:

I played a trinity game for 2+ years, helping run a raiding guild. “Standing still and mashing a rotation” is a gross oversimplification of what trinity play looks like and is frankly insulting to the skill required to coordinate and execute said play, when dealing with highstakes twitch mechanics.

Dodge roll in this game makes dodging mechanics so easy, compared to the average trinity game, where you actually have to anticipate your positioning and start moving INSTANTLY, or you’re dead from a mechanic (typically, the only person who can take a boss hit or two before dying is the tank and I really mean a hit or two, not four or five).

In a typical trinity game, the only thing that’s going to save you from poor awareness and positioning is heal spam, which only goes so far in the context of a timed boss fight with enrage mechanics if you don’t have good enough DPS.

I could go on. Point is, if you don’t like the idea of trinity design, good for you, but don’t misrepresent what it is.

You’re comparing raids in a different game to what exactly? Dungeons? Open world?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m assuming that if a player decides to go full Zerker in the new Raid system, he’ll be pulling too many heals from the assigned Druid, thus taking away support from the other team members who’ll also need heals. That would be detrimental to the whole team build.

There’s no such thing as taking away support. Heals are not targeted at a person but rather at an area.

Zenith.7301:

Who said I was gonna pug them? I said in that post I was considering joining a prospective raid team. Another case may be just convincing my FFXIV raid peeps to try these raids out since they quit GW2 long ago.

Part of joining any raid team concerned with success/efficiency is working out the team comps.

I was really looking forward to playing reaper, and with that announcement if I still decide to play reaper I’m basically screwing over my team with a suboptimal comp.

Convincing my raid group to try GW2 raids will be annoying, though ;(. Given GW2’s history of abandoning PvE content and making purely PvP balance decisions for the most part, why should they abandon FFXIV or Wildstar instead.

In FFXIV the DPS is so ridiculously well balanced. Parsing shows monk at 1300, dragoon at 1270, Ninja at 1150 (they bring a 2% raid DPS buff), and the support DPS classes of bard and machinist at around 1000 DPS. For the caster DPS, black mages are doing 1250ish, Summoners about 1200.

Within the melee DPS, the spread isn’t even greater than a 5% difference. Between melee and casters, the DPS spread does not exceed a 10% difference, and casters are balanced around better aoe/cleave.

I mean, how can I ask people to abandon much better balanced PvE MMOs for one whose developers clearly have no idea how to balance properly let alone prioritize PvE because “esports”.

Raids won’t be about just damage. At least I hope so.

Eponet.4829:

Given that 2-3 elementalists and a thief tend to be included, yes, that is probably enough for most encounters.

I wouldn’t count on 3 zerker eles being able to survive in high scales fractal. With enough instabilities and pressure from mobs it may not be that simple as bringing enough damage but survivability as well.

Misguided.5139:

I think balance includes more than gear, it also includes trait and skill selection. I suspect Berserker gear is still going to be completely viable, even in raids, provided you are getting some survivability through other aspects of your build. You shouldn’t be able to make every choice in the direction of all-out offense and still do well. If you can, the content is too easy.

You absolutely correct but most people still believe that berserker meta means full offensive with no defence nor support.

I wonder what will you do for 5s in water attunement.

Alekt.5803:

No they are not. I know you want to tell me about how you have to stay in an attunement for Tempest and Arcane rewards you to swap.

Of course they are. You can trait elemental shielding with shouts but the amount of protection is laughable. Instead, you could trait elemental attunement and spend in earth /water as low time as possible to give boons as often as possible. I’m not sure how anyone can neglect that. You cannot trait both water and tempest and claim how much healing you have because in order to maximise you’d have to swap as often as possible and overload as often as possible.

Zenith.7301:

I mean, I was probably going to play Reaper in the expansion, but with this decision I’m not going to invest time in a class that’s going to be rejected from raid teams who care about optimization (the groups that will actually get stuff killed).

Now I’ve got my choices narrowed down to Chronomancer or Herald.

You shouldn’t consider pugging them anyway.

Jski.6180:

You know you can run arcane with tempest right? So if you need it then you can run it and push the healing amount even more as a tempest then you could as an ele. If you go earth you can have 100% protection up time that is very hard to strip vs longer but less protection activation making it much easier to strip.

You know arcane and tempest spec lines are anti-thesis?

Dedicated healer doesn’t just heal. They always have some kind of cleansing DoTs or proactive support but not that much.

Celestina.2894:

Wasn’t saying that, I was replying to luke’s comment about the trinity always meaning not moving.

If you try doing something like fotm 50 duo/trio, it’s suddenly a bit more active game-play than your stereotypical mash 1 in a corner. Harder content will make combat much more engaging and fun, it doesn’t need trinity but challenge.

Which is what I wrote -.-

Eponet.4829:

Or… as is already their most prominent meta build, they take the powerful auras trait ans share the staff’s magnetic aura.

That’s 16,67% uptime of reflections. Do you believe it would be enough for fractals 80+?

Celestina.2894:

Actually as I just came back ff14, I can tell you I spent more time on the move in big fights then I ever did in GW2’s dungeons. Even when tanking.

HoT won’t have dungeons-like content so I wouldn’t compare them.

Clearing condies is a reactive support, same as common healing.

Harper.4173:

Personally I think they won’t make it a “requirement” but I think the community will – because if you need let’s say 10k healing over 5 seconds – you can have one guy provide it all or you can have 3-4 guys coordinating and each pitching in 2-3-4k heals in order to do it.
Overall the strain is greater on 3-4 people and the need for coordination is also a hindrance – that’s why this requirement will most likely be outsourced to a single person: the group healer.

I actually had great hopes for HoT raid content but if Druid healing capacity is any indicator – things don’t look so great.

I wouldn’t expect random pugs completing raids at the launch. I’d recommend to find 9 friends and try different tactics instead of playing with strangers who will give up after a first failure and won’t ever think about adapting.

lordkrall.7241:

Stupid?
Not to mention the fact that most skills do more than just heal. All of them have an offensive part to them as well.

I didn’t realise geyser and healing rain had offensive components. Anyway, this hypothetical ele could be quite strong in a content where there is a lot of pressure. Let’s not cheat ourselves and claim that you can dodge everything.

lordkrall.7241:

Yes, I have heard of a “Dedicated healer”. I have played other games than GW2. But there is nothing in this game that is a dedicated healer.

How would you call a guy that sit 100% in water attunement wearing nomad’s gear?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The thing is, this isn’t necessarily true, either. Counter example: a soft-role in the game is projectile stopper. It is necessary for many things, such as the high level grawl fractal. This “role” is fulfilled by many classes, particularly guardians, mesmers, elementalists, soon revenants, and possibly engineer, too. I’m not too keen on current engi builds. Anyway, the best projectile stopper out of them all is the mesmer, and yet guards and eles are more than sufficient at stopping the lava elementals at each wave. If you are in a party without one of the above 4, you’re in for a world of hurt, but so long as you have one it is doable.

An ele has projectile defense only on weapon skills (which he cannot swap) so in reality he has to sacrifice superior staff weapon for focus. At the same time, mesmer can do it while slotting one utility skill.

Gav.1425:

The dev said “zerk won’t cut it.” What does that imply to you?

On the other hand, nomad won’t cut it as well since there will be enrage timers.

Scientia.8924:

New meta:

4 zerker
1 druid

no problem

Druid doesn’t have a lot proactive support, mostly reactive. If the new content is all about pressure damage instead of spikes then sure, druid can work with other players using mostly offensive builds. However, if a pressure will have accompanied spike damage, then you’ll need proactive damage mitigation (dodges, protection, etc).

Also, swap tempest spec for arcane, dagger/warhorn for staff and the healing capabilities are the same if not stronger. You’ll bring about 80% protection uptime without using weak utilities and you won’t be forced to camp water.

You realise you compare an ele in full healing gear against a druid with no gear?

Stilgar.6437:

I do hope s/d becomes viable and i do hope d/d ele remains viable.

When was the last time any ele build was viable, not underpowered or not overpowered?

Jski.6180:

Most of ranger healing is 240-300 only a few skills are 1,200 mostly staff.
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gw2-druid-glyph-utility-skills1.jpg
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gw2-druid-celestial-avatar-skills1.jpg
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gw2-druid-traits1.jpg
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gw2-ranger-staff-skills1.jpg
All of its utility are on 300 ranged non ground target. All of its line effects are 240-300 ranges to get real use out of them. Only staff skills and most of the F1 effects are 1,200 but even they do not fit the other effects. Its like druide is 2 different classes that are pushed together.
Tempest fills its roll as a melee tankly support a lot better because its off hand is more class defining then the tempest main hand for the ele type of set up. So most of ele healing is close ranged the main reason why staff healing support ele never worked well and why d/x worked better at it.

Most of the heling comes from celestal avatr 1-2 skills and staff 1-3 which are 1200 range. SOrry but most of healing is 1200 range.

Most of druids healing is ranged and they got a 1,200 ranged wepon it simply dose fit perfectly. You will see durid dosent need to run in melee range to get the most of its healing unlke tepest. Tempest is a dagger main class with the chose of going off hand of dagger forces or wh as needed (dmg def or support in that order.)
I thnk druid is going to be fully healing build which is fantastic.

Arguing about alleged tempest efficiency is not even funny at this point. It’s tragic.

Xillllix.3485:

It would probably sell less than tempest. Think of all the people who will buy the expansion without ever trying the betas. They think they’ll be getting some amazing aoe storms (as we all expected).

And the best part? The only storm tempest can summon (overload air) is not even a typical aoe (3 target limit). I’m dying inside.

I wonder what a tempest or a storm has anything to do with healing. Can anyone explain how did we end up with this? Because for me it looks like a tragicomedy.

Jski.6180:

Ya pve any thing at 1,200 ranges or lower is melee but that just pve not much changese in that format in a lot of ways its not worth talking about at all becuse of how it is atm. If there is a changes to it (we cant tell till hot comes out) then you realty should only talk about the new spec in terms of wvw or spvp. That where melee staff dose not work that well and more often then not your aoe support dose not mix well with a range attk.

Warhorn doesn’t work well as well.

Jski.6180:

No that you need to be on the melee to get the most out of ele / tempest support effects and that staff realty dose not work that well for this.

I wonder what is your argumentation here. Staff is used as a melee weapon in pve.

Jski.6180:

If you could ground target with water 1 staff and soothing mist had a bigger aoe on it and if swap boons had bigger aoe on them too then yes staff is a good healing support tool but sadly this is not the way staff works. For boon and or healing builds you got to be right on-top of who you want to support. That is what going to make tempest good at support its abitly to stay with melee by its added stab from earth overloades its dagger main hand with some mobility and wh healing effect. On-top of aura heals / boons stronger def.

In wvw an ranges healer i do not think will work due to have mobility every one is and the aoe effect having very small windows of aoe. Your way better off using casters as cc and field support.

Are you implying that tempest has higher range?

Killyox.3950:

Nice numbers. Almost as good as my Ventari Rev with almost 130% outgoing healing :> Just different sources.

Definitely Ele healing support looks strong.

And I think raids might have spot for 2 strong supporters. 2 people pumping a lot of aoe heals for 10 players is a lot when fights are not a simple stack and burst.

Ele healing is strong even now with staff. Auto-attacking alone in water attunement is like 650 hps + 280 hps with soothing mist (and double it with soothing power). No need to play in close range with 0 mobility and weak offhand.

The V.8759:

kitten I was hopin sand squall tooltip was just wrong… 2s of protection is like nothing. 2s of extra boon duration…maybe its not worth casting now anymore.

Anyway other things are nice except for heat sync

It takes 0,5s to cast it, it’s obvious that protection is just an addition. It’s all about blast finisher and that 2s increase of boons which is only strong whenever there are boons like quickness and resistance.

We were also supposed to get a magnetic aura with sand squall because every weapon has some aura. Every, except warhorn.