Guild Wars 2

This question was asked multiple of times but the answer usually boils down to anet devs having no clue what makes ele tick so how could they design a decent elite specialisation? We have the same exact build since almost launch after so many iterations of balance.

Kain Francois.4328:

I thinl Lightning Orb is perfect from BWE2. It’s for cheese builds that just like to spam Lightning Whip autoattack, without worrying about element swapping. Sometimes Lightning Orb for burst on recharge.

No changey plz!

> lightning orb
> burst

Please tell me you are not serious. This skill deals pitiful damage.

Relshdan.6854:

this.
full boon share is one of the only reasons you’d even use warhorn.

Not any more. It lost boonshare, stun-breaking and the long forgotten boon-rip. And for what? For 20% boon duration…

Devs have absolutely no clue how to make this spec decent, unique and fun. Because, at the end of a day, all we want from this spec is to be fun. And right now it’s a very poor version of d/d ele.

Xillllix.3485:

You guys at Anet need to get a team of people to finishTempest. As it is right now the day HoT comes out I’m never touching my elementalist again and I’m switching class.

Revenant?

Jski.6180:

> Most
> 2 out of 7 revealed

Decide on which is which.

Jski.6180:

Adding stab to overloads is a big deal for both the ele and tempest class due to how little is lost from ele becoming a tempest.

Most specs lose nothing.

Since the first preview we lost boon-hate, boon-share and AoE stun-breaking. Is there anything else tempest can lose before the launch?

Valento.9852:

Problem with Imbued Melodies is that they’re trying to rival D/D + Arcane, but Tempest doesn’t have Evasive Arcana. It looks to me Air/Water/Tempest might be an awkward but effective combo for PvE, IF they fix aura stacking with Powerful Aura.

PvE builds without Fire spec are pretty much trash tier.

Heat sync is now officially a skill that’s required for warhorn to be even usable. Treat it as a blast finisher with 30s cooldown because to spread might it’d have to be in other attunement.

I’m curious how certain people feel about losing that “fresh feel” of tempest. It can no longer share boons and stun breaking was also removed.

So, what new mechanic tempest brings now?

I’m shocked… What’s wrong with the current updates? Let’s iterate over them.

Overload Fire – now probably worse than Lava Font while being stuck in the channel.

Overload Air – still 3 target cap, is this suppose to be an AoE skill?

Heat Sync – sharing might is something a base ele can do without a skill on 30s cooldown perfectly fine. If you don’t want boons like quickness or resistance being abused just blacklist them instead of butchering this skill (especially that it’s in fire attunement while you have to start your rotation in this attunement).

Sand Squall – where is our promised aura on warhorn?

No changes to other arguably weak skills like lightning orb?

Shouts – no changes except Rebound? Do you believe they are fine?

Latent Stamina – why this trait still wasn’t deleted? It looks to me like a place-holder.

Swift Conduit – We have tons of swiftness. How about superspeed?

Tempestuous Aria – can we finally get 20% cooldown reduction? Or shouts are too strong utilities to receive a cooldown reduction trait?

Hardy Conduit – I’m pretty sure you are more than capable to merge it with Speedy Conduit and implement a fun new minor that isn’t just a different boon. Take a look at other elite specs.

Harmonious Conduit – 10% damage increase for 5 seconds is too low. Berserker’s Power lasts for 10 seconds while being much easier to pull off.

Considering we had almost no changes between BWE1 and BWE2, and how much refine Revenant, Reaper and Chrono got, those changes are cry-inducing.

Wolfric.9380:

3 flies at once with trashing mainhand dagger.

1.) Scepter becomes more used when mainhand D is away
2.) OP D/D PvP ele is gone.
3.) Prepared for sword as next elite close combat mainhand …

………

Scepter is so kitten it’s more likely we’d see a shift to staff eles which were popular few months back.

BlackBeard.2873:

- Fire vs. Air: Let me get this right. Fire, the “AOE dps” attunement, overloads to do basically single-target higher dps (due to the 180 range) while air, the “single-target dps” attunement, overloads to do moderate damage in a large aoe? These are just wrong.

And that’s why air overload has 3 targets limit which doesn’t really make it a real AoE.

Won’t get? There’s already such a trait.

Those warhorn skills need that recharge reduction trait. Without it, they are pretty much laughable (except heat sync and new sand squall).

Does it do anything to you? Cause I couldn’t make it work.

Rednik.3809:

But with a LOT more button mashing, and only thing that is really better than current one is a quickness. And quickness aspect pretty probably will be nerfed hard.

Anet will probably nerf quickness stacking to 3 or so.

My humble feedback:

Overloads:

• General: Too long waiting period considering a relatively weak auto-attacks in water and earth attunement. It’s difficult to stay in those attunements for more than 3 seconds without gimping yourself considerably. Moreover, 20 seconds lock-out feels too long for the effects that are not that powerful to warrant that amount of punishment.
• Fire Overload: 180 range is quite low.
• Water Overload: looks good enough.
• Air Overload: 3 targets limit is too limiting considering it’s an AoE skill, not cleave. Static field after a successful overload has too short duration, increase by 1 second.
• Earth Overload: a blast finisher after 5 seconds, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Warhorn:

• General: not responsive enough.
• Heat Sync: it’s quite powerful, especially for sharing quickness tough it’s not something innovative (Signet of Inspiration v2)
• Wildfire: it used to remove boons with longer cool-down but currently, with 30s cool-down, it’s just a larger flamewall with longer cool-down, lower duration and lower burning application. Slightly increase the cool-down and reimplement boon removal.
• Tidal Surge: not responsive enough. Recharge way too high for its effect, it or Water Globe should remove 1 condition.
• Water Globe: moves either too fast or too slow (depending on swiftness)
• Cyclone: way too slow and its pull range is also quite depressing. I’d recommend giving it a projectile destruction.
• Lightning Orb: well, this skill is quite a let down. Damage is quite low and the more enemies you fight the less effective it is.
• Sand Squall: with blast finisher it looks solid.
• Dust Storm: way too slow in first blind application. Small radius and low duration. Hardly a storm, more like a breeze.

Shouts:

• Feel the Burn: looks solid enough though it lacks utility.
• Eye of the Storm: would it be too strong with Shocking Aura?
• Shock and Aftershock: the cool-down is quite severe for its effects.
• Flash-Freeze: maybe the radius should be increased so it can be used as an anti-escape tool.

Traits:

• Overall: traits focus mostly on defensive support, especially on auras which have traits all over the place. There are too many traits that increase the potential of overloads, some of them should be definitely merged. Tempest lacks offensive support or anything that actually increases tempest offensive capabilities, maybe a new trait could be added that increase the damage of tempest under auras effect or after a successful overload. A new trait that decreases the time a tempest has to wait before it can overload to 3s should alleviate that issue (maybe even baseline considering it could probably be a must-pick).
• Speedy Conduit, Hardy Conduit: those two minors should definitely be merged. Minor grandmaster should offer something different than just another boon.
• Latent Stamina: the endurance gain is way too low to be even noticeable, especially after vigour nerf to 50%. It doesn’t feel like it should be in tempest line, more like water. I would say to change it to “Auras you apply also apply vigour”. That way it would feel more in line with the other specialisation traits..
• Unstable Conduit: auras should be granted at the start of channelling, not after it. Overloads cannot be self-interrupted without getting a full recharge time so it can’t be abused. Tempest needs additional defence while casting overloads.
• Harmonious Conduit: make that baseline.
• Tempestuous Aria: it lacks shouts cool-down reduction
• Elemental Bastion: merge with Unstable Conduit and remove Frost Aura from it.

Purple Miku.7032:

This is why I and so many people can’t stand this guy— he acts like he is so strongly against elitism on this game yet he promotes hate in every single one of these videos."

I watch it everyday with the champions of social justice. It’s called hypocrisy.

Consider adding prefix to my post – "Note: ".

Earthen proxy works only on tempest.

Jski.6180:

You have not realty offered up any thing other then negativity rotten i am not sure why you hate ele class so much but you seem to think it super week because every thing an tempest is you see in the ele class.

I’m not sure what gave you that impression. Maybe it’s a communication problem.

Jski.6180:

Off hand dagger gave you shocking aura so i am not sure how d/d tempest has no abitly to use shocking aura on-top of being able to get shocking aura from air overload. You also able to get fire aura from the shout if you really wanted it. I am not sure where you came to the constitution that you could not use these auras as a d/d tempest.

You continue to prove that you have absolutely no idea about the profession.

MikaHR.1978:

Read the thread. Already been covered. Or are you THAT lazy.

This thread has 14 pages.

Why would you fix something no one will use?

Gorisek.2678:

Karma for D/D.
OR
You deserve it.

I truly think you guys got punished for abusing D/D ele to much.
It’s fair that you get something bad now.

Inb4 d/d pve

Why limit yourself? Make it such that you cannot use specific attunements until they are trained.

To reiterate, overloads are not the only problem with tempest. Traits have absolutely no synergy and were designed in 1h.

I wouldn’t count on ele meta, especially at the beginning. Most try-hard eles cannot survive a little pressure and I would assume raids will have at least that.

Taldren.7523:

It’s worse in that you are pigeon holed even further into requiring Soldier runes in order to get the Shout cleansing that was normally provided by Cantrips. It’s also worse in that it doesn’t have the mobility that cantrips offered (Mist Form / Lightning Flash) since you are compelled by the build to go with shouts.

Regardless, it is by no means a new playstyle that the new builds of every other class has provided them. There is nothing new outside of Overload which is fundamentally flawed in that it locks us out of our class defining feature of total available abilities.

Don’t try, he still believes the issue lies in overloads neglecting the horror of tempest spec line. It’s hard to argue with someone who thinks that cleaving two targets is as efficient as cleaving 3 or even 5 targets.

Ohoni.6057:

Neither of those is actually true. Necro Dagger cleaves as well as Reaper does, by some accounts better than it did in BWE1. Guardian has some solid ranged options, I plan to stick with Scepter/Focus even after HoT on mine. Yes, elite specs can bring new options to the table and offset holes in the class’s playstyle, but if there are glaring flaws in the core mechanics, those flaws should be corrected within the core mechanics.

TIL 2 is equal to 3. Eh…

SkiTz.4590:

Those 2 are completely different game modes. You cannot compare that to pve…. its an entirely different animal.

Both PvP and WvW have REAL players controlling their characters, who are most likely, smarter than your average risen who LOVES to sit in your lava fonts/AOEs until they die.

Exactly, meaning it’s definitely not a combat engine flaw but rather content flaw.

Test.8734:

Robert Hrouda was fired.

It’s interesting because it shows ArenaNet’s though process very well. “Hey Robert, a lot of people are playing in the Ascalon Catacombs to farm it, we need you to fix it!”. So Robert went there, changed how the encounters in that dungeon work, made it less farmeable but also harder and more interesting. The result: “Hey Robert, people are playing Ascalon Catacombs a lot less now” (obviously, because they weren’t farming it anymore) “So your new design sucks. Bye!”.

Mr Hrouda’s parting words are very sad. He mentions how he wanted to build something that would last… And instead his last assignment was a temporary dungeon.

Yes, indeed. But he was laid off few months after being transferred to the Live Team.

Windsagio.1340:

You asked me for a source, then agreed with me?

There’s no question that they initially intended dungeons to be a core part of the gameplay, and then they abandoned supporting them after a certain point (nobody’s contesting this)

Above you said, it was unsupported: As a feature it was supported then abandoned, presumably for ROI reasons.

Anet thinks, or is willing to take a risk that this content will be different and will have a better ROI… but given the example of their past experience, it is by no means a sure thing.

Edit: The distinction I’m making there might be fine, but its important. We have to ask ourselves this question:

Why, given the initial development support for Dungeons, did Arenanet abandon them?

Sorry, I’m not native english speaker and 10+ tenses are way too complicated for me. By “dungeons not supported” I obviously meant that they were abandoned after few months, not they were not supported at all.

Anet is no longer supporting dungeons so imagine they simply transfer their resources from dungeons to raids.

Secondly, gw2 raids will be nothing like a typical raid. There’s no locking system, no gear treadmill and no trinity.

Astralporing.1957:

No, that’s the problem that comes from bad combat engine design, which is in no way dependant on dungeon’s difficulty.

Completely false. Is there zerker meta in pvp/wvw?

But I guess it’s better to complain about “stacking in corners”, “pressing one” and “lack of trinity”.

Jerus.4350:

Curious how does Ele DPS compare when they do that?

Stacking prot via elemental attunement is probably extremely strong in an environment with unavoidable damage but I would question blinding ashes effectiveness vs bosses. In any way, the former would require frequent attunement swapping so it’s definitely not a play style everyone has in mind.

Ohoni.6057:

Elite specs should never “fix” primary specs. Classes should be perfectly viable in their primary specs, then Elite specs should offer something slightly different, while remaining true to that core.

Tell that to devs. They can’t balance ele properly, it’s either disgustingly OP or trash-tier UP.

Or tell that to devs of ranger and necro.

Of course elite specs should fix core specs. If a core spec lacks certain aspects, elite spec should bring it. Necro lacks cleaving – reaper solves that, guardian lacks ranged option – dragonhunter tries to solve that, etc.

What ele lacks? Innate survivability that tied to water/arcana/cantrips, proper burst spec, proper condie spec. Only spec that’s viable is a brawler hybrid.

Ohoni.6057:

If that’s true then you don’t need to be making straw man arguments. If you believe that we’re at the cliff, then argue that we’re at the cliff and cannot take one step forward. Don’t try to argue “well what if we walked fifty feet more?” Clearly I disagree, but employing straw man arguments doesn’t lead to more agreement, it just makes you appear to be irrationally terrified of relatively simple changes.

It’s definitely challenging to argue reasonably with radicals.

Dante.1763:

First define casual, please? Like, im a casual player by my definition, i dont play the game everyday, and i dont play for long when i do. But heres the thing, im really good at PVE stuff which is what raids are, beat Liadri after learning it, and trying many times(Which is how raids should be, they should be hard, but they should be doable to those that learn them). I suck at PVP, or any form of competitive fighting or scenarios. So am i casual? What is a casual?

You’re posting on this forum thus you’re not a casual.

Lord Kuru.3685:

The more casual players who got Ascended gear (especially armor) after months or years of grinding are going to really resist changing their builds.

A different build with exotic gear may be more effective, but psychologically, it’s a step down from Ascended; people don’t like that. This is going to be a real problem.

Then they should get a celestial gear.

You can always gut the weapons themselves, instead of traits.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, because any step forward becomes irrational if it requires you to make another step. There will always be a cliff or a wall to run into. Rationality is about taking the steps forward that are rational, and then stopping when the next step would be irrational. I proposed a rational position, you proposed “well then what about if we keep going until it becomes irrational,” to which my response is “let’s not.”

And that’s you and the majority of people disagree. Because for most us, we’re already at the cliff.

Anyway, it’s off-topic.

Windsagio.1340:

source

25 dungeon paths, with a second wave introducing the fractals is not an unsupported feature.

They largely abandoned support, but that was almost certainly a business decision.

Which is my version: They supported dungeon/instanced content at first, and it seemed hard at first, but they abandoned support as a bad investment.

Which goes back to the point: Will the same thing happen again?

I’m not sure how that wiki article is relevant.

They basically abandoned dungeons shortly after a revamp of AC which was in the end of Q1/beginning of Q2 of 2013. So yes, they put fractals in November 2012 but few months later this feature (fotm + dungeons) changed to life support. By the time it happened, dungeons were no longer considered difficult so that argument holds no merit. The simpler explanation, at least for me, is that they moved their resources (like Robert Hrouda, dungeon designer) to Live Team because of lack of resources. Bi-weekly releases required a lot of effort.

Jekkt.6045:

i don’t need to change anything and you don’t even know what you’re talking about…

d/d ele was fine prepatch without fire line, a very good support/bruiser build with mediocre damage, what it is now is a more tanky version with double the damage it had before.

d/d ele’s skill cap is bottom, the skill ceiling can be high if you know how to play ele but 99% or even more don’t and then it comes from properly supporting and peeling for team members, also something that 99% of eles have no idea how it works. but it doesn’t matter because they don’t need to know, why would they if they get build carried anyway.

and cleansing wave has a 240 radius, there is no reason to reduce that.

It was fine without fire line because you couldn’t grab a third GM trait.

Windsagio.1340:

It was, and then they cut back support because not enough people were doing dungeons.

Which begs the question, “How do we keep that from happening again?”

Source?

FrownyClown.8402:

If by support you mean the passive healing they obtain from running 4 eles in a team then it can be achieved by reducing the radius on cleansing wave. This poses an issue sometimes since you have to be very close to heal up allies that really need it.

It has 240 range, it’s already hard to use it properly when you are not in one big blob.

Ohoni.6057:

Nope, that is a straw man argument. There is no “next step,” it’s just the one step.

Oh, the straw man card. If there’s no next step, why stopping there? Because you ask for it? Sounds very selfish. I’m certain there are shovel knights who would love to farm, let’s say, legendary armour, via shovelling. Who are you to limit their fun?

Nope. Again, you post an audience at a major gaming convention, the definition of “vocal.” PAX attendees are far more likely than the average GW2 player to be “serious” gamers, since they are going out of their way to attend a gaming convention, and far more likely to be “casual” about GW2, since it was a general gaming convention. Their reaction to things is in no way indicative of the reaction of the overall game community.

> cosplayers
> serious gamers

Pick one.

Windsagio.1340:

Honeslty though, I think it’s a gamble. I dunno what their raids cost to develop, but instance play as a game mode hasn’t been very popular in general in the context of GW2.

Maybe because it wasn’t supported?

Ohoni.6057:

Nope.

If you enjoy challenging content, your reward is that you just got to play the type of content that you enjoy. It does not in any way make you more deserving of reward than someone who completed less challenging content. You are both playing the same game.

You sound pretty much radical to me. The next step would be allowing every single achievement and skin to be buy-able since you do not deserve them any more then someone who is a shovel knight 24/7.

Some of the community, yes, not all, and likely not most. Just because some players are getting what they want does not mean that the remainder cannot push to protect what they want as well.

https://youtu.be/gxLkfXwxLTs?t=18m23s

I’d say it is you and other vocal minority who is against new challenges. The reaction of audience at PAX South is pretty clear for me and Anet.

And then we’ll face our core problem of dependence on water/arcana. You need defensive traits in offensive lines because non-bunker eles will never work due to low innate survivability.

Basically, ele is kittened.