Guild Wars 2

Atherakhia.4086:

While swapping attunements is clearly the overall design of the class, is anyone else concerned that Elemental Attunement is simply too strong to be given to the class freely? Tons of other classes have mandatory traits to consider in their specs and several don’t have the luxury of it being a 4pt trait, but a 6pt one.

And why make the claim that Elemental Attunement is the issue and not say Cleansing Wave, the other trait most consider mandatory in their builds as an elementalist?

I do agree that build diversity is quite bad on the Ele with 8 points tied up at a minimum and most would consider 10 or even 12 points to be far more realistic. But Elemental Attunement is simply too powerful to be a freebie or even an adept trait and would likely need to be nerfed considerably.

Is it worth the risk?

No I don’t think it’s too strong, I think base ele is too weak.

I also think EA is more like a core class mechanic than a trait.

I play 6 classes regularly so I’m not biased.

I’d rather just have 900 range on traited traps instead of torment, which you can get from a sigil.

Yamsandjams.3267:

I do like the idea of incorporating elemental attunement in as a base feature (for self only), although they would probably need to reduce the durations so it’s not too powerful by default.

Besides allowing PVP Eles to finally spec out of arcane for non-joke builds, a solo version of Ele attunement would also make Ele a lot more forgiving for levellers and Ele newbies – a very common complaint.

The skill floor buff is especially needed now it takes so much longer to get traits when levelling.

Ostra.3927:

Warrior is better longbow user and thief is more damaging and group support then a shortbow ranger.

I play both a warrior and a thief and I have to agree – ranger got the short end of the stick for both bows.

I think it’s amazing that nearly 2 years after release, the community is split ~50-50 on whether down state ruins/improves GW2. Imagine how many players there might be playing GW2 had they not included such a divisive “feature”.

Personally I think it’s the worst/lamest PVP feature of any game, ever, and I’ve been playing PVP games for 25 years.

man i hate it when they your topic title…

Even with the new traits, I still find Ele to have little real build choice (in PVP/WVW) – virtually every spec revolves around 20+ water and 20+ arcane.

This is not to say you can’t run something else in PVE/zerg WVW/hotjoin, you’ll just be an easy kill/bag to any decent player.

So, this is intended to be a list of skills/utilities/traits that still stand out for me as being underwhelming on Ele. For reference, I spend roughly 33% of my playtime roaming solo on staff (aka hard-mode) or D/D, and 66% zerging with 10+.

Sceptre:

• water #2 is particularly bad.
• water #1 does really poor damage for an auto-attack that doesn’t have a secondary effect.
• fire #2 has never made sense to me as a (another) delayed auto-targeted spell, would make a lot more sense to be ground-targeted and phoenix a skill-shot. The “spam and hope for hit” aspect of this skill is a major turnoff for the whole weapon IMO.

Staff:

• air #2 is one of the slowest-casting skills in the whole game, yet does weak damage and the AOE radius of the blind is less than melee range. Accordingly it isn’t worth casting. Given the low damage and blind range, I would expect this skill to be instant.

Focus:

• is currently a weird mix of really weak and really strong skills.
• fire #4 is very underwhelming – an 8 sec field that causes 1s of burning. Needs a secondary effect or more like 2.5sec of burning per application.
• fire #5 is another relatively weak effect for a 40sec CD. A CD of ~25sec seems more reasonable.
• air #4 is crying out for swiftness.
• water #4 does virtually no damage & chills for 3sec, which compares very poorly with spinal shivers which also chills, but for 5sec, and also strips 3 boons and does considerable damage on a shorter CD.

Glyphs:

• lack trait support, the only trait of consequence is Inscription and even then, it’s quite weak. Suggest a secondary effect needs to be added in addition to existing effects, eg: a small heal, or an aura… just something.
• GoEP is best used before an encounter yet is a stun-break, which makes little sense.
• GoLE is a terrible utility because the elementals created are terrible. IMO one of the deserving candidates for a complete rework.

Conjures:

• mechanics are far too clunky for PVP. I’m firmly of the opinion that conjures should only replace the 5 skills of their respective element and not lockout all 20 skills and preventing attunement swapping – this is the core class mechanic!
• lack trait support – only 1 adept trait.

Yes, WVW should have a show, and it should be called “Bend Over”.

I don’t think there’s any collusion, it’s just that BG yield the easiest bags so naturally both JQ and TC want to farm the weakest server.

Karl McLain.5604:

Some great ideas here guys! This skill is something we’ve been looking at, as it’s a little underwhelming at times.

Here’s a bunch of potential things we could do (we would do one or maybe two of these, not all:

1. Look at making it usable on the move. Currently, the animation is ONLY able to be used while standing still.
2. Increase the number of boons removed.
3. Increase the radius.
4. Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.
5. Multi-stab! You choose multiple ground targets and stab all of them simultaneously (or one-after the other). We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!
6. ???
7. Profit!

Tagging this thread for later.

Not sure why you’d think of buffing MS – it’s already pretty strong. there’s a long list of far crappier skills that ought to get looked at first.

The Nameless One.4672:

Couldn’t live without it.

…which is why it should be baseline (solo version).

It is an essential part of any serious pvp build.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

I’m actually really surprised at how many people have found Stone Heart to be a positive choice.

Likewise… especially seeing as it’s 100% useless 75% or more of the time. Crazy.

• lemongrass/melandru should probably be nerfed slightly, 40% is a lot
• group condi cleansing/conversion utilities should prob have their CDs upped a bit
• warrs have too much condi clearing now – cleansing ire/dogged march are too strong

Chrispy.5641:

The OP said that traps need to have 900 range because Other Profession skills have longer range than traps.

…which is a completely valid reason to buff trap range. The key comparison skill type here is marks, which are 1200 range with very similar effects to traps, which require 0 traits. 900 range is completely reasonable.

Traps need 900 range

No. The whole point of traps is to lure your enemies into them.

Says who? Since when do traps get thrown like a projectile in real life?

Trying to argue semantics in a fantasy MMO is a bit pointless. The point here is to address ranger deficiencies in WVW, and to me, traps are an obvious candidate.

If you can just toss them across an area at will, it turns them into grenades instead of traps, and, isn’t there another profession in this game that uses Grenades already?

um, you can already do that.

The only issue with trap traits is the obvious incongruence of having condi-based utilities in a precision/crit damage trait line.

Wouldn’t hurt to have an additional trait that granted a support-ish aspect to traps, which is the other area of ranger need in WVW.

Klocknov.8219:

1. Blinding Ashes: The best new addition hands down. Yes you still have to go through the fire tree, but it is a good GM trait for investing 30 in it compared to the other two and probably the whole line I would say it is the best trait.

Clearly you haven’t had random pets/critters/players stroll into your fire field and consuming your blind proc… This trait is bad because it’s not deterministic – you can’t choose who gets blinded unless it’s a single target burn or you’re only fighting one enemy in an empty field.

Ranger is my 6th 80. These observations strictly pertain to WVW large-scale (zerg, GVG).

So, I’ve been trying hard to make ranger work in WVW large-scale (as in, not solo roaming) but the best-performing setup i can come up with continues to be a power-based 1500 range LB/GS with survival utilities/elite and SotF (new nature trait).

Unfortunately, it still isn’t nearly as good as my other characters though, mainly because of the weak AOE damage potential and poor group utility.

Pets, even ranged pets, continue to be overall more of a liability than a benefit, the pet controls are just too poor and the utilities they provide don’t justify their existence most of the time. I also feel like there’s a real lack of (for want of a better word) character, eg: cat pets should be really fast, bird pets should be immune to AOE (they’re flying…) and should probably be able to attack on tower/keep walls, spiders should have leaps, etc.

Traps are my favourite way to play ranger and while they are solid for any kind of solo roaming, their short (600) range and obligatory condi-based damage make them weak and fairly suicidal when you try to scale them up to the large-scale stuff. I really think they would be well-justified in gaining another 300 range when traited as other classes have considerably better AOEs with longer range, better effects, easier application etc. For example, ranger traps are effectively functionally identical to necro marks, yet marks are 1200 range, larger by default, similar short CD, similar effects, yet traps require 30 trait points and are only 600 range even when traited.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Once the Anet train starts moving in one direction, it never stops: the future is server merges in the form of EoTM style matches.

there is zero chance of them slaying the server transfer cash cow, expect to see more reasons to switch servers introduced, not less.

What game mode are you playing? The justification for longer trap range is really wvw zerg and gvg formats.

It’s a class-defining trait; it should be baseline, even if it’s a self-only version with a trait to get the AOE version.

Games like Darkfall, Planetside have fully real-time, aimed melee and projectiles, and they support many more players fighting in one area, and they don’t cap AOE in any way either. DAOC came out in 2005 and it also supported way more players in a single area before lagging and supported completely uncapped AOE.

I think most people would accept that the gameplay has really suffered for having such a low AOE cap as it has made zergballing the only effective way to play WVW, and together with other questionable game design choices like downed state, has dictated that zerg size is more important than player skill . Which really sucks. Hard.

So clearly something went wrong in the design and/or the implementation. I would really struggle to believe that they originally designed the game to have an AOE cap — it’s a bandaid to save on network bandwidth and/or server cycles.

Either way, badly implemented server is badly implemented.

Zerg situations are where staff ele does best, so if that’s all you do, you’re probably likely to think that ele is fine/good. It’s in smaller encounters that staff starts to become a liability due to difficulty in applying damage and lack of mobility/avoidance options as eles have no way to strip stability.

I think they’re all bad.

Stone heart is a good concept but there’s no good reason to spend any amount of time in earth, which means SH is 100% useless at least 75% of the time.

Blinding ashes is ruined by the 5sec GCD, which makes it far too unreliable.

Conjured weapons suck hard outside of PVE dungeons.

Hannelore.8153:

There are games where you can get stunned for 30+ seconds. If you value your sanity don’t ever play the original DAoC or any older MMO for that matter.

It’s true you could be mezzed for 30 sec in daoc, but when CC was broken in DAOC (demez, being hit, CC expiring) you became immune to that CC for 60 freakin seconds.

You’re right that the crux of the issue is really the inequity of access to stability though.

Walorx.5129:

This is unfair. Organized guilds … waaaa…. are jerks.

FYI, making a QQ whine post like this is the 100% best way to ensure that more people will be doing it in the future, the direct opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.

zbone.6287:

as a bg player I dont believe this is what anet had in mind

http://i.imgur.com/bFV3ysx.jpg

not seeing the issue – JQ is attacking BG keep and TC are stacking and about to hit them.

Mastodon.2458:

EmoDevo.3209:

EotM is like a test map for stuff that they might implement into actual WvW someday. Currently it resembles PvE more than PvP so just use it as a karma train. Or you can do what I do and form a group of 5 and take on superior numbers. It’s a lot easier than you think though and we have often wiped groups of 25-30 with ease. So it’s not a challenge but more of trolling people who think they can get free loots.

lol @ zerg bustin in eotm. Good game. Now learn to play and join ebg.

^ what he said. you should be embarrassed, trying to gloat about working over uplevels in greens with ascended 80s.

did it ever occur to you that JQ/TC are simply attacking BG because they’re the easiest bags? people call them bag-gate for a reason you know.

IMO. Warriors are a bit over, rangers are a bit under. All the others are decent in their own way. Eles continue to have the least/worst spec options.

In the interests of class balance though, i think rangers need to have a decent AOE option, and traps are the best candidate. They are already sufficiently differentiated by virtue of being condi-based, whereas wells, meteor storm etc are all power-based.

yeah, the karma/badges rewards in EOTM are pretty ridiculous for almost no effort. I’m not convinced EOTM was ever a good idea – it’s rare to have all 4 WVW maps fully queued these days, even in T1.

I feel like EOTM was yet another poorly thought through waste of resources, just like e.g. custom arenas (that aren’t customisable), tournament tickets, environment weapons, amongst others.

i think the lack of decent AOE is the biggest issue, hence why i suggested traps become 900 range instead of their current 600. 600 range is death unless part of the melee train, and due to traps (condi dmg AOE) being in the prec/crit dmg line, it’s hard to build traps and still be melee tanky enough not to get obliterated.

Overall, rangers do need something in WVW for GvG/zerg clashes, no doubt about it. Nerfing lemongrass/dogged march would prob help rangers out a lot so their AOE immob could actually last more than 0.5sec.

Shadowbane.7109:

<———- WvW Trapper Ranger. Love em. Don’t change em. Seriously. Don’t. I’ll cut you.

because increased throw range could be bad how?

as i said in OP, roaming they are fine, it’s the larger scale stuff where they’re really limited by throw range.

bump

bump for visibility.

Occasionally (approx 3-4 times per 2 hour playing session), my character will get stuck in the ground after using a teleport or rapid movement ability. By “stuck in the ground” I mean my character acts as if permanently immobilised – no movement keys work but i can use skills as normal. The only way to get out of it is to use an emote, e.g. /sit restores movement.

The worst offender skill-wise is Lightning Flash (Ele). I have not noted any link to world location/geometry – it seems to happen everywhere, but randomly. Other members of my guild have it happen to them — it appears to be common knowledge — that’s how I learned about the /sit trick. The only “smoking gun” as to the cause is that it seems to only happen after using a teleport or rapid movement skill.

This bug has existed before the feature patch.

i’ve had kicks because of ranger before. i’ve even kicked rangers, and i have one. let’s face it, group PVE is not their strong suit.

^ i bet you don’t use traps in WVW though – that’s where the 600 range really feels wrong.

for solo roaming in WVW, sure, 600 range is fine, but in larger encounters, the short range is so bad i basically am forced to port to spawn to respec, which just feels wrong.

The thrown projectile speed is very slow so it’s hard to imagine the “extra” range (to bring them to where other AOEs already are) will unbalance them.

2) i don’t have an issue with a 30 point investment for traps, but for those 30 points they should perform on par with other, similar skills. 600 range is pretty suicidal for a ranged attacker in WVW.
3) it’s a choice to use all 3 slots for traps, which is fine. what could be better IMO is having a trap that stun breaks.

it could be argued it’s not a bug, so balance forum is equally appropriate.

Dee Jay.2460:

Even 18 months into the game I still think downed-state is the worst thing in Guild Wars 2. I’ve gotten used to it, I can deal with it, but I just hate the game-play it encourages and the game-dynamic it rewards.

It’s the single worst thing about this game.

If you need a more detailed explanation feel free to browse my extensive posting history on this matter.

I couldn’t agree more. DS introduces a lot of imbalances, destroys the flow of combat, and just plain looks silly.

dancingmonkey.4902:

And why would you post this in the balance sub forum over the bug sub forum?

because it doesn’t seem to get read there.

The 600 range of traited traps is a major drawback of trying to run traps in WVW.

Compared to similar AOEs such as wells (900 range), necro marks (1200 range), ele staff earth #2, fire #3, water #4 (all 1200 range), guardian’s purging flames (900 range), the 600 range of traps seems fairly unreasonable.

A traited range of 900 or 750 seems more appropriate. It would also be nice to see trap traits in a more appropriate trait line, as condi utility traits don’t really make sense in a precision/ferocity trait line.

(hushed silence)

I don’t know, 30 points for maybe 2-3 damage procs per 2 min engagement seems pretty bad IMO. Not to mention it gets worse the better the enemies you’re facing.

overpowered in 1v1s vs heavy condi users, and somewhere between completely and mostly useless everywhere else, this trait is IMO the epitome of terrible game design, equivalent to a skill that insta-kills if your enemy’s name starts with a ‘J’.

Exedore.6320:

There are a million topics about this. It’s been explained why it’s a good thing. Search for them.

Judging by the number and size of the threads that have been posted about the downsides (pun!) of downed state/rallying, I would say it’s in the top 3 of most disliked combat mechanics in this game. I personally know (pvp/competitive) friends who won’t touch this game because of it, and others who moved on because of it. I’ve been playing since beta, and I still hate it.

I’d even go so far to suggest it’s one of the core reasons why GW2 PVP has unequivocally bombed.

The interrupts on staff are way too “passive” (ie luck-based) for this trait to ever be good. Ele just doesn’t have enough interrupts.

agree, the trait is pretty disappointing, because the amount of time spent in earth is fleeting at the best of times, and specs that would spend a lot of time in earth (S/? conditions) are pretty bad.

The new poison master works as advertised, but for one critical bug – pets that natively apply poison (such as forest spider, murellow etc) apply regular (unbuffed damage) poison, which blocks the application of the damage-enhanced poison.

This pretty much means you can only use the trait with non-poison-applying pets, which is kind of the opposite to what the trait suggests. Poison applied by swap, rather that by the pet functions as it should.

Repro:

• equip trait
• equip forest spider pet (do not swap to it in battle)
• attack a bad guy
• observe that spider applies 10+ of poison and that its damage sucks as per usual poison, and that applying poison yourself (eg: shortbow #2) does not increase the poison’s damage