Guild Wars 2

Vena.8436:

A rather poor comparison considering how much simpler the calculations in DAoC were compared to GW2. Any single skill in this game, usually, has more things to compute than several skills all going off concurrently in DAoC, and the stat breakdown in one game vs. the other is vastly different. Just look at one simple auto-attack in this game: condition damage, duration, critical damage, critical change, power vs. toughness, cleave for position, boon alterations to anything above, condition alterations to anything above, fields and finishers (and % therein). DAoC? Comparatively could be simplified to a D&D dice roll.

Firstly, both games were very similar in terms of the server.

Second, all of those stats are all pre-computed, meaning it all boils down to simple health -= dmg * dmgFactor type calculations, which have minimal CPU cost.

lordkrall.7241:

Nikola.3841:

Weak? Please explain before you get your MMO license revoked

Weak as in not requiring as much power from the servers and such due to graphics and other limitations of that age.

graphics has absolutely zero to do with server calculations.

that wasn’t even a little bit funny. 10mins of puggers tower and camp humping.

stof.9341:

Blaine Tog.8304:

stof.9341:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Why?! The only thing that enabled was jumping off things. What was broken about that?!?

Jumping off cliffs.

Jumping off cliffs was not broken! It was an extremely niche strategy mostly useful for clever escapes in WvW (where the Thief still has better escapes). It was also fun.

It breaks map design. It was foolish to think it’ll stay and wasn’t just a bug that would get fixed as soon as it was advertised.

Guess what? Necros jumped down out of the latest sPvP map and found stuff down there outside the normal play area. It was advertised, ANet saw the bug and now fixed it.

surely the better thing to do was ti fix the map? the ability to use DS to jump off cliffs was a great unique feature of necro that should have been kept in.

Neko.9021:

We have all been asking this question, every day, ever since the game was released.

1000x this.

The other question we ask every day is why we all have to spec 20-30 points into arcane just to make the class playable.

• base attunement change CD should be 12sec, 30 points arcane makes it 9sec.
• remove the CD on how soon you can change to another attunement after changing attunement, it serves no purpose except except to punish players with high latency.
• each of the elemental 25pt traits could decrease that element’s attunement CD by a further 2sec. consolidate the existing 25pt traits into the 15’s or 5’s on a case-by-case basis. It seems fundamentally broken to me that speccing 30 points into an element line doesn’t make that line somehow more accessible. Without some kind of mechanic like this, arcane is always going to be required.

Jackums.3496:

1. Deceptive Evasion
2. Illusionary Persona
3. Shattered Concentration
4. Illusionary Invigoration
5. Mental Torment

I’m a pure shatter mesmer.

this…………..

Mesiphidon.8324:

Peter Buch.8071:

Currently I can’t recommend you the elementalist. I am just and only playing the elementalist because I want to play mages in pretty much every game – that’s just my style. But it isn’t really funny anymore.

The elementalist does suck in PvE, and that is actually an understatement. He isn’t useful anythere and gets outclassed by everything. PvE needs to be completly rebalanced, the content isn’t balanced at all, the classes aren’t balanced at all, traits, weapons, skills, boons and conditions need a complete overhaul. The class design of the elementalist has some extremly weak points that need to be revamped.

Unfortunatlypave enaNet does only care about PvP, so probably he will be even more nerfed to become completly useless. Because in PvP he was once very strong and is still useful, as he is very versatile having more or less 4 weapons.

For WvW I will always prefer Guardian > Elementalist, just because of the AoE cap. Strong protection is more important than some AoE.

… maybe you’re just bad at elementalist. And more importantly if you’re not having fun, why in Gods name are you playing the game.

in regards to the OPs s question, a guardian and and an ele have competely different play styles. The guardian and ele’s have their place in WvW. Both are needed for large scale fights, though personally I find my elementalist to be a better roamer then my guard.

Don’t even consider pve as part of the equation. PvE is easy in this game, and can be done by any class. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either horrible at the game or a pve elitist who only cares about speed runs with face roll setups.

Basically pick the play style you find more enjoyable. Classes will go up and down the power curve, so play what’s fun.

Perhaps you need to play some other professions…

My mesmer kicks the crap out of my Ele in PVE, it’s not even close. Ele in PVE is either: squishy or does crappy damage, whereas mesmer does great dmg, is hard to kill when played well, and has great utilities.

e.g. I could solo fully upgraded camps in WVW on my uplevelled mesmer in blue/green zerker gear.

Ele is better than mesmer at support and sustained AOE damage, that’s it. Mesmer is better at everything else.

Anet have shown clearly that they only balance around performance in sPVP (despite hardly anyone playing it, but that’s another matter), which works against Ele badly because they can fulfil many roles without changing traits. They have basically designed Ele into a corner where it underperforms at anything less than the highest skill levels, where it debateably overperforms.

I’d also say Ele has some of the overall worst-designed weapons and traits in the game, here’s a shortlist:

• 20+ arcane is practically required to play
• 15+ water is practically required to play as anything other than lolglass.
• fire and earth lines lack compelling traits (understatement).
• there’s no real way to play Ele that doesn’t involve frequent switching
• there’s no real way to play Ele as a condition spec.
• staff has 19 of 20 AOE skills & is consequently terrible solo when not bunkering.
• sceptre has some of the worst-designed skills in the game: fire #1, fire #2, water #1, water #2.
• focus has 2 strong skills in earth and sucks everywhere else.
• conjures. what were they thinking/smoking?

• staff: excellent support, decent AOE dmg, poor single target dmg
• S/?: best burst dmg weapon so decent solo, but hamstrung by some of the worst-designed skills in the game (fire #1, fire #2, water #1, water #2).
• D/?: melee range, but good solo, good small group, good support

you said main-hand, but i’ll do O/H as well for the lolz:

• ?/D: very versatile, good damage/CC options – probably the best-designed Ele weapon
• ?/F: pretty crappy, lack of mobility and dmg make it only good for specific PVE uses.

With the exception of O/H dagger, Ele weapons are all quite pidgeonholed – in WVW you’ll find you’ll need to constantly be switching weapons for different situations.

They seem to want Ele to be difficult/annoying to play /shrug.

If you can’t be bothered switching weapons or would prefer to stick to just one weaponset, then D/D with 0/10/0/30/30 is the obvious choice, albeit the hardest to learn initially.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Sadranis.1738:

Rift ruined other MMOs for me. GW2 has it’s highlights and I do enjoy WvW, but overall this game is terrible.

What’s so good in Rift? legit question cuz i never tried it but keep hearing about it

The amount of choice in builds and playstyles in Rift leaves this game for dead. It’s not even close.

After the amazing success of GW1 relatively speaking, GW2 has turned out to be quite a pedestrian successor (except for the art style/direction, which are fantastic). They basically removed all the best aspects of GW1 (player choice, diverse and complex combat mechanics, skill capturing) and then copy/pasted a bunch of stuff direct from WOW (talent tree, totally pedestrian AI, gear-based progression, simplified class system) while adding some of the worst thought-out mechanics in the history of MMOs (downed state, unlimited rallying).

Valkyriez.6578:

I can’t really be bothered argueing the point, but downstate threads have been done to death in this forum since beta.

Some like it, some hate it and some don’t care either way.

The important thing to remember, is that Arena net loves it and I highly doubt it or any part of downstate and how it works will change besides very minute adjustments.

Best get used to it and roll with it, they won’t change it regardless IMO.

Yes they are stubborn and arrogant and unlikely to remove it completely, but they could however make it optional in the form of a custom arena option. At least then they (and we) would be able to get objective numbers on it.

For me personally, I won’t touch spvp while downed state remains in its current form. Given how badly spvp has bombed in terms of player reception, it’s very likely that downed state has contributed to that failure, the real question is how much.

Clearly, sPVP’s failure was not due to missing mechanics only as they have thrown tons of stuff at sPVP and it’s still only player by a tiny fraction of the player-base.

Rerroll.9083:

Downed state balances glass canon builds. If it didnt exist, glass thiefs, for example, would be insanely overpowered.

No, you’ve got it backwards. Downed state is what makes it possible to have glass cannon builds. If there were no downed state, then base health would be raised to compensate or peak damage would be lowered.

Phantom.8130:

mesmers bring the most utility to WvW out of any of the classes. portals alone are extremely useful. you can set up portal bombs, or hide in a keep/tower and portal your group in to quickly reclaim it. a few mesmers can set up portal chains to move an entire group from one side of the map to the other almost instantly. on defense, you can portal in reinforcements, or set up fast supply runs. then there’s veil to use in a zerg, and timewarp for golem rushes.

granted, mesmers don’t have access to much AoE, so they can’t really bring much damage in a zerg fight, but they more than make up for it with those crucial utilities. if a group doesn’t have a mesmer, they need a mesmer. if they have a mesmer already, they’ll want another mesmer too.

or, to put it another way, “we have too many mesmers” said no one in WvW ever.

agree with recommending mesmer, it’s the most complete and capable class i’ve played.

you’re wrong about lack of AOE though, at least in WVW: even after the nerf, glamours are still v powerful.

IMO Fresh air is junk. you lose a lot just to proc a 1K lightning strike.

I still find 0/10/0/30/30 to be the best. zerker/knight gear, divinity runes.

For me, mechanically and aesthetically, core Ele is not up to scratch yet. The absolute dependence on switching elements continuously is a real negative – not that switching isn’t fun, more that there’s no other way to play that is the real shame.

Accordingly, I’d like to see more ways of playing Ele as the core design brief. Not just reducing the requirement for 15+ water & 20+ arcane, more something like a way to make fire & earth stronger at the cost of weaker air & water, or vice-versa.

DT is a #2 skill on a 6sec CD. No way should it be a press’n’pray spam skill, it’s stupid.

Would be better for Eles and the game if DT were the ground-target skill, and phoenix fired in a straight line or homed to a target.

The problem with glyphs is IMO twofold:
1) too slow to cast, 1.25sec.
2) lack of compelling traits. cantrips have great trait support, signets have auras, and conjures are terrible anyway.

yes, it’s crap. just make it a passive 25% move speed bonus in Air and be done with it.

Obvious Anet employee post is obvious.

• downstate – what the kitten is it doing in PVP? gamebreakingly unfun and annoying
• it’s boring – map design is boring, game type is boring, how is standing in a circle as a main objective fun?
• lack of depth/diversity, feels shallow. builds are way too predictable and traits don’t make enough of a difference to make the gameplay varied and interesting.
• the UI is bad. visually noisy and unconfigurable. the most important info is tiny.

Profs are in sig genius. I played ele since beta. Glass ele is paper, whereas beserker mesmer is fine.

GS/S+F 20/20/0/0/30

TBH I would recommend just rolling a mesmer. The survivability is better, damage is better, the only thing that sucks is the relative lack of speed until you can slot 6-piece rune of centaur, then it’s 100% swiftness.

The only time I long for my Ele is in pitched zerg vs zerg confrontations… but only for a minute before I hurl 5 guys off a cliff to their death, stealth through the blob to portal my team into their squishies, melt people from 1200 range reliably, etc etc.

Fundamentally, condition Ele is broken because of the long attunement switching timer – if you need to switch out of Earth/Fire, you can’t do any appreciable damage for at least 9 seconds – and that’s if you have 30 arcane, which offers little to a condition build.

Attunement times need to come down for Ele. You shouldn’t need 20+ point in arcane just to play the class fluidly.

WVW is based on DAOC’s RVR, which had what many regard as the best GvG PVP of any MMO. WVW is the perfect backdrop for this, the problem in this game is that every element of the game promotes zerging as by far the most rewarding mode of play.

The last thing WVW needs is more incentives to zerg around trading keeps for WXP and avoiding any actual fighting.

Urrid.4593:

A lack of Budget and Time.

Also Nexon/NCsoft/Anet doesn’t see WvW as a huge money maker.

Ironic because it’s by far the most popular/successful PVP mode in this game.

It keeps being said over and over on these forums – there are too many game mechanics that encourage and reward zerging over small group play.

The clear difference between this game and DAOC was that in DAOC, a single 8-man group could drop a 30+ zerg using a skillful combo of CC and AOE. It’s not possible in this game except with focused siege, which is nowhere near as fun as open-field. So imo, raising the aoe cap would surely be a good thing to try.

The other thing is rewards. People wouldn’t zerg so much if rewards for objectives were scaled down by the number of participants.

The meta-game needs to shift away from zerging before a real GvG scene can really thrive IMO.

Rallying and rezzing in combat have no place in any PVP modes.

Agree the buffs to outmanned sides should be much higher, but you can’t buff individual player damage/defense.

IMO the way to go about it is to buff things like:

• player & siege damage versus structures (easier takes)
• NPC defenders for sides that have few or no structures on the map ( or low PPT) should do considerably more damage.
• structures taken by sides with few or no structure on the map (or low PPT) should upgrade faster and/or use less supply and/or have higher HP and/or spawn with free ACs when captured.

Bottom line: WVW needs feedbacks that effectively counter overwhelming odds. It all comes down to the best way to calculate disadvantage, IMO the best thing to use is just straight PPT, something like:

f = max( 0, 180 – ppt ) ^ 2 / 10000

where ‘f’ = disadvantage factor; ‘ppt’ = points per turn.

Effectively this means no bonus at all above 180 ppt, but below 180 ppt, disadvantage bonus increases exponentially, eg: 160 ppt = 4% bonus, 120ppt = 36% bonus, 80ppt = 100% bonus, 0ppt = 324% bonus.

Yes, too small and too contrived as well. Every path, every attack point has been pre-determined.

Imagine how great the game would have been if WVW was an integral part of max-level zones in the main game world.

Personal heals are the compensation for no dedicated healing classes, not downed state. Downed state was an attempt to differentiate GW2 combat from WOW et al but it backfired – GW2 PVP flopped badly.

Personally, I think rallying is borderline gamebreaking in PVP – it introduces a random element and kills skill. Above the 5v5 level, it gets pretty farcical… the rally mechanic wasn’t thought through at all.

Now, is it a good design that people can rez in the middle of sustained AOE damage? Mmm.

Conjures are terrible. The whole concept is bad – locking out 20 skills for 5 otherwise unremarkable skills, would that ever be a good idea? Only if those 5 skills were clearly better than the 20 they’re replacing and even then, it still costs a utility slot.

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

I think the problem is mechanics not scoring system. The game rewards zerging too heavily and the current mechanic strongly favour the numerically superior side. Specifically:

• downed state – greatly favours the numerically superior side.
• AOE cap – the low cap promotes herd defenses, and with the current dominance of ACs, the side with the more supply wins.
• Flat reward system – rewards should be scaled by the difference in attackers vs defenders, eg: a 1.5x numerical advantage should equal 1/1.5 = 2/3rds the rewards. A 100-man zerg who takes garrison defended by 20 should not all get the same rewards as 100v100.

Suggested improvements:

• scale rewards to #attackers/#defenders for all objectives
• greatly improve bonuses to outnumbered sides – taken towers/keeps start with ACs, require less supply to upgrade, NPC strength scaled up considerably.
• siegerazer shouldn’t need 10 players to start, 1 player should be enough.
• make it free to transfer once / month to a lower-tiered server.

Farming Flats.5370:

Axe Necro range is fine …. Ranger axe is also 600. Use a scepter if you want more range.

Ranger axe is 900 actually.

I’ve been running a hybrid (3k power, 1.2k condi) with 30/10/0/0/30 Axe/focus Sc/D with dhuum and I feel like it’s doing well. I like being able to switch seamlessly between double wells and spite + epi.

Just run the kessex event loop with any hybrid or power build. I used axe.

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

It certainly killed a big chunk of the fun of the class in PVE/getting around in the world.

Stealth.9324:

RtL CD 40s on miss is so Stupid. For those who has like 300 Pings like us who live in Australia or anywhere in the world that far away from server location, the experience RtL when you are in 600 range to opponent then being lag back,count as miss and start 40s CD is so unbearable. Please fix it ASAP. Why we who already has less enjoyable moment with game due to lag, ping and stuff have to suffer further because of this unreasonable change? What gives?

Same. RTL routinely overshoots targets or lags me back to ~600 game units from cast point. 40sec CD even though I have a target selected in range due to badly coded network prediction/collision detection. It’s infuriating.

Zelyhn.8069:

Just for information, spamming the scepter’s arc lightning and lightning strike on cooldown deals about half the damage of the dagger’s lightning whip. So you do not apply more pressure with scepter and fresh air, it’s just that the cooldowns somewhat match so it looks nice, but it is still bad, very bad.

This. Fresh Air is highly overrated.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Outside of focus, no, Mesmer’s ability to escape IS terrible. You’re not going to tell me that a random chance to get swiftness out of a mediocre signet is going to make mesmers excellent at escaping? :P And what good build supports this setup? Mesmers must bring portals in wvw and pvp, phantasm mesmers bring their phantasm signet, which leaves only a single slot which they take blink; while shatter mesmers take a clone stun breaker, and have one free slot, usually for illusion of life. And that’s when they don’t take condition removal.

Mesmer is just a slooow class.

Actually mesmer is not slow at all – runes of the centaur + 15sec heal + 1200 blink then 900 focus pull, then 600 sword #3 leap and GG, or 1200 GS #4 cripple… chasing is pretty decent on my mesmer. Likewise for escaping – 100% swiftness uptime, blink, clones, invisibility… lots of tools.

Comparing my mesmer and Ele – the only place the Ele is better is in a full-on zerg-v-zerg clash or pitched support role, for everything else in WVW, mesmer is better, much better.

You would be so much better off with 0-10-0-30-30. Fresh Air is not worth 30 points.

• Why do we all need to put 20+ points in arcane and 15+ point in water just to meet our minimal expectations of how the class should perform?
• What is the design justification behind making 19/20 skills on staff AOE? playing Ele is an exercise in annoyance because of the frequency i need to switch between weapon sets because they’re all so niche.
• Why are conjures so badly designed and clunky to use?

Yeah it’s not very impressive.

Demon.5082:

Sigh, I wish I could run 4 utilities and throw away my elite.

I think the game would be a lot better if (so-called) elite skills were optional. Likewise if every weapon type had a pool of skills that you could choose from. As it stands, 1 weak skill on a1-hander can render it close to useless.

I don’t think the changes listed will change much:

• 20+ arcane is still required for playability
• 15+ water is still required for survivability
• glyphs still suck (cast too slow, elemental is weak)
• conjures still suck (terrible, just terrible)
• EA is still a fair bit better than any of the GM traits
• staff still has 19/20 AOE skills
• sceptre still laden with crappy skills: DT, SS, fire #1, water #1

I can see S/D and signets being a little better, but survivability will be an issue.

Re-distributing the stun breakers is good and overdue, but the glyph ought to be instant or it’s useless. Also, GoEH is typically cast before an encounter not during.

More than anything, I would’ve expected to see trait changes that reduced the dependence of Ele on attunement CD reduction from arcane and dependence on 15+ water for sustain and condition removal, eg: Earth 30 = reset fire and earth attunements on using a signet, Air 30 = reset air and water attunements on using a glyph.

Yocairo.4257:

I just wanted to come in and adress the thieves-mesmer torment QQ going on.
Most likely this condition will be given to the (underpowered) condition specs, 90% run burst builds out there. Thieves running condi builds need some love pretty badly. I don’t think they will give torment to d/x or s/x.

there’s nothing UP about condition mesmers, even after the glamour nerf. it’s still really strong in 1v{1-4} and big zerg clashes, it’s just that power/shatter is better.

Jones.5718:

mjharrison.3209:

Fenrir.5493:

tigirius.9014:

Trust me warriors don’t need buffs of any kind. They need nerfs especially in PVE.

Most hilarious quote ever.

Oh please. Everyone knows warriors are OP in PVE, that’s why all the PVE farmer groups run 4 of them.

Actually the usual team set up your probably thinking of is 3 Warriors in beserker gear, 1 Mesmer and a Guardian as the anchor.

A specific setup with a specific play style that was designed to farm a path in COF does not constitute an overpowered class.

If you think it does, then by all means roll a warrior and run around in WvW, tank sungeon bosses or Orr farming in Zerker gear auto attacking whilst bashing button 2 and let us know how you get on. Thanks

dude i do have a (mostly zerker) warrior, and i do run around in WVW with it, switch between LB, (A/WH, H, GS) depending on circumstances. it’s fine.

like i said, warr in PVE does need a straight damage nerf. i would have liked to see 100b nerfed in damage and made usable while moving (and potentially destroy projectiles).

Peetee.9406:

Spammable static field is quite hilarious.

Fresh Air resets Air attunement CD, not Air skills, duh.

Einlanzer.1627:

Overall, this will likely be the best balance patch that’s happened so far.

That’s not saying much, attempts to balance the game have been pretty crap so far.