Guild Wars 2

Nothing – it is underpowered compared to other classes. It’s an easy thing to test — just try playing a different class for a little while.

A decent part of this is because the skill floor is so high, but I think the larger part is due to overly difficult to land combos.

Dragon’s Tooth is the perfect example. It does decent but not amazing damage, but requires an incompetent (or AFK) opponent and/or a utility slot skill (SoE) or 45sec CDs (A5 dagger, E4 dagger) just to land it.

Then there’s the (stupid) partitioning of weapons into attack modes, so staff is only AOE, D/D is only close range. Would it really have been so hard to offer 1-2 skills/20 on staff to do reasonable single target dmg? would it really have been so bad to have 1-2/20 skills on D/D hit at reasonable range?

Auto-attack damage is so low and attunement CDs so long that frequent attunement switching is the only viable way to play Ele. If you wanted to specialise in e.g. fire, you can’t. In fact, a typical 1v1 will require the use of 20+ skills, and if you’re playing from Australia for e.g. with a 220msec ping, imagine how much fun it is to lag your way through the whole fight.

It’s not 1 single issue with Ele, it’s the sum of a lot of small irritations/bad design decisions/oversights/outright bugs than make it UP.

ATMAvatar.5749:

For comparison: whirlpool has a 4x longer cooldown (180 seconds), takes longer to cast than this combo takes to execute, deals the damage over a much longer period, self-cripples the ele and locks out other skills, only works underwater, and it does not have the benefit of opening while stealthed.

It took a 33% damage nerf.

I’m still not seeing a good argument why thieves should escape the nerf bat.

This, exactly.

No class/spec should be able to (effectively) 1-shot under any circumstances. It’s the purest definition of a skill-less game.

Good for you, my response was for the OP, who very clearly posted that he is having problems in PVE.

But since you seem to have a prob with other people having an opinion: what level are you, and what other classes have you played? The forums are full of similar anecdotes about the relative difficulty of solo PVE as Ele and certainly my experiences with other classes from beta to now also clearly show that Ele’s are the worst at solo PVE in terms of killing speed, ability to solo vets/champs, and tolerance to random adds.

Ele is fine at PVE when you can dictate the initial state of the encounter (ie: you get the opener). It sucks in PVE in every other situation — other classes are simply better insofar as their damage is easier to apply and they are way more sturdy.

My advice is for leveling an Ele is to go into WVW at level 10 and stay there until 80, ideally never leaving keep walls except when your zerg is obviously on an asset-acquiring roll and there’s plenty of XP/karma to be had simply through PVD (player versus door). Nuking from/onto a keep wall and supporting realm-mates who are doing the same is easily the pinnacle of the leveling Ele experience in terms of effectiveness.

Be prepared to die obscenely easily until you can get 20+ points in earth and/or water and level 65+ gear.

just remove downed state in PVP or make the channelled rez break on damage.

it detracts too much from the core combat, isn’t fun for anyone, and introduces too many balance issues/corner cases (which again, detracts from the core combat).

downed state rezzing & spying is especially detrimental to WVW.

Downed is fine for PVE but for PVP it’s just a stupid, annoying mechanic that should be completely removed in PVP areas.

It’s not fun being the downed player, and it’s not fun having to immediately suspend combat and sacrifice utility slots in order to get the stomp.

PVP should be about the combat kitten not some silly 4-skill mini-game.

Barring complete removal of downed state in PVP, the OP suggestion of having any damage interrupt the channelled rez would at least relegate downed state contests back to where they should be: a relatively rare event, so that the primary combat, not the downed state contest, can take centre stage.

Hammerheart.1426:

Play a class that has to actually WORK for burst damage (Elementalist for example), and then play a Thief, you’ll see how stupid easy it is to burst as a thief. They don’t need a damage nerf, they need their playstyle difficulty increased.

Typical D/D Elementalist “damage rotation”
Start in Air
Ride the Lightning (4)
Updraft (5)
Signet of Earth (Util)
Shocking Aura (3)

Swap to Fire

Fire
Burning Speed (3)
Ring of fire (4)
Drake’s Breath (2)
Fire Grab (5)

Swap to Water

Water
Frost Aura (4)
Frozen Burst (3)
Cleansing Wave (5)
Cone of Cold (2)

Swap to Earth

Earth
Magnetic Grasp (Or Signet of Earth if its back up) (3)
Earthquake (4)
Armor of Earth (Util)
Churning Earth (5)

After that it takes an on-the-fly assessment on what to switch to next.

Thief
Assassin Signet
Steal
Haste
Heartseeker Heartseeker Heartseeker

I guarantee you just did more damage than my Elementalist.

Nerf the damage? Maybe its not neccessary, just nerf how kitten easy it is to achieve it.

Quoting for truth. I don’t care how “balanced” Anet’s combat stats are, the effort:result balance is terribly off in the Ele – thief comparison, and this makes thieves (and the game by extension) feel really cheesy. It’s plain irritating (read: not fun) to have to use 15+ precisely-timed/aimed skills to achieve a worse result (in terms of damage & kills) than another class than requires pressing 1-2-2-2-2.

Effort:result ratio ought to be roughly even across the classes.

Objective evidence of declining interest in GW2: http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2

While there are some great aspects to the game (WVW, art, accessibility), other areas are really disappointing (skill system, traits AKA WOW talents, downed state).

OP hits all the main points of why downed state is objectively bad for PVP, especially WVW. Also worth mentioning that downed/dead state is frequently used to spy behind enemy lines/in keeps.

There should be no trivial comeback option in WVW at all, at best it should cost a utility slot (eg: Glyph of Renewal).

While I feel it works to some degree in PVE, it simply shouldn’t exist at all in PVP, you should just die and respawn automatically after ~60sec.

At the very least, the channelled res should be interrupted by damage in PVP/WVW.

I think the GW1 skill system was the best designed skill system I’ve seen in an MMO. Together with the secondary profession concept it allowed virtually limitless choice in builds. A good chunk of the fun of the game was just trying out new builds & skill combinations.

Why they threw that system away for WOW-style talent trees and fixed choice weapon skill sets I just can’t fathom… it’s so limited and dumbed-down in comparison.

> Indeed, more skill slots may be something to be introduced as ANet moves forward
> with the game. I should mention here that I main an Elementalist, so I’m currently
> quite happy with the number of skills at my disposal. The only other class that isn’t
> allowed weapon swapping is Engineer, whom are similarly given a large number of
> skills via their bundles. For the other classes, the weapon swap feature is something
> that can’t be ignored and really iterates choices for your class. Even a Warrior,
> arguably the most simplistic to play, has some choices to make. GS Warriors
> offhanding a Rifle sacrifice defense for offense and range. Change your swap to
> axe/axe and the combination of the two makes you one of the most potent offensive
> melee fighters around. So, it’s not really 5 skills, to be fair. It’s 10 at any given time.

It doesn’t change anything. Fact of the matter is, all classes have weapons & skills that just don’t get used because they 1) suck 2) don’t fit their current build 3) don’t fit their current playstyle. Further, when you see someone with a certain weapon, if you know the class, you instantly know all their skills, and can probably extrapolate from that their entire build. Lastly, a key defining characteristic of Guild Wars I was the ability to choose every one of your 8 skills. In GW2, your choices are very limited.

Ele is a great case in point – can you build a long-range single target nuker with a few AOE skills? no, because staff has only AOE skills on it. Can you even build a specialist single-target nuker? no, because all the air skill choices on all the weapons are too limited & you’re forced to switch attunements to burst or CC. There are dozens of other, similar examples.

> I have to disagree that the traits are somehow a wow clone. The traits give you not
> only stats towards a particular build, but often times completely redefine how you
> play the class.

Traits are exactly like WOW talents, there is no difference. Assigning points in talent trees modify the effects of skills & give character stat improvements in exactly the same way.

> I also have to disagree with the removal of Downed State. It’s one of the major
> discouragements for these super burst builds. I don’t want to get back stabbed
> standing around 4 of my allies and just immediately fall over dead waiting for
> respawn.

This is because the game is balanced around having a downed state. Removing downed state would mean reducing burst and increasing TTL (time-to-live).

Actually both my criticisms had (IMO) clear resolutions:
1) Introduce more skills per slot per weapon (ie: you have perhaps 2/3 choices for each slot of each weapon.

As for traits (aka WOW talents) being the replacement for GW1 skill choice, as I intimated in the OP, I think it was — more than anything — lazy to simply drastically limit the skill choice and essentially copy WOW’s talent system in its place.

2) Remove downed state in pvp; you just die and you can choose to respawn or a living player can use a specific resurrection skill, much as it was in GW1.

Taking a step back, ask yourself – what does downed state really offer the player? is it fun? does it introduce interesting new mechanics? if the answer to those 2 questions is “no” or “not really” then what’s the point of it?

From a comment on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7xqKDP28:
“I think the devs loved particle systems so much (read: too much) that they decided to remove anything that was obscuring them (like player models).”

LOL!

Cogbyrn.7283:

In fact, GW2 is so much like WoW that it’s absolutely nothing like WoW in any regard.

Try to name one. I’ll wait. “There are swords” and “You move with wasd” don’t count.

GW2 traits == WOW talents, duh.

Definitely agree with the comment about excessive use of particle systems – a 1v1 is bearable to watch but anything more than that it looks like crap. Case in point — the red circles on the ground wouldn’t serve a purpose if the game had a normal amount of particle systems.

However, by far and away my biggest dislikes of GW2 PVP are 1) the skill system is too rigid, too simplistic, and 2) downed state in PVE works, but PVP it sucks.

1) the skill system sucks because it is too rigid, and too simple.

Simply put, the skill system in GW1 was so much better. I daresay the main draw of the game was theorycrafting/playing with different skill sets (builds). I don’t have an issue with weapon being a constraint on skill choices but why oh why does there only have to be exactly 5 (2h)/3 (m/h)/2 (o/h) skills per weapon? There doesn’t. The game should have released with a pool of ~10/6/4 weapon skills per weapon, and we should have been able to mix and match.

I hate the GW2 (weapon) skill system. It’s unimaginative, and just plain lazy.

2) Downed state sucks in PVP

I wholeheartedly embrace the motivation behind the introduction of downed state and universal rezzing but the current implementation is bad in the PVP context. In a nutshell it makes stomping/reviving more important than the actual combat.

In WVW, downed is especially bad — it encourages zerging and discourages small-man teams. There is also the issue of downed intel gathering, where oft times the best thing you can do for your team is stay dead, rather than getting back into the action.

I don’t know what your data/surveys show, but anecdotally, I don’t know anyone who likes downed in PVP. IMO, get rid of it, at least for PVP.

Thieves, their burst is OP.

Reduce their burst and make them tougher to compensate.

voted:
bugfixes
OP – thief
UP – ele
new PVP game modes