Guild Wars 2

I want to spend a couple of words about Ice Shard Stab.
That is a 10s Chill which completely mess up with the Elementalists attunement swapping, which means in most cases, unless you have Cleansing Fire slotted and ready to use, sure death of the elementalist after it lands.

Elementalists already have an extremely hard time against Thieves (which I think it is the main reason they are out of the meta right now), but that skill… That skill is their nail in the coffin.

Why is this on sPvP forum?

Gorni.1764:

I was solely talking about HPS, therefore I think it’s ok to compare different spells on different classes.

Not really.
Elementalists have many other sources of healing regardless of the build, Warriors have not, so it is not fair to compare directly the HP/s of Warrior’s healing skills and Elementalist’s ones.

Gorni.1764:

so you get the point. Like Arcane Brilliance ER can in theory be better than other ele-heals in terms of HPS without taking other things into consideration (like already mentioned that you would have to heal 1/4 of the time and that it can be interrupted for example).

I still think that the main reason why people are running ER is its condi-cleanse, not its HPS.

Nevertheless this is offtopic… Like stated in my first post I think ER is quite fine as it is (though I’d love to see a talent like Obsidian Focus that gives stability on chanels or something like that).

You have a way to prevent the interrupt, it is Rock Solid. Just switch in earth while you start channeling ER and you get both stability and damage mitigation to cover the eventual DPS you’ll get during the channel.

Gorni.1764:

huge healing

nope not really. You usually don’t get all ticks from the spell and you should also keep in mind that it’s a very obvious 4s-chanel. During that time you can do nothing and the heal can easily be outdamaged (if not interrupted) during that time. (15s CD and 4s cast-time = 1/4 of your time running around trying to heal when kept on CD … not really efficient playstyle, yet necessary to stay alive. Ask again why eles are struggeling atm …) Running berserker you usually just “negate” the incoming damage while chaneling and in the end you will have the same amount of health as before the chanel – just with conditions cleansed.
If it wasn’t for the ele’s vulnerability against conditions I’d never use this spell for it’s “good heal” that even requires a specific build to work. Signet would be the way to go for eles without this stupid condi-meta.
Compared to warriors’ healing signet ER is nothing but a weak spell.

Any healing skill compared to Warrior’s Healing Signet is a weak spell, that’s why it is going to be nerfed the next patch.
Also, I don’t see how you can compare two different skills on two different profession which have different settings. Except for healing signet, Warriors have no sustain at all, which isn’t the case for elementalists.

By the way, Ether Renewal heals for 5000 with an 1.2 healing power coefficient on a 15s cooldown. That means about 263 HP/S, assuming channel time is 4s. That is way above any other elementalist healing skills

In comparison, GoEH heals for 233 HP/s when traited for 20s cooldown, while Arcane Brilliance heals for 273 HP/s when 5 enamies are hit, so slightly above Ether Renewal.
SoR is on par with ER only with 1.5 casts per second, which is quite impossible to obtain that average of casts/s.

That assuming you have no healing power at all, because in that case, ER scales way better compared to any other healing skill. Also this caluclations are made regardless of the DPS you’re not taking because of the condition removal of Ether Renewal.

Of course there are drawbacks of the skill, which is the long channel time, but if you manage to work around it (which is more than possible if you’re smart enough), it is an amazing skill and that’s why there are an huge number of elementalists, especially the ones who don’t run 30 water, that prefer ER over other healing skills.

XGhoul.7426:

no dedicated healers and cast bars (primarily to introduce interrupts for key skills) killed this game very fast.

The problem isn’t the lack of dedicated healers and cast bars. Those concepts are good and can lead to an interesting combat system.

The problem is that those features have been implemented badly.

It is fine that you want the game to be animation based, but then you should also make sure that all animations are readable, regardless of the setting and the characters. It doesn’t really make sense that a game is animation based for the interrupts and then Asuras are allowed to have animations 3x times harder to read and AI which has models 3x bigger compared to the average Asura.

Regarding the lack of dedicated healers, that’s a delicate matter. GW2 replaces healers with support profession, which is way better compared to have a profession forced to adopt a single playstyle. The main problem is that support is unviable and that pretty much any content is designed to discourage to play a support role.

So, in my opinion, the concepts were goods but the execution is extremely poor.

Gorni.1764:

So overall this spell fits eles perfectly – high risk, mediocre reward.

Not really.
It provides full condition cleansing and huge healing, which scales with healing power better than any other healing skill in the game, while also having an insanely low cooldown.

The channel is the only real downside of the skill, but if you manage to cast it without getting interrupted (so while having stability or invulnerability), it is worth the slow.
That’s why you should run 20 earth or focus+Armor of Earth when running Ether Renewal.

Protip: Impale is the only autoattack you can use regardless of the direction you’re facing.

Well, not that Diamond Skin has ever been useful to begin with…

But yes, I’d like to have it completely reworked instead of changed a little bit.

Pteor.6421:

FrownyClown.8402:

It doesn’t work as well in spvp. Try cmc build with holbrak runes.

cmc?

0/30/20/0/20 fresh air

Perplexity won’t be added in PvP the next patch.
All this theorycrafting about it is vain.

About meta builds, there might be extremely different outcomes.
Mainly I see D/D water-arcana elementalist being again extremely popular in the short term, since it is the build most people are used to.

Justin ODell.9517:

It isn’t just about jewels, it’s about stats in general. I can totally see why our designers would want the most influential thing (stats) to be locked down.

I don’t know, to be honest.

There are some professions, like Elementalists, who are extremely tied to stats for survival and not having the proper stat distribution available completely kills the variety.

For instance, any elementalists needs at least 16k HP to survive to conditions, which means about 400-500 vitality. So any elementalist is pidgeon-holed to take either 30 water or run soldier+Air or barbarian.

In WvW/PvE, people can easily mix pieces of Valkirye to compensate the lack of vitality while not losing damage output and having more freedom on the trait picking phase, which is something you can’t do in PvP.

Now choosing to not make amulets customizable means that Elementalists are forced to compensate the stats lacking from the amulets via traits, which makes the trait picking tailored around available stat distribution of amulets.

This is something I don’t personally like and I don’t think that neither most of the WvW/PvE playerbase do.

Nary Why Irk.8150:

Because I´m pretty much providing reasonable points as to how some of us players believe the system change should work it out.

Once again, I don´t care about what you do in your real life.

You’re not providing reasonable points.
You are just spitting out sentences ignoring facts and counter arguments anyone else is providing.

It has been proved that rank does not means factual experience when a threshold has passed, yet you’ve ignored it.
It has been proved that rank these days means just how much time you’ve past farming skyhammer, yet you didn’t have a flying f.
It has been proved that an high rank player (r70, perhaps) isn’t necessarily more skilled compared to a relatively low rank player (r50-r51).
It has been proved that r55+ players aren’t that much as you’re depicting it, especially if you consider that even if all the players on the leaderboards are r55+, they are still an insignificant portion of the playerbase.

You are overexaggerating things, claiming untrue facts and ignoring what anyone else has to say.

Do yourself and anyone here a favor. Just start not caring about GW2 PvP, but for real this time.

bhagwad.4281:

You don’t think time spent grinding should be rewarded? Don’t PvE players get rewarded for the time they spent grinding?

No. It is a competitive gamemode in a game which is supposed to not encourage grinding.

If you enjoy grinding and you want to be rewarded to do so, you can join the champ train in PvE (still I don’t know if it will be as rewarding as it is now after patch) or perhaps go playing a korean/chinese MMO, where grinding is greatly encouraged and no fool developer wants it out of the game.

Nary Why Irk.8150:

I don´t know what you are talking about sandwiches here, but the thing is that I clearly stated that I don´t care much about the game anymore, i have other interests now, nevertheless, I am in my right to explain what do I consider about the rank change.

As others have stated previously, the real dragon rank should be at r70, or r65+, instead r55.

If you don’t care about the game, why the hell are you here posting and telling developers how they should handle a game you don’t care about?

I don’t usually go to a church of Scientology telling them what they should believe and what they shouldn’t, because, you know, I don’t care.

Nary Why Irk.8150:

r55 is a joke in comparison to r70 in terms of pvp-wide knowledge and experience.

You’re just repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of facts, without backing it up with any proof.

I think we can all say that this topic is not worth answering anymore, as you seem to be one of those people who sinked hours into skyhammer farming and now feels violated by this change.

Nobody of the people I know to be competent and r70 has spent a single word against this change. The only I’m aware they have talked about it is Ostrich Eggs, who has just complained about ANet not giving retroactive rewards, not about the change itself.

Nary Why Irk.8150:

No because a former rank 70 has evolved and learned all the skills and mastered all the metagame builds the game has gone through.

Any r70 has passed through the ele meta, spirit meta, hambow, decap engi, and they know all of the old and new tactics and strategies that are in the game. That´s something the 2week farmed r50´s do not have.

Also r70 shows far more experience than r55, there is no doubt for that.

Then why we don’t see any r70 in top level play and we see r50-60 people winning any competitive tournament and holding the top of the leaderboard?

There is no close correlation between the rank and the game mastery. You can easily be a r70 and have farmed all your way to that point by just playing hotjoin, farming skyhammer and soloq without a real will to get better and training.

Nary Why Irk.8150:

no. that doesn´t hold true since rank has always been an experience, not skill measure.
therefore cuting the hard work of some players experience earned in the game really breaks the essence of the system.

real dragon rank should be for r70, not 55.

There is a point in the rank progression when experience becomes just time spent.

Is time spent a good thing to rewards people for in a competitive gamemode? Hell, no.

bhagwad.4281:

So pit a team of r55s against a team of r70s a hundred times and see who wins the overwhelming majority of the time.

55HPM, currently the top EU team, winning pretty much any tournament around, have a r55 (Maylo) and a r51 (Niah) in their team according to the latest ESL weekly cup.

Cheese Mode, as for the latest record, had 3 members of their team under r60.

Among the top EU teams, there isn’t a single r70.

chriswho.8605:

Ok, so i’ll ask a question :

If we take the top100 teamQ in both NA/EU, what’s is the lowest rank ? What is the average rank ? How many players are under r50 ?

So you see… Ranks MEAN something.

Rank mean something, but there is a threshold in which it means only how much time you’ve sinked into PvP.

I can quantify that threshold to be around r55.
Seems fair to me.

Qaelyn.7612:

I am .. I’m thinking about just how much faster now I will die in WvW due to a lack of condition cleansing abilities, because of an overly-broad change that is intended to nerf one gimmicky build and instead makes life more difficult for all engineers, everywhere.

That’s the big picture — 0.1% of the GW2 playerbase whines about one specific build used in PvP, and all engineers are left even more weak in an area where they were already terrible. With, it would seem, no new condition cleanse abilities added to compensate.

Perhaps engineers are now forced to pick some active condition cleansing like Cleansing Formula, light fields or Elixir C added to AR just like any other profession do instead of just picking a trait and completely forget about conditions.

How bad is that? I think I’m going to cry.

bhagwad.4281:

In this case, time = hard work. You can’t spend all the time you want standing around in the mists and you won’t reach rank 70. Who said you only have to reward skill? Every MMO rewards grind. That’s why there is grind.

And I’m getting tired of people saying that ranks don’t mean anything. Pit a group of r70 players against r40s and see who wins each and every time. Saying “ranks don’t mean anything” is just a nice piece of theory crafted by low rankers who want to make themselves feel as good as those who are of a higher rank.

They’re not.

It is Guild Wars 2 and you, as a Guild Wars 2 player, are supposed to hate grind with your whole soul as being anti-grind was the first selling point of Guild Wars 2.

I am r51, playing with a team of players ranging from r40 to r51. We are exactly r40, r46, r48, r50 and r51. We are ranging around the 200-400 positions in the leaderboards and we get matched almost entirely against r50/60+ players. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

You can easily pick 5 competent r40 players and match them against bad r60 players who grinded the rank through skyhammer and wandering around the lowest end of the ladder.

They have said that rank isn’t meant to be a sign of prestige.
Rank is a mean to show that you’ve gathered enough experience in PvP to be considered a competent player.

So, pretty much like in PvE, if you’re rank 80 you have probably spent enough time in PvP to be considered “experienced”.

They have also said that prestige will be shown when ladders and seasons will be brought into the game and I agree with them. Time spent shouldn’t be a way to determine prestige as the position in a leaderboard system, especially in a competitive gamemode.

I guess we’ll see prestige in PvP when they will implement ladders and seasons, so it will be about 4+ months considering how much time they took from the CDI to the implementation of rewards in PvP.

Qaelyn.7612:

Also love the contrast in how engineers and warriors are nerfed.

Warriors: “We must be very careful! Make only small tweaks, very slowly! We don’t want to risk them becoming underpowered (even though they’re by far the most broken, OP, overplayed class)”

Engineers: WHAM

Wut?
They literally destroyed hammer and longbow in two patches and you say that engineers are the ones getting the bad news?

Daishi.6027:

Yay so condi builds get more of a free reign… that’s just what we need. I’m glad something is being done and it breaks the whole rock paper scissors thing… but this feels like it’ll be counter productive unless condi spam is toned down more.

Cleansing Water is going to have the ICD removed. I can’t recall any condi build in meta back when it had no ICD.

So Elementalists back into metagame and indirect nerf to condi classes. Two birds killed with one stone.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

I think that there are two ways to simplify the experience for new players:

• Making a gradual discovery of the game, which is quite what happens in PvE. You start with just one weapon, 3 skills and no traits and the more you progress, the more you unlock and discover in the game, giving you the time to get confident with the new mechanics you’ve unlocked.

• Dumbing down the game mechanics for the sake of simplicity, which is, in my humble opinion, the worse way to achieve simplicity.

PvP stat distribution has always been an issue in my opinion, because a whole lot of builds are unviable just because you can’t get the stat tuning you needed to make it to work. For instance, hybrid condition damage+power builds are completely unviable because the only amulet available which is best suited for hybrid build is Rampager, which has kind of a bad stat distribution.

Still, even if you cut customization in order to make it easier for new players to pick an effective build, players can still pick a bad or unviable amulet and get into the fights while having bad results.
I mean, how can someone can consider to run a viable build running Rampager or Barbarian amulet right now? I don’t think that much.

bhagwad.4281:

Uhhh….no. I’m rank r51+ and the vast, vast majority of the cumulative rank points are from soloq and teamq. Everyone has touched hotjoin at some point of time. It doesn’t make them an outcast.

I’m r51 myself, but before they buffed the rank points in tournaments, I was just a mere r30.

Now to get to r70, you need approximately 5 times the rank point you have on r50.

Most of people who are now r70 were r50-60 before the increased rank points and you can’t reach those levels without farming skyhammer a little bit.

I don’t believe that no one who is now r70+ has never touched skyhammer rank farming.

Before they buffed the rank points in tournaments, you would be playing well over 8 hours a day to manage to get r50 only by playing tournaments.

bhagwad.4281:

When that “higher chance” is something like 98%, it’s as good as certain. Simply put, you can’t be good if you’re just r10+. You don’t have the experience.

There is a threshold when you have the experience and then it is just a matter of who is better and who has played more time.
I think that this threshold is r40.

Fraelin.7409:

Perplexity Rune nerfed to applying 3 stacks of confusion on interrupt could be manageable but would still be insanely strong with condition warrior, it must also not stack with the warrior interrupt confusion trait or it is still a HUGE problem.

3 stacks?
I wish it was like that.
They are the fully fledged 5 stacks perplexity runes, brought into PvP to ruin balance there too!

Flumek.9043:

<33333333333333333333333

No more stabilty spam.

This sounds like the best patch and direction step the game ever made. 4x most OP builds getting hit at same time, I fell viable with almost anything

Just wait to see perplexity condition builds swarming PvP.

I don’t know it is a good idea to futher reduce equipment customization for the sake of simplicity.

There are a lot of builds unviable because of not being able to tune stats properly, now that I can’t even change jewels on amulet, it gets worse.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Thief get a trait that gives them a 50% damage reduction while in stealth…they spend like 90% of a fight in stealth. Ele get a trait that stops crit hits in a a attunement you don’t want to use as much as possible.

The only situation in which I see an use for this trait is for stealth ressing.

Other than that, it isn’t that good since you still have to expose yourself to deal damage and, unless you aren’t able to one-shot your enemy, you will always expose yourself to futher hit him.

hooma.9642:

thiefs are already pushing other gc out of meta. besides thief and hambow ( whats not really a gc) no other gc can burst so often like thief. so stone hearts is even stronger against other gc except thiefs. 2 reasons now why other gc are unviable.

considering that thiefs are squishy and investing a lot in precision and not power, […]

Well, that was the sole purpose of a bunker, right?
Also, are we talking about a 30 earth + 30 water/arcana build? Because in that case, it is completely comparable to a bunker guardian, which is something you can’t afford to have two in a team because of the lack of damage.
If we are considering another kind of build, then it will eventually die because it lacks the sustain needed to heal back from the hits.

A bunker ele finally being able to hold a node is not a bad news imho.

hooma.9642:

the next thing is. the amount of vigor and protection available, esp rewarding for bunkerbuilds, got increased. even aoe-application.

Vigor was nerfed on both guardian and mesmer.
The protecion uptime was not buffed at all. I can’t see which change you’re referring to.

hooma.9642:

thats the points that boost bunker builds. knowing that bunkers are easier to kill with condition let more player invest into condis. the new necro trait is garbage. reason why? it has no cooldown. so yeah a necro can draw the conditions, but will at some point be overloaded and die.

That’s not the case.
The conditions drawed from Necro are just fueling the consume conditions he’s going to cast as soon as he gets out of the deathshroud (condition drawing only happens in deathshroud, while also fueling the LF pool).

hooma.9642:

on the same time we have cleansing water, what counters condition application. so the fights will even take longer than now. to many bunker builds, to strong against raw dmg and esp ele with aoe condi-cleanses.

i think the new meta will be somewhat around double ele and thief as the only gc for fast sidepoint decaps mainly. decap engi will be more viable then as now.

Decap might be more viable than it is now. Hell, it is already everywhere, but I don’t see dual bunker ele being meta.
Two bunker ele will be pretty much like running two bunker guardians: not a good idea because of the lack of damage.

hooma.9642:

ppl still complain about automated response, some even about diamond skin. both only have a immunity under a certain condition, that is related to enemy actions. stone heart is a immunity without conditions where the player decides when it will be activate. so its a immunity thats even stronger then the other both. alone the possibility of that immunity will be determine the teamcomps to less raw dmg.

It is not an immunity, it is just damage mitigation. You still take damage, but you only take less damage as you should. That works pretty much like protection but a little bit stronger, still I don’t see protection making elementalists immortal to thieves.

AR and DS, on the other hand, are complete immunity against damage output of some builds. Sure they have situations in which they work, but AR in particular has an extremely comfortable situation when it triggers.

hooma.9642:

but maybe im just total wrong there are a lot of possible teamcomps, but i think stone hearts isnt healthy. a nerf to thiefs had been healthier and maybe some more sources of weakness for gc eles and powerrangers to have a better active defense against thiefs.
[…].

A nerf to thieves surely would have been more healthy, but it doesn’t changes that Elementalists will still be extremely squishy to any glass cannon or burst build around.

Yeah, I still see some pure glass canon builds being still confined out of meta because of thieves (like GC mesmers or rangers), but it is a first step towards balance since they are kicking in the meta another viable option and a profession that has been forgotten for well over half a year.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Dev-livestream-Ready-Up-March-28-12pm-PvP-Rewards-Next-phase/first#post3823183

Apparently, Elemental Contingency has a 10s global cooldown.
I guess we better stick with Evasive Arcana then.

Karl McLain.5604:

Thanks for the questions. Here are some answers:

• Blinding Ashes ICD (Internal Cooldown) is ‘global’, where it activates once and goes on recharge. The trait works much better in small engagements.
• Elemental Contingency’s Internal Cooldown is currently once every 10 seconds.
• Lightning Rod has no ICD. It will activate as often as a target allows you to interrupt them. The damage value of this trait is similar to that of Halting Strike.
  Weakness duration is 4 seconds base.

Thanks for the answers!

The Blinding Ashes ICD being global makes sense if it is designed for small engagements.

The Elemental Contingency’s cooldown being global is actually a bad news since it will be hard to have control over it and because it is in competition with Evasive Arcana, which gives much more control and equally good effects but on individual cooldowns.

The Lightning Rod damage might be good to supplement burst rotations, but I don’t know exactly how much damage Halting Strike do.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Asked, and answered:

1: Does not stack in intensity or duration.
2: This trait applies 4 seconds of torment each time a clone shatter hits your target. 3 clones shattered = 3 torment applied, similar to how Rending Shatter functions.

May I ask a few questions too?
How does Elemental Contingency cooldown work?
Does it have a separate cooldown on each attunement like evasive arcana or it is a global cooldown?

How does Blinding Ashes work, also?
Does it have a separate cooldown on each foe or it is a global cooldown? It would be bad if you waste a trait trigger because of some AoE burning

hooma.9642:

sorrow dont feed the troll. isnt that clear he has no clue and want admit that? he even plays a condi build and doesnt know the real power of burning.

but my original statements is still valid! stone heart is toxic for the game, it will shift more then now the game into condi-bunker hybridstuff.

How can a single trait shift the metagame to condi-bunker?
Right now, the metagame is way more about burst damage than conditions, as most people are running with multiple thieves/warrior comps, while retaining only spirit ranger as condition class, mainly because of the support and elite spirit, which futher fuels the warrior’s regen making them unkillable (which anyway will get a nerf the next patch).

Elementalists were completely negated and kicked out of the meta because they had horrible defenses against burst damage profession, as a single thief can pretty much make you useless.

Giving Elementalists a trait that counters burst profession that doesn’t make them immortal as they will still be squishy like hell as soon as they switch out of earth, but just gives them a way to mitigate team focus that will surely happen as soon as the elementalist is on sight, won’t shift the meta to a condi-bunker meta at all.

Also, keep in mind that Cleansing Water is going to have removed icd (that means that an elementalist alone can keep the whole team cleansed), while Necromancer is getting a trait that constantly drains conditions from allies fueling both LF pool and an eventual consume conditions after getting out of death shroud.

Belorn.2659:

Don’t get me wrong, bug fixes that makes the game more consistent is never wrong.

I just would like that when bug fixes reduced the usefulness and uniqueness of a skill, they get improved in turn to keep them equal useful and unique afterwards. Nerfs should only be done intentionally and not as an indirect effect of bug fixes.

To be honest, FGS is already unique.
Fiery Rush+Lightning Flash was just a glitch, not even a reliable one. It has nothing to do with the uniqueness of the skill. I wouldn’t even call it a nerf.

Meteor Shower does not get the red circle. It was in the fake patchnotes.
Also, I can’t find anywhere devs saying that tornado+MS combo will not be possible after patch.

The FGS fix was much needed though.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

How many changes have been made to this game based around S/TPvP. The mode is dead and Anet can’t see that still thinking they can turn it into an eSport. S/TPvP IS the reason why this game has such poor balance.

Of course, because most of the imbalances of WvW, like hammer trains, unkillable guardians, instagib thieves, perplexity condition builds, PU mesmers, condition duration foods are there because of sPvP.
Seriously, get real and stop hating a gamemode you don’t even have a clue about.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yeah. That is wrong. I have NEVER used Dhuumfire on my Condi Necro. Never have and never will. Burning being half its DPS lol. Sure its a decent bit, 50% not a chance. As i have said, they have plenty of other conditions that are just as much a threat.

Burning is the most reliable source of DPS necro has, as it is unavoidable. No matter what you do, you’ll end up having it on eventually.
Bleeds alone won’t kill a thing, terror is good as burst but you can easily stunbreak out of it while the only real threat on elementalists is chill but, still, it is a single condition.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Ah, you are talking about specific scenarios where you KNOW you will be fighting a specific build type. That doesn’t happen in WvW. I have gone DAYS without even seeing some classes. That is just how it is. Sure if you are dueling or something and KNOW what will happen, then yeah that could be viable. Long channel time and easily interrupted but yeah its possible.

That’s why you should bring Rock Solid. Aren’t we under the hypothesis that we are running 30 earth?

When you fight someone, if you’re good, you should take less than 10 seconds to realize which kind of build he’s running and adapt your playstyle to it. You don’t really need a crystal ball to realize which build your enemy is running.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So it makes more sense on a weapon that has long cast times of its skills and the fact it doesnt proc on channel skills more than once. You think its BETTER on Scepter than on dagger that has 3/4second cast time auto attacks? O.o

What?
Have you ever played a fresh air build?
Who the hell triggers SoR on D/D autoattacks when you can trigger it multiple times in a second with istant cast skills on low cooldown?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Barely against Condition builds. even without Burning both Engineer and Necromancer have the conditions to kill you. Even Warrior and Thief have builds that would melt you even inside on Earth with this trait.

I think it could be decent, i don’t think it will be anything that saves the class or anything. Within a week everyone will expect all eles to be running it so will just hold back when they know you are in Earth.

Of course they have the conditions to kill you as they are supposed to. That’s why you should cleanse them and kill them before they kill you, that’s pretty much how PvP works. Having a little help coming from Stone Heart is appreciated anyway, since it is mainly an anti-crit trait more than an anti-condition trait.

I don’t think that Cleansing Water helps you against crit builds either, but still it is considered an amazing trait and it is ran by a lot of elementalists.

LordByron.8369:

1) how are you Killing thieves, mesmers and warriors?

3) that is less then popular OP profession using already 2H (not to mention fasthands for warriors)

4) in WWW is situationally good….having to equip an elite for escaping purposes is more of a joke than pve.

1) Warriors are getting nerfs to Healing Signet (less sustain) and on Pin Down, which is a bane on elementalists. Other than that, you can easily counter Warriors with blinds on Blinding Ashes, since Warriors suffer from low hitrate usually. PU mesmers might not exist anymore after the patch because of changes to on clone death traits and perplexity runes. Thieves will have insane damage reduction because of the crit damage changes, as they usually run with very high crit damage and precision. You can expect 38% less critical damage on a backstab.

3) Being able to run energy+battle is an huge buff to elementalists, not to say it is the only profession keeping perma vigor via traits after the patch.

4) FGS was nerfed only to people abusing it to insta kill PvE mobs. It is still a solid skill in any gamemode because of the mobility, damage output and defensive capabilities (Fiery Whirl is amazing).

I can’t believe that people are under the impression that Elementalists are getting nerfed…

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Amulet? I am talking WvW. Who cares about S/TPvP. Its a terrible game mode. Which is also the reason why this game is SO unbalanced.

WHAT?
Blaming WvW imbalances to PvP was the most hilarious post I’ve ever seen in this forum from ages.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

As i have said – i have played with BOTH characters as condition builds and not taken either Burning trait. Sure, it will take longer – does not taking it really decide who will win and who will lose? No.

Remove burning from necros and you’ll wipe away almost half of its DPS.
Again, if you want a trait to carry you and to make yourself an invulnerable god, then I think you should change game. Perhaps, try some singleplayer games.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Slow? Like all Necromancer attacks stack conditions. Even Auto attack Scepter stacks 2 different conditions every 1.5seconds. Then you have the Spite signet and PLENTY of other access to conditions. They DON’T need Burning, they did just fine before it was introduced the only reason some take it is because of the nerfs they got because of it so it kind of seems a loss if they don’t. That doesn’t mean it is a defeat if they don’t take it.

You have Ether Renewal to counter Signet of Spite.
Also, if you let the Necromancer stack conditions on you by autoattacking, then you’re putting no pressure at all on him while you’re doing absolutely nothing to avoid the conditions being stacked on you.
In that case, I think you deserve to just die because you’re pretty much standing still doing nothing.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

You mean Signet of Restoration – i have over 800Helaing Power. It heals for not even 300 per a cast and remember the signet becomes weaker with certain weapons as well. Now, if only these condition classes didnt have easy access to Poison as well as the MANY other conditions…Oh wait. They do.

SoR makes sense only on S/x fresh air builds, otherwise other heals are just better. In that case, you can easily outheal the condition pressure along with poison by just doing your average DPS rotation, which includes loads of casts.
You really have no idea of how much DPS burning supplies to condition builds.

Again, Stone Heart does not makes you an invulnerable beast, but of course it helps, mainly against direct damage builds, but also against condition builds.

hooma.9642:

the next thing to consider is that nearly all meta power builds dont invest into power via runes or traits. so stone heart is even stronger the more builds invest into precision.

Sure.
The Stone Heart effectiveness scales linearly with both precision and critical damage, while it doesn’t scale with power at all.

Still, some people may argue that in WvW those kind of builds still have massive amounts of power coming from food and equipment, but in PvP it is extremely good since most berserker builds don’t have more than 2k power.

Skyhammer is frustrating and people don’t like being frustrated, that’s all.

Foefire is, in fact, one of the most forgiving maps in terms of general play.

Let’s take a look at it:

• The middle point is gigantic, so you can be extremely safe on it.
• No match is completely lost because you can still win killing the lord.
• The fences around waterfall prevents decappers from taking it.
• The ledges around middle allows condi spammers to do their job safely.
• The ledges provides also vertical escapes to thieves and anyone provied with blinks.

It is so forgiving as a map that anyone likes it.

Now look at skyhammer:

• A single knockback/pull can kill you
• A well timed dodge makes the difference between life and death
• Holding the skyhammer provides incredible power to the team holding it
• A skyhammer hit pretty much one-shots squishies like elementalists or thieves
• Map and position awareness is crucial to surviving
• The hammer room is so tight that it is extremely risky engaging in there

Sometimes, when something is too hard and unforgiving, it ends up being frustrating like skyhammer is, so most people ends up raging at it and blaming the map.

Still, I don’t think Skyhammer is a good map, since a map in a game should never be so unforgiving to the point of being frustrating playing it.
I don’t think that it is a skill-less and an uncompetitive map, though, as most people here seem to think.

Xenon.4537:

It would be nice if someone could calculate the effective % damage reduction gained by having crit immunity to a standard zerker build. Like, how much dps does a zerker lose if they never crit?

It is quite easy to calculate the damage reduction.
I’ll do the math for anyone wondering.

To calculate the effective damage output, all you have to do is weight the expected damage output with their relative chance.

So let’s define some variables:
p: critical chance (expressed in percentage values, for instance 50% critical chance is 0.50)
c: 1.5 + critical damage (the effective damage amplifier coefficient)
d: base damage

The effective damage (ED) with the chances to crit would be:

ED(crit) = p(d*c) + d*(1-p)

While, without the chances to crit:

ED(no-crit) = d

So the damage no critting damage compared to criting damage in percentage would be:

ED(no-crit)/ED(crit) = d/[d(p*c + 1 – p)] = 1/(1+p(c-1))

Now, to get the damage reduction, you have to subtract that value, which is the non-critting average damage normalized to critting damage, from the unit, which is the critting damage, so the final formula is:

1-{1/[1+p(c-1)]}

So, for instance, on a character with 50% crit chance (p = 0.5) and 100% crit damage (c = 1.5 + 1 = 2.5) the damage reduction would be:

1-{1/[1+0.5(2.5-1)]} = ~0.43 => 43% damage reduction

Obviously all of these calculations are made considering average damage and without taking into account fury uptimes or crit chances modifiers (like Hidden Killer, which always grants a critical hit). In those cases, the damage reduction would be even higher.

If you want to take into account also the damage reduction coming from protection, since you should have it when you swap into earth from another attunement, then all you have to do is to futher reduce the no-crit damage of 33%, making the numerator of the final equation be 0.66 instead of 1.

So, the damage reduction of Stone Earth + Protection is:

1-{0.66/[1+0.5(2.5-1)]} = 1 – ~0.38 = 62%

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Oh yeah, i forgot. Anet and the stupid idea of balancing a game around a dead mode….That says it all. So for Ele to be any “use” in S/TPvP they will have to run a support build with this trait…Oh that sounds fun.

S/TPvP was dead within the first few months of the games release. Might as well stop trying to turn it into an eSport and actually concentrate on the modes that even from the start of the game out numbered S/TPvP in terms of playing using that mode.

So why is such a trait that is USELESS in 2/3 of the game any good? I mean its going to be SERIOUSLY pointless in PvE. 99% of the content is face roll easy and the other 1% contains 1hit kill mechanics, that i some how dont think this trait will effect.

Then we get into WvW…

It’s not that the trait is useless, it is just that you are using broken premises that applies to pretty much any profession facing a thief to prove that this trait is useless.
It is a damage mitigation trait and as much as any damage mitigation, it isn’t useless, but it looks like that in your opinion it is because a thief can still kill you if you use that trait.

I don’t care about your opinion regarding PvP. Fact is that WvW is popular because it is casual and casual, by definition, means more accessible and more satisfying because people don’t have to get better to get good results.
You don’t need to be a genius to realize how casuals are running around WvW and obsidian sanctum asking for 1vs1 running perplexity condition builds to get instant satisfaction without efforts.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Silly me, I forget that an Ele has to run with a group to keep them alive. Now, just for a moment think about this insane notion -

Solo.

Crazy, I know. Yet some players actually don’t want to have to be followed around by guards so they aren’t killed in seconds. Now assume that you are in a solo situation. You versus a Thief. Do you think that Stone Heart is really going to have THAT much affect on the eventual outcome of the fight?

Now, even in group fights. You assume that you have people standing around and following the ele so they don’t die. Kind of sad yet actually needed at times. What if you are in an even fight but the others are also busy fighting – then what? run to them for help?

Dude, I’m talking about competitive PvP, not casual WvW encounters, in which that trait is amazing.

Elementalist is extremely good as group support and in team fights and Stone Heart isn’t a trait made for solo roamers.

Most professions die to thieves roamers anyway because… guess what… hold on… WvW is IMBALANCED! That’s right! This game isn’t balanced about 1vs1 situations. Surprised?

Point is that while thieves can keep pressuring you as they want when solo roaming, which is why they are imbalanced in that matter, they can’t in teamfights because they expose themselves to AoEs and team focus.

And, FYI, thief is always the first target when he exposes himself.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So, not heard of auto attack at the very least then? ANY class can keep attacking you – unless you somehow manage to run. Earth is NO threat to any class so they have no need to use defensive skills, So you can’t be crit – that does not mean you can’t be hit.

Hell i can do 2k+ Damage on my Mesmer Auto attack without critting, as just one example.

That’s the point. If the thief is autoattacking you, he’s exposing himself to your team focus, which what you want him to do.

No profession is going to hit when they are under focus, unless you’re talking about 1v1 or some imbalanced WvW.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

It means nothing against the biggest threat to ele (imo) – Thief. They can burst you any moment they want. With you in Earth you are no threat so they can continue and will continue to attack until you are forced to swap to heal up and such. Then what? press of a button, into stealth and hello Backstab and HS spamming.

So what has that going into Earth and negating the damage from BS really done? Nothing. Just delaying your death. This trait along with all of the others will be FoTM for a while until people realize that in the end it does very little to stop the biggest threats to us.

A thief can’t just keep attacking you for the entire time, since it either runs out of initiative or it just exposes himself to your team’s focus.

According to your reasoning, no profession can survive thieves.

LordByron.8369:

losing the skill does.

Withotu water you need to slot cleansing fire.
Wich would your utilities be at that point (consider WWW not PvP)?

Again, without water you don’t need to slot cleansing fire, you need to slot Ether Renewal.

Your utilities will still be the same.

LordByron.8369:

lightning flash + magnetic grasp is the only thing that keeps ele working (with a huge risk and lot of effort).

Also earthquake + LF

At least for me….
WIthout it as i said i would be kited forever.

As I said, it is just 4s on a major trait investment. Not worth that much imho.

LordByron.8369:

i tried 30 water….its too much.

But at least it provides cantrip reduction (see mobility) and cond cleansing.

WWW is totally unbalanced with profession like mesmer, thief and warriors being free to attack, disengage and attack again….and differently from PvP you “lose” if you don t kill them.

If they run away they still can harass many players making them lose time (1-2 can troll a spawn), they can kill camps, take away your captured ruins and stuff like that…..

I m extremely concerned about the dps loss or i wouldn t even think to change my build….
Ele since nerfs its to easy to kite….you don t have mobility nor stealth to catch up your target.

It wouldn’t call 4s of recharge reduction on Lightning Flash “mobility”.
I understand that WvW is imbalanced, that’s why I don’t play it at all, but hopefully the rune changes will bring also a nerf to perplexity runes.

Carpboy.7145:

As i said, i tried going for the new fire trait but i just couldn’t get the stats to work, i ended up with way to much power and not enough of everything else. If there was armor that had crit dmg without power i could’ve probably done it, but Anet dont wanna do that.

ANet said that after the ferocity change, they will probably add stat combos with ferocity as main stat.

Anyway, after the patch, stacking ferocity won’t be the best choice for stats. I’d rather stack more precision then ferocity.
For instance, you can try to put more emerald/knight pieces