Guild Wars 2

Setun.4368:

You’re right that necros (or anyone for that matter) can’t get through berserker stance while it’s up. However if you’re trying to spam your rotation while that move is up and the war is your main target soyou can clearly see the berserker stance icon up you’re doing it wrong. However at 86% uptime on all conditions my necro can easily keep 10+ seconds of chill on a warrior even when they have dogged march + food + runes.

That’s WvW.
Nobody takes WvW, where perplexity runes, 100% crit damage and 100%+ condi duration is possible, as example to talk about balance.

ThiBash.5634:

sorrow.2364:

Adrenal Health says “hi!”.

Just the weapon skills outheal adrenal health (and they’re free). Soothing Mist is on par with it. And regeneration surpasses it. So the ele gets 3 times that amount.

The trait which keeps the passive is a freaking grandmaster trait. Nobody is going to go deep into earth to take a grandmaster trait to keep the passive of a single signet active after you’ve used it only for a 3k healing every 25s, also considering how bad the other signets are.

With nobody you mean you right? Because what you’re stating is pretty subjective.

Also, you skipped over my main point: let’s see how this change works in practice before we complain.

Yeah man, that’s why you see so many elementalists today in PvP.
You can just take numbers out of context and say “uh, look, elementalists heal for more, so warriors are fine!”. Elementalists are nowhere survivable as warriors but, still, their healing is dangerously close to them.
Keep in mind that an Elementalist with Soldier has lower base survivability than a Warrior with Berserker, just to say.

Please, point me any competitive Elementalist which has ever used Written in Stone in the whole history of GW2 PvP without giving up the match after.

Rednik.3809:

Lol. If you are under heavy pressure – HS is one of weakest healing options overall in such situation, due to nonexistent burst heal.

That’s why berserker stance, endure pain and dodges are in the game.
If you are under pressure, you aren’t able to heal anyway because of CCs. Healing Signet is still healing you, tho.

Hopefully no.
Guardians are right now the best bunkers in the game and probably the most OP profession PvP-wise, we don’t really need guardians healing for 1.4k+ when dodging in PvP.

Rednik.3809:

Warrior – 392 HPS with HealSig – automated healing with no bother to press any button whatsoever to sustain (so interrupting the pressure on enemies), giving the max healing output possible in any situations, while being not likely affected by poison because of its heal-over-time nature – …

FTFY

Harper.4173:

Let’s not forget that the OP here is biased.
Unlike the other classes warriors have no access to protection, stealth, reflects and all those other nasty things that other classes can abuse to stay alive.
Of course he makes no mention of this since he’s trying to prove a point and thus only looking at a SMALL part of the whole picture and pointing out what he feels is wrong but doesn’t bother to present it all.

Yes – warriors have a strong heal. It is also a heal warriors need to remain viable.
If you’re mad – keep at it, but I believe the value is good. The devs said it themselves – reduce it more and you’ll have a trash heal nobody will take.

I do understand people like the OP – they want their free kill back. But I have a feeling they’re not going to get it.

They have high vigor uptime through stances when traited, best condition cleansing in the game while being the only profession with on-demand condition immunity, huge stability uptime, highest health pool and armor in the game, best CCs though hammer+longbow (which can be also used defensively) and now also the profession with the best sustain in the game with 0 healing power, outclassed only by elementalists or guardians with clerics.

I don’t really get your point. Is all of this because of protection? Necromancers have protection, but they are still squishy as kitten and would drop like flies if they didn’t have Death Shroud. Elementalists have the highest protection uptime in the game and are by far the squishiest profession out there.

Ahlen.7591:

It actually brings it down the point where it’s ALMOST not worth using heal signet because of it’s downsides (No anti-burst, weak to poison).

But whatev, people won’t be happy until Warriors are back to being unplayable.

Weak to poison? Really?
A burst heal to be weakned for 33% needs just poison to be applied before the heal is casted.
Healing signet to get a 33% reduction overall, needs perma-poison.
How can that skill be weak to poison? Get real, man.
Also, if the viability of warriors is completely tied to healing signet, then you know that it needs a nerf for sure.

ThiBash.5634:

You’re also conveniently forgetting that eles often have Soothing Mist and passive regens up as well, which the warrior doesn’t get from themselves. Then there are the healing skills (which appear on any weapon but focus) and if they bring a signet, they can trait for it not to lose the passive if they use the active heal.

Overall, I’d say that we should first look what this change will do, and then complain about it.

Adrenal Health says “hi!”.

The trait which keeps the passive is a freaking grandmaster trait. Nobody is going to go deep into earth to take a grandmaster trait to keep the passive of a single signet active after you’ve used it only for a 3k healing every 25s, also considering how bad the other signets are.

ronpierce.2760:

This is why after this post, I’m done discussing this with you. I told the guy I QUOTED to turn off nameplates because he was complaining about them… I’ve also explained why only 2 of the pets REALLY cause that much clutter and I even agreed to that.

As for minion damage, a FULL bar of minions maxed out for pure minion dps only does 50% of the damage that a SOLDIER necromancer does with a dagger (tested). Minions don’t scale with stats, thus a zerker necromancer can still out dps basically an entire set of his pets. And again, pets have a harder time making contact than a necromancer (controlled by a human) should, of course unless their bad, but if they’re that bad and you died, well… Get better. It’s a noob killer build, I’ve said that… who cares? Can’t balance around the terribles and decent players at the same time…

And I did explain the difference, you are just so into wanting to argue and cry about MMs, you won’t listen. MMs have more passive damage while they have to struggle with their defenses more actively (CCing, managing Life force, actually timing dodges since they’re less plentiful, and relying on accuracy for defenses even, when it comes to landing CCs, where as most defenses are activated and don’t require you to hit someone to be effective). While MM focus more on staying alive and controlling the enemy and (good mms) still focus on keeping damage pressure up all at once while watching the HPs of all pets and their placements/controlled status to make the best of their quirky AI, mms have PLENTY to watch for. You think people who PLAY MMs are somehow magically immune to clutter? Think about it. That sort of thing swings both ways. Oh AND we actually have to give a kitten about our clutty (ie, watching health of bone minions and blood fiend, and flesh wurm if used) so that we can ensure we get the best use out of them. I’m talking about GOOOD mms, not terrible people who play MM just to utterly destroy bad players… Yes its a good 1v1 build and VERY effective against bad players who don’t move around… I admit it. I don’t know how many times I can say that before it sinks in. I’m not defending that. YESS MINION MASTERS DESTROY BAD PLAYERS! <———————-
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

But play an MM in the top 10, and not just based on your stupid “paper math” and “paper theories”, actually do it, then come tell me how easy it is.

Too biased to have a proper discussion with you.
L2P has always been the back-up argument of profession biased players when talking about balance.

I’m honestly scared by this change.

If they nerf critical damage, PvP will be a conditionfest even more, effectively kicking out any other remaining power build around.
If they buff critical damage, the power creep will be just flat out ridiculous, when fights will last about a couple of seconds.

The only reasonable change I see is to merge critical damage and precision into a single stat, making it on-par with condition builds, which need only 2 stats to work (condition damage and condition duration), while reworking all the amulets accordingly.
This will help buffing the overall defensive capability of any profession, effectively removing complete glass cannon builds while pushing hybrid condition+direct damage builds, which will become kinda the new glass cannons.

Well, let’s hope they don’t screw this up.

Forzani.2584:

If a thief runs away from a duel, you won.

A worn out cliche that is laughably used by Thieves to prove they are balanced.

In PvP, it is true.
If a thief just harrass you on a node, he’s pretty much doing nothing relevant to the team and his team is probably dying outnumbered at mid point.
That’s why people get mad when thieves rush far in SoloQ.

ronpierce.2760:

Then TURN OFF THE NAMEPLATES. (See my signature)
And like I’ve explained. Yes MM has a lot of passive DAMAGE, but the minion damage alone should never kill someone, unless they’re a noob and just terrible, like many are. Most people who have the hardest times with mm are either glass cannons (it’s fine to have counters in the game, hell, moa and any other aoe build against an mm?). And people who stand in 1 place and take everything to the face.

Basically instead of having huge passive DEFENSES like other classes get through boons and so forth, they get passive DAMAGE, and focus most of their time supporting their minions by ccing the enemy so that they CAN do damage and not die, while doing still 50% of the damage themselves. Get it? The whole game has passive crap, its just that MM necros have their passive benefits in a different field while having a huge lack of mobility/cc breaks/evades/blocks/defensive boons/on demand condition removal/so forth. It boils down to you not liking the playstyle, but in reality there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. You just have to learn to adapt or…. well, or don’t and just keep crying about it until your tears drown all of the minions.

It’s not a problem of nameplates, it is a problem of 3D MODELS. Minions are big, asuras are small. Got it?

Of course minions can’t kill someone all of themselves, but they output pretty much the 70-80% of damage, ontop of the damage and CC provided by the Necro himself. It would be a complete joke if you can just kite the damage and let minion kill everything alone.

The justification of “but look at other classes” has always been a flawed point.
What you have to do is explain to us why it is fair in your opinion that a build which relies on 80% on AI is always a tough encounter even against experienced and good players.

Lupanic.6502:

In the teldo steam was a very nice fight against a MM necro. The necro did not see Teldo coming and run into the wrong direction like a monkey. Still won the fight.

So much minors
very skill
wow

Man, it is obvious that Teldo just needs to L2P.

First we have to define what “build that requires the most skill” means.

Any underpowered build requires higher amounts of skills to compensate the lack of effectiveness.
Some professions have an higher entry barrier because of the different game mechanic (Engineer and Elementalist) or playstyle (Thief), but after you get into the profession and get familiar with the mechanic, the overall general player skills is what makes the difference.

With “general player skill” I mean the ability to dodge at the right time, the ability to burst at the right time and the ability to use CCs when needed.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Runes and sigil rework
• Critical damage changes
• New stat combinations for PvP (amulets)
• High-level overview of planned balance changes

HHHnnnnnng

DaShi.1368:

Which is why the MM gets so many complaints. Most people don’t run AoE. Most run glass cannon burst builds for the big numbers. MM necros, in particular, destroy those builds.

90% of my battles as an MM go like this. A thief or some other burst glass jumps me and unloads all their skills. Depending on how I react, which is usually very little, I take about 50% to 75% damage from a large health pool. Now they are standing in the middle of my minions, while I have all my skills at hand (plus death shroud, usually), and they’ve just used up their skills/initiative. The battle is decided.

How do I fight MMs? As a glass cannon, I don’t unless I’m with an ally. As anything else, I pressure them. Keep the damage steady and use CCs. Most of the minions can be ignored, with the following exceptions: Blood fiend (I’m baffled that no one kills these things) and Flesh golem (just need to watch for its charge). In most of my battles as an MM, my minions are gone pretty fast, and I still do well. I remember one battle when a mesmer Moa’d me. First, I pecked the hell out of him, then finished him off with my axe.

In general, I don’t have any problem fighting MMs. Other types of necros are far more troublesome. If you’re not able to beat MMs consistently, look at your build and style of play. There’s no reason that I can beat them and you can’t. I truly believe that this is simply a learning curve as it was with the shatter mesmer, which is no longer near the threat it used to be back when people didn’t understand it. Just like mesmers, MMs are going to challenge new players and those unwilling to improve or adapt.

First off, this meta has marginal representations of glass cannons, as it is a quite tanky meta and it is well known that a glass cannon isn’t supposed to rush a far point anyway, so…

The problem comes when someone who is supposed to rush a far point, so a Warrior or an Engineer, has incredibly hard time because of how tough are minions to put down. When you’re trying to kill minions, you are completely ignoring the Necromancer, which is free to use all the CCs he has to hinder you. Then it is just a matter of how tough you are and how much the Necromancer is spamming his CCs.

Most times, you will just end up downed if the Necromancer knows at least to not autoattack when minions are alive before you can manage to kill them.
On the other side, focusing the Necromancer at first place is the fastest way to die.

In most cases, the effectiveness/efforts ratio is way too high for that build. Even the dumbest player can at least survive an assault for enough time for a teammate to come, making far point assaulting when a MM is bunkering it completely worthless.

All this without counting the “meat shield” minions provide (i.e. projectile blocking) and the screen clutter they provide.

ronpierce.2760:

Yes clutter is an issue. But one culprit of clutter shown in just about EVERY picture of people complaining about MM is that enemy pet name plates are on. (As is in my sig) if nameplates are turned off for enemy minions (not players), that clutter is far less HINDERING. Fact is, Blood fiend, Flesh wurm and Bone fiend are ranged attackers with no flashy animations. That isn’t very hindering. People have a hard time even noticing bone minions, so what are the biggest issues? Fleshy is too big and shadow fiend is annoying. (You can’t even have all of these at once). Now, class stacking IS an issue. But this isn’t just an mm issue. 5 warriors, 5 mesmers, 5 nade engies, 5 guardians is all annoying regardless of clutter. Maybe they need a 2 cap per class on spvp teams? (solo and team). That would alleviate some of that issue, plus fixing name plates and life suddenly isn’t so bad.

Additionally, like they did with tab targeting, make aoes prioritize any players before minions, then anything hitting minions is just bonus for the other player, and doesn’t stop them from hitting the primary targets. I’d be fine with this! But people would rather kitten about mm and not discuss the real issues or ways to fix it without saying it should just be banished. Or instead of wanting everything handed to you on a platter you could think, “Wow, minions are an interesting COUNTER to Aoe spam, as they provide Aoe absorbing UTILITY to a group.” But nah, its way easier to complain if you die to something. I don’t like belong stunned… Maybe they should remove all stuns just because it messes with the flow of my playing, right? Its a slippery slope.

Also if you don’t tab target and only click that isn’t an mm issue. That’s a l2p issue. You’re intended to use both not one or the other. No sympathy given. That’s like complaining you can’t kite effectively because you refuse to strafe and prefer to backpedal… Also they ready changed it so tab targeting prefers players. People still suggest this, and don’t realize this is already the case. Goes to show how much they test before they start complaining.

And I never said DS isn’t vital for survivability. You’re taking what I say out of context to make a moot point. I said I don’t sit in it. If you sit in it any time you have some life force and drain it constantly, you won’t have any when you need to twitch play using doom or suck up unavoidable damage while being stunlocked. Clearly you aren’t getting this, nor trying to get what I’m saying so just leave death shroud out of this. Point is while DS is a good defensive tool, it stops you from doing a lot of other things when using it, and life force isn’t ALWAYS entirely readily available, meaning even our anti cc measure (doom) and gap closer (dark path) isn’t always available. Hence; its best to never fully drain yourself of life force below 10-15%.

The issue is not about targeting, neither about nameplates (which hiding them makes everything harder too). The issue is about animations and small character models sneaking around big minions unnoticed. Nameplates is the only thing which gives you a chance to notice that asura sneaking in all of that clutter and you’re suggesting to disable it? Really?
Sometimes you can’t even notice an asura stomping you when you have all of this mess on your downed body and when you see the asura jumping before the stomp, it is too late to interrupt him. Sometimes it happens even on humans because how big Shadow Fiend and Golem are.

AoEs already prioritize human targets, it was changed in one of the last patches and that is the real issue.
If you stack as much AI as possible, huge amounts of AoE aren’t enough to wipe that amount of AI because of the AoE cap.
AoE isn’t the issue, AoE is a core part of the game which is incentivate by the node design and it isn’t even that much of a problem, unless you want to walk with your AI army on the midpoint node and expect to walk out intact.

About DS, I seriously start to think that you’re trying to make up arguments just to say that I have no clue. I’ll quote you the sentence which started all of this.

The DS bug was fixed, buffing the survivability of Necromancers with proper Life Force generation (so MMs) greatly.

Then you’ve said that MMs can survive with little DS use, which is a flat out lie and any decent Necromancer knows that.

I’ve never talked about sitting in Death Shroud, that’s something you made up entirely.

ronpierce.2760:

cut.

Fact is that staff is a weapon for any build.
Saying that staff was nerfed is irrelevant since it isn’t a requirement for MM builds more as it is for any build, neither it is related to minions.

Let me get this straight, did you tried to say that DS isn’t a core defensive mechanic of Necromancers and having higher DS pool added to increased LF generation capability isn’t an huge boost to survivability? Because if you didn’t, you did not contraddicted my point.

Whats exactly the point of saying that minions die? They don’t die more often as they did before and a 100 damage buff on attacks that usually hit for about 200 to 800 depending on minions is huge.

Minions are not squishy.
Yes, they don’t dodge, but they don’t get focused by players too and are in lower priority on the AoE cap of 5 entities, which is the only reasonable way to kill minions.

Yes, one minionmaster will lose all of his minions in a midfight, but stacking 2 or even 3 of them will not lead to the same output, since the AoEs just can’t keep up to the huge amount of minions (again because of the 5 entities cap).
They are extremely good in small scale fights, while being also good in teamfights when stacked up.

The main problem with minions is the screen clutter they create, the AoE cap when they stack up and the insane DPS they can output even on bunky characters while being completely passive.
Minions, also, are too tough to consider to kill them in 1vs1, making them pretty much impossible to fight against when they bunk a point.

Mightymealworm.8409:

No no no. I don’t think even 8k would be enough to make you want to activate it because it will heal that much anyway, and you could be interrupted or poisoned! This forces you to use signet mastery for it to be a buff and not all builds use that so it is only a small buff if even that. John wanted to IMPROVE the active so we would use it.

I think because poison AND burst is such a big counter to warrior that the active should convert poison into protection before it heals. And it should be instant cast. This would make you want to use it, and warrior would still be able to be burst down when on cool down. I think this is only way to make it worth activating the HS, otherwise what is the point?

Oh and Guardian Signet has 8k on 40 second cool down but not good comparison because warrior has AT LEAST 8k more health pool to have to fill up! Gaurdian signet passives cures lots of conditions and can ever cure condition on use and guardian can even cure conditions with lots of other skills when heal is on cool down! Go complain about guardian. Ele signet heals them 200 every time they cast a spell and they have less health pool to heal too!

You guys should not laugh at warriors being in bad place right now, you just want nerfs so warrior will be free kill again! LTP, you are all to lazy to change your build and tactics to counter warrior, you just need to spec burst bring poison and not fight 1 on one. Warrior is very weak when focused on by multiple people and will probably die!

John also said that without strong heals warrior is too much like all EVERYONE ELSE. Warrior should have the strong heals because it makes them stronger and is good for their play style, and that it still needs some buffs and tweaks!

No doubt he isn’t serious now.

ronpierce.2760:

With the change to Bloodthirst they actually nerfed the healing I receive from them, even if they do more damage. They nerfed staff in various crippling ways. I don’t use shadow fiend, and not that many do because its pretty squishy. The casted pet abilities only really affected rigor mortis, which in the grand scheme of things wasn’t that big. MMs don’t spend much time in DS because the more time you do the less you can cc your enemies and your minions die, and you also don’t gain healing from them when you are in it, its actually kind of setting yourself up for failure. A good mm can survive just fine with little DS use. That said, they also nerfed DS in the sense that it has roll over damage from bursts.

I didn’t say they didn’t get buffed, but they also received nerfs too, and none of them except the siphon damage really changed much. And the damage buff (at the cost of some healing and a screwed up staff) was about 90×5/3= 150 dps buff in BEST conditions, assuming you never use your bone minion ability and pets never die. Or you use shadow fiend which is notorious for dying. Of course this is high end tpvp I’m talking about, not 1v1, which everyone should know by now isn’t how they balance.

The nerf to the healing of minions was worthless anyway, since the sustain they provide wasn’t relevant anyway to the survivability of the Necro.

Also, I didn’t expected such kind of statements from you, ron, because as far I know you have a good amount of experience with Necromancers.
Are you actually trying to push the argument that MMs should avoid to get into Death Shroud to survive?
Come on.
The survivability of Necromancer is strictly tied to Death Shroud, not to the low heals that minions provide when attacking. The sustain provided through Death Shroud is far superior to any form of healing Necromancer has access to, not to say that the best defensive CCs are in Death Shroud.

Staff nerfs are unrelated to MM and they don’t hit that build at all, unless you run conditions. You can run Dagger & Axe on MM builds without any problems, having much more survivability because of the high LF generation.

The damage spilling to HP on low LF amounts is nowhere close to the huge buff of the DS damage “fix”.

The fact that activated minion skills are insta-casts help a lot to increase the fluency of the fight. In the time you’re not casting those skills, you are, of course, casting other skills and perhaps putting further pressure on your enemy.

Shadow Fiend is far from squishy. It has about 16000 HP and 2125 armor and it is the fastest hitting minion, at one attack every 1.64s. In comparison, only Flesh Golem and Blood Fiend are more survivable, while only Flesh Golem attacks faster.

Also, your calculation of DPS increase is extremely wrong. Assuming you have 5 minions skills, only Summon Blood Fiend provides provides just one Vampiric Master trigger every 3s. Flesh Golem provides one trigger every 1.2s, Bone Minions and Bone Fiend provides 2 triggers every 3s each, Shadow Fiend provides 2 triggers every 3s. Jagged Horror provides Vamp triggers too.

ronpierce.2760:

I love reading stuff like this. I played MM since the beginning and when I did and joined Tpvp and said “Hey, I’m MM” they LAUGHED at me and made fun of me and made comments like “have fun dying” and “way to be useless”. A year later, not much has changed, we got some minor buffs and then some minor nerfs and NOW everyone is complaining about it. Gotta love how popularity determines how OP something is. :P

Actually, a lot changed since launch.

Active of minion skill become instant, except of the Flesh Golem charge, which is an huge change.
The survivability and the healing provided by Blood Fiend has been greatly buffed.
The DS bug was fixed, buffing the survivability of Necromancers with proper Life Force generation (so MMs) greatly.
Vampiric Master was changed to also deal damage, scaling with power, buffing the damage of minions of approximately 100 each with Soldier Amulet (HUGE buff).
Death Nova was changed to deal damage.
Shadow Fiend active now gives life force.

That changes alone were huge buffs to minionmasters.
Before all of those buffs, minion damage was ok-ish, while the master was easy to pin down, making a good build for new players because the ease to play while learning the game mechanics.
Then add this to the fact that Elementalists completely fell out of meta and there you have the full picture.

Now the master is incredibly tough and minions hit like a truck, making it extremely strong in unorganized gamemodes, like SoloQ and pugging TeamQ.
Not to say the huge clutter they create.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Maybe we should just increase the heal amount of active to 8000, so you don’t lose any of your healing potential over the 20 second cool down. I think it is balanced because you would heal that much anyway, therefore 8000 healing on a 20 second cool down is balanced. And it would make signet mastery a buff. The active would also be weak to poison, just like the passive so u can counter it.

Besides warrior has no other sustain, we can’t dodge, block, blind, have protection, weakness, kite, disengage, teleport, have no ranged weapons, have no immunities, have no other skills that heal and all our skills have a cool down.

We need this, we are in a bad way.

Is this guy serious?

EvilSardine.9635:

Wanna see how warriors are NOT OP? Fight a skilled necro, engineer, thief, or mesmer. They will destroy you. If they pop doom sigils on their weapons a warrior will be destroyed even harder.

People need to L2P. Warriors are EASY MODE on my engineer.

Come on, don’t be silly.

A Necro can’t get through the berserker stance and the constant cleansing coming from Cleansing Ire on 30 discipline builds.
Engineer can’t do kitten on the insane stability uptime of Warriors, neither can survive the stunspam.
Thief can’t even get through the armor dealing decent damage at warrior to the point that engaging them is a pure suicide.
Mesmer is just lol. Any squishy light armor profession just melts on hammer and stuns.

Anyone can melt warriors with any profession in hotjoins where people usually don’t have an actual clue about what they’re doing.

Rednik.3809:

I want to ask about all those posts about “nerf HS regen, buff scaling, HS for bunkers”. You know what war bunker is one of weakest pure bunkers in sPvP? It works good only against someone completely unexperienced or if you got coordinated team. No one in sane mind would take average warrior bunker over average guardian bunker. Pure regen is nothing without bunker utility.
Moving HS to bunker won’t help bunker, and it’s heavy nerf for other specs, they are still don’t have any reliable sustain source outside of HS. Mending and stance are jokes, surge is good only for pure glass, kill fast or gg. Usually gg, bunker condi meta says hello. If you open warrior builds, you can see Ire and HS in almost EVERY pvp build, and it’s not because everyone ignores alternatives. There is simply no alternatives.

The problem with HS is that it gives too much sustain to non-cleric Warriors
Mending is a joke? Rofl.

Fact is that if guardian wasn’t so OP at bunkering, Warrior will come just right after it.

killahmayne.9518:

And many people are talking about hot join/solo queue. Nobody denies (or that many people) that Hambow warriors are top tier builds in pvp. But so are Bunker Guardians (whom are arguably more essential than hambow warriors) and condition nukers such as Engis. Only thing that keeps Necros from top tier are hambow warriors. There are many other builds that are easy to play and can “faceroll” hard.

And not many people deny either that Elementalists are underpowered either, so comparing them to a warrior in PvP is baseless because they are also underpowered compared to many other classes. Besides, Warriors only have the hambow build that is truly viable in tournament play.

There is also more to balance than just PvP, in PvE it has been proven that warriors aren’t even the most damaging class. They can die just as easy to champions and elites. In WvW they get countered by many other builds 1v1 and in zerg fights, well, doesn’t really matter too much unless you run organized groups which in that case most of the classes are equally as helpful.

To achieve balance all modes need to be considered, or at least balanced separately if possible. And be weary that if people are calling for nerfs (mainly to the hambow build that has already been nerfed) that they will make already non-viable builds even more non-viable.

There is unviability because there is another build which is simply better, then there is unviability because of impossibility to play it competitively in PvP.

For instance, Greatsword is unviable in PvP because of its design, while Axe or Mace are greatly viable, but see no play at all just because hambow build flat out outshine them in nodefights.

That said, I’m perfectly fine about warriors being able to output that amount of stuns and AoE damage as far as there is a risk associated with that.
Sadly, there is no risk at all about it.

Please, post more WvW videos to prove game balance, like WvW is balanced in some way.

Also, Burnfall, your arguments are laughable at best.

killahmayne.9518:

I’ve read it and while i do see your point there is a clear difference between having telegraphed skills and not having telegraphed skills. And one would obviously want the latter. It does detract from the class because you become more predictable and people can in turn counter that predictability. And having in game general knowledge also entails knowing warrior animations and knowing when to dodge them. And also having map awareness to better prevent being ganked by another player.

Fair enough, my logic might be flawed in that regard, however I mentioned it for a different purpose in which I will get back to later. But facerolling with a warrior in hotjoins doesn’t really hold any weight whatsoever (which many of these claims tend to be). And how do we define it? For all we know it could be 2v1s that people are fighting and that is how they define it. I remember picking up a mesmer for the first time and owning in hotjoin too. Must be easy, right?

And facing your own profession and somebody who is more experienced can also teach you that hey, I still have a lot to learn about how to master this class and play it to its full capability and that maybe I am not so unstoppable as I thought I was, and maybe, it isn’t so easy to be maximize my effectiveness Some classes are easier than others to pick up, but I think for the most part the gap closes quickly when talking about being masterful with their class. People who pick up warrior after playing another class just perhaps, maybe weren’t even very good with their original class to begin with. That is why when they pick up a class which is easier to understand and get a handle of, they do better. All possibilities need to be considered.

And even against other classes 1v1, typical warrior builds will struggle against Mesmers in general, condition engineers, a couple thief builds and dhuumfire necros although that is a little bit easier than the former classes i’ve mentioned. And most likely first time warriors will not be able to deal with them. That is where experience comes in and realizing that facerolling in some random hotjoin match isn’t the ceiling of the their potential; nor does it mean that is all there is to the class to learn.

Nobody here is talking about hotjoin, at least for me.
I’m talking about only TeamQ/SoloQ, when the team contribution and the chances to win fights are much higher on warriors compared to any other profession in the came, except perhaps some builds.

When I pick up Warrior from Elementalist, my MMR skyrockets. Seriously, I just win fights way more often than I do with any other profession.
And I don’t even have Champion Legionaire.

Ease to play is something, but when a build is also extremely effective while being easy to play, there it comes the “faceroll” definition.

Regarding skill telegraph, keep in mind that any telegraph is mitigated in PvP by the overabundance of Asuras and the huge clutter that fights usually have. So no, telegraph may make a difference in 1vs1 situations, but in teamfights, which is the situation when any hambow warrior wants to stay, skill telegraphs weight close to nothing.

Ahlen.7591:

The thief heal signet actually can have a lot better output than Warrior heal signet.

The Ele signet is balanced in addition to their many sources of both protection and regeneration.

Dont’ try to compare these in a vacuum, you will fail and just look silly.

I’m not comparing them in vacuum.

They are, of course, different skills with different settings, but both of them needs healing power to have significant healing output, otherwise they are outclassed by other healing skills.

Healing Signet is the only signet which gives huge amounts of healing without the need of healing power at all to the point that stacking healing power is counter-productive and other healing skills are worse in any situation.

killahmayne.9518:

sorrow.2364:

Cygnus.6903:

Have to call BS on this.

More punishing? A decent elementalist will never have to auto-attack. Ever. Long cooldowns may be true, but you have an abundance of skills. Missing an important skill is hurtful to any clkitten to an elementalist I’d even dare say.

And about the telegraphing, you tripping? At least elementalists can use non-telegraphed (as in instant) skills viably. Warriors get three interrupts with a short cast time (mace 3, rifle 5 and kick). That’s it. EVERY other warrior skill is as telegraphed as you can get.

Some of the strongest skills are untelegraphed/unavoidable.

Pin Down is 1/4s casting time and with little to no telegraph except for the projectile travel time.
Combustive Shot is unavoidable.
Whirlwind and Backbreaker on hammer are relatively telegraphed. Backbreaker has strong reseblance with other hammer swings while whirlwing has really short casting time, yet they are extremely strong.
Arcing Arrow has pretty much no telegraph once you cast it on close range, which happens quite much in PvP since warriors are one of the few profession which can walk on points and walk away alive.
Whirlwind Attack is one of the most damaging skills on GS, second only to hundred blades, and it has no telegraph whatsoever because of how fast it is.

That said, the problem of animations and telegraph becomes a non-issue when you make an Asura.
On the other hand, having light armor, low HP pool and being squishy like kitten is not fixed when you make a Norn.

Pin Down’s cast time might be quick but this skill is also easy to miss and a lot of things can contribute to that. For example a random aegis proc as you casted it, a random blind. Or just people randomly dodging without actually seeing it. It also has a 25 second cooldown and for the most part only hits one person. From farther range it also isn’t too difficult to just simply dodge it.

I can’t believe people are talking about it being not telegraphed in melee. Most range skills in melee are and that is the consequence of being in melee sometimes and the choice you make. However range skills are very clunky in melee and you probably would take a lot more damage in melee before you land pindown.

I would like to see some of these warriors who have claimed to faceroll within the first few hours to fight some more experienced warriors and see how that goes.

Read my other posts, which explains what my point is and why arguing about telegraph in particular is pointless.

By the way, your logic is flawed. If warrior is faceroll easy to play, then the ones which has little more experience win or it is a matter of luck. A more reasonable comparison is to match any warrior with a bit of PvP experience against any other profession, even against more experienced players.

That said, there are two kind of skills. Profession knowledge and game basics. Point is that the profession knowledge of warrior is so shallow that you mostly just learn what the skills do and jump in a fight mindlessly. There is no other finesse tied to the profession.

Many people reroll warrior in PvP to be competitive not only because of easy it is to play, but also because it is a big threat even against very experienced players.

Ahlen.7591:

sorrow.2364:

DeWolfe.2174:

My reaction to this is to ask, what is the goal? Is it to put Warriors back into the bad spot they were last year? I don’t see Warriors face rolling matches left and right. If anything HS needs to have a buff to it’s scaling with healing power. Make putting points into healing useful!

No.
HS needs the base heal to be extremely nerfed and the Healing Power scaling buffed.

Healing Signet is not the only thing holding warriors up from where they were last year.

Yeah because warriors should be the only class that has to stacking healing power to have an effective heal in PVP. kitten warriors amirite?

That on top of the active buff.
And, by the way, what you said is false.
Just look at ele/thief healing signet for a direct comparison. Without healing power, they are junk. And the active sucks too.

Cygnus.6903:

Alright, I’ll bite again.

My definition of a slow projectile is not Pin Down, yet that isn’t my definition of fast either. But I guess you got me there.
The comparison to elementalist does make sense, however. Every ranged skill in the game with a cast time is harder to avoid when you get closer. I said elementalist, but I can take any class to make the point. That’s why you should stay the kitten away from the warrior that’s using his longbow. You will find when not standing next to him that you can and will avoid most damage.

You say instant cast skills have no utility and relatively low damage. To what are you compairing these skills? Let me link to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gAif9qE4WY

This is not intended to make some point of eles being OP, which they aren’t. But they do have options, and this burst is insane, by any standard.

You’re losing the point of the discussion.
We are not going to make cross profession comparison or act childish saying “but look, that profession has this, it is unfair”.

This whole discussion started because someone claimed that warrior skills have huge telegraph and are easy to avoid, which is not the case.
There are skills with even less telegraph? Good to know, but it isn’t relevant to the topic at all.

Cygnus.6903:

Didn’t say in your post that you were talking about PvP, but I might have missed that in a previous post.

But then, you make it seem like combustive shot is the only ‘unavoidable’ and powerful AoE skill in the game… If you are going to be on point in PvP, you will eat AoE. Elementalist and necromancer are king in that area. So using that skill to prove how untelegraphed warriors are is very biased, to say the least.

Again, read above.
I’m not trying to push the thesis that warriors are untelegraphed. I’m just saying that the telegraph isn’t that much to justify all the other goodies that warrior has.

Right now warriors (and I’m referring to the meta stance/hambow build and some variants) have the best sustain in the game without healing power, the highest base health pool and armor, good burst damage, high stuns and CCs, extremely good AoE thanks to Combustive Shot and Earthshaker, good vigor uptime (Vigorous Focus), the best condition cleansing because of Cleansing Ire, high amount damage denial (Berserker Stance and Endure Pain) and incredibly high uptime of stability.

Someone said “but warrior skills are highly telegraphed”. Well, if the animation of skills is some sort of way to compensate everything else warriors have right now, then the telegraph is by far not enough.

Cygnus.6903:

So you only have the extremely slow projectile to dodge? The travel time being telegraphed makes the skill telegraphed, I call bs again. Saying a ranged skill is impossible to dodge from close range is not an argument in your favor, because ranged skills of an elementalist have that same advantage. Yet you get skills without cast time, from range.

Extremely slow projectile?
Which is your definition of slow, exactly?
The argument isn’t that it is impossible to dodge, the argument is that it is not that easy to dodge as you guys are trying to prove.
Actually, saying that is is hard to impossible to dodge in close range is an argument, since it isn’t telegraphed in any situation, but you can work around to make the skill really hard to dodge.

The comparison with elementalist makes no sense at all. The setting is completely different and instant cast skills are purely damaging skills with no utility and relatively low damage.

Cygnus.6903:

If you stand in it… Yet there is a big red circle telling not to do that… Quite similar to the Elementalists Flame Burst, actually. And if you want to complain about combustive shot being strong, it is our class mechanic. It should be.
In PvP this is a good area denial skill, sure. But you are not forced to stand in it, therefore it is actually easily avoided. If you play WvW, combustive shot loses a lot of it’s value (not talking about zerging).

In PvP you are forced to stay in it, unless you want to let the enemy team cap the node, making all the efforts of fighting useless.

Keep in mind that I’m talking purely on a PvP perspective, since it is the only gamemode I play.

Cygnus.6903:

Holy hell, did you actually post this? Backbreaker is RELATIVELY TELEGRAPHED???

I’ll stop any argument here.

Warrior QQ has come to this. What’s next?

If people put half the time they take to destroy other classes into ‘fixing’ their own, this game would have perfect balance.

It is.
I’ll dare you to dodge 100% of the time backbreaker casted by an Asura.
The animation is no different from an anonymous autoattack hammer swing.

Maybe on a giant norn the animation is easy to read, but pretty much every skill is easy to read on a Norn, that’s why none play Norn in PvP unless you’re a bunker and you don’t actually give a kitten of enemies reading your animations.

Scryed.9423:

Let’s talk numbers and factual information, not religion and mythology. I know you forum trolls love to just talk but uh, like the devs have been posting, it doesn’t look like the lack of information you present is getting the points across.
Sorry you and >x% of the game doesn’t like how easy 1 out of 8 classes is to learn and play. Having played this class prior to switching mains, its hardly as bad as you guys cry about and its mega annoying.
Factual information, by the way, consists of talking about builds that are not made up of 30/30/30/30/30( because all the posts here are crazy and make it look like none of you know how to play this class other than you look at these skills and get jealous because they are not as good as your favorite class) and reasons something isn’t working, usually with some kind of points or math to back up what you are trying to say. Maybe start there and try to have an actual discussion instead of making up ridiculous reasons and quoting people that serves no real purpose, other than saying you don’t like this wah wah wah, do things my way or I’m leaving!

What about you, then?
You just linked a post in another subforum staying obviousness and arguable statements.
You did not pointed out what are the false statements said in this topic, neither you tried to counter argument them.

How do you expect people to take you seriously if you never bother to explain your point?

Juba.8406:

Bro, do you even War?

Yep man, in case you didn’t played PvP recently, the only way to be competitive in that mode is to have at least one warrior in a team.

I guess you don’t play PvP that much, do you?
If some skills are so much high telegraphed to be extremely easy to dodge, trust me that none would use them.
Just look at how many eles actually bother to cast Dragon’s Tooth or Churning Earth in PvP. And by PvP, I mean not casual hotjoins where people play just for the lulz, but SoloQ/TeamQ.

Amir.1570:

^
Coming from a Warrior player who still loses to Minion Necros, and he has a right to say Warriors take no skill.

Same person who actually thought Warrior was fine when Frenzy got gutted actually.

GJ at going through my whole post history trying to grasp at something to invalidate my point instead of just countering it with actual arguments.

Is that your way to argue?
I mean, if someone says “I think that Nutella is healthier than peanut butter” your best counter argument is “Three years ago you posted in a fitness forum about how to get in shape, that kinda proves that you’re fat. So fat people are well known to eat junk foods, so that means that since you prefer Nutella, Nutella is not healthier than peanut butter”.

Just lol.

Cygnus.6903:

Have to call BS on this.

More punishing? A decent elementalist will never have to auto-attack. Ever. Long cooldowns may be true, but you have an abundance of skills. Missing an important skill is hurtful to any clkitten to an elementalist I’d even dare say.

And about the telegraphing, you tripping? At least elementalists can use non-telegraphed (as in instant) skills viably. Warriors get three interrupts with a short cast time (mace 3, rifle 5 and kick). That’s it. EVERY other warrior skill is as telegraphed as you can get.

Some of the strongest skills are untelegraphed/unavoidable.

Pin Down is 1/4s casting time and with little to no telegraph except for the projectile travel time.
Combustive Shot is unavoidable.
Whirlwind and Backbreaker on hammer are relatively telegraphed. Backbreaker has strong reseblance with other hammer swings while whirlwing has really short casting time, yet they are extremely strong.
Arcing Arrow has pretty much no telegraph once you cast it on close range, which happens quite much in PvP since warriors are one of the few profession which can walk on points and walk away alive.
Whirlwind Attack is one of the most damaging skills on GS, second only to hundred blades, and it has no telegraph whatsoever because of how fast it is.

That said, the problem of animations and telegraph becomes a non-issue when you make an Asura.
On the other hand, having light armor, low HP pool and being squishy like kitten is not fixed when you make a Norn.

Scryed.9423:

I am glad the forum posters are the minority. You guys have posted mostly wrong information about this class when you are comparing and contrasting skills, but oh no you don’t like to be told that as seen from posts about this skill for the last 5 months now.
This skill isn’t as bad as 95% of the posts make it out to be, nor does a warrior exist that gets every single trait line.
Quit being upset your class doesn’t compare to them in versatility. Quit being mad the learning curve for this class is minimal. Start looking for suggestions to improve what you feel is lacking on your class, because its quite clear most of you don’t really play this class. I feel like this is just getting out of hand with the crying.

I would suggest looking at this post if you want to actually know things, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Warrior-Mythbuster

Wrong informations?
Jesus…

Juba.8406:

High telegraphed, lack of Ranged, AoE, teleports, instant attacks and AI compared to other classes.

High telegraphed? Probably some skills, but also any profession have high telegraphed skills as much as non-telegraphed skills.

Lack of Ranged? lol. Let’s talk about longbow and rifle then.

No AoE? Longbow has some of the best AoEs in the game. Earthshaker is, by far, the best AoE skill in the game second only to, perhaps, chaos storm.

Instant attacks? Well, not every professions have them too, but some 1/4s casting time attacks are dangerously close to be instant.

Now, let’s talk about the kittenload of immunities that warriors have on top of their high armor, high HP pool and high sustain even on berserker gear.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Are those pvp numbers? Care to share the build?

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;2BJ-U0A5-N-Z0;9;5TJ-J;159B57;217-Io0;3H7W3H7W36BY
No water, though. Not that it is that useful on soldier amulet anyway.

Phantaram.1265:

I would call it glass cannon. I agree the trait is good for sustained damage. My point is that you simply cannot do that because you will die. Honestly if you are marching into fights as D/D with Fresh Air and surviving then something is wrong with your opponents.

In all honesty, I can’t name a single Elementalist build that you can safely walk on the node and get out alive without using a cantrip.

That said, the core problem of everything is in my opinion is the HP pool as I said before. Calling glass cannon a build that uses Soldier amulet is a joke on any other profession.

Phantaram.1265:

If you take the trait Fresh Air, you are a glass cannon. If I could take Fresh Air in a regular build of course I would, it’s a ridiculously strong trait, and that’s why people drop the survivability for it because it increases there burst. Any Fresh Air ele expecting to stand back and do sustained damage won’t be happy when the enemy team dives you and you insta die.

I’m running Fresh Air with D/D and Soldier Amulet and Berserker Amulet.
I wouldn’t call it glass cannon, neither I would say that I insta-die once the enemy team focus me.

On the other hand, Fresh Air helps a lot to have Air Attunement always ready when you’re waiting for other skills in the other attunements to recharge and you want to put pressure autoattacking.

It is, as I said, a good supplement when trying to bring down someone putting pressure on him when I’ve already used the burst rotation, which of course implies swapping to Air too. Point is that it isn’t useful only when bursting but also when you’re pressuring someone on low health, since it is pretty much always available.

Mrbig.8019:

fresh air one of the better designed traits= LOLWUT

Instant damage should NOT EXIST: it’s unavoidable, uncounterable, it’s brainless.

If anything, eles need the sustain/mobility they had before.

In the past they were so god-mode you could facetank 2 people at far without dying, simply to go contesting another point in 15 secs ( RTL CD).

Scepter air attu should be completely redesigned, along with arcane spells.

With current power creep and reduced burst, going back with the old ele would be the best choice: hell i would even increase ele healing capabilities.

Air Attunement is all about burst and instant cast skill.

If instant cast skills should not exist, you should just delete half of the Elementalist skills and traits.

Fresh Air alone can’t do harm, it is just a supplement damage to use inbetween another burst chain.
Even when you are using all instant skills, you can’t reliably kill someone without using some other skills with a clear tell even with berserker amulet.

Agree that Diamond Skin isn’t supposed to exist.

Disagree that Fresh Air is useful only in glass cannon/burst builds. It is also extremely useful for sustained damage because of the frequent swapping to Air. Probably one of the best designed trait of the elementalist, fitting the Air Magic traitline design while not being a must-go in any situation.

Disagree that Arcana should have a different effect. After the recent patch, it isn’t entirely necessary to go into arcana for the Attunement Swap recharge, as you don’t feel the lack of points into Arcana that much anymore. Also, I don’t think I will be able to think another useful effect for Arcana without it being either too strong or too weak.

Disagree that Healing Ripple, Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement should become baseline. What I think is that Elemental Attunement should be split into the other traitlines as much as Evasive Arcana, to keep the feel of the traitlines really affecting how strong your attunements are.
Healing Ripple should stay as it is, while giving better sustain to elementalists who don’t run into water, by buffing the weapon skill healing (for instance, reduce the recharge on Cleansing Wave).
Then, pushing the base HP of elementalist to 15k is the best thing to do, because you don’t need anymore to have points in water to have decent HP pool, neither to stack defensive traits to survive, neither to run soldier instead of Valkyrie when having 0 points in Water.
This will also help elementalists to not be completely destroyed by conditions while not having 30 in Water or Ether Renewal, which is another crucial issue at the moment.

DeWolfe.2174:

My reaction to this is to ask, what is the goal? Is it to put Warriors back into the bad spot they were last year? I don’t see Warriors face rolling matches left and right. If anything HS needs to have a buff to it’s scaling with healing power. Make putting points into healing useful!

No.
HS needs the base heal to be extremely nerfed and the Healing Power scaling buffed.

Healing Signet is not the only thing holding warriors up from where they were last year.

The new bane of SoloQ, after number of warriors have been slightly reduced, are minionmaster.

The issue of this kind of build is pretty much regarding the low-to-mid level of competitive GW2 enviroments (i.e. SoloQ and lower rating/pugging TeamQ), where an overabundance of minionmasters are seen and stacking more than one of them is far from counterproductive.

• Minionmasters create huge clutter: this advantage becomes bigger if you stack more than one of them. Lately, I’ve met teams with more than one MM which are extremely hard to manage and quite effective.
  They make targeting extremely hard (expecially when you are going to target mesmers and asuras) and reading animations a real pain.
• Minionmasters are too effective for the amount of skills required: they are extremely tough to kill, while dealing massive amount of damage through both power and minions, while having the inner survivability advantage of the clutter that the builds create. They don’t require much efforts on the offensive side, since minions output an huge amount of damage by themselves, neither on the defensive side, since the natural high LF generation, the sustain provided by minions and the Soldier amulet usually ran by minionmasters.
• Minionmaster are extremely tough to kill in small scale fights: even the worse minionmaster is still an extremely dangerous enemy when fighting on a point. Minions are extremely survivable and, in most cases, you will not manage to kill them before they kill you.
• Minions are “meat shields” to projectiles: one of the crucial issues of minions is thay they are meat shields. They block projectiles and melee attacks with extreme easy. It happened so many times that I tried to throw a projectile to the minionmaster (Magnetic Graps to be specific) just to see it wasted on a random minion passing by. That happens also on non-cleaving melee attacks. The huge clutter provided to minions is nearly the equivalent of complete immunity to projectiles, which is extremely strong.

Proposed Solutions

• Reduce Flesh of the Master HP gain to 20%
  This will make easier to kill minions with AoE, forcing the Necromancer to actually play to sustain his minions.
  The amount of HP and Armor of current minions is, right now, just insane with this trait. For instance (according to wiki), Bone Fiend has 2600 armor and 12500HP, while Shadow Fiend has 16000 HP and 2125 armor when traited with Flesh of the Master.
  Flesh Golem HP goes up to 19500 and 2600 armor, while Blood Fiend has the same 19500HP but with 2000 armor.
  It is, in fact, easier to kill an elementalist or a thief with AoEs than a minion.
• Reduce the base HP/Armor of Shadow Fiend, Bone Fiend, Bone Minon of about 10-20%
  This changes helps to futher reduce the survivability of minions, leaving untouched Flash Golem and Blood Fiend because of the more relevant role they have in a minionmaster build. This will also push the need to bring sustain traits like Transfusion to heal up the minions.
• Change Vampiric Master adding the effect of healing minions for ~400 HP each time they attack
  This will help to not make Minions too much easy to kill even by clueless enemies. If left untouched and free to attack, minions can in fact heal themselves having quite a bit of sustain.
• Minions don’t block projectiles or single-target melee attacks unless targeted
  A needed change because of the too strong advantage they give to Necromancers against projectiles.

Numbers, of course, needs to be tweaked during testing.

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

Sturdiness?

Let me get this straight, does that mean that warriors are dumb-proof and made to outclass any other profession in terms of survivability by design?

I see no drawback at setting self-priority.
If you want to finish into your field, you drop it down.
If you want to finish into an ally’s field, you don’t drop your field down.

Easiest and most straightforward solutions, yet the most effective.

In my opinion, no.

I’ve already seen thieves spamming that skill to hell and completely wipe any boon from the enemy.

It is just two casts of the skill and 4 boons are stolen from the enemy and an huge amount of damage is dealt. That means that it will be an huge nerf to Elementalists, more than on Guardians.

Hitting from behind or the side, also, is extremely easy when Flanking Stike reposition you right behind or beside your target. You just need to press the 3 button repetitively and all the job is done. I see no skill in that, honestly.

I would agree to the 2 boons stolen only if the damage is severely nerfed and to make LS to be available only when Flanking Strike actually lands.
This will seriously reward skilled thieves and push the skill cap to higher levels.

The best solution is to completely redesign the weapon.

In my eyes, it looks extremely rushed and badly made compared to any other elementalist weapon set.

Focus is a weapon set of Elementalist which is picked specifically for 2-3 skills useful to make glass cannon elementalists somehow work, while the other one are completely and utterly useless and not worth using in any situation.

Compared to dagger, focus lacks the mobility, damage and healing capability, making it a bad choice for anyone except glass elementalists, who picks this set just because of Swirling Winds and Obsidian Flesh.

The proposed solutions aren’t necessarily thought to be added together.

• Flame Wall: damage is low, casting time is high, the combo field is tight, recharge is relatively high, the burning is underwhelming. Compared to Ring of Fire, it is just flat out horrible.
  Proposed Solutions:
  - Make it give 3 stacks of might for 20s at any ally passing through it with 3s internal cooldown. This will compensate for the lack of fire field area.
  - Lower the casting time to 1/4s: this will make its casting more fitting into the dynamic playstyle of Elementalist.
  - Increase the burning duration to 3s: more punishment to foes crossing it.
  - Add 5 stacks of torment for 5s: again, more punishment to really make the wall a threat and to push further the viability of condition elementalists.
  - Reduce the aftercast delay.

• Fire Shield: recharge is high, its effect are incredibly underwhelming compared to any other aura.
  Proposed Solutions:
  - Decrease the recharge to 30s: this will make this skill more viable as a way to build might stacks.
  - Add blindness to burning when attacked in melee: this will help to increase the shield concept as a true shield, increasing the survivability of focus elementalists. It also fits the concept of the fire shield, whose light blinds the foes attacking.

• Freezing Gust: low damage, low chill duration, high recharge.
  Proposed Solutions:
  - Increase the chill duration to 6s: this will help the elementalists to kite the damage of melee professions and to shut down enemies.
  - Reduce recharge to 15s: helps to push the viability of the skill
  - Add Torment to the Chill: again, to help pushing the viability of condition elementalists.
  - Add healing to the caster: it doesn’t really fit the skill design, but focus need an healing skill to make it viable compared to dagger offhand.

• Comet: unreliable compared to other any weapon set CCs and its casting time does not allow for timed interrupts.
  Proposed Solutions:
  - Reduce the casting time to 1/4s:

• Gale: the recharge is just too high.
  Proposed Solutions:
  - Reduce the recharge to 40s: helping to make it viable compared to dagger.

Proposed solutions are just a stub. I’ll edit the topic gathering feedback from users as far as the thread goes.

Enzo Kensei.9850:

Yes… not broken at all

MMR does not mean rank.
Most of the r50/r60+ players you see are most likely people who have farmed the rank through skyhammer pre-nerf, who aren’t necessarily good players.

I’ve seen r60 players having no clue on how to play whatsoever in SoloQ and it is far from uncommon.

Cassiel.8762:

Hi guys! Me and 2 other people got facerolled by 2 d/d elementalists yesterday in wvw. From what I could observe they were both 0/10/0/30/30 boon duration eles and they were cycling through attunements such that none of them were in water attunement at the same time. Whenever we would immobilize or interrupt one of them the other would come in with updraft or earthquake or pop into water for aoe condi removal. What are some tips for taking on such a setup?

I’m going against myself spreading counters, but here’s one:

Use chill. If you manage to mantain a good amount of chills on an elementalist, you’re screwing all of his attunement swapping and eventually leading to his death. An elementalist who can’t swap to water can’t heal and can’t remove conditions, which means they are pretty much dead. Chill also prevents them to escape from the fight, which is nice since they need to disengage in order to safely heal up.

There’s nothing else really. Once you mantain a good uptime of Chill, you’ll realize that the protection uptime goes down dramatically, the healing is weakned and their mobility hampered. Now just smash everything you have on them and win.

Enzo Kensei.9850:

Let’s be sincere, the management of the team composition in tPvP is broken…and you can see the +30 ranks destroying,for an example, new condition necros that don’t have any experience in this particularly type…so where’s the fun in that? So they try this “meta”.
I’m just guessing here.

Although i find this build kind of fun, i prefer my retaliation Guardian in PvP =D

MMR is there to avoid people getting matched with strong players. There is no reason to also give new players a build they can play succesfully without efforts so they have absolutely no reason to get better.

This will only frustrate people who don’t play those lame builds and eventually lead them to run them too. That’s pretty much how metas happen.