Showing Posts For szthesquid.9576:
I wouldn’t say that elementalists have too little survivability.
I would say they have too little survivability on anything other than staff.
If you’re running staff at long range, you have little need for survivability buffs. The 1200 range, the huge amount of control, and Burning Retreat mean that you can completely avoid close-range combat if you so choose. In terms of survivability, staff ele is fine as is and shouldn’t be buffed up.
The problem is that scepter and dagger are short-range weapons, and by choosing a weapon that’s not the staff, you sacrifice the greatest source of survivability the ele has – staying far away and preventing enemies from getting to you. You can’t exactly prevent enemies from getting in your face when that’s where you need to be to deal damage.
Oh, almost forgot… more home instance customization! To start, give us a way to travel directly to our home instance at no cost (like the HoM teleportation stone). Retroactively award us trophies or decorations or town clothes based on our personal story choices – eg for human, street rat/commoner/wealthy, or for choosing which race to help, etc. Give us a vendor from our order so we can buy order armour and discounted food related to the order (ie Vigil sells Power-base food). Give us trophies for significant story and world boss kills – Zhaitan, Shatterer, etc. Let us build crafting stations and bank access and decorations and trophies.
Sure, this would probably decrease the day-to-day population of Lion’s Arch, but let’s be honest – the primary reason that LA is the main hub is because we can get there for free via the PvP lobby. It’ll still be packed full during festivals, and people will still stop by on their way out of PvP and WvW or into Fractals.
(edited by szthesquid.9576)
Whew, that was a lot of words. Now I’ll move on to part two: horizontal progression.
Guild Wars 2 has done a reasonably good job of horizontal progression. There are a variety of different skins obtainable through a variety of methods. I actually really like that some skins are exclusive to Living Story updates -
The one feature most sorely needed to help skin collection is some sort of renewable skin storage locker. At the moment, if I have a character with a set build that uses certain gear stats, and I want more visual options for that character, I’m forced to buy/craft multiple sets of gear for each visual set. This was at least not too difficult with exotics, if kitten bank space; but now with ascended armour it’s completely infeasible to craft multiple sets of gear just for the sake of skins – even if you have all the materials, it still takes a month for a full set of ascended armour due to the time gating (see above). A locker would effectively solve the problem of having to keep multiple gear sets for appearances. Even better, while we’re at it, allow us to unlock stat combinations the same way – use a crystal on a berserker light coat, unlock berserker stat option for light coat slot (though if that happens, maybe unlockable gear stats should be character bound and not account bound – not sure how I feel about that one yet)
Of course a skin locker with unlimited skins would cut down on transmutation sales. I think a reasonable compromise would be to require a transmutation stone or crystal (depending on gear level) to unlock a skin in the locker – for example, to unlock a level 80 coat skin I have to use a transmutation crystal to put that skin in the locker, and afterwards I have unlimited withdrawals.
And while we’re at it, why not put Living Story achievement skins in the locker too, so that we can have multiples instead of only one?
So that’s got gear covered, but gear is only one element of horizontal progression. I’d also like to see more character customization options in the form of traits and skills.
Before launch there was talk of having to go out into the world to find new skills and traits. I don’t recall exactly why it was scrapped, but I think it was something about class balance – like, you don’t want the elementalist’s skills to be harder to unlock than the warrior’s.
BUT, we now have a pretty strongly balanced core set of skills and traits, and have had that core for a year. Why not add future skills/traits by tying them to world events or locations? The new healing skills were a great addition, but just dropping them into the menu at a cost of 25 skill points, while accessible, is pretty uninteresting (and that’s leaving aside the problem that such a high SP cost, on a level with tier 2 elites, can easily lead new players to think that these are best-in-slot skills, as opposed to simply extra options). It would be great to see a jumping puzzle set in an ancient ruined library, where the reward is a skill or trait tome that unlocks one (or more!) new option for your current character’s class. To start, ANet could place these in easy-to-find areas in the starting zones, to immediately show new players that exploring can reward them with new skills and traits.
Finally, there’s one area of build customization that could/should be improved: decouple stat bonuses from trait points. Make the two separate, or at least give us some flexibility in which stats we get from which trait lines. Some classes have problems with traits in stat lines that are completely unrelated to those traits, or restrict builds by tying traits to certain stats. Maybe I’d like to run a glass cannon elementalist that uses signets as a complement, but the way things are set up now, if I want to invest traits in signets I have to go down the Earth trait tree, which is defensively oriented. A couple more examples include Water Magic’s Shard of Ice and Vital Striking traits, which would be cool offensive options but are stuck in a support line.
In addition to our 70 skill points, give us 1400 stat points that we can allot in increments of 10 (or for stuff like crit damage or condition duration, 10 points = 1%). Or if that much freedom is too powerful, at least give us some choice as to which stats a trait line assigns – for example, the elementalist’s Fire Magic line could give us two of Power, Condition Damage, or Condition Duration; Water could let us choose Healing, Vitality, Toughness, Boon Duration; etc.
I think that’s it for now!
(edited by szthesquid.9576)
For a short TLDR of this entire post: I’m mostly OK with the progression systems we have in place, but the options – and especially the methods of acquisition – need to be expanded.
Part One: Vertical progression:
Stop. Right here, right now. I don’t want any more vertical progression.
That may sound awfully harsh and close-minded, but I’ll do my best to explain.
I totally understand the introduction of ascended gear. Exotic was very easy to achieve. As a Guild Wars 1 veteran with over 2200 hours and a full Hall of Monuments, I was fine – no, enthusiastic – about easy-to-achieve top-tier stats. As a result I was a little disappointed with the introduction of ascended gear, which requires a lot more time and effort. That’s not to say I’m against it – I also understand that a lot of players come from other games with different philosophies, and some of these players want or need a lot of vertical progression to feel like they’re making progress, while some others just don’t understand horizontal progression at all.
All this is fine. I don’t even mind that ascended gear is untradeable. The problem I have with ascended gear (and celestial exotic gear) is the time gating. It makes sense as a way to slow down acquisition to make it feel more like a quest or genuine undertaking, but the implementation of the time gate is clumsy. The game presents no explanation as to why I can only craft one Lump of Mithrillium per day, or fuse one Charged Quartz Crystal per day – it simply throws a timer in my face. It’s a blatantly artificial restriction completely unrelated to game lore.
I would love to see time-gated crafting worked directly into gameplay, as opposed to simply slapped with a timer. Tie this crafting to actual game events out in the world! Keep the timer on the crafting stations, but also allow us to go out into the world if we want to craft more quickly or with more flavour attached – repeatedly running an event that lets me craft something once per completion allows me to work for my armour, rather than just clicking “craft” once per day for thirty days. Here’s an example I came up with on the spot to illustrate; I’m sure that better events could be conceived with more effort.
The only place in the world with the tools to craft Mithrillium is an ancient dwarven smithy in Mount Maelstrom, hidden under the ruins of Droknar’s Forge. The dredge now occupy the smithy, trying (and failing) to destroy the durable mithril machinery of their oppressors. They have figured out, though, that you need a special hammer to get mithril to react with ectoplasm, which they’ll use to break down the oppressors’ technology. A dredge smith has learned to craft such a hammer, but it’s fragile, and can only be used once before breaking. To prevent others from interrupting their work, the dredge have set up traps and checkpoints defending the forge.
All this comes together to create a multi-stage event to obtain a hammer used to craft Mithrillium: defeat the dredge guards, puzzle through their traps, and finally defeat the dredge blacksmith to steal his hammer. The guard groups and puzzles would change at random each time the event runs, so it’s somewhat different every time you do it. Maybe the actual location of the event changes as well, to keep players exploring and moving around, instead of just waiting for the next spawn. Better still, allow us to trigger the event ourselves with a personal cooldown – many players working together could craft more frequently than one player working alone.
So, slowly coming around to how that relates to vertical progression: adding more levels or another tier of gear would break the systems we have now. It takes a month to craft all the required ingredients for a full set of ascended armour – imagine how players would react if a game release pushed the max level to 85 or 90, or if another tier of gear was added above ascended, and suddenly the ascended gear that took us a month of real time to craft is no longer best in slot.
To put it simply, that would be bad.
It’s not a bug. It’s a deliberate design decision to prevent clipping. You don’t want to see long flowing locks growing out of your helmet’s back plate.
That said, I would absolutely love to see this improved on. I love the asura t3 light headpiece, but his hair goes away and he becomes bald, which is even worse than a lot of the other examples because the top of his head is exposed. And his ears disappear completely whenever he puts on a hood!
However, fixing this completely would take a lot of work. They’d have to account for every hair style in combination with every headpiece. That’s probably thousands of combinations.
The more skills are split the more people are pressured to stick with 1 game mode. I don’t want to have to re-learn my class to try a new game mode, or keep track of 3 different variations of each skill.
As many of you might already know, there’s new stuff in Wayfarer Foothills – repair signs, recover refugee relics, light fires, and the occasional event.
But…
We didn’t get mail to let us know the event was starting.
The event tracker in the top right corner is still empty.
Nothing at all is happening in Diessa Plateau.
Is this intended? Or has something gone wrong?
Total came out to a little over 1,100 MB.
With the clarification on Ascended armour, it sounds like we might be seeing the Mursaat again, and possibly very soon. You need Ascended/Infused armour to block Agony? Is that just a GW1 callback, or will this dungeon have Mursaat? Even if we don’t, it seems like they’ve already set up their return, at least mechanically.
(in the first Guild Wars, there were enemies called Mursaat that had an extremely powerful ability called Spectral Agony that would kill you in seconds. As part of the story you had to get your armour “infused” to be able to survive Spectral Agony and fight the Mursaat.)
If you’re not too attached to elementalist you might want to try another class.
My main is an ele and one of my alts is a warrior. When I play ele, I die pretty frequently, especially in some of the more challenging dungeons when a champion or legendary boss focuses on me.
But when I play my warrior… well, yesterday I was fighting a pair of enemies and I thought wow, it’s taking a really long time to kill these guys. Turns out that the reason was because they were five levels higher than me, I was using gear five to ten levels below me, and I didn’t have any accessories equipped at all. But I still beat them handily, it just took a bit of time.
And then I went back to my elementalist and many sighs were sighed.
If you take a look at Massively’s preview of the Lost Shores content here: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/guild-wars-2s-lost-shores-content-primer/ specifically the segment on the new dungeon, you’ll see that ArenaNet is introducing something called ascended armour which is “slightly more powerful than exotics” and holds an “infusion slot” which will allow you to “increase your character’s power”.
Did anyone else read this and think “oh no”?
I can’t help but worry that the slippery slope has begun and we’ll start to see a gear treadmill after all. For all the talk of only having cosmetic progression, we see more powerful gear introduced in the very first major content update?
If ascended armour turns out to be simply the armour equivalent of legendary weapons, well, that’s OK. But ArenaNet, if you’re reading this, please, please, PLEASE don’t take this any further.
They really should be stating the odds of winning the lottery. That is what this is, people paying real money to win a lottery.
Wrong.
Even though we keep calling it gambling, Black Lion chests (and TF2 crates and whatever) are not technically gambling or a lottery because every purchase results in a “prize” or goods delivered. You have a chance of receiving something rarer, but every purchase is guaranteed to receive something.
This is the exact same reason that buying booster packs of card games or miniature games is not considered gambling (and is not regulated).
Another thought in regards to Denial of Service’s legal action post:
If you’re even thinking about doing a chargeback on your credit card or some kitten, here’s something to consider: the terms of service you agreed to when you created your account state that ArenaNet can, at their sole discretion, terminate your account at any time for any reason.
Now what exactly do you think is going to happen to your Guild Wars 2 account when you run crying to your credit card company and have them forcibly take back the money you paid ArenaNet?
ive been wondering if someone can take legal actions against Anet
You could try, but I can guarantee 100% that you’d be wasting your time and money.
Disappointed over Variety and detail/animation/coolness of Halloween skins
Posted by: szthesquid.9576
I love the scythe. “Simple” doesn’t necessarily equate to “bad” or “newbie”.
If scythes are ever introduced as proper weapons this one will not be able to compete visually. Of course, it’s a staff, not a scythe.
Anyway, you can convert candy corn into personalized bags at 50cc/8 bags in Lion’s Arch, and you get candy corn from standard bags at an average of 2.5cc/bag. So you can essentially convert regular ToT bags into personalized ones at a rough 5:2 ratio.
How od you conver cc to ToT bags? From the kids?
Yup. “Ghost” and “Pirate” quaggan kids by the fountain in LA. There are probably others but those are the ones I used.
I’m coming from a background in GW1, and I don’t recall any RNG prizes for holiday events from there.
There were plenty; it’s just that you didn’t have to pay real money for them. Gifts, ToT bags, lunar fortunes, etc.
Thanks. You’re absolutely sure it was non-personalized? I don’t want to waste time possibly opening thousands without actually having a chance.
But… what else would you do with them other than open them?
Unless you mean obtaining them.
Anyway, you can convert candy corn into personalized bags at 50cc/8 bags in Lion’s Arch, and you get candy corn from standard bags at an average of 2.5cc/bag. So you can essentially convert regular ToT bags into personalized ones at a rough 5:2 ratio.
Well, to make it a more accurate comparison, you can spend $100 at a Casino and get absolutely nothing, but you knew that was a possible outcome.
You knew that not getting a Halloween item was a possible outcome, and yet you still received boosters and stuff, not nothing like you could at a casino.
I understand that there are people who view boosters as a loss, but a) that’s their choice and b) they still get something, even if it’s not the desired outcome.
Of the people who see boosters as a loss, how many are going to just delete them? I’m willing to bet that most of those boosters will be used anyway, because “a loss” is not the same thing as “nothing” or “factually/objectively useless”.
1. Will you or will you not be buying black lion trading company or random number generation materials again?
Yes.
2. Did you buy them in the past?
No.
3. If you would not buy trading post material/gamble, would you support direct to buy weapon skins and what general price do you find acceptable from a business standpoint both as a customer and realizing that they must make money as a business?
Yes, even though I’d buy random stuff anyway.
$5-10 for a full costume/armor set.
$1-10 for a weapon.
4. Do you believe that future events will also be handled with random number generation to make profit based on limited time item acquisition?
Yes.
5. If you believe that the future events will be handled in the same manner, does this realization negatively effect your trust of Arena Net in regard to handling micro transactions for permanent content?
No.
We all assumed wrong however.
This is where we don’t see eye to eye, I think.
When I saw “a chance for a Halloween weapon” from a chest that costs money to open, I immediately assumed that the skins would be very rare. I spent $10 on gems (keys) thinking I probably wouldn’t get a weapon but it would certainly be nice if I did. My expectations were met.
This is not to say “haha I was right”. Some clarification would definitely have been nice. But I’m honestly surprised to see how optimistic some people were about their odds. Maybe it’s because of my experience with TF2 where the community very quickly calculated the drop rates from crates and realized that the most desirable items had a 1% chance to drop.
I think that, in general, spending money for “a chance” at getting something should be approached with a cynical, or at least cautious, viewpoint, rather than an enthusiastic buying spree and being disappointed when the gamble doesn’t pay off.
As a side note, I’ve seen people argue that since Halloween items are common as dirt in other games, they assumed it would be the same here. I can’t help but think, well, Guild Wars 2 was advertised through-and-through as not being like other games (no matter how cynical and sarcastic that thought may be).
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Many people have compared this entire situation to a casino. I would have much rather gone to one, personally, because they are clearly labeled. I didn’t buy Casino Wars 2.
I’d much rather open chests in GW2 or crates in TF2 than go to a casino. The odds may not be accurately labelled, but I’m guaranteed to get something for my money in these games. At a casino I could blow $10,000 and get absolutely nothing in return. In GW2 if I blow $10,000 on keys I’ll be set for life on boosters and tonics even if I don’t get a Halloween weapon skin.
And with a degree of patience, it’s easy to figure out the odds for chests/crates. Gather enough accurate data from the community and you can get a fairly precise idea of the drop rates. For example, it’s been known for quite some time that the drop rate of unusual hats in TF2 crates hovers around 1%. The game doesn’t tell you this, but the information is out there if you’re patient and/or willing to put it together.
Actually I think this ties in to the rather sad state of the GW2 wiki. There just aren’t enough contributors. Granted, the GW1 wiki didn’t immediately start off full right away, but as the community grew you could check the wiki to decide if you wanted to, say, spend your Medals of Honor on a guaranteed but expensive weapon, or gamble gifts for a chance at a very valuable miniature.
Posts like yours, Szthesquid, don’t answer that question much because.. you stated you were happy with just the freebies. You made no mention of if you did buy premium holiday content, nor if you plan to in the future. Posts where people talk about how the outcome of this event effect their spending plans in the future in regards to the game are a bit of a forecasting tool.
I bought 800 gems ($10) and converted gold into 150 more gems, then bought 10 keys. I didn’t really expect to get any of the Halloween stuff and would have been ecstatic if I did, but I’m satisfied with the chest contents. I was honestly kind of surprised that ANet caved and added a recipe for Halloween chests, and that was cool and not necessary IMO. Though I do wish there were an achievement for using tonics, that’s been mitigated somewhat by the fact that EVERY tonic, Halloween or not, allows you to participate in costume brawl.
I intend on buying gems every so often. Maybe not on a monthly basis, but probably more at once around holidays or RL cash bonuses. My chest results had no bearing on my intention to buy gems.
Not going to say I feel like I deserve the skins, I will however say that the way to obtain them is very “disrespectful” of the playerbase. I’ve never liked low RNG style ways of obtaining items, it is one of the reasons why I loathe what FFXIV does after you have beaten a boss and given a low chance to obtain a weapon you may not even have the correct class for.
In that case you must also hate legendaries and the very existence of random loot drops. They’re random with a low chance of getting what you want, so that’s disrespectful of the player base, right?
So, after all is said, the answer to the OPs question is yes, I want some vanity items in the cash shop. Vanity items are the only reason the cash shop should even exist.
There are “some” vanity items in the cash shop, it’s just that you’ve chosen not to buy them.
Although I do agree with you that it would be nice to have some easily accessible permanent weapon skins.
I would also like to note that while some players may find the boosters useful, I have never much considered +strength, +rejuv, or +exp to be of much use in my play style.
This is a bit of a tangent from the thread topic, but the usefulness of these boosters have nothing to do with your play style.
There is no play style that doesn’t deal damage, therefore +strength is always useful.
There is no play style that doesn’t benefit from staying alive longer, therefore +rejuvenation is always useful.
If you’re not at 80, +exp is always useful. If you are, it’s useless if you don’t need any more skill points for crafting.
And a lot of people didn’t like a lot of the GW1 holiday hats. Why does not liking them or not wanting to wear them suddenly mean they don’t count? If I didn’t like or wear the GW1 Halloween hats that wouldn’t let me get away with saying “there were no hats this year, WTF ANet”
(edited by szthesquid.9576)
The event so far has been awesome. The handling of the cash shop skins has been objectionable. They’re not mutually exclusive positions to hold.
I’m specifically referring to people who are upset because they claim they got no permanent rewards AT ALL. The weapon skins have no bearing on my previous argument.
Well here’s the thing. You already have two permanent souvenirs, and I estimate a 99.9% probability of more to come.
Did you actually read and absorb what he was trying to say?
I did. Specifically the part about permanent souvenirs from chests. Because there are permanent souvenirs from chests AND freely available from the event. It’s just that the chest ones are rare.
I don’t like the “souvenir” argument. You have the horns and the book. Why isn’t that enough? Why do you also need the uber-rare weapon skins? To the people referencing the GW1 event hats, it’s not like those were difficult to get, you only had to be logged in at the correct time. The book requires you to actually do something and participate in the event, and rewards you with a cool “backpack” skin for any character to use. And of course the horns fill the role of GW1’s hats.
But apparently that’s not good enough.
I understand that people want the weapons and are disappointed that chests are the only way to get them. I’d like that scythe staff but I’ll probably never get it.
But the people complaining that they get “nothing” for Halloween? I mean, seriously? I guess they didn’t receive the events and doors and puzzles and achievements and candy corn and trick or treat bags and crafting and free stuff and quests.
Well here’s the thing. You already have two permanent souvenirs, and I estimate a 99.9% probability of more to come.
You can get free devil horns from the gem shop, and you get a neat accessory skin that actually shows on your character model for completing stage 1 of the scavenger hunt. And the book is only the stage 1 reward, remember, there are 3 more acts to come.
When you open chests, you don’t get “nothing”. Many of the chest items are VERY useful – karma boosters, magic find boosters, armour repair canisters, etc – but for some reason the fact that they’re consumable somehow means they’re worthless?
So yes, I do tend to feel that people are entitled when they complain that ANet has given them no permanent souvenirs while conveniently forgetting about the two they did give us. And I do think it’s ridiculous to complain that opening chests is completely worthless when in fact it gives you items which vastly increase your earnings or add conveniences or customization options.
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It seems that an extra race – tengu – is probably a given. Their walled-off area is adjacent to they sylvari starter zone and also a 15-25 zone, so it’s a perfect spot for another 1-15 area. Furthermore I hear they were being worked on as a playable race but they decided not to ship because they had too much animation trouble or something. I don’t have a source, it’s something I heard on Reddit or somewhere.
As for extra classes, we’re pretty unlikely to see anything from GW1 that didn’t make the cut.
Monk, Ritualist, and Paragon have all been folded into Guardian, with the Warrior also picking up some of the Paragon’s team buffs.
Thief is pretty much exactly the Assassin, except it’s missing the martial arts flavour.
Dervish would be cool, but since the entire class concept is based on the human gods, it would require either a serious lore reworking, or massive flavour differences per race.
I’m confused as to how you could possibly say that more areas are unlikely and that the world is already filled.
There are 3 major areas from the first Guild Wars that are not accessible in GW2. Coincidentally enough, two of those currently-inaccessible areas – the Crystal Desert and the northern Shiverpeaks – are confirmed over and over by the game to be the residences of elder dragons Kralkatorrik and Jormag, respectively.
There’s also the Ring of Fire islands, which in all likelihood is where Primordus (the fire dragon) will end up.
And just looking at the GW2 map you can see other areas that are named but inaccessible. Most notable is the Isle of Janthir, which has very strong lore ties to the Mursaat, a powerful GW1 enemy. And of course some of you human players will know that the White Mantle have already made their reappearance (if you choose “never knew your parents” at human character creation), so it seems pretty likely we haven’t heard the last of the Unseen Ones.
And of course, all of that is without even mentioning the entire 2 continents which existed in GW1 that are currently inaccessible but have had significant lore developments.
I find it likely that there will be 3 major paid expansions, each adding an elder dragon to fight and the area around that dragon. There’s a chance that the Mursaat will show up, but I think that’s less likely to be a huge paid update. And then we might get two (or more) major expansions after we’re done with the dragons to revisit Cantha and Elona.
Here’s an important point that I haven’t seen brought up yet.
For those of you who are arguing that the necro should feel evil because death magic is evil: not in Guild Wars it isn’t.
Consider that of the six human gods, one of them is Grenth, god of death, the Underworld, and winter. He’s viewed as completely equal to the other gods and not evil in the slightest. In fact he deposed the previous god of death, Dhuum, because Dhuum actually was evil and torturing the spirits of the deceased, and Grenth was not OK with that.
Now in that context, when death magic / necromancy is essentially channelling the power of Grenth, please explain to me why necromancy should be evil in the Guild Wars universe.
I think the game’s tooltips need to consistently differentiate between the terms “revive” and “rally”.
Rally = get a downed player on their feet
Revive = get a defeated player on their feet
Pre-Oct. 7th patch, the Elementalist’s Glyph of Renewal was able to revive defeated players. After the patch, it only works on downed players. I think at least one or two similar skills have also been affected.
For consistency, the tooltip for downed players should say “rally”, and Glyph of Renewal’s skill description should be “Rally allies with different attunement effects”. This way there’s absolutely no confusion over which actions do what.
I think the awful hit detection with Flame Jet is a much bigger issue.
Before launch ArenaNet told us that our home instances would change and grow based on the choices we made over the course of our personal story, and we would be able to take friends into our home instance to show off our choices and accomplishments, and playing through the game again with another character would result in different stuff.
This currently isn’t happening.
As an asura at the level 75 step of my story quest, I finally remembered that I even had a home instance, so I figured I’d pop in there and see what cool stuff I’d accrued. I found 3 NPCs that had played minor roles in my story, and I couldn’t even speak with them. No merchants, no trophies, nothing.
I’m wondering if perhaps this was more of a long-term plan, with stuff being added over the course of the game’s lifetime rather than the initial release – for example, trophies for each slain elder dragon.
How do you feel about home instances?
I play staff.
Start with Earth, use Eruption first because it has such a long activation from cast to hit.
Shockwave to keep them in range of Eruption.
Unsteady Ground to cripple as they come towards me.
Switch to fire, use Flame Burst and set up a Lava Font for them to walk into.
When they get close, pop both Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave for massive damage, 10 secs burning, and 6 stacks vulnerability (with traits).
Hit Burning Retreat.
At this point standard mobs are just about dead and I’ll only need an autoattack or two to finish them off. I’ll also throw up a Magnetic Shield for ranged enemies as soon as I see their first attack animation, since they usually open with something big.
Surprised the OP doesn’t mention the lack of underwater elites. The alternate form of Tornado – Whirlpool – doesn’t show up and is not equippable underwater in PvE.
My problem is that I’m playing staff ele, and in story quests where I have a tough NPC ally (Trahearne, for example) and am expected to fight 10 or 12 mobs, what happens is I lay down a single AoE and every single mob breaks from the NPC and comes straight for me, ignoring the ally completely. Which is a problem, because, you know, elementalist. And the NPCs don’t contribute enough damage to actually help me out.
I know how to swap attunements, and I do it – 30 points in arcane – but when all my CC is on cooldown there’s not much left to do.