Elites Don't feel like Elites

There are alot of elites that should be rebalanced / rescaled to feel more like an elite.

the shorter cooldown elites are mostly offenders of this making some normal utility skills feel more clutch than elites themself.

Mesmer portal for example should be un-nerfed and placed as an elite. ( maybe increase cooldown slightly )

Prime light beam needs its dmg back.Mortar needs to not be a handheld swap weapon.

You get the point. Those are just a few examples. I feel he lower cooldown elites should be buffed in effect enough to justify a cooldown of around 2mins maybe across the board, as well as maybe matches starting with elites on cooldown.

Thoughts?

No, bad idea

I think portal as elite is good idea, core mes could use elite that is not hot garbage, maybe it would become playable.

I think "elite skills" aren't supposed to be as build defining as Grandmaster traits.

Revert mortar back to a deployable siege weapon that'll show em.

But nah just nerf the blind field duration and power damage across all shots. It's a aoe utility weapon it shouldn't be hitting so hard. Give PLB damage back at least there was meaningful gameplay around it. Nerf EE by 25% while you're at it.

As for my own class every warrior elite feels meaningful even bubble in the right circumstances.

@"Tayga.3192" said:I think "elite skills" aren't supposed to be as build defining as Grandmaster traits.

They were at launchNow they not

I wished Elites had an extra Bar (on top the dodge bar), where it would increase /decrease your damage output based on the attacking/defending attacks patterns you do . For example 2 attacking moves increase the bar , while 1xdef +1xattack force the bar to remain the same .And the Total Points of the Bar (1%-100% increased damage/condition) is limited/grayed out , by the defensive traits + amulets you took .So a bunker with defensive traits can only benefit from 1% -9% increased DPS and no more

Some slow moving classes like Necro , out of combat retain a portion of the Increased Damage Points , or not all their defensive rotations will plummet their DPS

They need to stop calling them elites, and start calling them focus or expertise...something like that.

People see elite and believe it should be better, when that is ptw....

It should offer something different.

I guess you have general medicine, and then we got specialists.

elites are supposed to be elite, like rampage, lich form, moa. but there is only so many clever ideas im afraid

@Crab Fear.1624 said:They need to stop calling them elites, and start calling them focus or expertise...something like that.

People see elite and believe it should be better, when that is ptw....

It should offer something different.

I guess you have general medicine, and then we got specialists.

You didn't even read the post. He's talking about elite skills, not elite specs.

@Tycura.1982 said:Revert mortar back to a deployable siege weapon that'll show em.

But nah just nerf the blind field duration and power damage across all shots. It's a aoe utility weapon it shouldn't be hitting so hard. Give PLB damage back at least there was meaningful gameplay around it. Nerf EE by 25% while you're at it.

As for my own class every warrior elite feels meaningful even bubble in the right circumstances.

If they are nerfing mortars damage, can it at least finally get fixed on the auto attack?When they reworked the mortar kit, the auto attacks were supposed to apply projectile finishers on every target it hits to make it combo with it's combo fields.

Meaning that it would apply another stack of poison on foes struck when it passes the poison field, or potentially cleansing 1 condition for every foe struck on surrounding allies (of the foe).It never worked, it never applied the projectile finishers as it was supposed to. To this day, it still lists that it is a 100% projectile finisher, but it doesn't work.

So yeah, I can agree with shoving damage from it and making it an aoe utility weapon. But then at least fix the bug that is in the game ever since they updated the mortar kit and let it shine at this utility niche.

@Exedore.6320 said:

@Crab Fear.1624 said:They need to stop calling them elites, and start calling them focus or expertise...something like that.

People see elite and believe it should be better, when that is ptw....

It should offer something different.

I guess you have general medicine, and then we got specialists.

Yeah, I did not.

My point still stands because the title was enough to incite it.

I want the option to bring another regular utility instead of the crap selection of "elite" skills we have.

I'll say it again: Just delete the "Elite Skill" classification, re-balance/cull the existing ones, and then give everyone a fourth "Utility Skill" slot. That's infinitely more fun than "better" elites. Elite Skills as "Ultimates" are awful because nobody enjoys it when everyone on the field has to snap-respond to a gameplay-warping mechanic that some player generated at the press of a button: it's not fun because it's not fair; it disrupts the flow of combat with flavor-based, super niche, and artificially-generated circumstances rather than relying on a foundation of core mechanics which players have to use to the best of their ability.

@"Swagg.9236" said:I'll say it again: Just delete the "Elite Skill" classification, re-balance/cull the existing ones, and then give everyone a fourth "Utility Skill" slot. That's infinitely more fun than "better" elites. Elite Skills as "Ultimates" are awful because nobody enjoys it when everyone on the field has to snap-respond to a gameplay-warping mechanic that some player generated at the press of a button: it's not fun because it's not fair; it disrupts the flow of combat with flavor-based, super niche, and artificially-generated circumstances rather than relying on a foundation of core mechanics which players have to use to the best of their ability.

having 1 longer cooldown skill with bigger impact adds more to the game, mind games, baiting it out, assessing risks etc etc, problem is RN many of those elites are long cooldown downgrades.

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@"Swagg.9236" said:I'll say it again:

Just delete the "Elite Skill" classification, re-balance/cull the existing ones, and then give everyone a fourth "Utility Skill" slot. That's infinitely more fun than "better" elites.

Elite Skills as "Ultimates" are awful because nobody enjoys it when everyone on the field has to snap-respond to a gameplay-warping mechanic that some player generated at the press of a button: it's not fun because it's not fair; it disrupts the flow of combat with flavor-based, super niche, and artificially-generated circumstances rather than relying on a foundation of core mechanics which players have to use to the best of their ability.

Since you have such a big list of things to do which revolve around one random person's single button (which that person has possibly not even used yet), you are really devaluing the worth of the rest of the game's mechanics. That's why a plethora of baseline mechanics and abilities are much better to an "Ultimate" alternative. The best kind of "Elite Skill" improvement would be to just turn them into Utility Skills and expand that pool.

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'll say it again:

Just delete the "Elite Skill" classification, re-balance/cull the existing ones, and then give everyone a fourth "Utility Skill" slot. That's infinitely more fun than "better" elites.

Elite Skills as "Ultimates" are awful because nobody enjoys it when everyone on the field has to snap-respond to a gameplay-warping mechanic that some player generated at the press of a button: it's not fun because it's not fair; it disrupts the flow of combat with flavor-based, super niche, and artificially-generated circumstances rather than relying on a foundation of core mechanics which players have to use to the best of their ability.

depends from perspective, there is a reason why 95%+ of champions in mobas has basic abilities with low cooldowns and 1 stronger long cooldown ability, giving 1 lower impact low cooldown skill might just make the game more spammy

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'll say it again:

Just delete the "Elite Skill" classification, re-balance/cull the existing ones, and then give everyone a fourth "Utility Skill" slot. That's infinitely more fun than "better" elites.

Elite Skills as "Ultimates" are awful because nobody enjoys it when everyone on the field has to snap-respond to a gameplay-warping mechanic that some player generated at the press of a button: it's not fun because it's not fair; it disrupts the flow of combat with flavor-based, super niche, and artificially-generated circumstances rather than relying on a foundation of core mechanics which players have to use to the best of their ability.

Aside from the fact that you immediately reach for another game rather than trying to stand within GW2's fundamentals for its own defense, one of the things about MOBAs is that champions have, at most, single-digit numbers of abilities which work to create a purpose and identity for any given champion. GW2 has dozens more abilities per class than any given MOBA champion (not that that's necessarily a good thing in and of itself), so in the shadow of an "Ultimate" ability, you are really holding a lot more actions hostage in GW2 than in any given MOBA. When four or six skills lose out to one dude's Ultimate, it's already somewhat frustrating, but when 20 are invalidated by a person pressing a single button, it's an even worse scenario. This means that, rather than having two different design paradigms constantly fight against each other, GW2 either deserves to have a massive skill culling or maybe they ought to re-design their "Ultimate" abilities around the fact that everyone is already going to be using a whole mess of skills over a protracted period of time.

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'll say it again:

Just delete the "Elite Skill" classification, re-balance/cull the existing ones, and then give everyone a fourth "Utility Skill" slot. That's infinitely more fun than "better" elites.

Elite Skills as "Ultimates" are awful because nobody enjoys it when everyone on the field has to snap-respond to a gameplay-warping mechanic that some player generated at the press of a button: it's not fun because it's not fair; it disrupts the flow of combat with flavor-based, super niche, and artificially-generated circumstances rather than relying on a foundation of core mechanics which players have to use to the best of their ability.

Don’t give Anet ridiculous ideas man I see it coming that we will just lose the elite skill slot then...

what elites? check out guardian, and they are weaker than other classes utility skills.may as well run an empty slot, the benefit vs the cast time is a benefit to the enemy.

Elites should be redesigned from the ground up to function as they did in GW1, the build defining skill around which you based all your other skill choices. Hopefully, now that Anet has implicitly admitted they majorly screwed up the PvP in this game with the massive rebalance they are doing, they also start looking at skill design in general instead of just tweaking numbers.

@Waffler.1257 said:Elites should be redesigned from the ground up to function as they did in GW1, the build defining skill around which you based all your other skill choices. Hopefully, now that Anet has implicitly admitted they majorly screwed up the PvP in this game with the massive rebalance they are doing, they also start looking at skill design in general instead of just tweaking numbers.

How would that work in GW2 though? In GW1 every profession for the most part has ~100+ non elite skills and ~30+ Elite Skills, which can then freely be distributed to your bar, with the only limit being on only being able to select 1 Elite Skill.

In GW2 professions have 3/5 Elite Skills, and most skills available at a time are part of a static collection bound to the weapon equipped, with only 4 free choices in the Heal and 3 Utility skills, also from a much more limited pool.

GW2 really wasn't designed in a way that allows you to pick out an Elite skill and to then make selections and choices around that, which unfortunately left the few Elites to choose from for that one static slot in a pretty awkward not very elite feeling spot.The build defining elements in GW2 are much more equally distributed between Gear (Stats+Runes+Sigils), Traits and Skills (Weapon Choices, Utilities, Elite).Promoting Elite skills from one tiny subsection of build defining elements to the build defining element would require quite a bit of system changes and rebalance, and probably isn't a good idea with only 3(5) choices available to define all the builds in that case.

Jaunt really doesn't feel like an elite. There are numerous other mirage utility skills that rarely see the light of day, like the mirage advance? The shadowstep with a cast time? It's garbage and always has been. I'd like to see them remove that and replace it with jaunt, then create a brand new elite skill.

As far as suggestions I'm don't really have any. And I wouldn't dare suggest any because at least 50 people on the forum would instantly complain about how broken it would be.

There are also a lot of missing elites for varying skill categories. I.e. Elite sigils/shouts/stances. I think most of those DO have some. But there are a few I can't think of right now that have utilities themed around a skill category but no elite skill for the fifth slot. Do guardians have an elite conjured ability? I don't think they do. Things like that.Is there an elite well for necro? Or is the plague skill a well? I've never read that much into the tooltip.

There's definitely a huge advantage of some elite skills over others though, whether it be the functionality or the cooldown length. Some might be more ideal for a certain build but the cooldown is so long that you'd just rather use a different elite.

What they need to do is make sure all elite skills are useful.

For instance: eles use their fiery greatswords for dps, and while its fairly long cooldown, its pretty powerful, necros use lich on core for SPVP for big power burst.

But i think some might require an overhaul. Lich dmg is pretty nuts for instance in SPVP, but if that gets nerfed the dmg would be non existent and people probably not take it ever. You would probably have to overhaul at least multiple elite skills.

@Waffler.1257 said:Elites should be redesigned from the ground up to function as they did in GW1, the build defining skill around which you based all your other skill choices. Hopefully, now that Anet has implicitly admitted they majorly screwed up the PvP in this game with the massive rebalance they are doing, they also start looking at skill design in general instead of just tweaking numbers.

And remove any build diversity because there'll be 1 build / elite and nothing else. No thanks.