PilzorStyleZ.8301

Hello, I would like to ask for a new QoL feature: The option to turn off QoL features. In particular: 1) the target assist option on movement skills 2) the inability to cast some single target skills without a target From the POV of a GvG/15v15 player, on support elementalist, I don't care at all about landing the damaging part of most skills. Instead, depending on the skill, it does not work if I have or don't have a target. Not only that but you are heavily punished for having or not having a target. Let me give you examples (IMO, they all will be relevant after the next patch - which is why I bring it up now): 1) Movement skills require no target. Due to low natural defenses, ele relies heavily on its excellent damage evasion, partially coming from mobility skills. If you play dagger main hand, you have access to fire 3, earth 3, on dagger offhand also air 5, and earth 5. All these skills make ele very mobile and allow it to go into dangerous situations and land its low range heals on priority targets. This is fun and exciting. Until you have targeted an enemy and your movement skills now put you in the middle of the enemy squad. Not only does your mobility skill not give you mobility, but it actively griefs you when you have a target. Sure, you can drop the target before you use the skill. But why do I have to do like 3x as many clicks to use my skills - that are also emergency defensive skills - when I never ever want to use them on an enemy player in the first place? Please, give an option to turn this auto-targeting off. 2) Some skills require a target. Its unique access to shocking aura is one of the main reasons to play ele as support in GvG. Any skill that gives access to shocking aura is very interesting to support for this purpose alone. Why is it, that I can cast Elemental Explosion (pistol unload) only if I have a target? I don't care for the damage part whatsoever. Maybe I just used dagger air 5 to dodge and cc the enemy (requiring me to untarget :)) and now I want to apply shocking aura to my team. Well, better tab a target quickly, otherwise the skill will do nothing... Even worse: Earth trait line is super cool with the Written in Stone trait. I'm excited, I can now have an instant cast utility that can grant shocking aura. I can use that while evading! Ah never mind, for fire 3/earth 3 I have to drop target so I cannot use the signet since it requires a target. It even puts it on a 3s cooldown if you dare to click it while using your dodge skills. IMO, p/d ele with Written in Stone will be quite a decent and unique build and quite good in its own niche. But, after trying it for a bit, it is just way to frustrating to play. E.g., playing p/d catalyst would be quite cool, but having to manage 1) energy, 2) finishers for elemental epitome, 3) pistol bullets is quite a few systems already. Now, among all those systems, you forget to drop target once before you want to use earth 5 for repositioning and you quite literally kill yourself by jumping into the enemy because your mobility skill is gone and you are just the squishiest class stuck in the enemy squad <- QoL. Im not complaining about not having a good way to track energy on catalyst - I use my skills to gain or lose energy, so while im mindful about it, I know how much energy I have. Im not complaining about not having any way to tell which bullets I have (no way you find them in random places in the skill bar during combat), I know based on what buttons I pressed. Ele is a class that lives from its fun little mini-games that you must use efficiently to create value. But having to randomly take and drop targets in between every other skill for reasons that have nothing to do with what the skills do for me is just annoying and quite the opposite of QoL. Even worse it just griefs you if you forget once. Please add an option to turn off these QoL features! Thanks - Pilz

I don't like this adjustment.

People don't talk about many traits, that doesn't make them bad. SD&R isn't a bad trait. If you are expecting to play against burn builds, you definitely take it. In SotO, the trait works better with antitoxin relic, so compared to Soothing Ice it already got a buff. Soothing Ice is synergizing better with the common build right now, so it sees more play.

Yes, it's quite literally useless on Ele (and on Engi), but tbf the rune also didn't work previously so that's to be expected.

For WvW, the auras are a big selling point in favor of Ele, so losing 33% duration on it is kinda harsh. Especially since there isn't any good replacement among the other relics... Especially after the shadow nerf of Elemental Epitome last patch. Magentic Aura and Shocking Aura on that trait went from 4s to now 2s. Messes up staff boon catalyst even more, since 2s magnetic aura means that if you proc Elemental Epitome using Staff Earth 3 -> Transmute, then you cannot transmute it again as it runs out before the CD. So now you have to blast in earth with a delayed Ice Spike, with Earth 1/5 projectile finishers or some utility.

rip, sad times

It still works. Don't give them ideas 😉

Don't worry about people saying Tempest is bad. It might not be the top tier build in the current patch, but it has many interesting play styles, from healer over boon support to dps. So eventually it will come back around. And it still is an excellent build at the moment. I'm an ele OTP almost exclusively playing PvP, but whenever I do some PvE content, I always play Tempest (either support or dps). Like you, mostly because I like the aesthetics a lot and it's quite chill to play. For dps Tempest, I really like "Fresh Air" builds like this one: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Fresh_Air (Don't read the whole guide right away, copying the trait lines and playing around a bit is good enough. You can play with dagger as the main hand, it doesn't make that much of a difference. Also, starting with Celestial gear instead of Berserker gear makes your life a lot easier at the cost of some damage.) It is centered around the "Fresh Air" trait (the last trait in the Air traitline). This resets the cooldown of the air attunement when you land a critical hit. Thus, the core gameplay loop is to stay in air, overload air to create the big lightning aoe field, then switch out of air and proc the Fresh Air trait. This resets the air cooldown so you can start over again. I find summoning lightning looks cool and is rather easy to play as well. Over time, you can work through that guide and learn more and more, but even using this one skill, Overload Air, will be good enough to make your way through the game for a while.

Some quick tips that maybe help you without learning too much of a rotation: 1. If you want to place more than one sphere, make them overlap in duration. So you place one sphere right before you switch out of the attunement and the other one right after you enter. This way, they block your energy generation for the same 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds. 2. Make sure that you don't drop your sphere while your aoes are ticking. For example, Burning Speed (fire dagger 3) generates energy for every tick so you can use this and other aoes to generate energy quickly. This might require you to wait a bit with dropping your (Fire) sphere though, as this would block the energy regeneration. 3. This is closely related to the other points, but don't always drop your sphere instantly when you hit 10 energy, but instead wait until you have generated 20 or more. If you always drop it at 10 energy, you are energy locked at 0 energy almost permanently. Instead, figure out when you have many aoes going and use them efficiently.

That's not true. It applies to all auras you grant, including those you give to allies via Powerful Auras.

For large-number fights, Support Catalyst is not a very good choice, unfortunately. Due to its boon coverage, it is pretty strong in organized fights with well-prepared party setups. For larger, less organized fights, however, the boons are less important and the lack of healing makes it an inferior choice to many other supports (e.g., Tempest). It has also a more difficult rotation with less active defenses, which is harder to maintain as numbers grow. That being said if you like the idea of providing boon support: You can very much play a DPS Catalyst build and, besides losing boon duration, provide very similar utility while also padding the DPS meter with Lava Font and Meteor Shower. As most utility is AoE with longer durations, you can easily precast it before a clash. Without losing much DPS, you can play Water trait line with Cleansing Water to get really good cleansing with Healing Rain for free, and, due to the high base healing on Healing Rain, also get some serious healing without any extra Healing Power if you place it well.

This sounds amazing! Thank you :)!

Very exciting, I'm looking forward to the tournament! Thanks for organazing this for the community!

roy is my favorite streamer