TheDarkness.6947

This. I would add: 1. Require purchase of an expansion pack to play ranked 2. Investigate all reports of bots and permanently ban bot accounts when confirmed That should get rid of the bots too. This might make queue times very painful for a while. Hopefully it leads to quality matches though, and if they communicate what they’re doing and people perceive that the game mode is fair and therefore potentially fun, the population might increase. If it doesn’t, then I guess this answers the question of whether it’s worth saving.

I’ve read many of your posts and you make a lot of great, thought-provoking points. Sometimes, your retort seems to be based on a very literal interpretation of someone’s words, when I think the intention of those words was to be more illustrative in nature than literal. I don’t think anyone is expecting or asking for a ranged ele caster than can literally destroy anything and everything with 1 click from 1200 range. That’s not only not realistic, but it wouldn’t be much fun because there would be no challenge at all. We just want the ranged ele caster to be a stronger option than it is today.

Part of me wonders if there aren’t getting to be so many especs and available weapon choices that it’s getting nigh on impossible for even a talented dev team to balance them all out. For example, to keep weaver in check, they may have had to nerf things that effectively reduce the viability of other builds. And each new espec and weapon adds more and more complexity to that equation. At the moment, there’s really no downside to taking an expac espec, other than giving up a core trait line of your choosing. I wonder if things would be easier to balance if the minor adept for an espec were a plus minus with respect to the weapon choices. E.g. “as a weaver, you forgo your training with <weapon> in order to master the sword.” That may not be popular with players since it would reduce build choices. But I also speculate that this is possibly already happening. Not because you have hard restrictions on creating a particular build, but because some builds just aren’t very viable. In the case of ele, this seems to have happened with the very archetype that Anet portrays in its marketing material. And this is obviously an archetype and play style that a subset of ele players would really like to play.

You’re not wrong. Thing is, unless you’re an exceptional player, you’re going to get your butt kicked walking around with a staff outside of the core Tyria maps.. If EoD releases with some updates to staff to make it more relevant in the current game, and the Jade sphere mechanic is tweaked up to make it more rewarding, I think that actually might make a lot of people happy.

As far as the mage fantasy is concerned, go the GW2 Elementalist page. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/ Read the description, then watch the skill videos over on the right hand side. Is it surprising people would expect ele to play like a ranged caster rather than some kind of melee? The ele never lets anything near it in those videos.

Can anyone recommend a good staff build for conquest? Doesn’t have to be meta - just good. Any role is fine, but preferably tempest or core, not weaver.

Thanks for the tip! I can actually afford trailblazer’s at this point but that might be a good way to take the build for a low risk test drive.

Thank you for always beings such an advocate for players that want to play ele! I frequently see you offering to help other ele players, and I do really appreciate the offer here. I think I need at least a break from ele right now, but if I decide to take another swing, I will try to take you (and others who have offered) up on your offer before I get to the point of frustration with it again. Thanks for this suggestion. My experience was that when I reached level 80 on my first character (which happened to be an ele), Trailblazers was way out of my reach. I think a full set at this writing is ~120g on the auction house. I probably had around 30g when I hit 80. Making up the difference by farming gold seems like a pretty daunting task when your character is always dying even to vets and trash mobs. So maybe this is why you see new players in zerk gear? It's cheap! If Trailblazers and a condi build is what makes ele playable for the average player who hasn't quite figured it all out yet, maybe Anet should consider giving out exotic trailblazers as end rewards in the final personal story chapters. I don't know if starter L80 gear is a revenue item for them, but in this case I would think it's better than losing players altogether because they think the game is too hard. In my ideal world, player skill would not be some kind of barrier to play a particular profession. Rather I think they should all take about the same amount of skill / practice to get to a base level of proficiency, and they should all be deep enough that players who invest in developing skills with that class can shine. Ideally to me profession would be a choice about play style, theme, and possibly role (although I know GW2 tries not to tie roles to professions). To your point though, it would be nice if the professions had a distinct identity if not a dedicated role. I'm not sure what ele's identity is. I assumed it would be DPS, but I don't think it's currently that. Thanks for taking the time to write a condescending response that also adds nothing, I guess? My post wasn't directed at you, because, well, I don't know you. I don't think I made any suggestions that would somehow make GW2 worse for you, or anyone for that matter. And if reading my post was a waste of your time, I thought it was pretty clear from the post title what was going to follow, so you probably could have just skipped it. I'll assume you're having a bad day and needed to find an opportunity to take it out on some stranger. Anyway, I haven't asked for a refund or threatened to quit playing or spending money on the game. I will just play a different class. But when I find myself on youtube checking out what other games might be like, what I described above is really the reason for it. I guess instead, I could just go away quietly without voicing that particular disappointment, and stop spending money on this game. I'm sure some people do just that. I'm not really sure that approach is better for Anet though, even if it's better for you personally, for whatever unknown reason.

I’ve been using a logitech g600 from the start. My opinion that ele is a garbage class or at least way too punishing to learn includes that. I do agree it would be somehow even less fun without an MMO mouse.

As someone who just started PvP in S28 and queues solo, I think it’s worth a shot. The part of me that is resistant is the part that thinks it will take more time/effort to get a match. But lets face it, the quality of the matches is kinda rubbish right now anyway. If it makes it too much effort to get a match that I have to just stop playing the mode, it probably won’t be that big of a loss at this point anyway. Potentially it makes things much better. At least it’d get rid of the bots.

When evaluating games, having a class I want to play is one of the things I look for. Elementalist is part of what drew me to GW2 because I like to play a mage archetype and ele looked like a good fit. Unfortunately, in my opinion, ele sucks. To me, the class is no fun to play - anti-heroic. I’m honestly now kind of wishing I had chosen a different game and not spent money on this one. I’ve tried several other professions, and compared to ele, they feel like their skill bar is full of WIN buttons. I know there are some that have played ele for thousands of hours and will say it’s fine, maybe even OP in their hands. Maybe it’s true, I don’t know. I would say that they went through the learning curve at a time when things were different and the ele learning experience more fun/less painful. I don’t want to have to suffer through thousands of hours of learning curve in down state just to be on par with other professions. I’ve already spent hundreds. I don’t think I’m alone here. Most of the posts on this board are players’ perfectly reasonable suggestions to fix ele. I know there’s some of that on every profession board, even for classes that are currently strong. But not to the extent that it is on this one (except maybe the warrior board). Anyway, I don’t expect my post to change anything or that Anet will even read it. So I guess thanks to whoever reads this for letting me get it off my chest.

I just can’t fathom why they want to take a class with 11k base health and light armor, and force it into 130 range to do whatever smallish damage it can hammer out. It’s like someone at Anet is planning to compile a ‘funniest elementalist try-hard deaths’ reel to show at the office Christmas party.

I’ve only messed around with Catalyst a little bit. I’m not interested in it at all. Why, Anet, why, would you take a profession that people obviously choose because they want to play an elemental caster and give it yet another melee weapon with poor damage output, a spec that has no synergy, and also make sure there are no good sustain options on the already squishiest class? There are plenty of professions that players would logically choose if they wanted to play melee and its not ele. Why go down this road, again? I used to think people were being cynical when they said that Anet hates ele. It didn’t really make any logical sense that a company would hate one of its own designs. But I’m really starting to think there’s some truth to it. Please listen to the many pages of feedback above. Delete this and start over.

It’s hard to say. I don’t really see many buff requests on this board. I mostly see requests for nerfs and removal of game mechanics (and complaints about bots). I think it’s possible that if people requested specific buffs, for specific reasons, as eloquently as the OP did in this nerf request, we might get somewhere in achieving better balance?

First, your post is well written and compelling, OP. Second, I believe I agree with your assessment that necro is somewhat overturned right now. Third, please stop asking for nerfs. Why? Because when the devs actually listen, nerfs seem to get overcooked, and end up obliterating something that people enjoy playing. How many scourges have you seen since the last patch? I’ve seen zero. Really, they’re just gone. Instead, please ask for buffs to your profession. Buffs don’t seem to get overdone the way nerfs do, especially when they’re requested by players. In my opinion asking for buffs is a better way to get to equilibrium. Finally, if over-representation is your basis for over-performing, my empirical observation is that necro is a popular class. But not as popular as guard. Sometimes I wonder if the MMS will even create a match before it finds 2 guards to put on each side. I’d estimate 35-40% representation. Why don’t you have a problem with guards by the same logic? Anyway, I mostly play tempest in PvP so I guess if necro gets nerfed it would actually help me on the balance. But I’m not going to ask to nerf necro or any other class I don’t like playing against and that I feel is overtuned (hello revenant). Also, please buff elementalist. It needs a bit more sustain on tempest and core. There is almost zero forgiveness for making even a small mistake.

If two MMs are bunkering a single node, you’re 5v3 on the rest of the map? They really can’t move very quickly.

Makes sense. I wouldn’t say low silver players don’t care about losing. Nobody really likes to lose, do they? At least for me, I’m definitely focused more on what I can improve on than what someone else on the team did wrong. I’d hope I continue that as my ranking goes up. Everyone can always improve (at anything), and you really can’t control what other people do.

This is my first season. After my 10 games, I got ranked at silver 3, just a few points short of gold. Toxicity in map chat was frequent in those games and almost always from a single player on the team. I’ve since moved down to silver 1, and toxicity is rare now. Kind of makes me wonder if most of the toxicity is mainly coming from players who just got pushed down from a higher metal color and are upset about it, because they feel they’re now at a lower ranking than they deserve? In other words is toxicity highest at the “3” ranks, coming from players who just got pushed down from the “1” rank above?

OK, let’s assume playing the way you want (which is fun) requires gold, and getting the gold in game is not fun. Some quick back of the envelope calculations. The botware (which, incidentally the post with that link seems to have been deleted) would cost $22 USD for one PvP season, and we assume that can net a bot-user 200 gold. There’s an existing path to bypass gold farming by going cash -> gems -> gold, and $22 USD at this moment would get you 335 gold. Aside from being cheaper, it would also have these benefits: 1. You can have it instantly 2. You’d support Anet and further development of the game 3. You wouldn’t have to run your computer all night, which has electricity costs to you, and environmental impact from consuming electricity to generate fake money 4. You wouldn’t annoy your fellow players by putting AI into what’s supposed to be a player only mode 5. You don’t run the risk of getting banned, and just because it doesn’t seem to be happening to people now doesn’t mean it couldn’t. So, still struggling to see the reason there are bots in PvP.

Sure, I get that of course. My point being that earning the gold/rewards is supposed to be part of the fun. If it isn’t, that raises questions about whether you actually enjoy the game, and whether you should pay to avoid playing it. The alternative of course would be to spend your time and money on something you actually do enjoy.

I used to really enjoy amusement parks, but as I’ve gotten older, the hassle of driving there, walking between rides, waiting in long lines seems to outweigh the enjoyment for me. I could simply stop going, or I guess I could hire a surrogate to go and have the fun on my behalf. The former seems like the sensible choice to me. What a weird world we live in. I guess I’m missing something.

Thanks much for all of this detail. This has helped me understand what’s really happening here. At some point I’d like to play through all of these professions to get a first hand understanding, but that will take some time.

I have no doubt there is more for me to learn, which is why I’m here asking questions. At least I’m not asking for nerfs and removal of game mechanics, hey? If you’re telling me a tempest is a strong 1v1’er,, that means my skill gap is even bigger than I thought it was. I’m not sure whether to feel encouraged by that or overwhelmed by how much I don’t know apparently.

Oh, as a tempest I try never to 1v1 anything. But you know, sometimes unideal situations come up despite best attempts to avoid them. Thanks for the tips.

Mostly been playing LR Tempest. Occasionally core necro MM, mostly to learn its weaknesses.