Guybrush.4762

A few years ago my server was using colors to indicate which squad was doing what but the habit declined and is no longer in use. Funny enough we used different colors that what was stated above. For example our scouts were using purple tag instead of white, red was for temporary squad, if I remember correctly blue was also for open tag, I think orange was for small scale roaming squad, etc. In my opinion every tool that help better communicate with your team is a great addition and I would love additional option in that area.

I guess it is fair but also... I never felt that let down since the final season of Game of Thrones. 🤣 That is ok, we are going to convince you next time, have a wonderful day.

Long story short there is currently some quite decent elementalists build regardless of the game mode you are interested in but they generally requires more effort than average especially if you are new to elementalist. The builds I will list bellow are currently in good shape even though some of them could probably use a few buff/adjustment. PvE : [HEALER] Heal Alacrity Tempest - nice heals and good boons ; lack stability and fury to really tackle on other healers, contrary to other healer this build has a rigid rotation structure, you can't just use skills when you feel like it [DPS] Condition Scepter-focus Weaver - good damage ; the rotation is spammy and fast paced, it is reliant on being at melee range because of Primordial stance, it is a bit fragile and the weave self rotation is complex but you can simplify it by a ton by taking Glyph of Elementals instead WvW : [ZERG and ROAM, SUPPORT] Heal Cleanse Tempest - Really good heal and cleanses, auras are good to have, tags a lot of bags for a support ; other people struggle to understand your class and mostly ignore you as a result even commanders (it is fine because healing and cleansing is something you can do autonomously but sometimes calls can make the difference and comms are not tempest ready yet). [ZERG, DPS] Staff weaver - Very good sustained damage, good cc and can survive on his own, really shine during fights where movement is restricted (like inside towers and keeps) ; Does not have the utility of other DPS build, kinda falls off in open terrain, remember what I have said about people not understanding Heal cleanse tempest? Yeah... it is even worse for staff weaver. [ROAM] Celestial elementalist - All specs kinda works there for weapons, the most classic are Double dagger for Tempest and Castalyst, Hammer for Catalyst, and Sword Focus for Weaver. All specs have their pros and cons. PvP : Support tempest - Great tool box to impact fight ; kinda fragile if you get caught and reliant on active defense tool as a result Catalyst sidenoder - Stability on aura is great but the duration is fairly low, otherwise decent

Hi, don't mind me I am just adding my two cents here... I think linking an english speaking block of people with a language specific one kinda works, what create the most problems is linking two different language specific unit. As a rough estimate, I would say in language-bound servers there is probably a third of players that only understand basic written english, a third that are not confident enough to have a voice discussion and would probably mute themselves but can understand english game slang and comm orders just fine, and a final third that will thrive in an international environment and would be able to command a squad. So like I said it kinda works but it is not perfect and you still loose a lot of potential commanders and squad mates. When you link several language specific block together though, what happens is the German plays with the German, the French with the French and the Spanish... well fondly enough most Spanish squads I have found were open. You participate in the few events that your guild organize and you are happy while it last, but then you look for an open tag with voice and there is no one willing to command an international squad via voice. Yeah... not optimal. I guess my message is: identifying which alliance doesn't mind to be part of an English-speaking alliance and which one does is crucial for alliance to work in Europe and I hope it gets improved in future betas.

The difference between light and heavy armor classes is 291 point of armor. Without added toughness that is about 15.15% more power damage dealt to the light class. So yeah... the gap is way smaller than what you see in other mmorpg but it is still impactful none the less. To make it more concrete it is a bit like if the heavy classes were under a Protection-like buff that worked at 40% efficiency.

Plasma blast is a slow moving projectile, with a fairly small hit-radius, that you can predict by looking at your opponent attunement, and basically only bring damage on the table. It is easy to avoid and moving around even a bit is generally sufficient to counter it. It does hit kinda hard, I give you that... but honestly there is skills in the game that deals more damage and are far easier to land. You need to set it up with a CC or bad positioning from your opponent if you want to land it properly and at that point it is not Plasma blast that killed your opponent it is your CC and/or their positioning that set them up for a burst. I realize it is probably not what you want to hear, but the reason Plasma blast does decent damage is because quite frankly it should.

Basically, Phoenix and Dragon's tooth are straightforward spamable damage skill. Add the whole condi toolbox of weaver and you get yourself a decent dps build. Is it the best build ? Probably not, it is lacking utility and even if it didn't the "best build" is encounter driven anyway. But it certainly has good damage and the rotation can be simplified a lot if you are ok about losing 3-4k dps. Yeah... it is a good build, if you are interested try it out. A quick note about the Renegade rune and burning food. Basically this set-up is optimized for scepter but fall short if you want to use other weapons. It works well because this build focus on burning a bit more than other weavers. The usual Elementalist rune and normal condi food is a small dps loss comparatively but if you have them lying around from a previous build don't throw them, they are still great!

Yeah the new Gale song, while not completely horrible in a vacuum, does not really have any uses. Protection on heal is generally not desirable for Tempest in PvE. The choice is even clearer in sPvP and WvW; gaining an aura on overload is far superior there. One of the problem I see is they really force themselves to write a trait that produce an effect when you use a healing skill instead of thinking about what role it is actually supposed to fulfill in the kit. Gaining a basic boon (something you want to have full time) when you use your healing skill (a skill you want to save for emergency) introduce a conflict of purposes. The result is a "meh" trait that will most likely be forgotten as we all move on from the patch note. I think it would have been better to look at why people started picking Gale song instead and use that as a starting point. Essentially it was an additional source of stability/break-stun for when your subgroup was really starving for some so let's do something about that.

We spoke about it in the last open zerg I joined. The general consensus seems to be that people will try out stuff for a bit then realize Scrapper is still the meta support ; more Chronomancer may be added to the squad and that is about it. I personally don't know where the sneak gyro nerf will land. To be honest It looks kinda weak now (60s cd feels too high for that effect) and the removal of the smoke field is bad for support diversity. Unless I missed it, nothing was said about reverting the compensatory buff on superspeed application. I'd say the shorten stealth and superspeed at the beginning of the well promote a quick disengaging and fake push meta and I am not sure other supports are well equipped for that. So basically... If the squad really lack cleansing then Tempest (and probably Druid) are now able to out-cleanse Scrapper. Otherwise it looks like it will be Scrapper all the way.

Earth embrace - Most builds who take the Earth trait line either really want Bleed duration from Serrated stone or really want the Protection on aura from Elemental shielding. I'd say the best use for this trait would be for an Openworld condi weaver and even then the amount of barrier would need to be pretty insane to counteract the loss of Protection. Final Shielding - This change feels weird. If it procs on Glyph of elemental flip skill then it may be broken, if it does not then it is severely underwhelming. I like that we are addressing the 300 cooldown PvP/WvW traits, i really do, but this specific design does not feel right. Gale Song - This trait would probably see play for Solo Openworld Condi Tempest who often took Unstable conduit+Elemental shielding for Protection uptime. And now they may take Gale song+Serrated stone instead to squeeze a bit more dps. Unfortunately I fail to see any other situation where you would want to take this trait. The Auras from Elemental conduit is just too good in PvP and WvW to justify the trade off and Protection is already covered by other preferred means in instanced PvE. For instanced PvE specifically, it feels bad to loose a very valuable source of Stability as collateral damage ; Heal Alac tempest was finally doing ok. "Eye of the storm!" - Sure, why not. It makes sure the skill is ready when the commander call for superspeed and that does not hurt. Catalyst in PvP - I haven't plaid catalyst sidenoder nearly enough to form a solid opinion on the matter ; I am more of a WvW boy. I'd say the nerfs seems reasonable enough from afar. Overall - I would have loved to see more changes especially toward WvW and specifically about Staff weaver. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a fairly viable, very underestimated build, but it is not there yet. Sustained damage is incredible, CC is good, spike damage and general utility is lacking. Not every builds needs to be meta but I think it does need a little push so commanders finally realize that it is good enough. About Heal tempest, I would have advocated to copy the stability of "Eye of the storm!" from PvP to WvW in order to better compare to Scrapper but I guess the big Scrapper nerf was another way to make room... a more nuclear one. (I feel bad for my Scrapper friends, I hope the spec is still ok 😅) Another thing that I would have love being addressed is the Evasive Arcana bug. Long story short dodging in fire no longer cast Flame burst since the August 23rd patch. For PvE it is like whatever but for PvP and WvW this trait does matter for your typical Fire weaver.

You forgot to list condition Scepter/Focus as a viable weapon set. The build performs well in most PvE scenario and the rotation is fairly simpler than most condition weaver builds even if it feels a bit spamy at time. Utility is ok-ish at best (as is custom with weaver builds) : you got projectile reflect, a serviceable invulnerability and some CC. It is able to squeeze about 38k dps on the golem which is a pretty nice figure considering how reliable it is !

Like other said it depends on too much factor to gives you a definitive number, after all it is not as much about healing power as it is about actually making sure your squad stays alive. If you want a rough idea of what it takes i'd say go to the test golem, put up a damaging field and try the fallowing test : In a medium damaging field - Am I able to heal through it without using burst heal and still maintain all the boon. In a hard damaging field - Am I able to heal through it if I go all in and pretty much ignore all boon application. I'd say if you are able to do the first indefinitely and the second for at least 10 second then you should have enough healing in a real scenario. Being able to do the second indefinitely can be super useful in some niche case or if you play with novice players. But yeah... Generally speaking healers go mostly harrier gear with healing food and rune which put them at around 1235 healing power without traits and healing infusion.

Long story short, the common theory among my circle of fellow elemantalist main is that the fire dodge of Evasive arcana is calling for a version of Flame burst that no longer exists in the game since this specific skill was buffed last patch. Not sure if it is true but that seems very plausible.

I don't think nerfing the number directly is the ultimate fix for Power rifle mechanist. As its core the problem is not that dps potential of the spec is too high ; if we compare the benchmark with other specs it looks ok. The problem imho is actually the low amount of player input required to achieve good dps resulting in high dps uptime regardless of fight mechanics. Still, having to compromise on your dps to comply with the mechanic is good design and simply buffing other specs to get them there is not desirable. We also can't redesign every boss encounter around the existence of Prifle mech. Something has to go... If I were Anet I would probably try a dps cut to no-input playstyle compensated by a dps buff to the skills you actually have to press. Essentially the goal would be to shift from "press 3 buttons and be top dps in most pug squad, pressing more is a small dps increase" toward "it is a simple spec to handle that gets good results even with 3 buttons and that can go higher if you are willing to press more".

I guess it has the merit of being efficient. This kind of very broad rating would never be accurate and I don't think it is the goal. As many pointed out already the simplest build in the game currently (Power rifle Mechanist) being associated with a 3 star complexity rating is iffy at best and there is some other outliers. It also change depending on the game mode. For example rating the WvW Heal Firebrand and the WvW Heal Scrapper 1 and 3 stars respectively feels weird. I don't know how I feel about it, if it helps new player it is good I guess.

Well I love the game and elementalist is my jam. The gameplay is fun to me! But I still realize both the class and the game in general are not without flaws both big and small even if I am enjoying my time. For the rest, yes people tend to be overly dramatic over the balance of their favorite class but it is just the nature of a video game if you ask me. To be fair though the past few patches did not help cool down the temperature 😄.

Heal Quick Herald is in direct competition with Heal Quick Firebrand, here are the pros and cons of both: Both HFB and Herald can apply Stability but Firebrand can do that without sacrificing much. Meanwhile Herald has to switch to Glint/Jalis which is a huge tradeoff. This is the biggest reason why Firebrand is preferred at the moment! Revenant energy management force you to plan ahead, a disadvantage that Firebrand does not have. Both Herald and Firebrand have some reflect but if you need an obscene uptime of reflect then Herald is your boy. Firebrand have access to a decent amount of CC but nothing comparable to what Herald can do. If you want to apply all your boon to your subgroup as a firebrand you need to either fit them in a cone in front of your or stack on top of them, then place a symbol where they need to stay for some time, then every 7 second you need to fit them in a 360 circle around you... and it is just tricky in disorganized group. Meanwhile Herald apply most of their juicy boon in a wide 360 AoE around them, if the group is scattered everywhere for some reason they still receive good boon. Herald is slow to apply 25 stack of might which mean everyone does less damage on their opener. After August 23 Firebrand may struggle to apply 25 stack of might (Switching Honorable staff to Empowering might may fix that but it will come at a cost). While we speak about disorganized group, people will routinely dodge away from guardian symbols (then complain about healing 😄). Herald does not have this problem and while both class can heal decently, herald tend to have stronger heals in my experience. Firebrand apply Resolution and Aegis, Herald provide boon extension for the group. Firebrand is a low hp class and their heal skill is not really the best for self sustain so they may feel squishy at time. Herald is super tough and can take a huge beating. As for Heal Alacrity Renegade it has to compete with Heal Alac Mech at the moment. I don't play neither of those spec so I can't really provide as much input there.

As other people have mentioned Staff Phantasmal Warlock is a dps loss Beside rotation incident there exactly three uses of this skill in end game PvE and only one of them may arguably be cooldown sensitive: -It's the beginning of the fight and it's your opener so you precast a well time Phantasmal warlock to gain clones just after your first F2. -You need to use your shatter (F3 for CC or F4 for invulnerability) but Phase retreat is unavailable at the moment so you cast Phantasmal retreat instead to gain your clones back. -The fight is designed in such a way that your clones pops at some point and you need to recreate them more frequently (Fights against small adds like open-world, boss disapearing, etc). In fights where it happens so frequently that the Phantasmal warlock buff would matter you would still not bring your mirage because your dps is too slow to properly ramp up during such short windows. ...So basically Phantasmal warlock buff does not really achieve anything and we are left with a sizable nerf to the spec in exchange of a barely noticeable buff to chaos armor. I don't really understand where this change comes from. Yes Mirage is stacked on some confusion favored bosses but even on those fights, Mirage is still not the most frequently seen spec. Not to mention reducing confusion in favor of other conditions like bleed and torment would have probably been a more targeted nerf if it was the issue. To be fair, I like most things in this patch but I am not too hot about the mesmer part if I am being honest :D.

Escu sword Holosmith has poor benchmark (it would probably not change) but actually performs decently well in a real scenario because of its good burst, decent cleave as well as the relative tankyness. Still, if we look at gw2 wingman and compare it to other spec, it is consistently lagging behind power soulbeast by around 1,5k ~ 2k dps depending on specific raid boss. The August 23th announced buffs will certainly narrow this gap by a fair bit but I still think Soulbeast will perform better in a general scenario. After the August patch, holosmith may become favored for Vale gardian because it provides boon removal with throw mine and for Conjured amalgamate because A.E.D. is an incredible safety net to survive the clap. EDIT : Another thing that may push Holosmith forward is the possible replacement of Pistol 4 (blowtorch) with Throw mine in the rotation ; The coef buff and reduced aftecatst looks jucy. It would eliminate the need for pistol off-hand for optimized dps therefore making room for the more utility oriented shield off-hand. I'll let the rotation wizard analyses it and decide though.

I personally have zero problem with strong builds that are reasonably easy to get decent at. I do however believe that qualifying power rifle mechanist as being easy to get decent at does not paint the correct picture. It is a very passive build that require little to no input from the player to the point where mechanics that are supposed to pressure most build are struggling to impact its dps loop. I would argue it is more a design flaw than a balance problem. TLDR: I don't want this specific build to get worse but I do want it to get more involved. I'd say other meta mechanist build are not nearly as problematic. Yes they are strong and probably too well rounded for the good of the game but at least their gameplay feel involved and enjoyable. Well... unless we are talking about underwater combat, I want to see some jade in the water and I don't think I am alone on that request 😄. As for the initial post... Yeah I like exotics builds myself and I feel bad for some of the hard engi build op has listed. By the way Snowcrows have a legacy build section so you can find doc on them even if they fell out of flavor or never caught on.

In the Daily achievement window for "Daily Ascalonian Catacomb", the "Chest of Ascalonian Catacombs Goods" has the fallowing item description : "Double-click to open. Contains 100 Ascalonian Tears and 1 Tome of knowledge." This is a consistency mistake as the Ascalonian Tears currency no longer exists and was converted into the more general Tales of Dungeon Delving currency in a previous patch. Other similar daily dungeon achievement and chests might have a similar mistake (I did not checked). It is not game breaking or anything but it might be confusing for newer player so I though it was worth submitting. Thank you for the time and passion you are dedicating to the game, I wish you a wonderful day.

From an end game point of view, "having a main" usually means you are focusing your effort on a singular profession that you enjoy in order to participate in harder content and still feel like you are contributing. From that point of view there is two things that needed to be said : -First, do not choose a main class that you don't like even if it performs well in the current meta ; you are going to play it a lot so it is important that you enjoy your time. -Second, and I feel it is more controversial. Among the classes you like, prefer the one that offer some role versatility and that are desirable in the current meta. Choosing a spec that is currently on the weak side of the balance may generate a frustrating experience. So yeah, right now : Engineer and more precisely Mechanist is meta for almost everything. To a lesser extent you have Guardian and the newly buffed Ranger who offer strong options to fill both healer, boon-support dps and pure Dps roles. Other classes are typically only commonly plaid as two or even one of these roles. Then I would say Necromancer, Mesmer and Thief stand currently stronger than Elementalist, Revenant and the poor Warrior but take this opinion with a huge grain of salt. If you fear future patches I would say Mechanist is likely to get nerfed (but then again it is likely to get nerfed since 2 patches ago), Guardian will probably stay as it is now or receive small nerfs. Untamed may be nerfed depending on where the balance team want to put the damage output for boon-provider dps. Other spec will probably either receive buffs or stay as they are right now and therefor are safe to delve into. Warrior will almost certainly receive buffs as a quickness provider (finger crossed).

In therory, with both alacrity and quickness, you need about 7.5 second to attain singularity to an element and finish the overload. You then have to wait 16 second to refresh the cooldown of that element (or 14 second with Arcane trait line). That means with zero boon duration using one overload gives you around 29% Alacrity uptime (or 32% with Arcane trait line). Furthermore, if you hit sand squall regularly you gain up to 12% "free" boon extension (or 15% with Earth trait line) but it requires cooldown management. So if my not yet caffeinated morning maths is to be trusted and assuming you do a perfect rotation you need around -100% boon duration, both arcane and earth trait line and a friendly chrono pumping signet of inspiration perfectly... to barely make it work with 1 overload (that is pretty much unrealistic but it is cool enough to mention it) -At least 52% boon duration with 2 overloads (38% with Arcane, 47% with Earth and 33% with both). -At least 1.2% boon duration with 3 overlords. So yeah, my build/rotation up there have way more boon duration than needed... I was like... hum... What rune should I take ? I have a few rune of the traveler nearby so I guess they will work. 😄

It is purely theoretical at that point but this is my take on the celestial Condi Alac/Heal tempest : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGAFgE26WZEsL2CriRijqkfTF-zxIY1opvMSoIqORk/gICNxmxaCwnG-e The idea is to rotate between Overload Fire, Earth and Air to maintain alac and damage while only dipping into water for 2-3 seconds in between each Overload. Hopefully maintaining Soothing mist, some Regeneration (about 40% uptime) and procing Healing ripple regularly are enough healing for your group. As far as the rotation is concerned the gist of it is : Fire : Drake's breath > mash your other skills > Overload fire > Drakes breath (Switch to water while Drake's breath is doing its job) Water : Cone of cold every time, other skills only if more healing is needed (Ideally Water globe + Frozen burst healing combo goes there because you can blast the water field a second time with Sand squall in Earth) Earth : Ring of Earth > mash your other skills > Overload Earth > Ring of Earth (Switch to water while Ring of Earth is doing its job) Water : same Air : Convergence > mash your other skills > Overload Air > Convergence (Switch to water while Convergence is doing hits job) Water : same "Wash the pain away!" is used when needed. Glyph of lesser Elementals is always used in fire. Signet of Fire, "Feel the burn!" and Flame barrage (that is the Elite fire elemental skill) are used on cooldown. Scepter and focus are only there for precasting purpose. You never overload Water unless it is an absolute healing emergency and you are ok with loosing access to most of your healing for the next 16 seconds ! If you need more healing you should not be afraid to switch your Elite fire elemental for the water one. There is also an argument about dropping Superior sigil of Smoldering in favor of Superior sigil of Bursting and switch the glyph of lesser elementals for Conjure frost bow to cap the burn duration during Fire overload and gain another source of healing. It looks clunky-ish and I would wait for a rotation wizard to fix things up but in the meantime it is viable enough I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Me : Watching the video The commander at 18m12s : "Make the res of Courgette." Me (knowing that specific player) : (͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖)👍 EDIT : I checked with him and apparently it is his evil twin... I am sad and intrigued.