Flori.2194

No xD

Looking at their current track record for balancing? Nah, they rather sell you a profession change contract at the game store...

That's what I said in my first paragraph. They are probably clueless, not just HOW to balance but also about the game itself. This nerf happened out of stupidity and incompetence but in the need to do anything because balance "is in the works"tm.

It's not about "having a build", it's about "being one of the best possible choices avaiable aka meta, most efficient tactic avaiable", and ranger, ele and thief have nothing for certain game modes like wvw zerging. What I want to say is that you can make a Guardian (and Necro, Engineer or Revenant) and with the 8 euqipment and build templates possible you can switch game modes as much as you want and there is always a build where you are top notch. To do that with something like Elementalist is either very difficult or even completely impossible.

There are some cases for FA Weaver with scepter, as you mentioned LR Weaver and some really niche scenarios for some kind of support or interrupt Tempest. Anything else: Staff, Catalyst, damage Tempest is a bit of a meme. Sure it can work and you can climb with them, but the higher you get the harder it gets to pull off meme builds instead of close-to-meta builds... And for your specific question: No, nothing like Fire Weaver, sadly...

Or, even better, we remove the orbs and the sphere, put combo fields for hammer on 3 (because they forgot to give hammer combo fields, that's why they probably added F5), change hammer to a different weapon, remove the aura traits, stat stick traits and sphere traits, give it some powerful, unique and interesting traits, remove the augments and give some usefull utilities, add a really interesting and class defining spec mechanic and bada bing, bada boom: You have an elite spec, baby...

Yes. My point was that there is no fb build for spvp as far as I know but a whole lot of core, dh and even willy builds. So you only need one guard to be meta in all game modes... compare that to something like ranger, thief or ele.

Nah, I know Firebrand runs riot in PvE and WvW small scale, roaming and zerging, but it's useless for PvP, that's where Core Guardian is an absolute powerhouse... Get one Guardian character, be meta in every game mode, profit....

Aurashare Mechanist confirmed after next balance patch kappa

To put it simple: There are just two possibilities: They either can do better but won't do it -> Then they should be removed from their jobs. Or they can't even do better in the first place. -> Then they should be removed as well... In a more complex way: This game is impossible to balance, at least with the "one balance patch per year"-approach of anet. It's just too complicated: Too much build diversity (too many stat choices, too many traitlines with different choices of traits, no trinity of tank, heal, dd), three different game modes that all need different things for balancing, the whole boon system and to top it all of the devs themselves are probably not enough in numbers and probably not good enough in the game as well. To properly balance this nightmare of a game you need much, much more effort, you have to regurlarly pump out balance patches. In my opinion the best way would be to release a big balance patch after each normal pvp season followed by smaller patches in the next two to three weeks to smooth things out or revert things. This would mean something like 5 big and 10-15 smaller balance patches per year. Sure it sounds a lot, but you can always revert stuff, you can always tweak some numbers. But it's in my opinion what's needed... And here comes the twist: Those patches would only appeal to the few thousend raiders, daily fractal cm enjoyers, dedicated wvw and pvp players and that's it. You can do your two hours a day Tarir, LLA and whatever without ever thinking about balancing at all. This game is made by and made for casuals, elite specs for example have to look cool, nobody cares if they are conceptually lacking or if their balance is broken. Everyone who complains about the balancing in this game is not really the target audience for the game itself. I also guess it's not in their monetary interest to invest in balancing. That's why they throw out a balance patch a year with no further explanations... It's a bone to throw at the dedicated players to shut their mouths, maybe followed by some known dev (looking at you, Grouch and CMC), who then promises there will be more frequent balance patches or major and significant changes after a beta test etc. when in fact it's not in their interest. They can't balance the game properly because it's too complex and the classes are too diverse. And they don't need proper balancing because this game is for casuals.

depends on the standpoint you take... from an ele point of view: yes! from a guard point of view: no, not at all

Did we just found our own "Better nerf Irelia"? Guardian too strong and meta in every game mode? Better nerf Catalyst kappa

Oh... you mean that staff, I thought you mean the staff at arenanet that is responsible for class design and balancing... they really do need support...

And they neither acknowledge with words OR with actions that they read the profession forums... Or otherwise we wouldn't have to point out the same problems for years... In all prrofession forums btw...

And it's a completely uninspired mess that lacks any concept or theme, has boring traits that either belong to Tempest or are just boring stat boosts. It's a combo spec, which is weird, because after roughly 10 years of power creep combos nearly don't matter at all in this game. Hammer is already a conjured weapon so the weapon choice is a lore fail. The augments are just worse core utilities that see no support in traits or with runes (OH YEAH, there weren't any new runes). It's missing a useful elite utility, but that's nothing new for ele players. Shall we continue? Oh, the design of the e-spec armour skin, the helmet, has those floating orbs, you know, the one from hammer that you won't have with any other weapon, but any other weapon has better aura generation than hammer, besides the fact that this helmet is ugly as hell. But auras are better suited for Tempest because shouts are a thing and are much better than augments. Hammer is useless in PvP, so you are left with Core Ele with an additional, static combo field but you miss another core traitline which makes Catalyst in WvW and sPvP as viable as Core Ele, read: not viable at all. It has no built in sustian like Tempest or Weaver (e. g. Water Overload and tons of barrier). It is so lackluster that I refuse to believe that they put more than 20 minutes of work into this spec. And the best thing about it? They even said they have no idea what they did with Catalyst. CMC in the presentation video said: "So somehow we decided to give Ele hammer." They went into their "class designing room", sat on the table, wrote down some first ideas, put them all in a blender with the remaining ideas for Tempest and Weaver and glued them together. Every fooking fanmade e-spec that was posted in this forum or on reddit is better, at least conceptually, because Catalyst has no concept: Melee bruiser without sustain that needs auras (hello, Tempest) that its e-spec weapon can't generate that needs cc that its e-spec weapon can't generate with a bunch of minigames you have to play in your head all the time (hammer 3 with attunement swapping, placing your F5 (why is it even an additional button, put it on F1-F4 already, you idiots), using your augments in the right sphere, dodge, do mechanics, do cc, finish your combofields, do more cc to get more stacks, do a leap finisher (not on hammer) to get auras for more stacks, keep those stacks etc. etc. Giving Elementalist quickness was a good idea... anything else is bullshite. I said it before and I will say it again: I can design a better e-spec in two days, a lot of people already designed good e-specs, but those people at anet get paid for being absolute dogshite.