Birdie.3869

Just went ahead and tested in molten boss fractal. It doesn't remove boons at all.

No longer do signets apply effects (let alone the bonus they had in shroud) in shroud anymore. Meaning lifeforce in shroud is gone, extra power, life steal signet... No proper buffs to the signets, just cooldown reductions, which is NO WHERE NEAR what they were before (Rest in pieces Signet of Undeath's 17.5s cooldown) Gigantic nerf to signets, I expected them to still be active in shroud at least, since their cooldowns were being chunked, but just gone? Heavy shroud nerf to a class build that wasn't even near the top for things like raids or strikes. This needs to be undone, this is such a massive nerf to something that already didn't see much use. Vampirism signet at least needs a buff after this, plague signet can get AOE, so can signet of spite, undeath is dead dunno how to fix it at least it should res 3 now, or maybe just remove the huge chunk of health it rips out. Locust is about the only fine one after this change. One tiny buff in a sea of massive nerfs. Why change signets so harshly? Why? Give us back our tiny cooldown for them at least! 50% reduction isn't anywhere near enough and it's less than that! Cooldowns were 10-15 seconds on shroud builds. Pop signets, pop in shroud, smack away, leave shroud, pop signets, go back into shroud. Absolutely hate this change, congrats devs you got what you wanted, I'm upset about the changes. Now change it back!

While in world vs world, the warclaw second ability "Sniff" is not marking enemies. It's currently doing nothing, despite showing it's usual animation on the map.

I know it's a war crime to use a flamethrower but does the Geneva Convention really apply to gw2 as well? Anyone still use this thing or have a build that can use it properly in any game mode? Seems to fall miles behind explosives and feels like there's no reason to take it anymore.

Heeeey Anet~ So since you guys buffed pistol 2 animation speed on engi (and thanks for that btw) could you do the same for flamethrower? You know, the kit you guys kinda kicked into the dirt and left to rot? Only place it use to be good was pvp and even that got taken away. At least buff it's dps by like 50-75% in pve. It's very far behind for a dps kit, and NEEDS to be traited. Xoxo lots of love, An Ele Main.

I just want to throw out there that if you have friends or guildmates or followers that are hiding "offline" all you need to do to find them is sort by location and hover over the top offline members. The ones who are "offline" will have their location pop up with their other usual info. That seems like something that should be fixed to me. This doesn't work with blocked people though, as no info appears on hover over. So remember to block your followers if you play wvw a lot and feel you're being stalked even while offline. And yes it's not uncommon for wvw opponents to add you to friends to see your location, I've had it happen to me several times and I don't even play wvw that much. And yes I know they're doing it, my followers list is empty and suddenly I get a follower after a fight in wvw who's "offline" in wvw when hovered. Blocking them does solve the issue but Anet could still make it a little easier to manage the friends list though, I'm sure I've blocked people who've wanted to be friends the same as people who wanted to follow me around the borderlands with their friends. I like the idea of invaders names not showing up in the friends/followers list while in wvw, it would make it much easier to see if it's friend or foe adding me.

Sure thing! I might have gone overboard on the explanation of the build though. Sorry it's so long. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAYlZkxu6aaptqaGZoOSPntfA-zxIY1ogvMCsAiNB85iEgbgHA-e This is my general build for roaming and fractals and even strikes. It's the best solo style build I've found for staff ele. This build is all about survival while maximizing dps after the fact. With proper rotation you'll have perma protection, might, vigor and regen without ever having to swap off fire or earth unless for emergency healing or cc. I've hit around 12-13k dps on single champs with it. Rarely go below 50% hp. You can also go support anytime for decent healing in between rotations. The rotation is key for all ele builds, so I'll say how I play it too. Open with elite fire ele into fire staff 3 unless it's a max hitbox immobile boss, then move into meteor shower then fire 3. Then 2 into earth signet to immob the target into it, earth signet can be swapped for aftershock if wanted. Then fire signet, then fire overload, into burning retreat if you can then fire 2 and 3 again. Auto attack is on fire lesser summon ele so you should be spitting them out on cooldown. Beware! you have to let the cast go, if you interrupt it go a step or 2 ahead on rotation and then wait for it to cast. It seems like a loss in dps until you get 2 out, then it's an increase. Greater fire ele should be used on cooldown. After that swap earth, earth 2 into earth 5, pop signets again into earth overload, fire ele can be triggered during overloads so be sure to use that on cooldown. After that auto attack until fire is back up, that should null any breakbars you're up against, if it doesn't swap water and drop the 4 on it. It's not recommended since you'll be locked there for 5 seconds, but you can clear some condi's at least if you need. That's your dps rotation with it's variants. I'll put it sorter here: Fire rotation: fire elite ele, fire 3, fire 2, earth signet, fire signet, fire overload, burning retreat, fire 2, fire 3, swap. Earth roation: Earth 2, earth signet, fire signet, earth 5, overload, earth 2, swap. Don't be afraid to camp fire a little longer if you want to push out an extra fire 3 or rotation. Sometimes it's better if enemies are walking out of earth 2 a lot. If you delay earth rotation, you can throw out earth 2, swap to water and drop the 4 on it, and then water 2 for a big heal and boon buff on short delay, then toss out water 3 and water 5 and then quickly swapping to fire. Don't put your fire 2 or fire 4 on them though, might for some reason overrides the auras more often than not as will raw healing from blast finishers. So sometimes quick swapping is just better than using water 3 and 5. There's a lot of variety for this build, you can use greater ice ele for around an 8k heal plus a cleanse and hard cc and soft cc on a 15s cooldown. Or you can summon a greater earth ele and stand still for about 2 minutes in most fights against champs. Also comes with some immob and protection. Can always take the stab on overload trait if you need/want it too. The regen and vigor are nice, but not needed more often than not. With the perma protection you'll have around 50% strike dmg reduced at all times. You can get up to 67% reduced dmg with frost aura when attuned to earth (doable with lesser ice eles) You can take antitoxin runes to wvw or anywhere with a lot of condi's and do pretty well. You lose around 1k dps, not bad at all. Do not take lesser summon eles to wvw. Use aftershock and flash freeze instead. Elite ele is still ok - ice for emergency healing (try to sneakily pop it or pop it while running) or fire ele for a big burst of dps and punishing those who don't kill it. Wvw you want stab on overload instead as well. You also have to have a much more reactionary rotation in wvw. Delay dmg, cc at the right time, that sort of stuff. No just pressing buttons. If you really want overkill for pve roaming, bring vamp runes. 2k dps loss but you become immortal. Each kill will net you around 2k health. Combined with perma protection and +10% health and regen? Immortal, I tell you! Honestly I feel starting with this would be good until you get the rotation down. It makes the need to swap to water much less, but it's really overkill once you have rotation down as signet of restoration plus auras and their regen does more healing than you'd think. You can swap sigil of generosity out for sigil of nullification if you want. Getting rid of boons every now and then is nice but never needing to panic swap earth for magnet aura and shatter makes the rotation much easier. (or to swap out of annoyance, curse you slowness! Why are you not priority removal?!) You can also swap to sigil of earth, or any stat boosting sigil like sigil of the stars or corruption if you want to push a little more dps. Air or fire sigils work too with vamp runes. Blood sigil too if you ever find yourself below 80% hp with vamp runes and want even more healing, or healing for champs. Feel free to play around with it as well and let me know if you find anything that does that balance of survival plus dps just right too. Have fun! And remember, magnetic auras save lives.

I disagree with summoning 4 of each kind, stacking elementals increases their usefulness especially ice eles. 2 Ice eles can keep up perma chill on any stationary target. Stacking fire eles lets them do decent dps for one skill. Air and earth lessers are useless though, air misses half the time (they literally only shoot above an enemy sometimes) and only the elite earth ele is useful for tanking and soft cc so the lessers have nothing to do. Imo, one press should summon 2 eles of the current element - lesser elementals die too often to be one at a time summons and honestly even perma duration would be ok since they die so often, but if they don't get perma duration the cooldown should be 30 seconds by default. Going above the max summon count should kill a summon or two based on lowest duration remaining or the order of summoning if they get perma duration. Air and earth eles should be reworked. Earth eles should at least bleed on hit. Or maybe daze half a second or quarter a second on hit? They need something and it has to be good because they have nothing at the moment. Air eles are ok for swiftness and auto cleansing of immob and chill (they use air staff 4 randomly), but that's it and their aoe for it is tiny. Increase air eles dmg and have them throw out a half second or full second daze every now and then and maybe they'd be worth using outside niche situations. They also need to fix their targeting issue. And lastly, yeah. Why do only our summons go away on mount? At least reset the cooldown on dismount if it's going to stay like that. Considering how much work this skill would be to fix or rework anything on it I'm betting we'll see no changes at all for it tho.

That's very true. But my point was in wvw and pvp weapon skills are often worse than in pve, and it's the opposite for a lot of staff skills when it really shouldn't be.

Sorry, this is going to be a long one. I made a staff ele about 2 years ago (got the birthday gift a couple weeks ago) as a sort of "challenge" character. To see how far I could bring staff (only) ele. The answer? I made a summon tempest celestial build (if you want to try it out to or try to improve it ask and I'll give you my build, runes and sigils) and because of the earth elite summon it's great at soloing just about anything. Add a few lesser fire eles and my dps is "ok". Signets for helping dps and survival as well, but it's survival is pretty great, honestly. Don't even need the earth ele to tank. My average pve dps on solo targets with only self buffs before the patch with full cele was 8-9k, after the patch it's 9-10k - that's with full summons out, fire ele summon elite, perfect rotation, ect. I'm fantastic in fractals, I'm not invited to raids even after the aura buffs on tempest. Open world pve is a solo adventure. I can even solo some legendaries, slow and steady. Because ele is outshined so much with quickness and alacrity, I'm often forced into dps or raw heal support role in group content, that often means dropping the cele setup for minstrals because I'm a better support than dps. Who needs 3 other attuments to be wanted anyway? The nice part is I can swap to support if needed mid fight, and I bring protection regen and vigor with near inf durations - but that's just support staff tempest, and with minstrels it's twice as powerful of a support. But still, support ele wasn't changed with this update. Anyway enough about general ele experiences, on topic: First, I think the patch was a step in the right direction but: For fire: - Meteor shower is still a useless skill. I drop dps if I stop to use it, unless on a large or huge hitbox and if they're mobile it's still not worth it. Burn on hit, c'mon, you know you want to. - Lava font still has a delay before it actually hits and has a teeny tiny aoe. Immobs can't even last long enough to make it hit fully sometimes. Still, the burning is welcome and makes it worth throwing out a little more. - Flame burst was my main fire dps skill, and still is. Nice it has a punch to it now but the burn damage is still the main selling point. The rest of the skills need to be made like this one. It's fast to cast, it hits hard and has a low-ish cooldown. - Fire auto's (fireball) damage and burn is still so bad it's better to put the glyph of lesser summons on auto attack than let my fire auto be my auto attack (staff 3 if you don't use summons). Seriously, avoid using this skill unless you're too fast on rotation and other skills are on cooldown. It can animation lock you as well, preventing you from casting other skills while you take the second to wind up the pool noodle. - Burning retreat is a nice skill for the mobility and the dodge. I still use it for dps now and then too, I honestly think it's fine but it's radius could be increased a tiny bit and I'll never say no to dps buffs. For earth: - The auto attack (stoning) was worth using for weakness for soft cc and that's about it. A few of these is enough to last for most breakbars when combined with other soft cc's like chill and immob. The dmg buff is nice, single target but makes the weakness application more worth it in rotation. - Eruption is still bad. It's the best for dps on earth, yeah, but it's huge wind up means it will miss most of the time, and for the wind up it's tiny damage on the pop is sad, and the bleed isn't nearly enough, also the cooldown is too long. Also sometimes dodge rolling or getting cc'd cancels it when it really feels like it shouldn't. Anet take a look at this skill and rework it, keep it earths dps skill but like, make it usable. - Magnetic aura is always nice because it's instant. Projectile reflect and free aura proc is ok. Cooldown is high though, for dagger getting infinite duration self auras. Maybe not infinite for this one, but maybe 15-20 seconds in pve, 30 is too much to be a decent aura proc. Then again, shock aura is an infinite duration counter cc in pve now. Why not have an infinite duration reflect? - Transmute earth WHY does this skill have such a long cooldown? Anet how often do you think eles are getting earth auras? Why is it only 3 seconds in pvp and wvw and 10 in pve? It's damage is so weak, it's cast time is so long, it's protection time is so little for giving up a reflect barrier. This is my emergency condi cleanse with fire traits "cleanse on aura and cleanse 2 on shatter" and nothing more. Do not use unless you need that tiny bit of protection if you're not traited for the cleanse with fire. - Unsteady ground is still the best staff cc, fight me. You can make it hit stationary targets once if you position it right, but even after years of doing it I miss it sometimes, but locking some things down in cc over and over for even just 4 seconds is still powerful and funny. It's not what it use to be in 2013 though and I think they should add back cripple or dmg to it, or increase the duration or reduce the cooldown. 4s duration feels low. At least 6. - Shock wave, everyone's new favorite. Hits like a truck, pierces, applies a nice bleed, cc's with immob. What's not to love? Oh yeah, it can be reflected. I think the change is fine for this one though, cooldown could be reduced a little more, but once per rotation is still ok with how hard it hits now. For air: - Why are you in this attument? - Seriously even full power ele does less dmg in this than with shockwave and fire and earth auto now. - The bounces on the auto are too low and even against 2 it's not worth using over fire auto. - The 2 skill hits so weak it's not worth it even for the blind. Yes that's after the buff. - Oh I know why you're in this attument, it's for the push and stun aoe because that breakbar is bothering you. Too bad that's not enough, even if they run through the 5. - Don't even get full duration swiftness on the 4. But hey, free aoe chill and immob clear if your group's in a pickle! For water: - Staff water hasn't changed in actually 2 years, why do you need feedback on it? - Fine I've typed this much I'll do it anyway. - It's good for healing and aura procs. Combine with lesser ice eles for perma chill on a mob and free blast finishers into ice barrier for melee folk. - healing rain even traited is worse than traiting fire traits "clear condi on aura" and I would recommend using that for cleanse support if you're running hybrid. It's only useful for large aoe minor cleanses because your group just loves to split up. At least reduce it's cooldown. Or the cast time. Or maybe buff it's regen or have it pulse a heal? Also, why's it better in pvp and wvw than it is in pve by twice as much? - Geysers aoe is small and hard to see, my allies often walk out of it very quickly. It's an ok self heal though. Nice to need to blast finisher for decent healing with it. That's sarcasm. I'm sorry, I've typed a lot now. Just increase the aoe on it or make it immob allies in it. That last bit is also a joke, or is it? - Ok I admit it I guess a lot of water skills did get buffed in pvp and wvw this year, but that's the only changes it's seen in 2-3 years. - Ice ele elite is a better support than all of these skills combined, elite summon glyph is better than most of ele's elites as well. Rebound is better for support, unless the ice ele's raw heal, condi cleanse, hard cc and soft cc is needed, or just preferred. - Reduce staff 2's cooldown to 3 or 4s, it's only useful for supporting with blast finisher anyway. The dmg isn't worth the delay and it misses often. The vuln isn't useful enough to make it worth 6s, at least increase the stacks to 10 and make the duration of them 12s so ele can at least keep 20 stacks of vuln up for the weakest most already fulfilled support option there is. - Everyone else has said it and I'll finish off my way too long post with it too, staff water 4 needs to pulse dmg or something. It's bad as it is as it's basically just 1 single itty bitty delayed frost aura proc while chilling in a decent aoe for not long enough. Also a "better in pvp and wvw" skill. I could probably go on but I think this is more than enough. Cheers to anyone who actually manages to read all that! That's all honest, actual feedback on all staff skills after years of playing staff ele.

Honestly, it'd be fine if the new VA was willing to do the lines. Why is she so lazy she can't do the new lines with as much flare as the old ones? Isn't it suppose to be fun recording these lines? Why are they so flat? What are the reasons for this? At least put in some effort when you guys replace voice lines. Some of us do actually care. This whole idea has gone to crud, Scarlet should have your noggins for screwing this up!

10/10 making a worse tempest elite. Letting me give up good heals and sustain every aura, protection, vigor, regen and might inf durations if I rotate right all for a bleh amount of quickness as my unique boon. Missing all this, I also lack any sustain. On top of that I don't deal nearly as much damage with my class "overload" and they don't give as much boons, they don't do any condi dmg. So I'm here to ask after trying this awful class. What's the point? Were you guys only looking at the quickness given? Raw dps if the enemy isn't fighting back? Harbinger can give infinite quickness by existing in a fight. Mechanist can give infinite alacrity by mashing a few buttons. Why is catalyst getting such a short stick? Honestly why on earth do we have to put in 10x more work for 10x less results? No need to even go into much of anything else, everyone else is covering it well enough and I don't want to make this a super long read. The class itself is underwhelming heavily and there's no reason to take it beyond a slight amount of quickness to the group. -Bring a Weaver for some awesome dps. -Bring a tempest to make your entire team in a fractal or 5 man group become as tanky as can be. -Bring a catalyst if you want to contribute less dps and less boons to a fight to give your enemies a fighting chance at wiping your group. When's ele going to get their new elite release? As funny as this joke has been, we're waiting.

Honestly, my only issue with stealth currently is that if you drive your axe into a thief's head while they're in stealth it doesn't automatically reveal them. How can I hit them and still not know they're there? Stealth should be removed on hit like it is in every other game, don't even need to apply reveal after the hit, just remove the buff. Wouldn't fix every problem with stealth, but it would give classes like elementalist a chance at fighting stealth thieves since they (and some other classes) have 0 form of reveal as it currently is. Just spamming AOE doesn't work as it is, thieves can just jump through them quickly or outburst you quickly before the AOE damage does anything, as can most any class that uses stealth for their burst (Hi grenade scrappers!) Painter traps do nothing against deadeye by the way. Why would they need to get close to you? Same with any other class that doesn't need to walk where you were standing. Map reveal still allows 3 seconds of stealth anyway, making more a nerf than a counter. You can still get one shot out of stealth, or at least have the attempt made. Just because not everyone abuses stealth in it's current state doesn't mean it isn't the most powerful buff in the game. Even quickness falls short to what stealth can do. PvE mobs don't reset or even swing wildly against stealth, just stand there blankly and fight after it's over. Is that what ArenaNet expects players to do? It's a much better form of alacrity as it is in PvE. Sure, you can't hit while you're invisible without losing it but that's fine, the mob won't reset and cooldowns tick anyway. Including the skills that put you in stealth. Yay for burst! You can even solo some raids this way, better slow than never right? And yes I've tried thief, along with other classes that use stealth like mesmer and scrapper. I've played a lot of it actually, stealth abuse was the most powerful of any build I've found. The fight is over whenever I want it to be as long as I'm using a stealth skill. Isn't that fun? My proposed change doesn't at all fix the issue stealth has with PvE, but at least those in WvW in those giant open fields of a thieves dreams would be able to have even a chance against it. Thief isn't the only class that can abuse stealth, they just do it the best. Sentries in WvW were changed to nerf stealth on all classes, but sentries die fast and that debuff suddenly doesn't matter anymore after that. Sentries are also marked on the map, making them easy to avoid. That just leaves player reveals to counter it or just trying to outplay the opponent. There's only 4 AOE reveals currently ---Sight beyond Sight which is Spellbreaker only. ---Detection Pulse which is Engineer giving up a utility slot for the toolbelt skill. (yay 1 second of resistance and a long cooldown stunbreak that does nothing else). ---Gaze of Darkness which is Herald only. ---Tainted Shackles which is core necro only (also breaks if any target goes beyond 600 range before it ends) (requires life force to use) Of all these, only engineers has 900 range, the rest have 600 and all are formed around the caster, so hope they're near you. Targeted reveals can't hit characters in stealth making it only a counter play if you already see the character planning to stealth that isn't a deadeye. The cooldown still goes up if you miss that shot though, so that's too bad. I get people don't want their easy mode buff nerfed at all, and I also understand there's also other issues with the game like heavy bunker builds, but the cries for stealth not getting nerfed actually work better on stuff like bunker: Walk away. You can't always do that against stealth, since you never know what direction they're going. Engi has superspeed, Mesmer and Thief have teleports. What exactly are you going to do on guardian or rev against that besides accept death? Sorry for the long post, but stealth IS certainly something that needs to be looked at as it is, and I know that many will hate me for saying it. If resistance negating all condi damage was broken, how is stealth negating all targeted damage and most aoe damage not?