[And just like that, Arcane Wave becomes worthless]

2 minutes ago, Leo G.4501 said:

I mean, you could have a redesign of staff with more melee and leaps along with its support while cutting its range and I bet it'd make the weapon better in PvP but...if no one likes staff in PvP, why bother trying to make it more viable by morphing it into a PvP weapon? And you just peeve off players that had something they liked in PvE.  Same deal with Arcane Wave: if it was garbage before, is it better to take something away from one mode to give to another? Why stop at Arcane Wave? Why not make the Glyphs better PvP tools too? Who needs the elementals glyphs, am I right? 

This isn't me defending Arcane Wave tho, just pointing out they've been doing this game of musical chairs for a long time and when you're not winning over as many new players as you did, the shuffling can lose more players than it helps. 

Arcane wave is way better in PvE now btw. Why? Because ele is trash at breakbars.

Of course don't get me wrong. I really want ranged staff ele to be more of a thing, but arcane wave doesn't matter at all for this.

The actual issues that should be discussed is how staff still needs lots of improvements and how there is barely any ranged focus in all the ele elite specs. The latter especially is incredibly important, since it doesn't matter if you have all the ranged weapons and utilities in the world, if your elite spec forces you into melee or simply doesn't work with them.

[Suprise nerf]

57 minutes ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Nah the issue was super obviously the traitline. The weapon was only overperforming on Tempest and Tempest's bloated trait modifiers had already got Hammer nerfed for every other spec. Tempest is by far the easiest Ele spec; it basically having +35% damage for simply existing has always dumb, but that kitten became just straight-up absurd once SotO dropped and it started holding Cata and Weaver's weapon choices hostage.

And here I thought that spec difficulty was irrelevant. At least it seems like it when comparing ele to any other profession.

[Suprise nerf]

32 minutes ago, Serephen.3420 said:

I get you but the weapon really was only good on tepest, it was trash on weaver and a mess on catalyst. Which says a lot about things.

And it still won't be good on those specs. They could have just nerfed some pistol skills and buffed dual skills to compensate weaver. There, done.

But what about catalyst you may ask? The weapon simply does not work with the spec so it's just an irrelevant consideration. And if we are being realistic catalyst has needed a rework since day 1. Who cares really?

[Fractal Rush Event just doesn't feel good anymore [Merged]]

32 minutes ago, Ravenwulfe.5360 said:

Probably because they don't gear every event to vets but try to get new player interest in the game since there has been a spike in new players.

Yes, events for new players that encourage newbies to throw all their fractal progression away with the steep pristine fractal relic costs on the vendor. New players need the infinite potions, so that makes the event vendor useless with these costs, while vets already have all these items. Who is this for?

I remember when the old fractal rush allowed you to use the medallions as the currency instead of automatically converting them into karma. Way more new player friendly. Also, why is the ascended trinket not stat selectable? So many questions for an event that is supposedly for new players.

[Condition Elementalist issues in general]

5 hours ago, HallMonitor.6392 said:

I like the idea of 1 and 2. But I also don't like the idea of flat out nerfing them and instead buffing other utilities so they are better once in a while. The problem is we basically only have one utility worth bringing in pve that isn't "damage" in lightning flash while a lot of other classes often have strong utility which ALSO buffs damage.

You kinda need a bit of both nerfs for condi utilities and buffs/reworks for others. If you buff other utility skills that is great because ele can finally get utility in its kit that is equivalent to other professions. However, if you keep condi utility damage to overtuned levels then the opportunity cost to use other utilities will be higher than other professions, which would still lose less damage by swapping them out. 

[Whoa balance update march 19]

1 hour ago, crosknight.3041 said:

great, got the monkey paw effect with arcane skill update. i wanted it but my god what we're getting is awful. i wanted some of them to be made into support skills, since lack of viable support options for utility skills is a pretty big issue i have with the class in general.

Arcane makes no sense for support skills. If you want that ask for a conjure rework, the skill type that was originally designed to be support oriented and was a complete failure in that regard.

With the arcane changes we at least finally get a CC utility that is not a complete pain to use, with a decent cooldown, charges, and even some mobility.

[CC bars in pve in the current state goes against the philosophy "bring the player not the class" and power budget]

12 hours ago, tiagotatico.6304 said:

it is a huge dps loss on cweaver, you see, this is the whole point, the opportunity cost on the cweaver utilities is huge, you lost around 3k for each utility, if you have to put like ice bow and earth shield for cc you will be raced by boon dps builds, at this point you should simple switch to specter, chrono boon dps, do more cc, more dps, and provide boons

And let's not forget that conjures are among the most clunky skills of the game. Nobody wants to pick up conjures and people avoid them like the plague, constantly asking for a rework.

Ele's severe lack of utility options for its dps build is a well known fact and it's one of the many reasons for the abysmal play rates.

[[PvE] Celestial stats in need of a trim.]

2 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

No it does not work the way I want it to. I want it to follow the power budget balance philosophy that anet detailed. I want stats to be more impactful on damage, healing and survival. I want the % bonuses to be stat dependant by making the % scale off stat / 100 = % or something of that sort. 
Nothing works the way I seem to want it to. AKA nothing works the way anet detailed it was supposed to work. 
The developer has long since left the whole power budget within their philosophy behind and taken lazy aproaches and put "bandaids on bullet wounds". 

I want the philosophy to be held to and the power budget respected for proper balance. Said budget on stat sets would also involve things like stat totals from one stat set to another as strike damage, condi damage, def, survival and healing is budgeted for in regards to balance. 
I agree with a trim because I do not feel that stat totals are being bugeted for across stat sets. 
This is my own opinion as I quite like the balance philosophy and power budget that the developer detailed. 

You are ignoring damage modifiers and exponential scaling. For example a pure power dps weaver gets at least +50% in damage modifiers at any given time, and even more in some moments of a fight. This means that the effectiveness of all berserker gear stats get 50% more value at the very least. To top of this ferocity is nearly useless without lots of power and precision, so it's a wasted non-stat in cele gear. You need the three stats in large quantities as they empower each other. 

But yes, having higher numbers in your stat sheet obviously matters more because you said so. The stats are higher so that the power budget is similar due to how traits work. If it had a similar stat total it would be a completely worthless set.

[Legendary Relics are Coming Soon]

2 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Very good way of putting it. I got full legendary so I can just play the game, whatever I like in it. Not what the devs just released and think I should play. There is WoW for thaf type of game and honestly its better in all aspects but the gear grind.

Yes, beating an easy boss without dying is now a grind apparently. There are almost no relic achievements that are even close to being a grind. I guess the word has lost all of its meaning for some people and they just throw it around for anything they don't like. Somehow I got the vast majority of SotO relics the first time I went through the story and then had to backtrack a little to get a few with non-grindy activities. What a travesty to have to do some content at some point.

[[PvE] Celestial stats in need of a trim.]

31 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

For the record...

I do not think Cele is some OP super strong game ending stat combo in any given game mode. I beat celes in WvW with non cele geat and I have used cele on my own builds and know it's shortfalls.

That said I see value in normalizing the stat totals of 3 stat, 4 stat, and cele gear. Whether that means buffing 3 stat gear a lot, and 4 stat gear some, or nerfing cele and 4 stat gear to the totals of 3 stat gear, or nerfing cele and buffing 3 stat gear to match the totals of 4 stat gear I don't care. Making them the same total amount of stats is probably the right thing to do in the end irrespective of the way that is manifested. Personally, I think the best approach there is to buff 3 stat gear and cele down both the the 4 stat gear totals. Just buffing 3 and 4 stat gear to the amount of cele would make the game trivial, and nerfing cele and 4 stat gear to the level of 3 stat gear would be too much of a de-creep.

If you make them the same amount of stats then almost everyone will run 3 stat gear and gear with more stats types will be pointless.

It is a known fact that stacking more of the same stats is superior due to how traits and other multipliers work, leading to exponential gains. Investing into additional stat types almost always makes your build worse, except for a very few niche cases. This is why 4 stat gear has a higher stat total. If this wasn't true nobody would ever use 3 stat gear, and yet it's used fairly often.

[Buff/Rework Staff when?]

5 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

projectiles need a velocity increase and skill cast times need reducing across the board. ele staff skills are awfully slow for current standards

as far as pve is concerned, staff power dps is a bit behind sword/warhorn. it mainly revolves around key skills: fireball, lava font and meteor shower (and pyroclastic blast for weaver)

• fireball: heavily spammed mediocre skill with a massive windup/cast time that makes it difficult to use. has bizarre ability to whiff despite not being blinded (due to slow projectile). desperately needs the speed buff (velocity & cast time)
• lava font: carries staff power dps. not in much need of pve buffs other than shuffling the dmg ticks to hit a bit sooner
• meteor shower: the current value of this skill is held back by its excessively long cast time. since its usually cast in relative safety, i feel like shaving a whole second off from cast would change little other than letting the ele get back to throwing fireballs/doing other things sooner. meteors could also fall faster
• pyroclastic blast (weaver): lava font v2. doesnt need much other than the aforementioned velocity increase and cast time reduction

straight up dmg buffs to these skills are welcome but are probably less of a priority

the other dmg skills (ice spike, lightning surge, eruption, all weaver dual attacks) do need pve dmg buffs. most are barely any better than just spamming fireball

• eruption: cast time should just be removed (similar to lava font/frozen ground) due to its long delay. making it an ammunition skill could be interesting
• chain lightning: ability to bounce back to the first target should be removed and compensated with dmg buffs (staff air doesnt have much dps anyway)

the poor breakbar capability on staff has been pointed out multiple times. gust has too long of a cooldown for its current effect. static field at least should do something on initial placement to justify the cast time

I agree with many of the suggestions here, but I would like to add a bit to this.

Meteor Shower: Overall a good suggestion but an alternative way to change it would be to increase the cast time to 4 seconds and make all the meteors fall within the cast. Just burstier but riskier to use than your suggestion.

Eruption: I'd prefer a smaller delay rather than getting rid of the cast. This thing is just impossible to not walk out of even with the cripple.

Static Field: Rename it to lightning burst. A large lightning burst strikes the ground, doing decent damage, 5 stacks of vulnerability and stunning enemies for 2 seconds (daze instead in PvP), then the static field appears in that area.

Burning Retreat: Reduce PvE damage to the point where it's not worth using in a rotation. Should be used for evading and positioning first and foremost instead of cheesing dps golems.

Unsteady Ground: Useless CC against most bosses. I feel that this and guardian's line of warding should get some work done for this purpose. Haven't thought of what exactly as of now. 

Shock Wave: The way this skill functions is very clunky. Elevation can completely negate the skill much more than any other projectile skill because it's underground. Also being negated by reflects and projectile destruction is very unintuitive for an underground attack and adds yet another weakness to it. Definitely shouldn't be both an underground attack and a projectile. I'd prefer if it was just a proper projectile so we don't get negated by elevation. 

 

One thing that I'd like to point out is that the current design of conjures is very likely holding staff changes back big time. Staff has always been the kind of weapon where you had a small amount of really strong damage skills and everything else sucked. What made it work is that conjures covered the gaps. These days it's not as pronounced because there have been nerfs to staff and conjures. However, I think Anet may be afraid of the possibility that staff ele gets too much damage while spitting out utility from oher attunements.

In a vacuum increasing the damage of non-fire attunements is completely reasonable since the damage is usually far too low even if you consider the utility, especially with the power creep that other builds/professions have received. Still, if they overshot they could potentially have a monster of a build with good utility, range, AoE and damage that is never has to be traded even if using the utility, especially now that non-CC staff utility has seen buffs.

Perhaps we should get the long overdue conjure rework before getting the work that staff needs. That way you won't have conjures closing those damage gaps in non-fire attunements and then damage buffs can be given to their skills. I should probably revisit the conjure design yet again and suggest a rework idea. Thinking of opening a thread.

[Can you add something on this class that doesn't require extended mental gymnastics?]

4 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

They actually built the solution right into it with the Unravel skill.  The problem is you shouldn't have to waste a utility slot to access it.  It should just be an F5.

An f5 isn't needed. Just make reattuning into a single element not subject to the global attunement cooldown. You are still slowing down your overall rotation with that a bit because a global cooldown would be reapplied anyway so it probably wouldn't be OP.

[Can you add something on this class that doesn't require extended mental gymnastics?]

6 hours ago, nuggetjr.6571 said:

If they took on the design philosophy that difficulty translates to higher damage potential, it wouldn't need to scale linearly. If say ele is 2x harder, if it just did 10% more damage, many people would be happy to play it. However, I don't think all ele specs are really hard. As a primarily pvper, imo, Weaver slow access to offhand skills should be rewarded a lot more than it currently is. A tempest in most cases seems a lot simpler and slow to play and probably shouldn't have that potential of a weaver. 

 

A good start would be getting comment from balance team on the philosophy around difficulty and feasibility to execute a build and balance intent based on that.

Also, if they intend to try to move the other way and make harder professions easier to execute (I hope they don't...).

It should also be noted that tempest carries a lot of risk and opportunity cost when overloading. That should be taken into account as well. The main reason why elementalist should be more rewarding than it is now is actually risk vs reward rather than something like APM. Ele simply has a lot of aspects to it that are either risky or have the potential for huge failure.

[Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Elementalist]

1 hour ago, Redfeather.6401 said:

I really think this weapon would be SO GOOD if it removed the auto attack and was made into an offhand. We just don't have a spammy ranged offhand for anything. Dagger/Pistol or Sword/Pistol would feel so different than anything ele can do right now.

I agree with this. It really wouldn't overlap at all with any offhand that ele has. Ele has no pure condi offhand, or even a real ranged one for that matter.

Focus is ranged but barely has any attacks on it, with one of them being melee anyway. Warhorn has some very weird hybrid ranges, with some melee, mid-range and ranged moves. Dagger is melee. Let's just get what we lack, especially if the implementation is easier than a mainland that has autos and 6 dual skills.

[It would be nice if boon share range was increased as QoL in pve content for some specs]

3 hours ago, Angesombre.4630 said:

At first I didn't feel like replying, but the pure balance you're talking about is harder to balance between just a buff and a buff coupled with an attack that's still pretty strong.

I agree that the area could be larger, but at the same time it's still a good damage skill if you have a larger radius like the fire overload. You'll be farther away to launch this attack, so you'll take fewer risks. Then, with a trait, you can have stability.. I'm not saying that everything's perfect, but I think that a small increase in radius wouldn't be out of line, without being too excessive either.

The thing that could be done eventually is, as with the scourge, to have a line that covers the area without increasing the damage too much, for example, or the renegat alacrity.

Elem's shout skills have a range of 600, though.

You do have a point, but it should be noted that boons still happen while you are attacking with many other skills. Examples include using a skill that is automatically pulsing them at all times or if you are using something like a mantra or a shout with no cast time. In addition, overloads happen to be some of the largest opportunity cost skills in the game. 4 seconds cast time plus putting your attunement on 20 seconds cooldown in a world where Anet wanted to remove tradeoffs from specs. It's such a hefty cost that overload water barely ever gets use even in heal builds, just because of the massive tradeoffs.

You can at least get stability if you sacrifice things that other supports don't have to sacrifice, but then again bladesworn gets a bigger area on their dragon trigger and they get stability plus aegis for free. Not to say that they are directly comparable, but it does show that it is reasonable to give high risk skills some form of protection.

 

Also support tempest has no room for more traits. You can't even take your heal and alac traits at the same time. Any support radius increase would have to be baseline, even if they have to make it separate to the damage, which I am really not convinced should be as tiny as 180 anyway.

["Conjuring Weapon" skills]

Make them function like spirit weapons so ele finally gets a decent set of core support utility skills.

[It would be nice if boon share range was increased as QoL in pve content for some specs]

Look at fire overload's 180 radius might generation. That is your amazing reward right there for pulling off a 4 second cast time skill! 

Meanwhile another profession that will not be named simply keeps pulsing everything at a 600 radius without even the opportunity to be interrupted. I see nothing wrong with this. Pure balance. 🤣

[Pistols Grant Elementalists the Choice between Greater Damage and Defense]

Scepter is more of a hybrid weapon. It's just that the power side is probably a bit undertuned in numbers.

Staff is the ranged power weapon an we all know how undertuned that is.

[Siege turtle gets projectile improvements, but still nothing for staff ele.]

4 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Realistically you can only use 1-2 of those at most. Most CC phases only last ~5s at maximum, while the cooldown between Attunement switching is ~2s. 

Most staff cc doesn't even work on bosses at all since many of them are stationary during cc phases. It's a really outdated weapon.

[Staff Warriors Bring Frontline Support to the Heat of the Battle]

5 hours ago, AllNightPlayer.1286 said:

Great, another melee weapon for warriors. In the meantime, my bunker/support warrior doesn't know what to do with either bow or rifle.

At least warrior mains signed up for a melee profession in character creation, unlike say elementalist.

[I have too high hopes for Pistol...even knowing I will be disappointed]

On 10/18/2023 at 3:01 PM, scerevisiae.1972 said:

At this point I wouldn't be surpised if pistol were yet another melee weapon.

I mean, making hammer a melee weapon was such a screamingly obviously bad idea but they did it anyway. 

Even if it's ranged weapon you will end up playing melee most of the time because catalyst and tempest enforce melee no matter what your weapon choice is. Weaver doesn't force it at least but it definitely favours it.

[Wizard Vault - Help you solve problem]

Or they can just give you tasks based on which expansions your character has been in. For example, treat your account as an HoT and PoF only account if you haven't been to EoD and SotO yet, even if you own all the expansions.

[please make the new essences depositable!]

Putting them in material storage would be okay but they don't need to be in with the currencies. Just craft the amalgamated Kryptis essences every time you have enough for one instead of hoarding 20k essences. This is literally common sense. 

[A Msg To GW2 - Heal Tempest Buffs]

I am not sure why all overload cds need to be the same at 20 seconds. Can't it depend on the overload and its effectiveness? Rethinking this could especially help overload water.

[signets pvp rework]

13 hours ago, Bast.7253 said:

This would just delete catalyst in general. 
 

Stability is the #1 reason why catalyst works. Quickness is nice but it’s locked to one element plus an energy cost. 

Well, if we are being honest catalyst does need to be deleted and reworked anyway. It has enormous design issues that are apparent in every single game mode. Can't get worse than that design wise.