[All effects that provide a percentage reduction to incoming damage have been standardized to stack multiplicatively.]

There are a lot of assumptions here. Some of the damage reduction effects were multiplicative already before the change. This just changes the inconsistent ones. Damage reduction being additive is a really bad baseline to balance from, as we have seen with revenant builds especially.

[Tempest nerf]

I am not sure if this is even a nerf for earth. Many damage reduction effects already stacked multiplicatively. They just standardized the outliers, especially those broken revenant ones.

[I would love to play an elemental mage, not the piano, please?]

23 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

I would argue though that this design is awful. Power Weaver for example doesn't have very strong CC in its primary damaging elements, and in many raids, you have to almost expect the breakbar and break it right then, this doesn't jive well on power weaver because the best CC abilities, in earth element (4 & 5), take 2 attunement swaps to achieve (so you either lose a lot of DPS in anticipation, or miss the CC bar). I feel like I can get more CC out of just about any other damage class I play. Even ones I don't normally raid on like power reaper. 

"Swapping based on the situation" doesn't jive well with how mechanics are written. 

Weaver design is antithetical to swapping based on situation though. It is the least flexible version of elementalist due to the dual attunement system, so of course it's very difficult to swap to CCs when you need them.

[Why are Guard and Necro always top dps]

3 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

He mentioned fractals. In fractals u get 15% bonus dmg by pots which is already 40k and then there is fractal god which is 7% too. 

The boss in thaumanova is Single target and i saw a scourge with 38k dps there just a few days ago. 

Cleave can also be a reason but i think its more like the movement and dodge uptime of other classes is far higher. Its not a secret that scourge can Facetank far more than some other classes. 

 

This described it pretty well. 

Don't forget exposed favoring condi too. That helps increase the dps even more.

[It's not Catalyst, it's Core Ele that's weak]

19 minutes ago, Sarrs.4831 said:

No I can't, but that doesn't mean it's weak, that means that Tempest and Weaver are better than Core. More specifically, that Tempest is better than the other options for a core Ele so there's never a reason not to take it.

If you added additional trade-offs to weaver and tempest to get them to the level of core they would never really see play anywhere. Core ele is really one of the weakest core classes, with maybe core engi being the only one that is at the same level.

[Catalyst rework?]

18 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Fair point about PvP/WvW, but I don't think that we should solely consider it boon support in PvE. As shown, the damage of this skill adds up quite some, even outperforming wells which have damage as their primary function, so that is something to consider as well in that environment.

Maybe the damage in PvP/WvW should be buffed. Not too much, obviously, since you can't have a strong damage tick for 15 seconds on an area. The node denial in PvP would be insane. But 0.01 power coefficient seems too harsh, they should let it tick at least some damage.

The big difference between wells and the sphere is that you only need to stand in a well for 3-5 seconds. Meanwhile you are you expected to stay in the sphere for up to 15 seconds. Massive difference in how stationary you have to be here. 

Let's also not ignore that one is profession mechanic, which also happens to be required for the majority of your elite spec traits to even function properly. There is no real comparison.

[It's not Catalyst, it's Core Ele that's weak]

22 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

The entire core design of elementalist, being able to do literally everything with every build, is holding the class back, imo. Every elementalist build has power damage, has condi damage, has CC, has group healing, etc. Without any investment, just because they use a weapon which every class does in this game anyway.

Perhaps this was the original intent, but what you are describing here is firebrand in the current game, and it much easier to play and better at pretty much anything really. Elementalist builds being able to do everything is a joke in comparison, especially weaver builds with how the dual attunement system locks you out of your utility.

 

I do think that catalyst is intended to bring this sort of versatile play back to elementalist, but the current implementation is lacking to say the least. Perhaps they will do better in the 4th beta. We will see. Either way, core ele needs a lot of work, especially outdated weapons such as staff.

[Is GW2 efficiency reliable in regards to players statistics?]

7 hours ago, Panda.1967 said:

Those two professions being the least popular is not even in the least bit surprising... they are after all the two professions with the most problems and the least developer attention.

When it comes to Revenants, the fact that you can't truly customize your build as a Revenant has a bigger part to do with its lack of popularity than its late addition to the game. As a Revenant, you have the fewest choices to make in your build out of every profession in the game. You pick your weapon and you pick your 2 Legends.... all of your utility skills are tied to your legends, so you have no actual choices in them... your choice of traits is the most involved part of a build on a Revenant, and even that is largely predetermined. They designed each trait line on Revenant with a very heavy connection to one Legend each with the Invocation line being the "general Revenant traits" trait line. As a result nearly every Revenant build out there has Invocation + the 2 trait lines that coincide with their 2 chosen Legends, this even holds true with Elite specs. Afterall, the Revenant was designed alongside Elite Specs and was basically built as if every spec was a separate elite spec.

Engineers... They had potential to be one of the most popular professions in the game, but they had a lot of major failing points on day 1. The vast majority of which still exist today, over 9 years later... Turret skills have been repeatedly nerfed despite the fact that they were one of the most underperforming skill types in the game at launch. Gadgets at launch were absolutely terrible, the effects tied to some of them were so bad that they may as well have done nothing at all, luckily this is one thing that has actually been fixed over the years. Engineer Elixirs have too many similar effects split across multiple skills. Several of them could easily be merged together without being over powered. For example, Elixir S & Elixir R both fill the same general function and would be better served as one combined skill... though without the skill lockout that Elixir S currently has tied to it (that effectively renders the functionality of Elixir S pointless). Engineers choice of Weapons is the most restrictive of all professions, having only 1 mainhand, 2 offhands, and 1 two-handed at core. And then there are Kits... The only part of the Engineer that has been "Good" since day 1... I say "good" in quotations here because it's really a matter of perspective on this one... from the view point of how the skills perform and function, they are great... but from the perspective of how they have affected the profession, they are the worst. Every single poor design decision for the Engineer is because of Kits. The lack of developer attention on issues that have plagued the Engineer since day 1, is because of Kits. The lack of weapon choices? Kits. No in-combat weapon swap? Kits. Turrets low damage? Kits. The odd skill selection on Rifle? Kits. In all honesty, it feels as if Kits were originally meant to be the Class Mechanic for Engineer and then the Toolbelt skills were tacked on in their place after a last minute decision to make Kits be actual utility skills. Had Kits been a class mechanic instead, then it is quite possible that the bulk of Engineers problems wouldn't be problems today. I think ANet had issues coming up with 2 more skill types for Engineer, so they made Kits into a skill type, added a 5th utility to all of them, and then created the idea of toolbelt skills that offered alternative ways to use the selected utility skills. All while neglecting the fact that without Kits as a class mechanic many of the design decisions for the profession just cause problems.

 

To put in perspective how bad Kits are as a Utility vs a Class Mechanic....

As a Class Mechanic, you trade out in-combat weapon swap and gain a limited weapon selection for a powerful class exclusive weapon kit. We likely would have had just a single F1 skill that was a slot-able kit.

As a Utility skill, you trade out In-combat weapon swap, gain a limited weapon selection, and sacrifice a utility skill slot for a class exclusive weapon kit... and if you opt NOT to slot a kit as a utility, you trade out the in-combat weapon swap and gain a limited weapon selection for NOTHING. Without a kit, an engineer has absolutely no reason to have those limitations imposed on them, it literally makes no sense.

Anet literally have the solution for engineer in one of the EoD elite specs, the bladesworn. Kits should function just like the gunblade, but you can instead choose which one you want out of combat like revenant legends. Would be way easier to balance the class like this. They really need to apply reworks to several aspects of some core classes after EoD launch. There are so many neglected things that are outdated at this point.

[Catalyst Feedback Thread]

Possible solutions to the clunky nature of the jade sphere have been discussed here ad nauseum, but we should be looking for ways to make it more fun and unique as well. What if the catalyst's blast combos catalyzed into an explosive reaction? It would be a sort of combo that causes damage and has effects based on your attunement. You could even give it an indicator and a 0.5 second delay like scourge shade skill effects if you want to make it fair.

[Catalyst Feedback Thread]

There is too much wrong with this specialization right now, but let me start with the positives.

 

Positives

-I really like the concept of building an elite spec that is based on making combos more useful again, and the name catalyst fits that perfectly.

-The visuals on the sphere skills look pretty neat, as well as some skills like wind storm and the grand finale skills.

-This is a spec that finally gives elementalists access to completely new effects, and there are plenty. A poison field, quickness, resolution, resistance... You even get to access the rest of the elemental fields on every weapon, potentially expanding versatility instead of inhibiting it like weaver did.

-Speaking of versatility, the empowerment can help any build, which is nice. I especially like that it favors celestial too.

-Most of the traits are really solid and have the potential to be quite strong while not being overloaded, but they are held back by other aspects of this spec. I really like elemental epitome in particular. When I saw this trait in the livestream I was so hyped because I knew the implications. It was what I didn't even know that I wanted.

-Hammer having mixed ranges is nice and has potential to work, but again is being held back by other design issues in the spec.

 

Negatives

-By far the biggest issue is the sphere mechanic. The concept is great, but the execution is abysmal. Development on this has been far far too conservative for it to be of any worth. The PvP version was even split, but why? Even the PvE version would be almost useless there. It's gated behind an unnecessary energy mechanic and a fairly lengthy cooldown while being hammer's only access to combo fields. You cannot move it without having to start from scratch and it feels really punishing to use. It really seems to me that you saw what you did with scourge as an area denial spec and you got demoralized of ele having anything close to that. It's worse in every single way imaginable. You have one area vs 3, it cannot be maintained as long as shades, you don't get an AoE around you, it doesn't do much to enemies... I could go on, but you went out of your way to make sure that it didn't have a single benefit from the quintessential area denial spec's myriad of pros. 

 

-Hammer has some pretty neat skills, but it suffers a little due to various factors. There are a few skills in there that take a tad too long to activate and it has no access to fields on its own. Having no fields would have been no problem if the jade sphere worked in a rational way though. 600 range feels pretty awkward to play with. Would it really be that broken if air and fire were 900 range? Just make it have true hybrid range, the skill animations already work for this. Also, this weapon is very stingy with finishers considering that it has no access to fields. It has 3 blasts and a leap, which sounds good on paper until you realize that their cooldowns are fairly long so they don't really work well with what the spec is trying to accomplish. The core weapons are just way better at providing reliable finishers. The fix for this is easy though. Just make all the whirls into whirl finishers. I am not sure how Cleansing Typhoon, Hurricane of Pain, and Whirling Stones are not whirl finishers. Then you also have the Grand Finale mechanic, which looks fun but is way too punishing with only 5 seconds to pull it off. The lack of combo fields and the grand finale give you pointless things to juggle, which prevents you from actually using your attunements in a flexible way. Instead you need to make sure to do all the busywork instead of responding to the fight.

 

-The Utility skills are all underwhelming. At least hammer has some nice skills in its kit, but there is no utility that I would ever use. These feel as if you split them in half and gated half of them behind spheres. Even if they did not require the extremely clunky sphere I would probably not bother using them. Well, maybe I would consider using the unlockable sometimes, but I am not sure about even that. I am very disappointed that we got yet another uninspired elite skill.

 

-There are not many traits that are inherently bad. Most of them look bad because the sphere mechanic has an abysmal implementation, while it's supposed to hold these together. The only two traits that I think are inadequate are Hardened Auras and Empowering Auras. Just like with the Grand Finale mechanic they take your focus off being flexible. The duration on these is waaaay too short. I get that you want combos and auras to be a core part of the spec, but this is not necessary. You still have to build them up, and even without them there is enough payoff for combos. You get a potentially good aura, a stack of empowerment, and you can even trigger a core aura trait for aura share or boons.

[Rate catalyst]

I thought that it would start out as an average to decent spec based on the preview. However, as of right now I would say that it's so bad that I don't see myself ever using it. A shame, because the concept was pretty solid and workable.

[Do you guys actually use Jade Spheres? (PvP)]

I haven't tried Catalyst in PvP, but from the looks of it from Grimjack's stream the sphere is completely worthless in PvP with all the pointless balance splits. I wouldn't be surprised if even the PvE version was barely usable in competitive.

[Do not make jade sphere wells switch as you switch elements.]

This would basically mean perma quickness in every single catalyst build, even the most glass cannon dps one. No trait investment needed. Watch it there, because even the pet class firebrand cannot do this. 

I happen to think that the attunement swap of the field makes it more versatile and it can fit many more possible builds than just something like this. I would hate to see it go away, and besides if you invest for it the well allows you to achieve perma quickness and pretty good uptime of other boons, while providing access to multiple different fields.

The main problem that I am seeing is that is a bit too stationary and punishing to move. This is one of the primary aspects of catalyst that need to be tested in the beta. The well could probably stand to get some qol in that department.

[Have we seen what the Catalyst trade-off is?]

I don't think that there actually is a trade-off for this spec. Makes me hope that this means that they are looking for core ele additions or reworks in the post-EoD rebalancing. There is no way they did not consider adding a trade-off since they really wanted to make sure to add them to all EoD elite specs.

[For the love of Melandru please make staff a viable option]

I do think that staff needs a bit of a rework. Water is actually a pretty good attunement for use in support builds. However, every other attunement needs a bit of love. Air is definitely the worst attunement of the weapon, and it needs a couple of ability reworks so that it can actually do good power damage, like air is supposed to do on all weapons. This also reduces the huge conjure reliance of dps builds. 

I think earth is pretty decent overall, but maybe it needs a bit more condi there, to enable condi playstyles and hybrid playstyles. Likewise, fire needs burning on lava font, and flame burst reworked into a proper skill. Some will disagree that staff needs more access to condi and I used to be one of the proponents of a pure power approach to staff. However, it is obvious that the hybrid approach is becoming better and better as time goes on, especially on catalyst. If staff doesn't have better condi options it will greatly restrict build diversity and the weapon will stick out like a sore thumb.

 

Of course some cast and aftercast times could have a look at too.

[Catalyst, why give auras on every combo?]

It's to make combos actually matter. Most combos these days are near useless, so you really need to add something good to make them worthwhile.

[I like the mechanics and idea of Bladesworn but what about legendary skins?]

It would be nice if they started releasing new profession visual options in general. Gunsaber skins, maybe a different photon forge, different dragon sphere familiars etc. That would be an other layer of cosmetics to make as rewards and/or gem store items.

[End of Dragons elite spec preview]

7 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

Did I miss something in the preview yesterday?

 

Catalyst has NO TRADEOFF?!?!?!?!?!!!

 

I'm a Necro main and I was pretty pleased with the harbinger spec (even though it had it's downsides - 3utter useless traits (power traits but not a single good power weapon to pair with), and a set of ultra boring utilities). But after the rev, warrior and ele preview I'm kinda shocked.

 

These three specs have like 10 times better design than the first three.

 

I mean: Necro got like 3 weapon skills, 5 shroud skills and 6 super boring utilities, and most of the traits are super boring as well and don't really change your playstyle. And 3 of those new traits are basically unusable.

 

Rev gets 5 weapon skills, and 10 super interesting utility skills, and traits that actually change the playstyle within the new spec

 

Mesmer was pretty interesting to play imo.ore like a caster but even here the playstyle didn't really change depending on trait choices.

 

Warrior gets 7 new weapon skills, and 5 super interesting ammo utility skills with traits that could agument your playstyle

 

Guardian gets the mobility creep, with some pretty interesting utility skills, overall decent design but could need some improvements.

 

And then there's ele. NO TRADEOFF just straight core ele upgrade. Super interesting mechanics/design with a ton of new skills. And I can already see some scary interactions like unblockable meteor showers in WvW.

 

I really hope that the first set of three specs already gets some reworks/improvements for the last beta in early December

 

Core ele is like the worst core class and desperately needs an update. Hopefully, they will add something extra that only core ele has access to, like they did with ancient echo on core revenant. Placing a tradeoff on current core ele is asking for the elite spec to be dead on arrival.

[Rune of Tormenting needs nerf]

You either reduce torment application of certain professions or you do a flat reduction to the healing on the rune. An internal cooldown doesn't really make much sense here.

[For End of Dragons, more than a new elite spec what I want is the ability to swap weapons in combat.]

Nobody cared about weapon swap until we got weaver. Really, a weapon swap is not really needed unless your only weapon is pure melee, and since basically all weaver "meta" builds use sword it's only now suddenly an issue. If the next spec does not do the same, then having a weapon swap will be completely unnecessary. 

[Mindblowing new weapon revelation]

The only mindblowing thing is that people ever thought this mattered. 

[After 9 years core Necro still has bad power options, and Power Harbinger is suffering from that]

Harbinger should not even have a power option, and virtuoso should have no Condi option. These feel shoehorned and a waste of traits.

[Guys, we get stolen so much things by others class but why not conjures ?]

Converting conjures into kits is a perfect example of "be careful what you wish for, or you may just get it". Look at the meltdown that necro mains are experiencing, even though they are getting exactly what they wanted with harbinger. Please think of the consequences before asking for something like this.

[Isn't willbender seem a better weaver ?]

The entire first beta seems like a glass cannon spec beta really. All of these specs have no mention of any sort of support. Now willbender can use the core guard utilities, but whether or not they can afford to with only a minor dps loss is unknown. 

 

[Core Tyria elite specs concepts]

8 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Because you see sooooooo many firebrands in sPvP these days. 

 

Guardian is already one of the few professions where core is genuinely viable in most if not all game modes. They also do trade away the core virtues when taking an elite specialisation. I know a lot of people claim that's not enough, but the real tradeoff is that unlike many other professions, guardian core traitlines are good enough that taking a third core traitline is a genuine alternative to taking an elite specialisation unless you specifically want something that the elite specialisation provides.

The reason you don't see them in PvP is because the numbers were nerfed to the ground in the February 2020 PvP patch. It really doesn't have to do with mechanics. They just forced it to be bad.