Affinity.7253

There is no character animation for the weaver fire/earth scepter skill Fracturing Strike on Asura. Unlike the other races, they just briefly freeze, followed by the idle animation. If running, they just keep running with no animation alteration to it. The other races all use the character animation for Rock Barrier (earth scepter 2), which is also the animation Healing Rain (staff water 5). Is this bug technically a racial PvP advantage? Sure. But let's squash it anyway. It's a noticeable bug that some players will see every minute if they are playing professon/race combination required. Assuming the engine isn't put together with chewing gum and rubber bands, this should probably be a 10 minute fix, if that. Its just applying a pre-existing animation to a skill that was supposed to have said animation in the first place.

I think anyone who has been around for a while has requested or seen a request for some form of (probably paid) race changing. The answer given by ANET as to why this is not really possible is due to the core Tyria story. Since many decisions and choices are made by the player, ANET has come to the conclusion that it would be too challenging to automate a system that reconciles a character and all of the decisions made by them with an entirely different story path. So here is my proposition: When something seems to be too challenging, go back to basics and see what works. In that sense, just let someone remake their character, and reset the entirety of their core story progress. Wipe the slate clean. Wipe clean all of their decisions, all of the paths they took, and plop them back into character creator. They will be able to remake their character entirely, including race and story choices (reserve their name when they do this though). Then, they spawn in to the prologue at level 80 with all of their gear, skillpoints, map completion, non-core story, and everything else preserved. The only thing reset would be their core story progression. Since it has been made clear that the branching core story plot points is the problem, then the easy solution is to just remove it from the character's data. I have also heard the argument about the game being more alt-focused, so why bother? Well, while I and many others have a bunch of alts, we all tend to have a main. A character with 2k+ hours on them. Letting someone make their main character exactly how they want to is a good decision for some player longevity, and having the system in place to be able to reformat any aspect of a character is a good investment for future-proofing the game. If GW2 is going to rise up as the frontrunner MMO, not having some of the account service aspects that most expect from an MMO these days may hurt its appeal.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO OH GOD PLEASE NO NO NO NO. For ONCE, let's let the caster class play like a CASTER. I am SO sick of having elementalist's playstyle dictated and nerfed by using a sword in melee combat. Because THAT'S why I picked this class. To take a sword and get into MELEE. The ABSOLUTE LAST THING we need is yet ANOTHER close combat spec dictating how elementalist gets buffed and nerfed over the next X years. If you want to play around with a greatsword, PLEASE GO PLAY A WARRIOR OR SOMETHING. Let those of us who want to play a caster actually HAVE something!

So the guild archmage set is very similar to the devout set, with the distinct exception of the head piece (and chest piece, but that is still available). Th head piece of the devout set looks like someone vacuum sealed the archmage cowl to our character's head.This is really unfortunate because there are so few good basic hoods in the game. Too many have some weird additions to them or sit funky and make our characters look bald. The guild archmage cowl is just a very solid, basic, hood. So to that end I am asking, no, begging, Anet to add the guild archmage cowl back to the guild armorers! No additional work needed! Just add the armor piece back into the vendor's inventory. It's genuinely one of the best looking hoods in the game.

So this one may be strange to some people. What are soul cakes? That green food that give you expertise and vitality?Yes. Those. This garbage is pure degeneracy.People (toxic trolls) on this form love to give out the non-advice git gud, l2p etc. and predominantly "Just dodge it" to a lot of the newer players, damaging the future of the game in the process. And after years of doing so they still haven't been banned...Anyway, good luck dodging this.This food turns your character misty and mostly invisible. It also seems to turn some of your projectiles invisible. It is nearly impossible to see the animations of someone who has eaten this food. I had the displeasure of fighting an asura who had eaten this and the only thing I could see was a small faint ball of mist. This food effect needs to be disabled in WvW. Provides a huge benefit to classes that have dodge-or-die moves.

Wait... are you joking? I get literally 1 shot by grenade engineers. Hit for 13-15k by that stupid toolbelt skill, usually either killing me outright or leaving me almost dead to a single follow up grenade toss depending on whether I am running mostly zerker or marauder. No one should hit that hard, let alone a class that farts stability and barrier like they ate some bad beans.

Whew, Elementalist almost became playable for a second! Gotta drive that usage back down to its absolutely abysmal level.For real, glad this got fixed.But how about fixing grenade engineers hitting for 15k from stealth (or not from stealth. They shouldn't be able to hit this hard period)? Or how about fixing Elementalist class in general? There is a reason you hardly see any around. Maybe its time to look at that extremely long list of nerfs that were intended to balance weaver damage and made the rest of the class almost unplayably bad?

Forgot to add a new teleport utility. Elementalist is the flimsiest of the scholar classes, AND now has the fewest/worst teleports of them. Elemenetalist NEEDS a newer, better teleport than lightning flash. Even guardians are teleporting more often than the 'wizard' class. wtf

I have been running a mix of things in a vain attempt to survive thief fights. FA sc/f weaver, lightning rod staff tempest (with earth), celestial/trailblazers staff earth/fire tempest, celestial sword/d. The only thing I have not been using much in WvW is d/d. I have only seen limited success w/ FA sc/f. Even when going with celestial staff or sword on tempest or weaver respectively I cannot win against thieves, just make the fights go longer. Even if I get them down to 20-30%, which happens often, one dodge roll and they aren't going to come back out until they are at 80+% health. EDIT: The main reason I have only seen success with FA so far is that it can do some limited counter burst damage while defending, and it has amazing active mitigation with obsidian and swirling winds. Good thieves just get me to use my limited amount of mitigation with their infinite amount of burst (since all they need to burst is initiative and stealth), then reset and bursting after it is spent.

WvW, SPvP, doesn't matter. We all know thief is incredibly broken. Some people deny it because they are... delusional? Or more likely fearful of heavy handed nerfs, some of which are absolutely warranted. Any class that can dump 100% of their stats into zerkers and not see a significant change in their survivability is strong. A class that can pull that can pull that off every time? That is broken. Now I know there are some total ***wipes that brigade this place, responding to all threads mentioning how dominant and oppressively thief are with 'you're bad' 'get gud' etc. Some of these people need to be straight up banned after looking into previous posts and seeing certain actors bullying like this for years... Anyway - how on this green earth do you beat thief as an ele? I just got into WvW seriously for the first time and given my pervious experience in SPvP, I can for the most part see when I make a mistake. I am by no means good, but I am good enough to realize when I made a mistake - when I should have been in another attunement, when I should have approached differently, when I whiffed my attacks into a dodge roll I should have known was coming, when I swapped uselessly putting necessary attunements on CD. I can generally form a game plan (executing it is entirely another matter) for how I CAN beat someone. But not for thieves. never for thieves. I have no plausible concept of how to beat a thief other than 2 things: they don't stunbreak fast enough and I can fresh air burst them down in a single stun (because every one of those arrogant overpowered little bastards is running no survivability stats), or I reflect their super skillful deadeye invis2death combo, and they are dumb enough to keep attacking into my little 3-4 second reflect, instead of just... waiting for a second, returning to invis, then killing me safely knowing my reflect was burnt. And if I have another... well they can just invis again. Or instantly be 2.1k units away. Either way, safe from any repercussion. Either way, the ability for me to win is entirely in their hands. I want to know how to beat them without relying on them not playing well. Does anyone... ANYONE have a build or stratagem that can actually kill thiefs? Not just bunkering until they just walk away, but actually kill them? Because every time I encounter one, they open, I defend. The instant I stop playing defensively and start attacking back (after 1-3 seconds) they are just gone. Usually invisible. Rinse, repeat until I am dead. Lock them down? Most run 3 stunbreaks (shadowstep is 2 in 1). Burst them down? Elementalist's highest burst is either targeted (doesn't work on invisibility) or ground targeted with a delay (doesn't work on the fastest most dodgy class in the game). But what about condi's right? Well, you better have a ton of applications of burning, because you will need to keep reapplying them. Elementalist doesn't apply that many covering condi's over its burns/bleeds. It's just really good at stacking those 2. And WHADDYAKNOW the ever-present invis condi removal from thief IGNORES most covering condis as well, only targeting the damaging condis. And of course, the grand daddy of em all, you cannot kite them. They are faster then you - no matter what. Some classes are straight up stronger than ele in a head to head fight right now. But, with proper kiting you can turn some disadvantaged situations around. Doesn't work on thief. And the age old tip of 'breaking pathfinding to counter steal' is a cute idea, but they do not need steal to do massive damage to you and get away, especially if they have a gun. So if anyone has ANY advice, I will take it. I am at wits end, because it seems like 33% of the damn population I encounter when not in a blob right now are thieves, DESPITE the ridiculous current overturning of rangers. I am so tired of fighting this easy to pickup and easy to play class. Without badmouthing the high end thieves out there, it is INCREDIBLY easy to wreck unprepared/prepared people on deadeye, and its moderately easy to wreck prepared people on daredevil. I would know, because after rolling around on my own thief (who I NEVER pvp on), I was astonished how shallow the entry difficulty was. Just... restealth. Burst and restealth. Over and over again. I have been trying for a few weeks, and I cannot solve this problem. Any advice? Builds? Playstyles? Mindsets? I will take literally anything at all at this point.

I totally agree that staff desperately needs a buff/rework in all forms of the game (PvX) but I think some of the solutions proposed by OP aren't fantastic ideas and pigeonhole staff into a particular playstyle, or are too much of a departure from the core class functionality. From Eilah, I really like the idea of turning fire 3 into basically searing flames - doing what it does now but also dealing massive damage to something if it is already burning. That gives it both condi and power scaling. Second, here is my proposed rework for fire 2: Lava Font - turn your target into a font of lava, turning them into a small fire field and dealing periodic damage to them. (you now need to be facing your target to cast it) Basically, how this would work is just like lava font does now, but instead of being placed, you turn your target into the lava font and the fire field stays centered on their character. To people ABOUT to write how OPOPOP this would be in pvp.... stop. Fire 2 does little damage anyway in pvp after the nerf, so guaranteeing it is fine. For those concerned about how it would make kiting too easy, it cannot be placed behind you anymore, so no. Also, staff has too much reliance on placed fields, which makes it incredibly clunky. SOME place fields is good and fine, but too many is what makes it such a pain to use in non-raid environments. Finally, here is my idea for air 4: Windborn - teleport to targeted area (1200 distance), clear movement impairing debuffs (immobilize, chill, cripple, slow) and grant swiftness (10s) to yourself and all allies that were in the INITIAL area of effect. Base cooldown of 30 seconds. I find it absolutely INSANE that the lowest health and armor class has by FAR the fewest teleports out of the scholars. We have ONE mid range. Even necromancers now have triple that! What on Tyria is going on here?!? Why is the flimsiest class the most starved for movement options?!? So yes, a 30 second (24 if air talented) teleport that removes movement impairing effects. This will let staff elementalists get away from some classes instead of just... having to waddle away from fights going south, praying that earth 4 saves you.

People seem to think I am just sitting there like a pumpkin. I am kiting, I am jumping puzzle-ing. I am running circles and trying to CC. None of it matters. I can cleanse condi after condi. I am either perma chilled and cannot get away, or trying to contest a point. The brief time I am not perma chilled, I get hit by a 4 second stun then a 5 second fear. Then his reaper buddy comes in with another 7-9 seconds of CC and I am way beyond dead. Anyone who seriously says this kind of thing on a forum needs to "git gud" at social interaction. If it was obvious what I was supposed to do against them, then sure, learn from experience. I have been fighting them for weeks and still have no friggin clue what I am supposed to do. They don't visibly have any weakness. The most reliable way I have to kill them is wait till they go lich form, then just reflect their extremely overpowered AAs back at them and watch them 3 shot themselves. But "just have your 25 second condi cleansing cooldown up or die" is not good game design. And no, swirling winds doesn't work. It only lasts 6 seconds. That gives them room for 4 auto attacks afterwards, which is like, 28 thousand damage. I can even roll one and its still 21 thousand damage which is more health than I have. Anyone who says "they aren't overpowered" still needs to answer the question WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OF THEM. For the past day or so I rarely even see holos anymore. Its always 1 tempest with 2-3 reapers and usually a ranger and something random in the last slot.

So a friend and I recently started playing again, and we were having a blast in PvP. We are both switching up our kit routinely during unranked, and started going on crazy winning streaks. All in all we probably went 30ish wins to maybe 6-8ish or so losses. This may be because I picked up auramancer (I am an elementalist) while my friend settled in on a core condi tank mesmer. This probably took us a good deal of the way there admittedly. However, every game there would be a minimum of 1-2 reapers, and usually a holo as well. These guys were our bane. Holo tended to be crazy bursty, but didn't have nearly the same CC or sustained damage output as reapers. We could do nothing against those guys. I seemed to start noticing the same thing happening, I would try CCing them and it would never work. Always immune. Then I would overload with stability trait and get knocked out of it almost every time. Then of course, they have permachill, which may as well prevent you from ever overloading again as it would lengthen the time it would take to 8 seconds or so, and the reaper would kill me in 3-5 seconds if I didn't have any rolls or defenses left. So for real: How do we beat reapers? I have heard before "just CC them" but to both of our observations, that just doesn't work. Even if one goes through, you have stopped a freight train barreling at you for 2 seconds, at which point it just resumes speed. A freight train with >30k hp. This has gotten way worse as the past couple days we logged in, we are finding 2-4 reapers in every game now. We went like 4 games in a row with the enemy team having 2+ reapers. And often our team has a reaper or two as well. Oh and I'm not even going to mention lich form. We all know about that. So does anyone have any helpful advice? (advice beyond gitgud scrub, reaper is top skill class)Based solely on their player numbers in spvp, they are obviously way overpowered, at least in the lower to mid unranked brackets. But just "wait for the nerf" doesn't seem like a good solution.

Like I said in my post, for the same reason there needs to be an archetypical fighter, or ranger, or rougish class. Some people WANT to play this class. Not having it deliberately cuts them out and alienates them. This isn't "attempting to cater to everyone" this is attempting to cater to the core proponents of a fantasy game. Alienating them from a fantasy MMO is ridiculous. Again, like I said in my post - viable non-melee spec. Tempest is functionally a melee spec requiring one to get into melee range with others to be useful. Scepter weaver is in no way viable outside of WvW (or sPvP if you are being REALLY cheeky with a no longer viable spec.) Anet has never once tried to make scepter weaver viable in a broad spectrum, which was fine due to its capabilities in PvP. Now days, not so much. No, you're right it doesn't. However, every non 'Wizard/Caster' spec that is added to elementalist diverts a SIGNIFICANT amount of resources away from keeping the core archetype of play usable. See the current game where sword weaver is completely dominant for proof. Adding a bow even further reduces the chance that Anet can keep the 'wizard' archetype relevant. For the last time... I said in my post already :(. Torch would probably be the best given the circumstances. I am also not sure why elite specs need to keep adding weapons to classes. Not every class needs to be a universalist. I'm sure you could find a reason to give a staff to a warrior. Will it be significantly different from daredevil? Probably not. Making BOTH classes less unique, but even worse, detracting resources from their core archetype. Please don't act like this all happens in a vacuum. Adding any elite specialization to a class will objectively make all other specs worse over the course of the game due to the limited amount of time devs have to work on and update individual previous specs. The theory is that adding an elite spec elevates the class as a whole, which they usually do. But when that elite spec is centered around a completely off brand concept like a bow for a wizard, it diverts the entire class in that direction. Tempest turned every weapon into a melee weapon. Weaver was actually a decent addition, but as time marched on, only sword weaver was kept up to date, pulling the class closer to a melee class. Sorry if this is coming off as combative, but I like this game and I have seen the player base offer up some genuinely poor ideas without significant deeper thought into how those ideas impact the game as a whole, its image, and its place in the MMO landscape. Many of these ideas will only further isolate this game into an obscure niche. Subverting the fantasy tropes is not always 'cool and interesting.' If the core of those tropes don't really exist, you have nothing to subvert. It's just making weird things for the sake of making weird things. Had the core class archetypes of the fantasy genre been fully catered to thoroughly in GW2, we wouldn't be having this conversation. In truth, all Anet needs to do is make sure Ele staff is always viable and interesting. And tanky warrior/guardian are always viable and interesting. And long ranged bow using ranger is always viable and interesting. And sneaky thief is always viable and interesting. These types of core archetypes CANNOT fall into disuse at risk of failing to actually appeal to fantasy fans. That's not even mentioning how tanky warrior/guardians don't even exist in PvE yet. I don't flat out hate the idea of giving a bow to elementalist. It's not my thing, but there's no reason to not have an arcane archer. However, you need to look at the current game and gaming landscape to understand why implementing it here and now is a really bad idea. Anyway that's my bit. Take it or leave it. I would encourage everyone to REALLY think through their ideas before proposing them / combating others. How would they impact the systems in the game. How would they be implemented. How would their implementation effect the rest of the game. etc. EDIT: for clarity

Okay, as an elementalist main this needs to be finally said by someone: The concept of longbow elementalist is fundamentally terrible from a base level and will further alienate an entire subset of people who want to play a game like GW2. Stop proposing longbow elementalist please, for the health of the game. There needs to be a proper (viable) "wizard" class in the game, and right now if someone were to ask me what that is in GW2 I would say go play a different game unfortunately. No other class really holds the "wizard" mantle like ele does, yet it fails to have a single solid spec that isn't functionally a melee spec. The addition of swords into the class was fine so long as they didn't focus on it. This is because it does not generally cater to the type of person who would deliberately seek out this archetype of class. There has been far too much "subversion of expectations" and that is not always a good thing. Is it weird to see a wizard jump around with a sword? Yes. very strange, very unique. Not what people whom are looking to play that archetype want. Seeing a wizard use a bow is even worse. What about staff? It is incredibly finicky to use and I would honestly say is one of the worst general use weapons in the game as it requires the player to be competent with the 'look behind' and 'about face' commands. The fact that it has been terrible for a quite a while is not withstanding. This game needs something to entice a player who wants to play a long range 'Wizard' type character. As someone who can self identify as one of those people, the game is really lacking. Stop proposing longbow elementalist please. Stop making every class a universalist. It detracts from what makes each class unique, and waters down the flavor of each until every class is bland and uninspired. Could you make a longbow elementalist? Yes. Should they do it? Absolutely not. The classes NEED less "subversion of expectations". It makes the game that much harder to get into. The best tank for a long time was a cloth armor wearing magic using duelist. That is not a good thing, and is a large barrier to entry/return. Give warriors a big ol tanky spec. Do the same for guardians. Don't you dare give a bow to your friendly neighborhood wizards. :( Sincerely,All the magic users who do NOT want to use a friggin' bow. We would have picked ranger if we wanted that. EDIT: If the goal is to add every option to every class, then I guess that is okay? But it is ONLY okay to do so once the core archetype the class represents is functioning on a solid level (like, actually receives routine attention from devs) so that seekers of that archetype have an established foothold. Otherwise you are alienating thousands and thousands of people. I would only really feel okay with a bow if the elite spec catered more heavily to the staff or scepter - and at that point, why even bother with the bow? Preferably make it a torch spec, or remove the new weapon 'need' entirely.