Mega.5791

Nice troll. I checked twice before realizing there's nothing. Last post from A-Net on balance was from June. I've been hearing some rumors about changes, but I haven't seen anything truly describing the changes. All I've heard so far is something like (Thief nerf, Holo Nerf, Elementalist Nerf, Necro Nerf?) Specifics aren't clear. It's not even clear if this is legit. (From my perspective) Hopefully someone will come in and confirm a date or even generally what they are doing for balance. I am sorry... :lol:

Check the thread of Upcoming Balance Notes in the Professions subthread! :smile:

You can also use Swirling Winds for that. No reflect indeed, but longer duration. And also without that triggering 0.5s (!!!) Protection. :lol: (€: Yes, I know about the boon duration extension. The value just looks so awful.) I kind of like warhorn though indeed. Sneaking up with it and bursting wit Lightning Orb is fun on zerker builds. :D But competitively and on support builds, focus is the only choice in higher level PvP. It's actually around 5 secs of protection xD (...) Yaah, the duration gets increased by 2 (or 3) seconds right with the skill. And then some concentration in Tempest, boon duration and you have solid numbers. I just hate seeing this 0.5s in the skill description. :lol: I am currently trolling with warhorn too, some of the weapon skills are huge fun indeed! Lots of lingering AoE fields, rather versatile - it is simply too slow and can usually be avoided easily and the lack of defense lets several classes hardcoutner you. :disappointed: I think some cast times would work wonders on the usability of warhorn in PvP... but I fear that's far down the list on things needed for better PvP. And, well, rightfully so. I swear right now on ele, they really need to redo or improve a lot of the skills on scepter, warhorn and staff to make them competitive at higher ends. Infact even warhorn isn't as bad as say staff. And this is just the weapon skills... lots of other stuff needs attention tooHehe, you are totally right about staff. It is such a PvE weapon, and even there it is not really strong anymore due to the nerfs of all those AoE effects. I mean, some weapons are okay to be subpar in certain game modes, but staff really could use some QoL changes. Has been like that for, like, forever - looking at you, Shock Wave, not hitting anything since 2012!

You can also use Swirling Winds for that. No reflect indeed, but longer duration. And also without that triggering 0.5s (!!!) Protection. :lol: (€: Yes, I know about the boon duration extension. The value just looks so awful.) I kind of like warhorn though indeed. Sneaking up with it and bursting wit Lightning Orb is fun on zerker builds. :D But competitively and on support builds, focus is the only choice in higher level PvP. It's actually around 5 secs of protection xD (...)Yaah, the duration gets increased by 2 (or 3) seconds right with the skill. And then some concentration in Tempest, boon duration and you have solid numbers. I just hate seeing this 0.5s in the skill description. :lol: I am currently trolling with warhorn too, some of the weapon skills are huge fun indeed! Lots of lingering AoE fields, rather versatile - it is simply too slow and can usually be avoided easily and the lack of defense lets several classes hardcoutner you. :disappointed: I think some cast times would work wonders on the usability of warhorn in PvP... but I fear that's far down the list on things needed for better PvP. And, well, rightfully so.

You can also use Swirling Winds for that. No reflect indeed, but longer duration. And also without that triggering 0.5s (!!!) Protection. :lol: (€: Yes, I know about the boon duration extension. The value just looks so awful.) I kind of like warhorn though indeed. Sneaking up with it and bursting wit Lightning Orb is fun on zerker builds. :D But competitively and on support builds, focus is the only choice in higher level PvP.

By "meta specs" you maybe referring to the PvE "optimal builds" which people are running in raids and fractals? Those ones with Guardians with 12K HP playing against punching bag NPCs with dismal A.I. and entirely predictable patterns? Those builds don't work in PvP. Symbolbran uses mender: low crit chance with 0 ferocity: mediocre dps. It's role is mainly support/tank (and they aren't even the best at that, currently), with most of the traits and skills devoted to make the healings from aegis and pulses to work (which barely do after all the nerfs). On the other hand, if you run Honor 1,3,2, and Virtues 1,2,1 replacing Zeal and wielding carrion you get better burst than physical based symbol Guardians: despite the lower physical damage you'll proc burns like crazy, and cleans doesn't matter that much since you're constantly re-aplying the burns. Works better with core and DH, of course: Firebrand braces too many things for his own good. So your meme build is better than core symbol guard, which is probably by far the best side noder for ranked? FYI the meta symbol guard build you are talking about uses Sage amulet, and is, SURPRISE, a hybrid relying on burn procs from symbols and shattered aegis, retal, and a bit of power damage in between. Most people I encounter use mender's amulet though. I suppose burn procs don't do enough without cover conditions at some level and the additional sustain makes more than up for it. €: On topic, there are many many builds able to do much more damage in these cases. It is simply unrealistic. Mender's amulet doesn't dish out more damage. It's a little bit more tankier, but Sage is still better. Hybrid is the only way for guardian right now. Also, the role of symbol core guard is mostly side noder, which it performs quite well up until plat 1 ~2. > (...)No no, mender's does not dish out more damage. But when those single stacks of burn do get cleansed quickly? Then it actually might. The main advantage, as you say, is significantly more sustain of course. I guess it is dependant on the compositions, if you might get +1ed more often, if you might have to get into team fights, which enemies you have on sides and stuff. Both seem to be viable up to average plat though in my experience (my statistics about seeing more mender's is surely not empirically relevant, I admit).

By "meta specs" you maybe referring to the PvE "optimal builds" which people are running in raids and fractals? Those ones with Guardians with 12K HP playing against punching bag NPCs with dismal A.I. and entirely predictable patterns? Those builds don't work in PvP. Symbolbran uses mender: low crit chance with 0 ferocity: mediocre dps. It's role is mainly support/tank (and they aren't even the best at that, currently), with most of the traits and skills devoted to make the healings from aegis and pulses to work (which barely do after all the nerfs). On the other hand, if you run Honor 1,3,2, and Virtues 1,2,1 replacing Zeal and wielding carrion you get better burst than physical based symbol Guardians: despite the lower physical damage you'll proc burns like crazy, and cleans doesn't matter that much since you're constantly re-aplying the burns. Works better with core and DH, of course: Firebrand braces too many things for his own good. So your meme build is better than core symbol guard, which is probably by far the best side noder for ranked? FYI the meta symbol guard build you are talking about uses Sage amulet, and is, SURPRISE, a hybrid relying on burn procs from symbols and shattered aegis, retal, and a bit of power damage in between. Most people I encounter use mender's amulet though. I suppose burn procs don't do enough without cover conditions at some level and the additional sustain makes more than up for it. €: On topic, there are many many builds able to do much more damage in these cases. It is simply unrealistic.

Focus has a lot of defensive and support capabilities - mainly projectile hate. The second big reason ist the fire aura. Fire traitline gives cleanses on auras and aura transmutation. It also gives a lot of fire auras itself, but only focus gives you the tranmutation skill which means a lot of cleanses.€: The invulnerability is not bad either, but a weapon skill with 60s CD? Well... :lol: Warhorn is generally more offensive and especially slow. There is some nice CC, but when you play a healer, the damage skills won't help you much. Also the magnetic aura skill is no aura skill, you cannot transmute there (noone knows why). Warhorn can be used in meme builds, for support builds and generaly when cleansing with fire traitline is a thing, there is hardly a way around focus.

Big ol' bomb has a THREE second fuse time and 1/2 a second cast. Toss elixir is THREE seconds of stealth. Pressing W counters this entire strategy. Big Ol' Bomb also does like 15 damage when critting. :wink: I guess his main focus was (or should be) EE + Grenade Barrage. Which in WvW I am sure can still hit for 20k easily from stealth and is actually instant without any warning. Would like to see some screenshots here.

It is not the build diversity. This actually has increased since before the February patch. I totally agree on that. However, the fact that there were no real changes since then (except quick fixes for example on condi rev) and the pace of adjustments has reduced even further since then, that is the main issue for most people. We,, for me at least. Nothing shakes up the meta anymore, no fundamental changes, no truly new builds coming back (or holo finally getting the mirage treatment).

I don't want the stuff end up as outfits that cannot be mixed with other skins.I couldn't care less about the U.S.A.'s past agenda of breaking words to make printing cheaper. Got it, nevermind me then. I totally agree about making more armo(u)r!

Depends on whether you write (or speak) in BE or AE. Hence the joke "americans are getting rid of u" or something along those lines. (Hoping that's why you put that word in bold.^^)

Could static shield get the shocking aura treatment? Like only stun oce every 2 seconds or (accounting for the shorter duration) 1.5 seconds or so? It shuts down any team fight AoEs instantly even with stability on. Ah, well. There are so many things on holo in need of tweaks/nerfs/changes, this might coma later on the list. This one even got buffed last patch after all because... uhm... noone used shield? :lol:

Finaly someone realized the actual issue with tempest, @Lord of the Fire.6870. It was the changes to the fire traitline, leading first to fire weaver, now to support tempest being able to spec into aura share without sacrificing AoE cleanses. Guess Anet will change shocking aura. :lol: Good thing is, this will happen in a year or so, when the next balance patch comes and gives holo another sneaky buff. €: Kinda sad, I got cynical over the last few months. I abandoned PVP some weeks ago too, after a long time of optimistic arguments.

It will be fixed with the Full Counter visual bug. :lol: Also get rid of the "instant cast" bug being able to change the AoE area.

Talking about warriors, I like how they couldn't fix the FC visual bug and as a solution just made them unplayable. :smile: LR weaver can be dealt with after looots of other issues.

Not a major issue at the moment...?

While aura share is surely one problem, it is not the problem. They should not just change support tempest and then wait another six months watching whether holos still dominate. Yes, change support tempst. As suggested in other threads: the possibility to mass cleanse in fire was the cause. Make that more egoistic or force support tempests into earth with other changes. And then delete all those ridiculous holo traits and adjust grenades. Holos would be just as strong if FB were in tempests place or there would be no support at all.Just like thief has always been strong in almost any meta. None of your arguments pointed out how those three enable thief to be strong - which build used to hard counter thieves except a side node heavy meta (looking at you, spellbreaker, but you would be weak no matter how strong or weak tempest/reaper/holos are)?

I heard Dota is so much better than LoL because you can deny kills. So make it possible to stomp your allies to not give them the satisfaction of showing off their finishers!

No, that literally does nothing but butcher DPS ele specs even further and is nearly irrelevant for healer tempest. The issue with tempest is SHARED shock aura(WATER - healer trait that a DPS tempest wouldn't take) and GLYPH OF RENEWAL which is also something a DPS tempest wouldn't take. I respectfully disagree. Shared shocking aura has never been a problem until this meta formed. Shared stability would easily fix this problem but they put everything on a 60s cooldown. Most people would rather take a low cooldown stunbreak. Counters to shocking aura clearly exist within the game, but is not utilized because the professions or builds that make use of shared stability are not good enough to be considered meta. You can't counter a reflect or projectile block other than to not attack. Tempest would get pooped on by lb ranger if their projectile defense wasn't so over-tuned. Reducing the uptime on auras will affect dps ele very little. Weaver makes no use of it. Core d/d would maybe be affected most by shocking aura but its 1 second less. DPS tempest spams air overload so the uptime is already very high. I could be wrong about all of this, but at least I am not complaining about any change that could affect dps ele without looking at the real reason dps ele doesn't work in the first place.The issue with the new shocking aura abomination is: Support tempests used to have no other option to cleanse than the other water grandmaster trait, cleanse on regeneration. Now, since they can drop earth and get great AoE cleanses on auras with fire, they could switch to aura share. Yes, hate me, fellow eles, but the cleanses added to fire made ele much more imbalanced as a whole - fire weaver was another abomination caused by this exact thing. The issue was not the damage, the issue was the strong defense coupled with it. They nerfed the damage... For support tempest they need to nerf the fire traitline (make it more egoistic for example) or make earth viable (someone suggested offensive boon hate). Guess they will nerf water (just plain nerf the aura share duration). :lol: Which would still be better than shocking aura nerfs, because it is desperately needed for other builds... €: Also /signed @Widmo.3186. :smirk:

This "fight on point" is a very, very bad advice btw. To answer your question, fall back to your spawn/close and wait for your team to respawn. I see. So why does everyone seem to think that is the best advice? It makes sense to regroup but what do I do if every player scatters? You gotta figure out whats the best place for you to be, which really depends on what the other team has done after wiping yours and their team comp I think the best answer is to move where you can decap a point What ppl do wrong ia tunnelvision their enemy home while the other 2 points remain uncontested as your team 1v3 home and when you close to get the kill their whole team arrives and wipe yours again Can you give some examples? The team comp thing doesn't make sense because a wipe is a wipe. So, like, what should one do after a team wipe and they have a bunker rev?It really depends on what you are playing. I guess guard according to your profile pic? If you are a thief (or any other +1 build with decent mobility, some disengage, kite potential), it is absolutely possible to run far and draw one or two people with you. This way, your team (which hopefully consists of some team fighters) can outnumber close and/or you can make it an even fight on mid.--> I think no guard build should do this though. They are usually too slow. When you are a support build, you should generally run home. Necros are slow, kite to close, don't try to hold the point (usually). Supports just as well, though they might be able to troll the point long enough for respawn to arrive. As was mentioned already, don't risk dying though.--> This goes for most guard builds I guess. Support FB at least, you will get focused on point, so kite around it. Some builds like scrapper, weaver, bunkery side noders used to be able to stall the enemy on their way to close so your team could bleed out and respawn in time.--> Maybe this core bunker guard can do this and survive with Renewed Focus? Not sure about DH either. Some trolling with teleports can work. Does this help a little? It is very situational and depends on your build. Telling us that would be helpful. :tongue:

A few notes about tempest and aura share. Earlier, support used to play with water and earth traitlines. What happened? Two things: The power damage got kind of reduced. This made earth less necessary, protection is not a very important buff anymore with auras.Ele got access to mass condi cleanse in fire. This allowed to trait fire instead of earth for condi cleanses and only enabled using aura share.Now I won't suggest to increase power damage or make tempest mor vulnerable to it. If caught off guard, it is still deadly. But earth needs some improvement to specialize - as @Leonidrex.5649 mentioned, maybe boon rip would be an idea. Maybe more soft CC like cripples or cover conditions. Or else this could be solved by changing the condi cleanses on fire. I know, many eles have asked to be able to switch away from water, but the current situation shows, water is simply too strong in support overall. Make it not affect the team, but only the ele itself - a solo-focussed choice? Reduce the cleanses somehow, not affect other auras than fire (which would mean, weaver could benefit from it by constantly switching to fire, but core and tempest would get serious nerfs)? These are the problems and changes in the whole game and ele traitlines which enabled the current CC spamming. Will it be addressed? Sure, but I doubt it will be in any meaningful or interesting way, but rather some ICD here, some cooldown increases and some number changes. On another note: Revive glyph is another abomination which I hope gets deleted, maybe ele will already be nerfed enough and make support FB more viable just like this. The current revives combined with port and/or invulnerability is simply horrible for both the player (in my view, at least) and the enemy team.

That ele afk on close in the last fight, making mid a 3on3... what the heck... :lol: Fun stuff, keep it coming! I like you showed full fights instead of cherry picking tiny clips.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_Earth would like to have a word. :lol: I don't see any real hate against DE anymore to be honest. It is still unfun to play because of looong stealth duration (can you move or do you need to protect your point? Do you need defensive skills at the ready?). But as you say, the damage is not that high anymore, so it is made kind of weak enough to not get too annoyed anymore. Just... well, unfun. I would actually prefer it having high single target damage but significantly less stealth/defense (why condi cleanse on the jump?). I prefer that over the current situation which is often just plain boring. I guess it would become too much of a noob filter though.

There is a really easy fix to this which i really dont get why its not already a thing... Give everyone 1 amulet to use that has split stats. Runes can stay the same, same as sigils. "But build divercity?!" - You still have traits to control how tanky or suport like your build is.Now damage and healing can actually be balanced. We currently have a system where you can min>max defence and damage. Which causes huge problems where someone can be 100>0 from 1 or 2 skills. This way (providing balance is actually done) tank builds can be kept in check, they would only be as tanky as the traits they pick rather than the Amulet and traits. Balance can never be achieved when players can exploit builds that abuse traits and stats combined. Unless they manage to really pull it off on the next balance patch. I am not sure what you mean. Like everybody has to use celestial amulet (or something similarish, less tanky)? That doesn't sound very exciting and less creative indeed. But no discussion needed: While I would be willing to try it (with various stat combinations), it will never ever be implemented.