Mega.5791

So, how do you consider the vigor amount of your main profession, taking into account mirage relies on dodges to survive and to do damage, and ele doesn't? Well, S/D weaver basically doesn't have vigor...? Except some random 3s procs when being hit in water with a 10s ICD? Tempest is different of course, giving AoE vigor on auras. Also, how does mirage rely more on dodges to survive than ele? PvP Elementalist throughout the history of GW2 have always been defined by their capability to completely resustain damage through self healing in ways PvP mesmers just don't. Even the current Chronobunk that won the EUMAT, which is a top tier survivable build with blocks and invulnerabilities and protection just can't heal from near death to full as quickly and as many times mid fight as any meta elementalist build have been able to. That's their point, that active mitigation means more to mesmers because they have far less self healing capacity. That's typically the class asymmetry between the light armors. Mesmers avoid a lot, Elementalists heal a lot, Necromancers are bullet sponges through pure health pool. I don't think it's weird to describe that as a fundamental philosophy Arenanet has for the professions. + So, how do you consider the vigor amount of your main profession, taking into account mirage relies on dodges to survive and to do damage, and ele doesn't? Well, S/D weaver basically doesn't have vigor...? Except some random 3s procs when being hit in water with a 10s ICD? Tempest is different of course, giving AoE vigor on auras. Also, how does mirage rely more on dodges to survive than ele? What Mort said.To add to that s/d weaver has a lot more evades on weapon skills than mirage. And you've the arcane vigor trait if you choose it.On tempest you've the vigor trait which you referred too. So, considering this do you think ele vigor is okay too, needs a buffs, needs a nerf? How did we end up discussing vigor...? Anyway. 1) I do think ele needs (relative) buffs, but I wouldn't add vigor. I want more reliable damage. 2) I will not talk about tempest vigor, because... yaah, that's absolutely off-topic. 3) Mesmer has distortion, blocks, stealth, teleports. Just buying time for kiting, mesmer is quite powerful. S/D ele can't even attack from range... 4) Concerning importance of dodges: If you don't dodge key skills, you are dead - with mesmer as much as with ele. Only difference: Ele dodges can be baited while mirage's... well, can be avoided (due to still existing mirage cloak during stuns). I know baiting dodges and fake casting is much less important today, because what the heck, just cast the skill, it's going off CD quicker than endurance regeneration anyways lol, but it is a disadvantage. So you could view it quite differently: Ele needs impactful dodges (or evade skills) to be able to make use of the healing at all. Healing power only helps over time. Mesmer - especially mirage - has evade skills, more vigor and distortion for avoiding bursts. My conclusion for mirage:I would have been happy if condi mirage could have kept more vigor outside of chaos. Instead deciding between offensive dodges via ambushes for clones or defensive ones like dodging during CCs. But I guess reducing vigor was the easy way out. My conclusion for weaver:Please don't buff it by adding vigor. My conclusion for portal:@Quadox.7834 might be onto something, but again I fear it would make another build hard to balance (power +1?). I would welcome a test on this, having a look on the idea for a season. That would require actual balancing effort though and willingness to revert things in time - or test servers.

So, how do you consider the vigor amount of your main profession, taking into account mirage relies on dodges to survive and to do damage, and ele doesn't? Well, S/D weaver basically doesn't have vigor...? Except some random 3s procs when being hit in water with a 10s ICD? Tempest is different of course, giving AoE vigor on auras. Also, how does mirage rely more on dodges to survive than ele?

I am an ele main. Tell me more about nerfs, please, I would love to hear your stories. Do you not remember condi chrono in HoT? Which was only meta due to portal and severly lacked fighting capabilities? Do we really want these times back? What do you mean? Concerning what? I am an ele main. Tell me more about nerfs, please, I would love to hear your stories. Do you not remember condi chrono in HoT? Which was only meta due to portal and severly lacked fighting capabilities? Do we really want these times back? That isnt true even . The only time chrono been 'trash' at fighting others its before pof release they nerfed it and just because pof was coming I believe.Also its pretty same situation for mirage now. Scepter is dumb-carry stick for everything mesmer plays and chaos traitline (you couldnt play without chaos because you were pretty easy to kill without protection/vigor but now its mandatory, wooo!) Take it away and we will see what is left Maybe I overexaggerated a little. :wink: But condi chrono was still meta right before PoF while kind of lacking in many other fields - mainly due to portal. It supplied superior mobility for teams and allowed huge map rotations, so to make it not completely OP, mesmer had to be nerfed to be not even in pure fighting capabilities (condi lacking in damage, power in survivability - again, relatively speaking). The choice has been for a while: Either give portal to others, nerf portal or nerf mesmer all around, because it's single utility skill is just incredibly powerful. Choose one. (And yes, again, I think the nerfs were harsh.) I am absolutely with you on chaos/scepter changes. I think we agree on the condi mirage nerfs not addressing the right issues (even worse, often nerfs to power mesmer) and the need for an overhaul. I.e. make sword 2 great again instead of scepter 2. They trashed vigor and left it 3/10 while others 5/10 and effortlessly ride on perma vigor while we had to invest into it THREE traits to get vigor ,I dont have to tell you how crucial vigor for mirage right ? Just to nerf mirage they decided would be nice to nerf core and sw2 and still suicidal 8 hits (while dealing close to no damage) into retal on bunch of ppl still there when pistol whip was 'fixed' .Not like my rant is going to change anythning anywayWell, lots of vigor was just powercreeped indeed. Mirage has an okay amount of vigor - you have to think about it when to use it. Stuff like perma-vigor thief is indeed just stupid. Also hate the sword 2 treatment, absolutely. Lots of nerfs were general mesmer, even chrono or core nerfs, while the problem was condi mirage. The combination, and only this combination. But we all know by now that they seem to balance in weird directions ("we dont like evade spam, so we increase CDs on ele. Hey, lets give daggerstorm 4s evade lol"). :wink:

I am an ele main. Tell me more about nerfs, please, I would love to hear your stories. Do you not remember condi chrono in HoT? Which was only meta due to portal and severly lacked fighting capabilities? Do we really want these times back? What do you mean?Concerning what? I am an ele main. Tell me more about nerfs, please, I would love to hear your stories. Do you not remember condi chrono in HoT? Which was only meta due to portal and severly lacked fighting capabilities? Do we really want these times back? That isnt true even . The only time chrono been 'trash' at fighting others its before pof release they nerfed it and just because pof was coming I believe.Also its pretty same situation for mirage now. Scepter is dumb-carry stick for everything mesmer plays and chaos traitline (you couldnt play without chaos because you were pretty easy to kill without protection/vigor but now its mandatory, wooo!) Take it away and we will see what is leftMaybe I overexaggerated a little. :wink: But condi chrono was still meta right before PoF while kind of lacking in many other fields - mainly due to portal. It supplied superior mobility for teams and allowed huge map rotations, so to make it not completely OP, mesmer had to be nerfed to be not even in pure fighting capabilities (condi lacking in damage, power in survivability - again, relatively speaking). The choice has been for a while: Either give portal to others, nerf portal or nerf mesmer all around, because it's single utility skill is just incredibly powerful. Choose one. (And yes, again, I think the nerfs were harsh.) I am absolutely with you on chaos/scepter changes. I think we agree on the condi mirage nerfs not addressing the right issues (even worse, often nerfs to power mesmer) and the need for an overhaul. I.e. make sword 2 great again instead of scepter 2.

I am an ele main. Tell me more about nerfs, please, I would love to hear your stories. Do you not remember condi chrono in HoT? Which was only meta due to portal and severly lacked fighting capabilities? Do we really want these times back?

Do you really want to see mesmer nerfed to the ground because "it's still meta cuz portal"? That's what happened in HoT and many people were predicting portal was either going to other classes too or get deleted from PVP. I think this way is healthier and mesmer becomes much more easy to balance (relatively speaking). So no, please don't.

This would nerf water weaver significantly, because of much less cleanse potential. However, it would enable air to be a great competitor, because you can cleanse 2 conditions per swap (imagine with fresh air...) and have several weapon skills giving swiftness/superspeed. I fear It would push S/D weaver in PVP actively into air/arcane/weaver, making it the only semi-viable spec for S/D. It should give both, or, well, you should be able to choose from these cleanses on swiftness/reg on swiftness to enable S/D weaver to take on a bunker role with water or a bruiser role with air. Add some ranges on sword skills for AoE pressure and I like the rest of your changes. :wink:

give me a chance to upload some video with how I use the build before you pass judgement. i'll try & have something for you guys to watch up tonight. i just need to get some spvp footage and a few more wvw fights. Sounds great, but I would wait until ranked starts to do that, also, please post the current rank at the time of the video. It isnt the same to fight bronze people with it, than plat people where the meta/skills are different. I'm actually trying to stay open minded about it, I want to be pleasantly surprised, who knows, maybe it works, but I wanna know if it is relevant to my rating or if it only works up to certain rating.Agreed, ranked would be much more interesting. You can partly determine the skill of the player and the enemies (and allies) from watching the video, but proper setups are always more interesting. :smile: Also agree with the scepticism, I only trolled with D/D a little and never liked it, but... well, still curious!

Please also include some PVP games. WvW doesn't compare with it at all when it comes to +1ing, side noding and stuff. I'd be curious. :smile:

Since FC is being discussed in another thread again: Any news on this topic?

Of course. However, only the relative skill improvement. So if everybody else improves at the same rate, you remain at your current rating. :wink: The lower limit of RD exists to account for skill changes throughout the season as well as balance patch changes and stuff like that. It does not fix your rating too quickly (and therefor precisely), so things can still change.

As far as I know, this is how Glicko-2 works in general. The examplepaper on it shows it like this - an ever decreasing RD out of all previous games (which is less, though, since noone plays 100 matches in chess per year. Maybe not representative there.^^). Also I think a limit to minimum RD is kind of okay - but I think it is too high. I once asked for it to be reduced: less effect of skill changes throughout the season, balance patches and stuff, but way less volatility on late matches reducing the punishment of many games played per season and maybe decreasing toxicity of later games. Maybe we can get a hint here too and maybe it could be reduced?

On a side note: The rating deviation (RD) does usually have a lower limit to account for "skill changes", in the GW environment of course also balance patches and class changes and stuff. After the first 15-20 games we all seem to hit that limit - that is when the placement match deviations have become low. Ever wondered why the tenth matches gives ±30 rating? Then the 20th game at the exact same rating only gives ±15 (and stays like that)? That is the RD or it's lower limit respectively. You can still have statistical streaks, but the impact is lower. On the topic of the matchmaker: We have rather few informations her indeed. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm gives some hints that it tests loops to look for the "best rooster" of teams, but we do not know many details on the criterias or for example how duos are implemented. Ben once showed an example here on the forums*, where it seemed not to be accounted for at all. That would indeed be a major flaw, but not connected to win/loss streaks. So if your rating inflates by duoQing, you might indeed experience a loss streak to get you back to your solo rating. :wink: Final note: Glicko-2 is solid, though I would still like to see some changes. Matchmaking itself however could be an issue. DuoQs are only my personal worst idea. It does not, however, seem to look at your previous match outcomes except they keep lying to us. :smile: *Here: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/54656/match-ranking/p2 Can you tell me the date/time and exact score of the match where you as a silver player had pro teams? I'd like to look at that match. Please help me look at a match that ended a minute ago. Maybe about 10/7/2018 - 12:28AM Server time. Didn't grab screenshots of it, but this is the only match on my account for the day. Horrible match, completely one sided blowout. was 2x duos vs full team of soloqueue, and I'm pretty sure half of my team were bots, and one guy said he was silver just in the game for pips. I think I found the match, at least this one had 2 duo queues on the opposite team. No silver players. The averages skill rating difference between the teams is 5 points. Blue team (Defeated):Ranger - 1393Necromancer - 1432Necromancer - 1440Thief - 1515Guardian - 1521Average Skill Rating - 1460.2Std. Deviation - 55.72 Red team (Winner):Guardian - 1359Thief - 1391Necromancer - 1475Necromancer - 1514Mesmer - 1587Average Skill Rating - 1465.2Std. Deviation - 92.33

Haha, great job man. :smiley: You actually did it! Thanks a lot for this! Also, absolutely correct sidenote about the matchmaking <> Glicko. Matchmaker is developed by Anet and we have rather few information on this. But Glicko(2) is a solid and widely used and proven system. Still I am kind of surprised about the huge deviations. Did you turn some screws, the system constant tau (τ) for example? Could you add two or three graphs for different values, because that is supposed to determine the volatility? But only if you should be bored (again). :lol: I don't know Python and I am abroad so I don't have Matlab on my private computer... Anyway, again, thanks a lot! Really fun to see. €: I see, you used 0.8. Could you give it a shot with lower values? :smile:

Apreciate your effort, sir! On topic! Would just like to mention: Yes, it is annoying af. :lol:

They never were. These posts were taken from various other areas that might get more attention, merged together, and stuck here so that nobody has to look at them. It's sad to see people keep posting as if someone is actually reading them. Yeah, it was a clever trick, I'll give them that. Fake some attention, wait it out... at some point ele players must give up, right? We're past that now.^^

Then we will have a response by Gaile last Dev intervention :Engineer : April 15, 2018Guardian : January14, 2018Mesmer : May 9, 2018Necromancer : May 8, 2018Ranger : November 7, 2017Revenant : February 6, 2018Thief : May 3, 2018Warrior : July 11, 2018 well, they are not very talktative in others forums too I was thinking about the PVP forum once again... :lol:

Maybe we should start spamming in the other forums again, maybe we can provoke another response...

Please amaze me and many others. After seeing your vid. I will never say a word about Ele again. its a promise. Ps: Vid should be in this current patch, not in the future patches where Ele got balanced. I never played weaver, so I cannot do what this guys does. But, unless he is using cheats (he isnt) you all experiences Eles can play like him. I dont want to talk about other classes that really need improvements because this will distort what Im saying, but Imho, you Eles atm have a very strong PVE dps (top 3 class), and a very strong WvW roamer, and ofc very strong sPvP duelist. Translation: I don't play it, never have, and have no clue what I'm talking about, but the grass is always greener on the other side. Lol. Moving on... Can someone elaborate why Cellofrag, and other high tier eles, shouldnt be taken into account in the balance equation. I mean, if you buff cello character, instead of being superb he is gona be godmode. Does this guy have 10 fingers in each hand? Has he super-human reaction times? Its an AI? Does he plays with different skills or lower cooldowns than you? You asking me to do 5% of what he does. Probably if you just play as good as half of that he does, u wont even be asking for ele buffs. Of course, the day I hear Cello, or another top tier, saying his class need a buff (like I've been hearing from other classes top players in the last months), I'll just fold and not gonna discuss if you need a buff or not.WvW roaming is 99% noob bashing and profiting from builds. It does not say a word about PVP (or relevant WvW zerg balance) at all. This is ridiculous. We were asked, we gave a lot of suggestions, we were ignored. I am out.

Talking about PVP! Sword weaver:The build is in a bad, but not in a completely unviable spot. The survivability is good - even though heavily reliant on the corresponding traits and heals. The damage is completely lackluster compared to spellbreaker, holosmith and condi mirage. I would be fine with starting with two things: Increase the range on (some) skills. Maybe the dual attunement skills could have 180 to make them hit more reliably in a fast paced PVP scenario. The damage buffs to pyro vortex for example simply do not affect this since the vortexes are stationary. Increase range, increase some radii. Maybe increase some teleport ranges too so that weaver gets some chase ability (right now mirage and spellbreaker are faster, holo is roughly the same but holo leap is ridiculous). Also improves the barrier application! To make condi builds more viable, maybe add some cover conditions to some skills. Getting rid of the vulnerability sigil hit sage ele pretty hard. Right now everyone runs so many cleanses in fear of condi mesmers and scourges, any other condi build is just unuseful (this depends a lot on the composition right now, indeed). This might make sword weaver viable and competitive again. If not, then one might think of damage buffs (or healing or whatever). Weaver also has zero interaction with auras - sword does not have one without comboing, and that's also just the underwhelming fire aura -, making several traits obsolete. But that's too much work and probably not really helpful. Fresh air builds:I admit I never liked weaver FA, because the main two things you had to do is positioning and then smash air attunement as fast as possible for some instant burst. Rebinding keys was 50% of it's challange - not saying you didn't need a lot of experience though. However I love the old classic FA ele, but it was not competitive at all since HoT and even less with PoF. The burst was bad and happened to rarely. With the nerfs done to FA weaver, it became completely unplayable. So here are my wishes: Revert the changes to the damage of electric discharge. Instead, give it a short internal cooldown of like 1 second. Reduces the instant burst of FA weaver and improves core FA ele. Also allows some more skill usage of offhand non-air abilities for FA weaver for that split second. Reduce cooldowns on double attunement scepter skills like phoenix. Make dragon's tooth more powerful or land quicker. Rework some AA abilities of scepter and don't just buff shatterstone. Maybe the long-term goal can be to make FA weaver a burst spec and core FA a more DPS oriented build - but I don't expect that much work in core tbh. Tempest:Tempest lacks some things that firebrand has - most importantly stability which makes it too easy to interrupt. Maybe even AoE stability. Right now every overload in a team fight gets interruptes due to holosmith, spellbreaker FC or random necro fear. There are too much interrupts to play tempest without staff - and even then you can hardly use your overaloads, because they are all for close combat. Staff seemingly just doesn't fit tempest all that well (also: only 1 aura without comboing...). And there are hardly any offensive buffs. So maybe think about that: Make stability while overloading baseline or at least not let us decide between stability and aura cleanses. This helps tempest to move to their allies for overloading and healing via auras. They could even interrupt their overload and use the heal shout instead or anything they want, risking the higher attunement cooldown. Nice decisions! Maybe rework some auras. The duration reduction for HoT was good and needed, but right now they have become too weak. Increase the duration on all auras to 5 or 6 seconds. And improve fire aura a bit, maybe add some damage for an offensive buff or include 10% condi reduction. I would also love warhorn seeing an improvement. Some of the cast times are just way too high and get too easily interrupted or predicted. Reducing some of those could make it a more offensive offhand choice for tempest, increasing the pressure in team fights. Maybe improve overloads in general, but I think with stability they might already become good enough. See what happens with these changes. Staff zerker:Well, this is a meme, but I loved it for trolling in unranked. There is too much work to do to make it actually viable. I know you have to be careful because of the other game modes, but you could easily split things. But some minor changes would make it fun to play again: Revert the lava font changes. Reduce some cooldowns on defensive abilities such as burning retreat or magnetic aura. Make some defensive abilities be cast backwards like gust and shockwave and let them hit more easily. General things: Let weavers double attune again! Give the buffs even to the second atunning. In PVP this is extremely dangerous because you lose access to new abilities already, this would give us an additional option for panic protection or cleanses. For the far future: Rework some traitlines. Water as the only reliable source for cleanses has been difficult forever. Also fire is almost useless in PVP. I admit these are bigger changes though. Give more access to fury. Maybe revert or improve arcane prowess? Or give easier access with fire? Maybe some weapon skills? Improve comboing. A lot of classes can easily stack might for example without any combo. Give blast fire field 5 stacks of might, improve fire aura, increase range of blast water or ice fields for more team support. All these things help with complex, but rewarding gameplay. These are my spontaneous wishes for PVP, feel free to add, comment or criticise. €: Oh, I forgot for sword weaver: Make the ranged skills go backwards again. The build has to kite sometimes, which is fine. This change did hurt sword weaver a lot in PVP.

1) You are a duelist with some team fighting capabilities. But you will lack support in the latter but it can work out in some scenarios.Direct damage burst builds kinda counter you, rev and core guard though. Save one oh shit button when they're around. 2) Depends a tiny bit on the situation and how the rest of the game goes, but distracting 2 people on their close is (almost) always good. Oh and of coure, please #pinthis! Really good job, thanks a lot for that, @eksn.7264!

But retaliation is also working with the caster's strength too... imagine a zerker SB's maul reflect. Pew. :trollface: Wait, I'd like that actually! €: On topic, I don't think condition classes need another nerf and direct damage classes another buff. It is just some build being crappy, dont punish my sage ele even more. :/

I wish more people would play this build. Still carried by easy phantasms, but still dies too quickly. Saying this as a sage's ele. It is the combination of Staff + chaos + inspiration that is ridiculously op in combination with over 9000 phantasms. It is a solid build still, sure, but not as op as other builds.