AliamRationem.5172

What would then be the use of stealth? Considering that stealth doesn't prevent any damage to yourself it would just turn you into a sitting duck. You might as well just use Alt+F4 if you want to lose a fight. Whatever its use, endless disengaging and re-stealthing in combat shouldn't be on the list. They really need to reign in stealth and teleports in this game. It's just too much.

You might give this a go. I'm able to burst down this poor veteran hydra before it can move, but I'm also resilient enough to solo the bounty boss hydras! I'm using Dire stats, which are one of the cheapest sets you can buy on TP, last I checked! Build link in video comments:

If you pay attention to the up/down arrows and icons indicating layer transitions (e.g. cave entrances/exits, ramps, stairs), you should be able to follow any road wherever it goes by shifting the layer view up or down according to the arrow indicator. The problem is that objectives marked on the map (e.g. HPs, MPs, POIs, etc.) aren't necessarily located conveniently to a marked path. Thus you can follow the marked pathways through Tangled Depths all day long and still never find what you're looking for! If you ever wanted a true exploration challenge, you've found it! The map isn't broken. It's just useless! You can use it to get around, but it's the unmarked paths that matter most in Tangled Depths! There's nothing to do but ignore the map and explore until it starts to make sense!

While Tangled Depths tops my list of favorites, I have to give credit to several other maps that have been mentioned in this thread. Verdant Brink is a fantastic map! I feel it is a great example of a map being well-integrated with the story. The event chains during the day cycle on that map are just perfect! They're fun and varied and they go hand-in-hand with the story. On top of that, the map is just plain cool and unique! What other map is like Verdant Brink (or any HoT map, really!)? Auric Basin, of course. Even people who can't stand HoT in general tend to appreciate this map. It's beautiful and the meta is quite popular. It's also great if you're a solo player who enjoys combat as some of the most dangerous enemies reside here, including plenty of champions-on-demand from the hero point challenges! Grothmar Valley. This map is both visually stunning and fun! The metal concert is one of my favorite events in the whole game! Honorable mention to the chef event. It's not exactly compelling gameplay, but I love the voicework on the chef! Bloodstone Fen. The events here aren't anything to write home about and the map is tiny, but I'm just gonna go with cool factor here. It's another one of those maps where I don't feel like I've played through it 10 times before the first time I see it (like most of core!).

Tangled Depths is my favorite, for all the reasons other players hate it.

I felt the same way when I first arrived in GW2, after playing WoW for years. But I really prefer the GW2 way now.

So sad, took my elementalist out for the first time in a long, long time and ugh, just ugh. I used to main her a long time ago before all the nerfs. So, I took her back to DR and bought some dire armor because I want her tanky enough to survive open world and more than one enemy pounding on her in tight spaces. She's okay from a distance but not every fight is from a distance. Anyway, I agree with what you said especially about the earth elemental tanking. The devs must really hate elementalists to have killed them so badly. Squishiest class in the game and not even the most powerful. My necro tanks everything. My elementalist will go down if a strong wind blows at her. Have you tried tempest or weaver? I know core ele is not in a great place, but the elite specs are quite capable in all game modes. If you have dire gear, you'd already be set to try my weaver build. It's a beast for open world, although I find it works great for PvP, roaming, and fractals as well. If you haven't already, check out my thread here on the elementalist forum. It has video, build links, and discussion: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/107218/open-world-domination-fire-weaver#latest This is not to say that I disagree with the assessment of core ele or that the elite specs are problem-free. But it's not all doom and gloom. Maybe you will find something to find your way with the class again?

I like the explosion, but I see no reason we should be giving up might for it. Just remove the might loss. Now it's a strong solo play trait which allows you to easily stack 25 might in fire attunement, but it's also an okay support trait allowing you to share some of that might with allies. The flame expulsion burn isn't very good, but the burst from the explosion is actually decent. I think this would be a great trait, honestly.

Wouldn't a better idea be to buff core specifically and not just the trait lines, which it shares with the elite specs? Give it an exclusive set of utilities and perhaps a passive and an active ability not available to the elites. The elites already have tradeoffs. Doing something like this would make the choice even more of a tradeoff. What you propose would simply kill builds that players currently enjoy. It's using a hammer to cut wood. There's a better way.

Yeah, maybe. But at least making people aware of it has a chance to change behaviors. Maybe there aren't as many such people as I think there are, but that's not really the point. The point is that there are enough of them that you can ask players why they don't PvP and it isn't balance (That's for PvP players to worry about!) that tops their list, it's toxicity. I mean honestly, you can't even go into unranked without being told by PvP players to "Get off my lawn!"? I don't personally care for conquest gameplay, so I mostly just duel and roam to get my PvP in. But I would play more if people were a little more respectful of each other in this game mode. Am I expecting everyone to hold hands and sing together? Nope. But there might be a little bit of gray area between that and just not being a salty, toxic, asshole, right?

I had a great time playing unranked with my guild last night even though none of us are serious PvP players. But there was one match where we didn't do what some guy on our team wanted us to do for the opening play so he decides to throw the match by sitting at spawn. Whatever. I don't really care about winning in unranked. I figured it was a lost cause anyway, so I finished the match with a nice series just fighting off point at mid. It was great! I went down 1v2, but rallied off the first down as a third enemy player showed up. Then repeated that two more times with last second rallies! Good fights! At the end of the match, the enemy team pointed out that we probably would have had a close game if not for this guy throwing the match. But then the guy whispers me telling me to go back to PvE, etc. No big deal. Block/report. Otherwise my friends and I had a good time. But it occurs to me that if this is how PvP players behave in unranked, it's no wonder you can't keep any sort of population in ranked for matchmaking. Blame balance and what not, but also blame piss poor attitudes like this. It's a real turnoff for people who might otherwise get into PvP. So, don't be part of the problem! Cool?

I rarely post videos of fights against thief because it looks as bad as it feels. Basically, if a thief dies you got lucky. How else can you look at a class that can disengage at will and only gives a fraction of a second to fight back at any point in the fight? If thief disengages u got the point equal u won the fight , thats the big differente between wvw and pvp balanceNot everything is about winning or losing. Against thief I win some and I lose some. It depends a lot on the build and there are thief builds (thankfully not many that are widely used!) that hard counter mine. That's not the issue. The issue is the combat neither looks nor feels good. The thief can't stand for a second at melee range, but can port and/or stealth endlessly. A win tends to feel like it happened by accident and, in fact, against thieves with heavy stealth they often just appear downed out of nowhere! Oops! How did that happen? I guess you zigged when you shoulda zagged, huh? I just feel it's not the greatest design. I like the bursty stealth openers and the evades and blinds, but the endless disengages with stealth and ports are just gross. I would have preferred they beef thief up a bit and make them a little more punishable. Right now it just feels like you win the lottery on whether or not you sneeze in the right direction to kill the annoying fly.

I suspect they didn't do this because they were tunnel visioning raid dps. The intent was to boost power damage because condi outperformed it. Why have a condi grandmaster trait for offense? Totally unnecessary!

Didnt lose wow so many players because they removed basically all build variety and tried to make it extremely casual friendly?Every expansion simplified things.Gw2 lost almost all players 2months into the game. Release was riddled with bugs. Every 2nd event was stuck and there was basically no endgame. Correct! As a result, the player base that remained were only those who could stomach a game in that state. Along comes HoT with what probably should have been included in the initial release (specifically what could be considered some sort of endgame). Predictably, this strategy did not appeal to the type of player that could play a game for years with no endgame or even any sort of progression in difficulty. As a player who never would have played the core game as it exists, I can't argue against that change. But I understand why core players may feel differently.

I was less than 40 ranks from 2000! Oh well. Close enough I guess.

Hi, guys! I figured I'd upload videos of the two festival bosses that typically give people trouble so you can see what that looks like on this weaver build.

This is very impressive, especially the third video. Ele with 3k armour? Must be a sight to behold when you play with other people and all the mobs beeline for the elementalist... Thanks! I like to have the mobs on me anyway. Deal more damage that way. And as long as they're in a nice, neat pile, so does everyone else! And it's not like they're going to hurt me, right?

Seriously? Can you point to any youtube vids that show people actively playing HoT maps and not getting hit by anything for hours? I would really be interested in seeing what it takes for that kind of play. It's not literally not getting hit, but it might as well be for all the damage this guy does to me. But like you say, that's just a video of bursting down a veteran. What happens when there are more? Okay, but that's small stuff. What if it's a tough champion? What then? Watch the health bar carefully. I never heal (aside from passive signet heals) and never rotate into water, but my health stays above 66%. Again, not literally not getting hit, but close enough. But there's a catch! I'm actually using the Soldier equivalent for condition-based builds: Dire (condi/toughness/vitality). Wearing a more offensive set like grieving actually lowers my DPS in high-pressure situations because I'm forced to play more defensively or, worse, rotate to water and heal. Everyone's wrong and right at the same time! You definitely want to learn to evade and use your skills properly, damage is very important, but you still need to choose stats that fit your build and play style.

Well, that is just unacceptable, isn't it? Look at the horse head on the staff! It's neighing in fury! But there's a problem. Its squeaker is broke as a drive-thru menu speaker! All it does is crackle with static! Do the right thing, ANet. Give this horsey its voice back!

I don't usually complain about this kind of stuff, but I think this is an absolute travesty! Honestly, how could you? Look. I had one dream and that was to play staff/shortbow daredevil pairing the Dreamer with a staff that makes horsey sounds (don't judge me, okay?). And you go and fuck it all up by giving it lightning sound effects? It's a thunderhorse staff. How could you miss this opportunity? It's time to take a stand, guys. We need more horsey sounds. Cmon, ANet. This is the next best thing to an expansion!

So basically, he wants the classic tab targeting MMO game where you only click a skill and call it a day? I dunno anything about this summit1g guy but man... based on the feedback here I am guessing he's not a fan of complex games nor a fan of reading and understanding game mechanics. Well, at least he tried GW2. This is why level skip from 1 to 80 was a bad thing imho. You learn the game as you play and level up that when you hit level 80, you have an idea on the game and the game mechanics. But that's only my opinion and is outside of the bounds of this thread. Edit : On the very least, I agree that the condition damage and its application right now in the game is too much that it looks more like a burst skill rather than a Damage Over Time which it should had been. But meh, its a topic that was discussed a LOT of times already and anet just flat out did nothing to it and instead just went full ham to the point that we have this meta in both PvP and PvE. Actually, he was pretty emphatic about not liking tab targeting. I think this is just a mismatch as far as play style goes.

In short, he's a FPS pro, used to very straightforward gameplay, which MMO combat is just not.

Ahh okay. I thought I was just messing up because they seem clearly one of my toughest 1v1s. And again, I am neither complaining about that nor proposing nerfs.

I'll try to learn the game, thanks! Maybe you can show me how it's done? I'll 1v1 anyone. Good practice!

As a sword weaver I would place reaper near the top of my list of bad matchups 1v1. They hit pretty hard at any range, where I am forced to fight them at melee. They can kite with wurm and walk and regain a ton of lifeforce in the process. Worse they spam chill like mad, which is a real beast of a condition vs. elementalists and they have plenty of CC on top of that. I really feel like this is an uphill battle for me. Am I wrong? Just to be clear. I am not complaining about reaper or proposing nerfs. Simply observing that, as an elementalist, this is really not an easy fight for me at all. Yes you are totally wrong, you should delete reapers in 1v1. As a reaper main vs one of my friend playing weaver i could kill him just a very few times and it is an easy match for u.Yeah? So how do I know your friend isn't just better than you are or you don't know how to play reaper all that well? Or maybe it's something specific to my particular build?