xChris.8904

People who want to have the same challenge as SC are already progressing it and have 2 weeks to keep going. If they cant kill it by then they just need to accept it. It is doable but the time investment is huge. If they make the hp 106 mil the fight will still need a progression static and a lot of effort and time to pull off. It is not just the dps check that makes it difficult, it is all the mechanics and the coordination needed. This fight is not made for the average player and it shouldnt be. It is good to have more difficult things in this game, HT CM was (and still is one) and i cant see anything negative to it

i know the hard data and exactly because i can see myself on wingman, i know that my numbers are not something based on which a spec should be balanced. These data are good to give you an idea about certain things but there are many factors which make them unreliable. Balance based on complexity should definitely be a thing, i mean some builds are objectively harder than others no matter how you look at it. And that is why i hope they will realize hammer needs a buff atm. At the same time complexity can be subjective and you still can't exactly nail that part. Reason being, the skill level gap. That issue can't be fixed, people are complaining all the time about the "0,001%" and "speedruns" and "snowcrows" etc but these also have to be taken into account when balancing. Usually it becomes clear that something needs to be balanced by having these situations (not by taking into account what the average player does). In the end elementalist is always going to be a class with less playtime than others

you think most cases don't exist for condi virtuoso for example? do you really believe that condi virtuoso is best in slot everywhere? there are many bosses i could name where any experienced player would never play it: VG, KC, CA, Adina, Qadim, Harvest Temple. And many others where it would just not be able to compete with a catalyst/weaver. So obviously you can't balance going by specific numbers on every boss. That is impossible and you can't track them either way. There will always be some people overperforming. With "everywhere across the board" i mean everything needed to be nerfed. You can't exclude catalyst. Everything should be between 40-45k. That balance should be made based on complexity and dps uptime as well. These builds (like cvirt) will take the lowest spots. But you can't say catalyst didn't need to be nerfed because few people play it. I mean that will always be the case, you still can't have 1 single build doing 47k. There is no way to perfectly balance between personal skill level so people should stop bringing that as an argument.

pick one of what? i said 2 completely different things in 2 different sentences and you went and quoted them seperatly...

most fights can be treated like a static boss with no mechanics for the most part. weaver got nerfed because of fireworks dropping from 10-7%. and the elements of rage nerf which i don't agree with, it could have stayed as it was. considering that it also lost damage due to wildfire. balancing using 95% of the bench would be ok but you still have to realize that most people can't get anywhere near that. so they would still complain. balancing based on utility/range capabilities should definitely be a thing as well. but as i said previously, in most cases you can handle the target like it is a dps golem and do a golem rotation with minor adjustments here and there.

condi virtuoso should be nerfed i agree. should be around 39k. but weaver/cata shouldn't be buffed. because balance is about dps everywhere across the board and the ceiling should be 45k. i think you have a hard time understanding that because you lack endgame content experience but that is how it should be. they will never be able to balance the game that way because the gap in skill level between players is just too big. some people will always be doing low dps no matter what the benchmark is, that can't be fixed by balancing

almost none ele players at all in pve isn't true. many people play elementalist and there is no reason not to play it. there are multiple efficient builds and not everyone cares about mix maxing and being able to get benchmark dps. heal tempest, condi alac tempest, condi weaver, power weaver, power catalyst, power quickness catalyst. there is no way you won't be able to find something to use and making it work is up to you and your personal skill level. are you sure you know what you are talking about? because the +5% crit only when in air was changed a long time ago. yes i agree that the balance team doesn't seem to have on hands experience regarding what is going on in each game mode which puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to making the correct balance choices, but the latest patch was quite on point (most builds ending up between 40-43k). catalyst has definitely been played more than you think. check this (and it obviously represents only a part of the raid community, i am pretty sure there were even more not shown there) https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/patch (go to soto release august 2023) i might be in the 0,01% that overperforms on elementalist, but you don't need to overperform to use it. as i said previously, many people don't reach high numbers on any class, it is just that elementalist requires a bit more effort. so i guess that is why it is picked less. but the sword/warhorn build is much simpler than hammer. so i am pretty sure it is gonna be more popular eventually. if you have 5k hours on ele and you can't play it in raids then you are doing something wrong. no balance patch has ever stopped me from playing my favorite class. the nerf was 100% justified, there is no question in a 47k build ever being balanced. we needed a general nerf because powercreep has gone way overboard. if you think any build should be doing 50k then you don't know what you are talking about. no effort should be rewarded with that kind of number and like seriously, sword/warhorn doesn't require much effort. have you actually played that build? you switch between 3 attunements, fire-air-earth, use damaging skills off cd and finish auto attack chains. like it really isn't that difficult. any competent player can get 85% of the bench with 1 hour in the training area. 11600 hp? catalyst has 17k hp. t10 jade bot core, the reinforcement buff and 10 EE stacks which you should be able to maintain effortlessly in actual fights, put you up there. also you get extra toughness. if you have survivalbility issues you are doing something wrong. your positioning is bad, you don't know how to anticipate attacks etc. there is no endgame content where you should have trouble staying alive with a healer in your group. and if something kills you, it is gonna kill everyone, not just you. if you want to roleplay as a mage then slot a staff. i am not sure what you are complaining about. you don't seem like someone who cares about their performance so just play however you want. nothing and noone stops you. you are the one putting restrictions to yourself. if you want to be doing high damage then you will have to go with specific setups. i am all for every weapon being viable but knowing Anet that won't happen. well the only weapons not viable as dps right now are staff and hammer. Also the whole "range throwing fireballs and stuff" sounds like a joke to me because i am not sure if you have realized it but you are always gonna be melee. even if your build has 1200 range, 90% of the time you are gonna be stacked on the boss with the rest of the group. i am arguing because your whole perception is skewed. you are a casual i get that, but there is nothing "elitist" in people making benchmarks. that word is wrong to begin with. you have 2 options: 1) either get better at the game by putting effort in it and practicing, something that everyone is capable off 2) or stop whining about elementalist's state and play it without caring about your dps. i wouldn't recommend elementalist as a first choice for a beginner in endgame content but you can certainly go with it after you are comfortable with the content. it is a simple skill issue if you get outdpsed by a power mechanist, a build that is completely nonexistent atm. at some point you will realize that outdpsing other people is so easy once you actually try, as opposed to them putting the bare minimum effort because they only want to clear.

videos put on youtube are not just snowcrows players. also the new encounters are balanced between melee and ranged. actually the newest encounters, SotO strikes are just melee dps golems (with only dagda not allowing you to be melee for a few seconds). eod strikes are split, AH and HT are fully melee for a pure dps, ankka and ko favor range more depending on the mechanics you might get. i agree that balance should take dps uptime into account, a fully melee build should be higher than ranged ones. but that is true right now. the highest fully ranged build is probably condi virtuoso at 41k (maybe condi weaver as well at 41k but that requires closer range for primordial stance) and catalyst stands at 43k. i would argue if something needs to change here it is a nerf to virtuoso. in the end i am not sure what you want their balance to be based on.

that is a really bad argument. overperforming has to be based on it's ceiling, not what each individual player can do. balance has to be based on the best players. because if it wasn't based on that, then we wouldn't need any balance at all. if balance was based on what the average casual can do, it wouldn't matter because their dps will always be low. that is no excuse to have catalyst sitting at 47k. like Anet can't (and obviously shouldn't) make every class do 50k damage so as someone like you can have a chance at being good. it simply doesn't work that way. catalyst is not even difficult. and i am saying this as someone who knows this class as good as it is possible and plays it every day (so i have the experience to back it up and i can give an objective answer because i know it like the palm of my hand). the sword/warhorn build has a much simpler rotation and faster learning curve. so there is no excuse to say "you need to be a keyboard freak" or whatever. that is not true anymore. you just need to be somewhat good at the game and put some effort in it. catalyst should still be higher than other builds and it is. it is sitting at 43k right now. that is fair because it is a fully melee build and lacks any kind of utility (well it still has the boon extension which is good). these are factors that should be taken into account when balancing since they are reasons why someone wouldn't pick it so they need to be offset by more damage. but anything more than that would just be bad, no build should be above 45k and the ones close to 45k (between 44-45k) should be the most difficult ones like hammer catalyst, condi holo, rifle -dagger/dagger deadeye, axe mirage etc. the class seeing no gameplay doesn't have to do with the numbers, it has to do with the players. it had a 47k benchmark after soto and still few people played it. there is not much to say there, people have a general bias against elementalist as being "difficult" and 'squishy", both of which are untrue. energy is a simple and straightfoward mechanic with a restriction behind it which is fair to exist. most class mechanics have restrictions (tempest can't instanly overload, firebrands burns initative to enter tomes etc). managing energy is part of learning it, if you could just drop spheres freely the moment you switch attunements, it would be lame. not everything needs to be handed to you freely. comboing is extremely simple and happens as part of the rotation. there is nothing crazy and every interaction can be explained. i have made guides and uploaded them on youtube going over all that. weaver and tempest have their own level of complexity but nothing that absurd. but these specs are not the topic here. overall every rotation has it's difficulty to reach high numbers and a good player will be able to outdps the average cvirt or scourge on catalyst. all i have to say is, if you don't feel rewarded by playing ele then don't. nobody forces you. it works that way by design but you are seriously overstating things. you don't need to master it to be able to play it. there are some simplified builds that still output pretty good damage (LI catalyst, condi weaver with fire ele for example). or just stop caring that much about your damage, it is not like you need to be doing a lot to clear any type of content. if you actually care about your damage then go to the training area and get better. it is a simple process that everyone goes through to reach that point. then after that it needs more effort and practice in actual fights. elementalist is nowhere near a "body carpet" if you are dying you are just bad at positioning yourself. that is the plain truth i don't think Anet cares about what snowcrows is advertising. seeing that catalyst overperformed last patch was really easy. also snowcrows had a 45k benchmark with the actual build reaching up to 47k. so 2k lower if that makes you satisfied. rewarding should be first of all because you enjoy it. and after that because of it's dps. but usually these 2 are combined. if you enjoy it you will learn how to play it and be good on it. there is nothing you can't be good on no matter how much or how little damage it does. i was playing catalyst when it had a 37k benchmark on hammer at the august 2022 rebalance when noone else wanted to touch it at that state. i kept using it because i had fun and i could pull some very respectable numbers on it (top dps in pugs which doesn't say much for me but it does to most people). and you are now complaining for a class that benches 43k. i think you are a bit out of touch here. the only thing to complain about would be hammer being below 40k.

They made the right decision by nerfing a combination of things. These things being wildfire (warhorn), jade spheres (catalyst), empowering auras (trait). Catalyst has been dominating as the highest dps ele build for a really long time and although weaver came close at some point, it was still lower and if they nerfed sword/warhorn it would end up being noexistent since it uses sword. They could have heavily nerfed warhorn on it's own in which case dagger works for weaver but then power tempest would be nonexistent (and it already is). also there is not much more to nerf in warhorn, widlfire is the strongest skill by far, lightning orb is good but heavily relies on hitbox size and dust storm is there just for fireworks uptime. either way the only way to nerf catalyst down from that 47k benchmark would be to involve traits/specific catalyst stuff in the mix as well. and it is still in a very good spot, higher than most builds (sword/warhorn has a ceiling of 43k). The only problem is them nerfing catalyst to hit 1 specific build and forgetting (or not caring) that other setups exist. Notably hammer, catalyst has been using hammer for around 1 and a half year and now suddenly hammer is a meme. Not that you cant play it, but it does so much lower damage that most people won't feel like it is worth it. On top of being more difficult to perform on.

Nerfing Catalyst was neccessary, it was ridiculously overperforming after SotO along with many other builds. And the way they implemented these nerfs by dropping down EA and sphere coefficients then hitting wildfire a bit, is ok. Because any heavy nerfs to either sword or warhorn would be a big hit to power tempest/weaver and these builds didn't need a nerf. Also the nerf of fireworks lowered the damage in general across the board and ele has been one with the highest uptime on that. So what is the problem? The problem is that with the weaponmaster training, they seem to have forgotten that certain weapons exist. Hammer has been the main catalyst weapon since it's release, few professions have been that tightly tied to their own weapon and catalyst was one of them. So although it is good to have another option around, it is really bad that hammer got completely sidelined because of that. It is still usable in open world but it lags a lot behind on the full dps power build (around 3-4k dps less). On top of that it has a much more difficult rotation, lacks burst and isn't capable of maintaining specific buffs during downtime, things that sword/warhorn excels at. Right now the low intensity sword/warhorn build that i made does the same damage as hammer and it literally switches only between 2 attunements using everything that does damage off cd. If we are gonna have 2 possible setups on power catalyst, the only logical thing is for the one with all these drawbacks, to be higher dps. Easiest way to do that, something that they could pull off without any effort, is increase the strike damage on the orbs. Nothing new there, they used to have a 0,05 and even 0,1 coefficient at some point. They are at 0,01 and basically do no damage. It should be brought up to a point that lets hammer do between 43-44k as it's ceiling which means that most people will barely be getting 40k because that is how it has always been when it had that kind of benchmark (and obviously it is even more difficult to pull off in actual fights)

Have you thought that maybe it is a personal skill level issue? Some people can make something work that you might not be able to. I don't play pvp/wvw but when it comes to pve builds at least, there is a specific setup to follow and a specific rotation. You can also find online footage of people using these builds and see their potential in actual encounters. Anyway your problem doesn't sound like it has to do with build diversity, not being able to find something that satisfys you doesn't mean the game is limited when it comes to builds.

I don't think i am missing anything because that is exactly what i am saying. I am using the average because that is the only way to track your stacks in the entire fight, the longer you drop stacks, the less average you will have, it should have been obvious. And again if you do the rotation as intended you will be only dropping them for less than a second each time, which has a minor effect on your dps. Yes dropping stacks here has more impact than most other things i can think off in gw2 regarding rotations but personally i like that you are being rewarded the most for playing good. They could also have made it double them anyway no matter the amount i guess

I am not saying it has to be a support hybrid. Is soulbeast a support hybrid? Is it a must in every group? No. And what i am suggesting is basically to copy the soulbeast trait to an extent, of course my implementation could undergo many changes if someone invested the time to flesh this out properly and all the details. Making it top tier dps wouldn't change much lets be real. The issue with elementalist is that it requires a lot of effort to perform well, the ones who can put it don't have trouble being useful to the group by doing a lot of dps. The ones who can't would probably struggle even if it did above 40k. Going that direction would just make the top elementalist players happy and some groups that want to get speedkills. What weaver needs to see some play outside of whoever picks it because it is fun, is to be able to provide something to the group.

I don't know if this has been suggested ever before. What has definitely been talked about a lot is weaver being a pure dps that provides nothing else to the group. That is fine for me, but for most people when it is combined with the rather complex rotations or glass cannon nature of elementalist, it draws them away from picking it. Also looking at weaver traits, some of them look quite bland and uninteresting to me. Specifically elemental pursuit and woven stride. What i would do is merge these 2 in one, they have similarities anyway, and make the middle grandmaster something actually worth taking. This is just a fan concept that in my opinion would give a little more flavor to the spec and make it more popular. I only have instanced pve in mind, i don't play wvw or pvp so i can't talk about any specifics for these game modes. Also i didn't run any numbers, this was made only to show the idea, i don't know if it would end up being broken or not, which i doubt since there is a trade off with elements of rage and since it is pretty difficult for weaver to replace any utility skills without suffering big losses. Primordial stance is always there but with my way, just applying the conditions it wouldn't help the power build. Also unravel and twist of fate feel kinda useless for organized group play. Weave self is the most interesting one in my opinion, there are almost no specific buffs around anymore and this would put weaver in a special category. https://imgur.com/gallery/5OPZeg3

I explained in my comment why EE stacks aren't an issue. Yes in solo play your uptime of 10 stacks will be too low to be worth taking the trait and you just go with sphere specialist instead. But in organized group play, just by clicking your skills in the right order and dropping spheres under you, you will easily have 10 stacks most of the time. It won't be 100% uptime and to be honest it is good that it works that way, the better you play, the more you are rewarded. If i can average 9,5 stacks during an encounter and someone can average 9, then it is logical that i will get that little more dps. I like specs that have this kind of depth.

It isn't incredibly fast paced. It has to be incredibly fast paced if you want to squeeze out the most dps out of it, which is true for most rotations, but with the orb effect renewed by 15secs every time you activate a new one (compared to 5 sec on beta), it definitely doesn't force you to rush. Upkeeping 10 stacks of EE is a lot easier than people think. You start with 3 in combat, molten end in fire sphere gives 1, shock blast in air sphere gives 3 (disable + aura), cleansing typhoon into air sphere gives 2 (dazing strikes count as disable), crashing font into water sphere gives 1. That puts you at 10 before even going to earth where you can get another 3 from ground pound. Obviously not executing the rotation perfectly will be a dps loss but less than people think unless you are not doing a rotation a lot. Casting grand finale by mistake is the only major way to gut down your dps output. But that just takes time to get used to, you can always use hammer 3 while another skill is casting to avoid it. I don't disagree it needs more practice than other specs and has a higher skill ceiling but most things you mention are the very basics and can be learned by spending an hour in the training area and then some more hours in simple encounters. I kinda dislike how it became the norm for people to expect builds to have an extremely easy rotation that requires no effort at all. Also a good catalyst will be easily topping the dps charts and personally the few people i see (myself included) that still play this spec, usually can perform.

I love hammer. Mainly because it is the first weapon which provides value out of every attunement. I like the half ranged/half melee gameplay, like at the part of my rotation where i swap to fire and then air i can take some distance and then i have to go close, this makes things more interesting because i have to modify my positioning instead of being just fully ranged (boring imo) or fully melee (dps loss if the boss is locked in deadly fields). The orbs are just a cool visual effect at this point, they don't do damage so you don't have to be close, they serve 3 purposes: 1) offensive buffs, 2) energy generation (not so important), 3) grand finale. Overall it is my favorite weapon, i am glad elementalist got a 2handed and i think it really fits the catalyst theme

-- the biggest issue in end game is lack of a constant stream of challenging content. strike mission cms were a success in my opinion and they filled the gap for a while but when is the next one coming? between that and HT cm it is gonna be months. They should also be looking at fractals and raids considering how many people repeat them and how many others are interested in these game modes. balance between classes is lacking a lot but that isn't that much of an issue because at least raids are quite easy content. you dont have to pick the spec combining the highest dps with the easiest rotation to do them. You could literally play whatever -- they aren't picked because most people don't care about playing what they like, they want to take the simplest option there is, kill the boss and that is it. if you are playing for fun obviously you can take anything, it doesn't have to be in snowcrows. and some people do it. although snowcrows covers the majority of builds if not everything, you just have to look at the archived section as well. using the word meta is bad in this context, i could take something completely off meta and as a skilled raider outdps pugs without breaking a sweat. In that scenario it would definitely look good -- no lfg will ever force you to play specific classes when it comes to dps, at least on EU, speaking from my experience (maybe with 1 in 100 exception). The only thing that might be specified is power or condi dps depending on the encounters. Both can work everywhere but in some cases they are suboptimal and unless you are very experienced you will underperform. -- arcdps is completely irrelevant to raid or fractal trainings. everytime i have ran one, i have never bothered looking at it. Even when everyone was doing below 10k. it doesn't matter that much at the first stages because you know people have to become comfortable with the content. Although ideally when getting into endgame you should at least have a proper build and know how to use it. if someone is unfriendly it is definitely on the person, arcdps isn't forcing your behavior. -- Anet doesn't have to ban a useful tool that helps people improve their perfomance, when it is completely optional to use. if you don't like it, don't install it. A large amount of raiders play only because they like to push themselves as much as possible and that translates to high dps and fast kills. Without being able to track them the result would be the hardcore endgame scene completely dying, most of us would stop raiding because it would take away part of the fun. So you are like completely wrong here

I have an issue, the one mentioned in the title and i am not entirely sure if this is the correct place to ask but i thought i would give it a shot. Basically i am playing guild wars 2 on my laptop and so far the previous years (around 2 that i have it) i didn't encounter any trouble. I am running on pretty much best performance always because i don't find it necessary to have cool graphics, i just want everything to be running as smoothly as possible (and i usually have some issues with my internet so i try to not make it worse). But some days ago my fps started dropping heavily every now and then (like below 5) making the game unplayable unless i wasn't doing anything that requires much effort (but i mostly do fractals and raids). I asked around to see if anyone could give me any info on what is going on and some people told me to check if my laptop is overheating because an fps issue means the device is responsible and that is most likely the reason it is happening. I dowloading an app and yea the temperature is high, i have no idea what it used to be because i never had a reason to check it but currently with gw2 open i am seeing 80-90 cpu temp in Celcius. And i read online that above 90 you should just close your device because you are risking something more serious happening. I would go get my laptop checked, maybe serviced somewhere but without gw2 open and just chrome running the temperature is below 50. So this seems to me to be connected only to the game. In this case what do i do? Is there any way to deal with it? Should i just take my laptop to a professional? But in this case it is not like the issue is general, i have to tell them that it happens only when gaming

What the title says, i am showcasing CM but this has happened in normal mode as well, i just didn't pay much attention to it back then. At first i thought it was because i used weave self before the encounter starts and everything gets stripped at that point (this has happened to me on Cairn for example where he appears some seconds before everyone is actually in combat). But i have 2 cases that i recorded where i am using weave self a little after the start and somehow it disappears. I assume it is a bug? It is pretty annoying because condi weaver relies a lot on this skill to burst and not having it in my opener kinda sucks proof:

No. just buy gold with gems if you want and buy them from the trading post. Or if they aren't being sold there, it still comes down mostly to gold and few other things to do. The entire point of legendaries is to be able to get them by playing and doing various things ingame that cover different aspects of it. Reducing that to something in the gemstore would be utterly lame and ruin them

what people don't get but it becomes clear after raiding for a while, is that LI and kp exist only to filter players that have no idea about the game mode at all. i have around 2k li atm and for me 250li means literally nothing, i am not expecting a good kill in these groups. tbh from my experience i am also not expecting good kills in 50 and 100kp groups (so this applies to pugging in general) because in many cases they are really bad. so i lower my expectations to not get tilted when they fail simple stuff. who you will encounter in a group is random. many players, me included, raid for fun, so you might see me joining a non requirement group from time to time when i don't care that much because i have already full cleared. if more people like me join that group then you will start to wonder how the overall performance is that good. just open the kp.me add on in these scenarios to check what is going on.

depends on what you consider the word meta to be, pugs essentially only care about the assigned role being covered even if your performance isn't great. so as dps you can pretty much play whatever you want. As boon support you are limited to whoever can give said boon, but with EoD our options increased by a lot. Firebrand, scrapper, chronomancer, catalyst, harbinger do quickness and mechanist, mirage, willbender, specter, renegade do alacrity. The choice is entirely up to you, you can go with whatever makes you feel more comfortable and change depending on encounters (there are still things that work better than others and it is also boss dependent). A typical composition that is taken at this point is 2x heal mechanists with 2 quickness sources. But it could also be 2x hfb with 2 alac sources or a subgroup with a druid/quickdps/alacdps. You can literally do whatever you want, raids are a joke to clear anyway, people have killed Dhuum only on guardians and mirages by auto attacking

Catalyst was almost utterly kitten in EoD strikes even before because of how much movement is necessary in most of them meaning you both loose dps and have to manage a difficult rotation in the meantime. Right now i dont think it is playable anywhere at all. I mean you could take it at kc/samarog/ca but why bother when you can play classes that are a lot easier and do more dps?