Tired Of Pepega Invuln Design Classes

[Koensol.5860]

1 hour ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Professions like ele don't get stealth, 1500 range fast attacks and border hopping mobility to avoid damage, 3/4 of the time you are stuck there getting damage on an elementalist, you don't get to stealth-run and pewpew on an ele...like you can do on a ranger or a thief and neither get access to core block and full counter mechanics. Without projectile denial, even a donkey can sti there at 1500 range and pewpew...then you tell people to dodge...but if you are not a complete tool, for as long as you comfortably sit at 1500 range...I don't really care if you dodge or not...my 1500 range burst is up in half the time it takes for your dodge to recharge and if things go south...I can druid stealth, run and start again..simple isn't it?

You are either given the ability to avoid damage for half the time ( thief-ranger-warrior-revenant....) or you sit there and grind your way through aoe and stealth ambush from 1200/1500 range...you decrease one...you decrease the other too, and one is as BS as much the other.

Is blocking/dashing away and teleport from 1200 range under stealth any more "skilled" then pressing a button and become invulnerable for 3-4s every 40s+?

This @Trevor Boyer.6524, just a ranger specialized in pewpew from safe distance, he gets mad that its simplistic tactic or sitting and powpow with the longbow from distance...doesn't work in all scenarios and he wants that to change, no mention of when other find annoying and frustrating to be forced in dealing with the ranged beep beep. 

P.S played ranger for 7k hours now...I know what the class can do, where the complaints in this thread come from and what type of player may back this up....stealth remains one of the worst MMO implementations and builds like SIC em will not be allowed to exist if anything happens to projectile denial

I know I'm cherry picking a bit, but... no mobility? Please... You have:

- Flash (900 range)

- Magnetic surge (600 range)

- Burning speed (600 range)

- Earthen rush (600 range)

If weaver:

- Steam surge (600 range)

If Catalyst:

- Crashing font (600 range)

- Wind storm (600 range)

 

Ofcourse you won't have all of these together, but still that is plenty of options. I have seen tempests with daggers being very mobile and hard to catch. Then you also have ele builds with superspeed, or perma swiftness. 

As far as the main topic goes, yes I really dislike this design as well. Ever since I started playing I hate fighting against eles of all kind, because they have so many defensive cd they can rotate, that eventually they can create entire periods where you just cant touch them and they also have the mobility to get out of there. I get the same feeling when fighting bunker mesmers, blind spamming thiefs (these are nerfed at least) or spellbreakers. Spellbreaker with FC on 8 sec cd is also BEYOND me. That ability is so kittening overloaded and unlike what people say it's actually easy to force procs on. 

Somehow the ele, mesmer and warrior community love to cry about how weak their class is. I believe this comes from having become used to a time where they were OP af, and when the nerfs came they suddenly feel weak. Whereas for mesmer I can sort of get behind this, as most of that class was bad for a long time, with warrior and ele I can't. Okay.. Warrior didn't have good build diversity, true. But spellbreaker has always been a very strong duelist. People saying it was bad were just being spoiled and biased af. 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Koensol.5860

[Dr Meta.3158]

1 hour ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Professions like ele don't get stealth, 1500 range fast attacks and border hopping mobility to avoid damage, 3/4 of the time you are stuck there getting damage on an elementalist, you don't get to stealth-run and pewpew on an ele...like you can do on a ranger or a thief and neither get access to core block and full counter mechanics. Without projectile denial, even a donkey can sti there at 1500 range and pewpew...then you tell people to dodge...but if you are not a complete tool, for as long as you comfortably sit at 1500 range...I don't really care if you dodge or not...my 1500 range burst is up in half the time it takes for your dodge to recharge and if things go south...I can druid stealth, run and start again..simple isn't it?

You are either given the ability to avoid damage for half the time ( thief-ranger-warrior-revenant....) or you sit there and grind your way through aoe and stealth ambush from 1200/1500 range...you decrease one...you decrease the other too, and one is as BS as much the other.

Is blocking/dashing away and teleport from 1200 range under stealth any more "skilled" then pressing a button and become invulnerable for 3-4s every 40s+?

This @Trevor Boyer.6524, just a ranger specialized in pewpew from safe distance, he gets mad that its simplistic tactic or sitting and powpow with the longbow from distance...doesn't work in all scenarios and he wants that to change, no mention of when other find annoying and frustrating to be forced in dealing with the ranged beep beep. 

P.S played ranger for 7k hours now...I know what the class can do, where the complaints in this thread come from and what type of player may back this up....stealth remains one of the worst MMO implementations and builds like SIC em will not be allowed to exist if anything happens to projectile denial

If you're looking for a long range, high mobility, bursty ele with blocks and invulnerability then you should look up the FA weaver build. Its like playing a tools holo with more buttons to press.

[shion.2084]

15 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

whats the problem with perpetually immune virtuoso, that is perpetually kittening useless, how is this any different then playing thief and spending 75% of the match stealth or playing bunker scrapper or some other never dying useless kitten
if its teamfight ignore it cuz its useless if its sidenode get a cap for free, and that is all there is to it.

You are seriously comparing a bunker scrapper, who has 1 invuln by the way, to a virtuoso?   When was the last time you died to a fricken bunker scrapper dude???  When was the last time you even saw one in a match.  This is just absurd.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

So this is an Earth Shield thread?

[Waffles.5632]

I personally do not like the extra distortion on Virtu and feel what the class really needs is the removal of face targeting it's ranged abilities, even if they have to take a dps hit, I feel the class would actually be really fun to play if it could 360 target all of it's dagger only abilities. That would allow the Virtu a lot more paths of evasion through proper movement instead of just chaining invuls, which no class should just be able to do.

 

IMO Invuls should be reactionary and powerful defensive or offensive buttons not combo chains where the other side is forced to stall all of it's abilities and wait it out for excessive durations. Anything longer than 3secs is really pressing the line of anti-fun, especially in gw2 pvp where ~5secs can determine the outcome of an entire team fight which can then snowball into winning the match, and if the Invul has ~30sec CD that means it can be up pretty consistently from team fight to team fight, which again leaves little to no chance of enemy counter play because they are forced to wait in a position (losing team side) where waiting is counter-active to them.

 

This is for PvP though, so WvW may be different, I do not do WvW.

 

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Waffles.5632

[Caine.8204]

I made the suggestion of changing mesmer's distortion to a block instead, and was met with outrage.

 

but yeah, completely agree, "invulnerable" is a bad status and should be removed with something that you can play around.

[rune.9572]

Petition to make a "I lost 1v1 to <CLASSNAME> therefore nerf <CLASSNAME>" thread in every profession subforum so I can put them on ignore and don't have to read everyone's QQ

[Sansar.1302]

22 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

In other words:

1. In say War vs. Thief, or Ranger vs. Holo, or Ranger vs. War, when someone is dodging everything you do and you are losing, there is a very distinct feeling of "being outplayed" because these classes require actual effort in paying attention to timing & accuracy, and actually well utilizing defensive CDs in balance with offensive plays.
2. But when a class/build goes against a Catalyst as example, and that class/build does not have access at all to certain mechanics it needs to even begin to deal with the Catalyst, this is not a feeling of being outplayed, and it doesn't even feel like "being countered" anymore, but more like "this game is designed poorly. my class/build is incapable of dealing with this outside of just running away".

This is like, a bad design route that the game's balance/dynamic is headed down and it's due to oversaturating the game with invulnerable designs. It has to stop. It's funking up the balance something bad man, and the good feel this game once had in general.

This is so spot on

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Trevor Boyer.6524, I think a great deal of this is that there are defenses to which there are no counters.

Block has unblockable to counter it.
Stealth as revealed to counter it.
But teleports and shadowsteps for the most part can't be stopped.
Invulns are normally balanced around  not being able to use skills that have activation times.
Distortion though has no counter to it.

So, to me it seems that there needs to be a direct counter to things like evasion and distortion like there is for blocks.

[Waffles.5632]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524, I think a great deal of this is that there are defenses to which there are no counters.

Block has unblockable to counter it.
Stealth as revealed to counter it.
But teleports and shadowsteps for the most part can't be stopped.
Invulns are normally balanced around  not being able to use skills that have activation times.
Distortion though has no counter to it.

So, to me it seems that there needs to be a direct counter to things like evasion and distortion like there is for blocks.

 

idk if direct counter stacks are the only way to go. Another potential avenue is lower CD but also lower duration skills so that way timing is rewarded and punished like it should be.

 

The idea of the virtuoso using blocking/invul akin to how a Mirage evades, where it is a bunch of super short term evasion frames (which are significantly harder to chain together thus still amply rewarding skillful play), sounds very appealing I think.

 

How it is now though is too much because it's huge chunks of windows. 3 secs, 4 secs, 2secs etc etc

idk the exact numbers, but virtu simply chaining two would definitely be somewhere around 5-7 total seconds of invul time that cannot be countered. In this example if a Mirage wanted that same amount of time being god mode they would had to have used most if not all of their abilities and expend their one dodge. Much more balanced that way IMO.

 

This could just be me not trusting Anet enough to actually do the expansive work I think it would require to balance and rework something like anti-invul stacks across all abilities for all the classes though lol.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Waffles.5632

[Terrorhuz.4695]

2 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Distortion though has no counter to it.

kill clones, distortion lasts 1s. Shouldn't be hard, they're really kittening eager to get themselves killed anyway.
EDIT
ok we're still talking about virtuoso, it's a badly designed class and I'm very sorry.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Terrorhuz.4695

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Waffles.5632 said:

 

idk if direct counter stacks are the only way to go. Another potential avenue is lower CD but also lower duration skills so that way timing is rewarded and punished like it should be.

 

The idea of the virtuoso using blocking/invul akin to how a Mirage evades, where it is a bunch of super short term evasion frames (which are significantly harder to chain together thus still amply rewarding skillful play), sounds very appealing I think.

 

How it is now though is too much because it's huge chunks of windows. 3 secs, 4 secs, 2secs etc etc

idk the exact numbers, but virtu simply chaining two would definitely be somewhere around 5-7 total seconds of invul time that cannot be countered. In this example if a Mirage wanted that same amount of time being god mode they would had to have used most if not all of their abilities and expend their one dodge. Much more balanced that way IMO.

 

This could just be me not trusting Anet enough to actually do the expansive work I think it would require to balance and rework something like anti-invul stacks across all abilities for all the classes though lol.

Stacks aren't necessarily the answer sure. Having immobilize stop evades and teleports/shadowsteps is also valid. The point stands though, counters need to exist.

@Terrorhuz.4695,  you forgot distortion on signet use, but that is more rare in my experience.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

7 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

you forgot distortion on signet use, but that is more rare in my experience.

Already argued in the past, chronomancer and virtuoso getting distortion wasn't a good decision. I understand why they had to do it, but if it was on me I'd double down on that design; virtuoso doesn't get distortion because it gets a really really good block; chronomancer doesn't get distortion because they get really really good defensives. For this reason, distortion on signet cast was necessary; distortion is a class mechanic that activates several traits, and mesmers needed a way to proc them even when the shatter wasn't available.

But that's not the case anymore: even if I disagree with this kind of design, distortion is available on all mesmer specs. The way things are now, there is no reason for distortion on signet to exist. It can and should be removed.

[Waffles.5632]

15 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Stacks aren't necessarily the answer sure. Having immobilize stop evades and teleports/shadowsteps is also valid. The point stands though, counters need to exist.

I agree and would welcome that change of counter play to shadowsteps and the like. It might feel wonky at first, but over time it would promote good dynamic play between players imo.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

5 minutes ago, Waffles.5632 said:

I agree and would welcome that change of counter play to shadowsteps and the like. It might feel wonky at first, but over time it would promote good dynamic play between players imo.

It would require all of us to adapt, I fully admit, but it seems like the right answer to me. Others are free to disagree on how, but something should exist to inhibit evades, and something should exist to inhibit ports.

[Dr Meta.3158]

3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

It would require all of us to adapt, I fully admit, but it seems like the right answer to me. Others are free to disagree on how, but something should exist to inhibit evades, and something should exist to inhibit ports.

They would have to do another serious balance pass on deadeye and druid though.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

12 minutes ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

They would have to do another serious balance pass on deadeye and druid though.

Sure. But like how they reworked Resistance you know that they won't.

[Dr Meta.3158]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Sure. But like how they reworked Resistance you know that they won't.

Yeah...

[Sahne.6950]

22 hours ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

If you're looking for a long range, high mobility, bursty ele with blocks and invulnerability then you should look up the FA weaver build. Its like playing a tools holo with more buttons to press.

DELUSIONAL.  - Tell me you dont like FAweaver, without telling me you dont like FAWeaver.

 

"its just like tools holo."

 

FA Weaver is very garbage in competetive pvp right now.... while Toolsholo isnt. 

How many FAWeavers do you see in MAT?   how many FAWeaver did ever win a MAT? 

The answer is 0.

With a WH00PING 3,4 Rating it is officially the worst pvp build according to Memebattle.com. IF we go by community rating, there is exactly 53 Builds that your better off playing than FAWeaver......   Hardstuck.gg?  They dont even list FAWeaver as a potentially viable build.. THEY DONT EVEN MENTION IT..  Guildjen.com? They have it... but as the last of all the Ele builds and marked as  *Offmeta/situational* They put it on the Same level of viability as Firebrandsupport... and we all know how viable FBsupport is in spvp 😉

 

You can flex with it in FFA and surely get some kills... but in a Real conquest setting your borderline griefing if you play FAWeaver instead of Cata.

 

Edited December 12, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Sahne.6950]

16 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

So this is an Earth Shield thread?

3 second Invuln on 50 seconds CD.... YES THIS IS A EARTHSHIELD THREAD.

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

On 12/11/2022 at 12:31 AM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Sorry, don't take this the wrong way. I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm being completely serious.

Don't worry, I take it as a healthy discussion.

I agree with a lot of points in your reply actually

Earth Shield has shared cooldowns between cast and picked up shield, I still think that increasing the cooldowns could proper balance it, make it so you could only use one invul per cast, no matter if you pick the second shield. Keep the barrier on skill #2 and remove on skill #4 etc  etc, they really need to look at it since other conjures are lacking in comparision and overall they need a rework

Stone Heart is a stupid trait and it should be replaced with something else, it's borderline Broken on few builds (mostly Tempest), but too niche to most Ele builds, so IMO not balanced at all. Earth traitline itself is very stituational and 90% of times you're better running Arcane instead of it. I don't think they should mess with the invul skills just because Stone Heart exists, just delete the trait and call it a day.

Aura Share is at a weird place, it's a cornerstone of Tempest gameplay but Catalyst generates so much Auras that it can be abused in 2x2 and 3x3 just like you stated (Aura Share Catalyst is a meme in conquest tho). I think the addition of an ICD to it in competitive modes could probably make it less obnoxious, make it so you can't spam the same kind of aura to your allies over and over again, or shove down Shocking and Magnetic auras (which are the problematic ones)or even move the trait to Tempest trait line, something between these lines. But I don't often see the trait being run in builds other than Support Tempest

we also have to be fair and also recognize that Ele's can't afford to run only stunbreaks as utilities, like ranger and warrior can. Our port is not a Stun Break, like Thief's and Mesmer's. We don't have channeled blocks in our weapon skills , we don't get Aegis, we don't have a second health bar and we don't have access to stealth.  Sure, we can have mobility: if we run Off-Hand dagger, Fresh Air or Fiery Greatsword (which is 180sec cooldown to mimick a Warrior's Greatsword Mobility).  Dagger's 600 range Leaps with aftercast aren't enough to survive the chase, specially considering that we have to blow out attunement cooldowns to chain them together. I'm talking scpecifically of core Ele features here, which Invul also is. If the Elite specs are overperfoming (and TBH I don't think Weaver is close to overperforming), then it's more than reasonable to adress their features that need a nerf. 

Thinking about it, other than Transmute Aura and Off-hand dagger water skills, nothing else changed about Ele sustain recently, and the only complaints I've heard about Ele's sustain before were due to Earth Shield. Cata became prominent after the Nerf to other EoD specs and Tempest due to the projectile nature of EoD specs + nerfs to Core Guardian support.

Idk, just trying to add to the discussion, broken things need to be adressed, but fairly. I also get super annoyed fighting Virtuosos lately, but that's because they have access to Stealth on top of all that Invul.

 

[Sahne.6950]

1 hour ago, AzuritaBlues.3206 said:

I still think that increasing the cooldowns could proper balance it, make it so you could only use one invul per cast, no matter if you pick the second shield.

Thats exactly what they did.... you could potentially use it twice per CES... but you have to pick up the second shield exactly 29 seconds after casting the first one, and then you have to keep holding on to it for another 21 seconds and then you can use it again^^

 

OR.....  You just wait till you have you 60 Second CES cooldown up.... because your literally just saving 10 Sec CD on the invulnv while completly crippling your Gameplay...

1 hour ago, AzuritaBlues.3206 said:

Stone Heart is a stupid trait

agreed.   They should make this trait a -50% critdamage trait, instead of it completly preventing crits. This trait hurts enemybuild immensly that rely on crits to procc certain traits for example.

 

1 hour ago, AzuritaBlues.3206 said:

Thinking about it, other than Transmute Aura and Off-hand dagger water skills, nothing else changed about ele sustain.

*cough*

• This trait has been renamed Smothering Auras, and its functionality has changed.
• When applying an aura to the elementalist or an ally, Smothering Auras removes one condition.
• Detonating an aura removes two conditions from nearby allies.
• Fire auras have a 33% increased duration.

*cough*

Ebastion Increased healing coefficient from 0.55 to 0.8 in PvP only. *cough* Elemental shielding Increased protection duration from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds in PvP only *cough* Final Shielding This trait no longer grants Arcane Shield when dropping below 50% health. Instead, it grants Arcane Shield after using an elite skill *cough* Icy coil Increased condition damage reduction from 5% to 10% in PvP *cough* rocky loop Increased damage reduction from 5% to 10% in PvP *coug* Soothing Water Increased pulse healing from 1,340 to 1,541 in PvP *cough* fortified Earth Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP *cough* Elemental Celerity Reduced cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds in PvP *cough* Cleansing Wave The base healing value of this skill has been increased by approximately 20% *cough* my coughing is really bad today... sorry for that.     Thats just the sustainbuffs or reworks that come to mind right of the bat... im sure there is more, and i havent even mentioned any offensive buffs.  There is a dangerous lack of knowledge in what your saying here....

Edited December 12, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Spellhunter.9675]

2 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

DELUSIONAL.  - Tell me you dont like FAweaver, without telling me you dont like FAWeaver.

 

"its just like tools holo."

 

FA Weaver is very garbage in competetive pvp right now.... while Toolsholo isnt. 

How many FAWeavers do you see in MAT?   how many FAWeaver did ever win a MAT? 

The answer is 0.

With a WH00PING 3,4 Rating it is officially the worst pvp build according to Memebattle.com. IF we go by community rating, there is exactly 53 Builds that your better off playing than FAWeaver......   Hardstuck.gg?  They dont even list FAWeaver as a potentially viable build.. THEY DONT EVEN MENTION IT..  Guildjen.com? They have it... but as the last of all the Ele builds and marked as  *Offmeta/situational* They put it on the Same level of viability as Firebrandsupport... and we all know how viable FBsupport is in spvp 😉

 

You can flex with it in FFA and surely get some kills... but in a Real conquest setting your borderline griefing if you play FAWeaver instead of Cata.

 

This is a very weak point.

FA weaver is decend after recent patch.

Sometimes power herald also fall of mAT meta but it keeps it's place in ranked. 

People at those site with builds usually need like 6 weeks to know something new is meta.

I'm not saying FA is meta, but it is not garbage.

And I'd pick Mr. Zeus on FA weaver for my team instead of 95% cata players on EU.

 

[Sahne.6950]

3 hours ago, Spellhunter.9675 said:

This is a very weak point.

FA weaver is decend after recent patch.

Sometimes power herald also fall of mAT meta but it keeps it's place in ranked. 

People at those site with builds usually need like 6 weeks to know something new is meta.

I'm not saying FA is meta, but it is not garbage.

And I'd pick Mr. Zeus on FA weaver for my team instead of 95% cata players on EU.

 

i literally beat zeus on his FAWeaver like 2 weeks ago, with my wonky offmeta sceptre Tempest.... thats how good FAWeaver currently is😂...... A mediocre Ele, that struggles to do 30 Ranked games each season, on some wonky offmeta sceptre tempest... cant be killed by your handpicked FAWeaver....  He was playing like a young god... but since feb2020 Damagenerfs and electric discharge nerfs (Reduced power coefficient from 0.25 to 0.05.) and may2022 Elements of Rage "Rework", a  PvP FAWeaver can no longer burst someone that has Protection or Toughness like they used to... i could literally facetank right thru his Burst, thanks to 1600 toughness and prot. Its simply not as dangerous as it was before those nerfs... and even then its viability was debateable. You need a VERY VERY good player to make it work consistently. And even they will hit a brickwall as soon as they are facing a Tankybuild or an enemy team with conditionpressure.

this Weekend i met him again. He swapped to a SceptreCatalyst build, and was overall alot stronger.  Hes a VERY good player❤️! Shoutouts to him! i defo see why your mentioning him.

i just think its whack, that literally the best FAWeaver that comes to your mind, cant kill a mediocre tempest on a wonky offmetabuild.    But at the same time you have people raging in the forums that its overpowered and literally the new Toolsholo.

You can say all you want... FAWeaver isnt even in the top 3 of Elementalist builds currently. WHICH IS SAD IT WAS MY FAVOURITE BUILD before feb2022.

While the sceptre buffs tried to bring FAweaver back to where it once was...., they helped the other sceptre builds even more, keeping FAWeaver exactly where it was before... below the other builds in terms of viability. Yes it has gotten stronger, but  SceptreCata or even SceptreTempest are alot stronger than FASceptreWeaver.

Sure you can play Weaver... but your better of playing Cata or Tempest support.

If you ask me:

1# support tempest

2# Hammer Cata

3# Offmeta Cata or Tempest  (Dagger/sceptre Cata  or  sceptre/dagger Tempest)

4# FAWeaver 

 

You saying that FAWeaver is decent, is the same as me saying that Firebrand is decent, because its the 4thbest supportbuild right after Tempest/Coreguard and Druid.

Sure you can make it work, but you could play any other Ele build, put in half the effort and harvest double the results.

Idk if he is active in the forums, but i bet even Zeus will tell you that FAWeaver needs more love to truely compete with other Ele Builds.

Edited December 12, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Mik.3401]

Is it stupid? Yes. Is it cracked? I guess only in case of ele, as a Mesmer bunker you do way less damage than dps version and struggle to hold the node due to invuln spam (hence inspi virtuoso/mirage is sh!t). 
 

not to worry though as a Ranger one can just wait to snipe them in the right moment/ use pet AI auto target burst if needed. If you are a thief then you are indeed doomed