69 replies to this topic

[Mitch]

fafnr, on 07 December 2012 - 07:39 AM, said:

I'm curious as to what your build is?  Ele really seems to be the one class in the game that really only has a couple niche specs to me.  Everything else is bland and mediocre. What exact direction are you taking as far as specs?  Id like to know your reasoning and how effective you find it.

As far as viable Ele builds go you might have a point, I wouldn't go as far as to call them 'niche specs' however, just about every tpvp team seems to be running some form of S/D or D/D ele roamer.

As far as trait lines go >90% of all eles (outside of PvEasy players doing hotjoin) are using 10-20 air, 20-30 water, 20-30 arcana, earth and fire lines are pretty much completely unused outside of a few people speccing 10 in earth to get the Armor of Earth proc on 50% health.

That being said though you do have some options, S/D and D/D are both viable weapon choices, both can choose to go Arcane Utilities with Elemental Surge in Arcana or go Cantrips and focus on the corresponding traits in Water Magic. Mistform is a must have, but most other professions have 1-2 must have utility skills also so this is not neccesarily a bad thing and definitely not restricted to eles.

I'm not sure about the viability of staff builds though, the EA nerf hit those pretty hard.

Edited by unraveled, 11 December 2012 - 07:43 AM.
Amended quote.

[Dusty Friday]

I'm not sure how my ego is related to your crying over a nerf, but sure... These things happen all the time and no one can help if you expect no changes to take place throughout the development of any online game.

I don't see the Elementalist as a class with a 'couple' of specs, I tend to change my trait build on a daily basis, sometimes switching it up a few times per day. My gear is almost fully dedicated to Power/Toughness/Healing Power. I don't find my damage to be too low and my healing seems to be top notch in terms of numbers (Around 1,200 healing power currently). I would hardly take any build with less than 20 points in Healing, in my opinion the Air And Earth trees could use some buffing around the grandmaster tiers to make it more compelling for players to ever go that deep in said trees.

The auramancer build seems to be the best choice currently, which can be played with S/D and D/D. Going for a cantrips build seems fine as well. I use runes of the Monk/Water. I don't mind switching up my traits and weapons as I go, constantly trying to adapt to a situation, depending on what is needed. In PvP the S/D elementalist is very hard to kill, and can defeat almost any enemy. But the current state of PvP is a joke anyhow. This game is in an urgent need of a 1v1/2v2 and maybe 3v3 arenas. This capture the point shit has gotten utterly boring, that's how I feel at least. Small-scale battles are much, much more fun and reap unexpected outcomes, while any kind of zerg is making the game look ugly and feel annoying and shallow. To be fair I wouldn't chose any other class for a 1v1 situation and I love the potential support of my Ele. If the party members are smart - they wouldn't position themselves too far away from me and I'd be able to provide decent healing, condition removal and a number of boons, if I've specced as an auramancer. That's regeneration, protection, fury, switfness, might.

With the recent bugfixes you can easily provide nice stacks of might for your team, combining the Fire field (with S/D) with Phoenix, Dragon's Tooh, Arcane Wave, Eruption and Eartquake in a sequence.

[Mitch]

Dusty Friday, on 07 December 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

The auramancer build seems to be the best choice currently, which can be played with S/D and D/D

S/D Auramancer? You got 1 aura skill, that hardly seems worth not taking Cleansing Water for.

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But the current state of PvP is a joke anyhow. This game is in an urgent need of a 1v1/2v2 and maybe 3v3 arenas. This capture the point shit has gotten utterly boring, that's how I feel at least. Small-scale battles are much, much more fun and reap unexpected outcomes, while any kind of zerg is making the game look ugly and feel annoying and shallow.

I guess you're playing hotjoin? There's no zerging in tpvp, cap points are ok, 1-2 maps that work differently would be some much welcome variation though, 1v1/2v2/3v3 arenas would be retarded, this isn't WoW.

[Dusty Friday]

I'm not sure what kind of auramancer build you're using, but mine includes access to 30 water traits and has 3 to 5 aura skills, depending on what I want in my utility. D/D is +1 due to Shocking Aura.

I never said anything about Hotjoin vs tPVP, actually I explicitly stated my unhappiness with the capture point system, feel free to scroll up and double check on that. Your view is obviously one of a close-minded person, and this quote is a good example - "this isn't WoW"... This isn't Guild Wars either and your argument is nowhere near relevant. Small-scale arenas would be anything but retarded, knowing how this game is not even close to an e-sport. The problem here lies with balance, which needs a lot more work.

A huge amount of people have already expressed their wish to see a duelling option introduced into Guild Wars 2. There isn't any real GvG option yet, if you haven't noticed. Variation is not welcome, rather it's desperately needed.

[Mitch]

Dusty Friday, on 08 December 2012 - 12:55 AM, said:

I'm not sure what kind of auramancer build you're using, but mine includes access to 30 water traits and has 3 to 5 aura skills, depending on what I want in my utility. D/D is +1 due to Shocking Aura.

Please enlighten me how you do this, S/D has 1 Aura skill on weapon, 1 Combo Field (Fire) and no leap finishers, the only way I see to create other Auras is to use Lightning Hammer (Combo Field + Leap), Lava Axe (Combo Field + Leap) and any signet with the master Fire Magic trait. Seeing as how Mistform is a 100% must have skill, this leaves 2 of those, having a grand total of 3 possible Auras (excluding relying on an Combo Field Ice from an ally to blast/leap in) 2 of which won't work with the Powerful Aura trait.

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I never said anything about Hotjoin vs tPVP, actually I explicitly stated my unhappiness with the capture point system, feel free to scroll up and double check on that.

You complained about zergs, which don't really exist in tPvP, basically the biggest fights you'll see are 4v4 which are pretty uncommon, 2v2 and 3v3 fights are the norm.

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Your view is obviously one of a close-minded person, and this quote is a good example - "this isn't WoW"... This isn't Guild Wars either and your argument is nowhere near relevant. Small-scale arenas would be anything but retarded, knowing how this game is not even close to an e-sport. The problem here lies with balance, which needs a lot more work.

It would add more arenas to further fracture the already small player base, it would complicate skill/profession balance and personally it would be incredibly boring, I'm not a fan of 100% of all maps being capture points, but some kind of goal other than a pure death match has to exist for any kind of tactical depth to be present.

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A huge amount of people have already expressed their wish to see a duelling option introduced into Guild Wars 2. There isn't any real GvG option yet, if you haven't noticed. Variation is not welcome, rather it's desperately needed.

Dueling is simply a retarded 'gametype' it is almost 100% buildwars, I understand a lot of people come from WoW where this might be a popular thing, but I personally don't see any value in this, GvG however would be very interesting, but I doubt it will happen.

[Extinction]

this game should be named build wars btw since that what it really boils down to.

[Dusty Friday]

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

Please enlighten me how you do this, S/D has 1 Aura skill on weapon, 1 Combo Field (Fire) and no leap finishers, the only way I see to create other Auras is to use Lightning Hammer (Combo Field + Leap), Lava Axe (Combo Field + Leap) and any signet with the master Fire Magic trait. Seeing as how Mistform is a 100% must have skill, this leaves 2 of those, having a grand total of 3 possible Auras (excluding relying on an Combo Field Ice from an ally to blast/leap in) 2 of which won't work with the Powerful Aura trait.

I don't feel eternally bond to a single 'must-have' skill like mist form. There are other defensive abilities that work well. Arcane shield, Cleansing Fire, Armor of Earth. As I said it depends on what you are up against and what do you want to achieve. With the signet build you can still easily have 4 auras - Frost armor, heal signet, 2 other signets and one defensive ability (while keeping in mind that Air and Earth/Water signets provide considerable amounts of defense themselves). With the right runes you can pretty much keep up permanent swiftness and fury. If you choose not to go for the grandmaster water trait (to share your auras with others), you can have 10 points in Arcane instead. Furthermore, you might not have access to that many combo fields (since it's Anet policy to not have numerous blast finishers and combo fields in the same weapon set), but you have enough blast finishers. After all according to you small-scale pvp is retarded, so why wouldn't you expect your teammates to bring the required combo fields? Earth finishers have no internal cooldown, so you can easily heal up anyone from 0-100% with the right rotation. If there's a water field and your mates are smart enough to not dodge out of it (like 90% of the players do when they see gayser field), then you can go Eruption and EQ (interrupting the long cast in the sake of fast healing), Arcane Wave, switch to water, trident + cleansing wave. There are two other blast finishers in Fire, so if the fields last long enough you pretty much have an EPIC amount of AoE heals. All of this would heal for an insane amount. Not to mention how well 1k+ healing power scales with the signet's passive heal.

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

You complained about zergs, which don't really exist in tPvP, basically the biggest fights you'll see are 4v4 which are pretty uncommon, 2v2 and 3v3 fights are the norm.

The zerging part refers to WvWvW. When arenas become a tedious activity your only other choice for PvP is W3, and there you have the zerging, which ruins the fun for me. None of these modes manage to live up to the level of GW1's pvp modes.

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

It would add more arenas to further fracture the already small player base, it would complicate skill/profession balance and personally it would be incredibly boring, I'm not a fan of 100% of all maps being capture points, but some kind of goal other than a pure death match has to exist for any kind of tactical depth to be present.

'The already small player base' - you see, you've already got the answer to your worries within your own statement. This game was hyped as the best MMO, yet its population has been declining since release. Why do you think that is? I can ensure you one thing - it might have something to do with  the lack of more PvP modes, or with the lack of dueling and the current state of PvP in general. Plus, I never said anything about deathmatches. The game's built on nice mechanics, it promotes movement and positioning. Having small scale battles will promote players to fully utilize their fields and finisher combos. A lot of creativity is required in order to come up with such maps that are actually fun and interesting/challenging, but it's in no way impossible.

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

Dueling is simply a retarded 'gametype' it is almost 100% buildwars, I understand a lot of people come from WoW where this might be a popular thing, but I personally don't see any value in this, GvG however would be very interesting, but I doubt it will happen.

Buildwars? Well this is a kind of a joke commentary, especially when I remember how the first game was centered around the juxtaposition of builds and how they can counter each other (which was more than epic fun). But honestly, you are the first person who I've met and is against adding a dueling option. I hope you can think about it for a second and realize the benefits it can provide. For one it won't be buildwars, but it will surely help you TEST OUT your build versus a particular build in a controlled environment. All we have for that right now is some dummies, which is another thing we've already seen in WoW, but I haven't seen you cry about that. We can have that, but not dueling, 'cuz it's going to be like WoW too much? That, my friend, is retarded. If you don't see any value then I have nothing more to say. And I won't even go into the amounts of fun any player can have while dueling, but that's irrelevant, isn't it? Glory points is all that matters, go cap that point yo!

Edited by Dusty Friday, 08 December 2012 - 12:57 PM.

[Mitch]

Dusty Friday, on 08 December 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

I don't feel eternally bond to a single 'must-have' skill like mist form. There are other defensive abilities that work well. Arcane shield, Cleansing Fire, Armor of Earth. As I said it depends on what you are up against and what do you want to achieve. With the signet build you can still easily have 4 auras - Frost armor, heal signet, 2 other signets and one defensive ability (while keeping in mind that Air and Earth/Water signets provide considerable amounts of defense themselves). With the right runes you can pretty much keep up permanent swiftness and fury. If you choose not to go for the grandmaster water trait (to share your auras with others), you can have 10 points in Arcane instead.

You really sacrifice 2-3 utility slots for signets and spec 20 in fire just to get fire aura a couple of times? Not to mention unless you spec 30 in earth on top of this, activating your signets will make you lose their passive bonus, which for the heal sig is a pretty big deal (hardly worth the fire aura it would give you imo) not to mention you will need 10 points in Air to get the swiftness/fury from Auras which is almost the entire build of an aura build, so this leaves max 10 points, I guess the 10 you're putting in Arcana, making the internal cooldown of attunements pretty high as opposed to the 'standard' 20-30 spec Arcana builds.

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Furthermore, you might not have access to that many combo fields (since it's Anet policy to not have numerous blast finishers and combo fields in the same weapon set), but you have enough blast finishers. After all according to you small-scale pvp is retarded, so why wouldn't you expect your teammates to bring the required combo fields? Earth finishers have no internal cooldown, so you can easily heal up anyone from 0-100% with the right rotation. If there's a water field and your mates are smart enough to not dodge out of it (like 90% of the players do when they see gayser field), then you can go Eruption and EQ (interrupting the long cast in the sake of fast healing), Arcane Wave, switch to water, trident + cleansing wave. There are two other blast finishers in Fire, so if the fields last long enough you pretty much have an EPIC amount of AoE heals. All of this would heal for an insane amount. Not to mention how well 1k+ healing power scales with the signet's passive heal.

Not really sure how this related to anything I had to say, I merely mentioned Combo Fields/Finishers as some of them can be used to make Auras on yourself or allies.

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'The already small player base' - you see, you've already got the answer to your worries within your own statement. This game was hyped as the best MMO, yet its population has been declining since release. Why do you think that is? I can ensure you one thing - it might have something to do with  the lack of more PvP modes, or with the lack of dueling and the current state of PvP in general. Plus, I never said anything about deathmatches. The game's built on nice mechanics, it promotes movement and positioning. Having small scale battles will promote players to fully utilize their fields and finisher combos. A lot of creativity is required in order to come up with such maps that are actually fun and interesting/challenging, but it's in no way impossible.

Small player base was in reference to PvP player base entirely, how do you suggest small scale PvP without capture points to be anything other than some form of deatmatch? Sure skirmishes are fun, they happen all the time in tPvP as it is, with the added depth of holding/capping points and fighting over them as well as some other (minor) objectives (e.g. forest monsters, guild lord, trebuchet), now I'm not saying cap points is the be-all and end-all game mode that GW2 should have, but it does allow multiple objectives to exist on a map and a very quantifiable score which means theres no need for tiebreakers, which was a huge huge problem in GW1 GvG.

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Buildwars? Well this is a kind of a joke commentary, especially when I remember how the first game was centered around the juxtaposition of builds and how they can counter each other (which was more than epic fun). But honestly, you are the first person who I've met and is against adding a dueling option. I hope you can think about it for a second and realize the benefits it can provide. For one it won't be buildwars, but it will surely help you TEST OUT your build versus a particular build in a controlled environment. All we have for that right now is some dummies, which is another thing we've already seen in WoW, but I haven't seen you cry about that. We can have that, but not dueling, 'cuz it's going to be like WoW too much? That, my friend, is retarded. If you don't see any value then I have nothing more to say. And I won't even go into the amounts of fun any player can have while dueling, but that's irrelevant, isn't it? Glory points is all that matters, go cap that point yo!

Ok now let me make something clear, I've got nothing against being able to make 'private/custom' games where you can play with/against your friends in a closed setting to try things out or play matches against other teams for the purpose of 3rd party tournaments/practice or simply having fun, in fact I think it is one of the most needed things to make GW2 PvP have any kind of lasting potential. Now if people would use such a system to have duels with eachother or host 1v1 tournaments, that is entirely up to them, if they enjoy these kind of things then by all means let them, but when you're making dueling a seperate game mode and start balancing for it it might very well be detrimental to 'real'  PvP.

As far as the build wars comment, being able to make builds is fun, it was fun in GW1 and it still is now although very much different, but when it comes to 1v1 there will either be 1 superior profession/build that 90% of the people will end up playing or it will be more rock paper scissors where your profession/build will likely determine the result, rather than individual skill (unless the skill gap between the 2 players is immense), now I don't think this is a fun and useful game mode and definitely not something that other game modes have to compromise their balancing for.

[Dusty Friday]

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

You really sacrifice 2-3 utility slots for signets and spec 20 in fire just to get fire aura a couple of times? Not to mention unless you spec 30 in earth on top of this, activating your signets will make you lose their passive bonus, which for the heal sig is a pretty big deal (hardly worth the fire aura it would give you imo) not to mention you will need 10 points in Air to get the swiftness/fury from Auras which is almost the entire build of an aura build, so this leaves max 10 points, I guess the 10 you're putting in Arcana, making the internal cooldown of attunements pretty high as opposed to the 'standard' 20-30 spec Arcana builds.

You don't spec 20 fire 'just to get the fire aura', there is also +10% damage while in Fire, as well as the actual stats you get from spending points in the tree, which a lot of people seem to ignore. You need some kind of dps boost in any case. And yes, you lose the passive signet effect with this build, but besides keeping them - what other use does 30 earth have over other trait lines? It's not very attractive as it is right now.

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

Not really sure how this related to anything I had to say, I merely mentioned Combo Fields/Finishers as some of them can be used to make Auras on yourself or allies.

I was making a point about how useful the S/D build is in general, not particularly for aura upkeep. People complained about the nerf of EA's blast finisher, but in reality this build has enough of them as it is. Less combo fields, but enough blast finishers.

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

Small player base was in reference to PvP player base entirely, how do you suggest small scale PvP without capture points to be anything other than some form of deatmatch? Sure skirmishes are fun, they happen all the time in tPvP as it is, with the added depth of holding/capping points and fighting over them as well as some other (minor) objectives (e.g. forest monsters, guild lord, trebuchet), now I'm not saying cap points is the be-all and end-all game mode that GW2 should have, but it does allow multiple objectives to exist on a map and a very quantifiable score which means theres no need for tiebreakers, which was a huge huge problem in GW1 GvG.

Small-scale pvp won't magically make the game better, rather it will provide a much better form of 'casual entertainment'. If I'm going to waste time in hotjoin - I rather have such battles instead of capture point fiesta. Not to mention that most of the time hotjoin is desolate - during the last couple of months I've mostly had 1v2 or 2v3 scenarios, simply because no one wants to enter it anymore. So explain to me what's the point of having this at all, if it's not being used? Adding a 2v2 /3v3 and dueling options will spice it up a bit, it will allow for smaller teams to still have fun and not run alone in big maps, capturing points ALONE, with 1 or 2 people in the opposing team... I'm not sure how these modes would work for tPVP, but I'm certain of one thing - none of this matters while there isn't a real GvG mode (with spectator mode and an actual ladder).

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

Ok now let me make something clear, I've got nothing against being able to make 'private/custom' games where you can play with/against your friends in a closed setting to try things out or play matches against other teams for the purpose of 3rd party tournaments/practice or simply having fun, in fact I think it is one of the most needed things to make GW2 PvP have any kind of lasting potential. Now if people would use such a system to have duels with eachother or host 1v1 tournaments, that is entirely up to them, if they enjoy these kind of things then by all means let them, but when you're making dueling a seperate game mode and start balancing for it it might very well be detrimental to 'real'  PvP.

I didn't say anything about making dueling the official GW2 e-sport mode, but rather just add it as an option, anywhere in the world. Trust me, everyone will be doing it around the world map if it was possible. But then Anet would have to deal with a huge amount of  baby crying about how OP everyone that beat anyone else are. That's mostly related to the fact that no one likes to lose and rushes to look for excuses, while blaming some 3rd party factor for their loss. Regardless, this happens now just as much. But having to enter a custom game just for a single 1v1 (as it used to be in the GW1 guild halls) is just too much effort. If there's going to be dueling - I sincerely hope it's not restricted in such a way and is open for anyone, everywhere. That's the kind of freedom that Anet used for promoting their revolutionary game (that still hasn't got GvG in it, and is called Guild Wars). So it doesn't make any sense to talk about the plausible effects that such small-scaled pvp modes can have on the 'real PvP', because there isn't any real pvp yet.

Mitch, on 08 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

As far as the build wars comment, being able to make builds is fun, it was fun in GW1 and it still is now although very much different, but when it comes to 1v1 there will either be 1 superior profession/build that 90% of the people will end up playing or it will be more rock paper scissors where your profession/build will likely determine the result, rather than individual skill (unless the skill gap between the 2 players is immense), now I don't think this is a fun and useful game mode and definitely not something that other game modes have to compromise their balancing for.

Explain to me how this isn't happening now? Thieves, Warriors? Even Mesmers? I can only dream of having such dps with my Elementalist. But there's the other factor - how you actually use your skills. I've had duels versus nasty glass canon thieves and I've managed to come on top by using my spells to their full potential and moving vigorously around the surrounding environment. That's what I like about the game - it's mobility factor. If you are fast enough and all of your Utility skills aren't on CD - you have a good chance to survive any 1v1. Plus, don't you think that having a dueling option will actually help to balance things out even better? This will provide feedback that is currently absent.

Edited by Dusty Friday, 08 December 2012 - 03:30 PM.

[lmaonade]

Dusty Friday, on 07 December 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

But the current state of PvP is a joke anyhow. This game is in an urgent need of a 1v1/2v2 and maybe 3v3 arenas. This capture the point shit has gotten utterly boring, that's how I feel at least. Small-scale battles are much, much more fun and reap unexpected outcomes, while any kind of zerg is making the game look ugly and feel annoying and shallow.

totally agree, i've stopped playing sPvP because while node capturing is nice and all, sometimes gamers just need some old fashioned death match, random arenas where?!