Ganathar.4956

> @"Ragnar.4257" said: > TBH, Lava Font is fine. Has the same function as a guardian symbol, and does more damage, on a lower CD, castable at 1200 range. Traited its nearly 100% uptime. > > Fire and Earth attunements for Staff are both pretty decent, it's Air and Water that are letting it down in PvP. That, and the fact that nearly all it's skills have minimum 3/4s cast time as well as slow projectile travel time. Symbols actually have a larger radius and are bloated skills that can potentially do 5 different things.

> @"Katary.7096" said: > > @"Lord of the Fire.6870" said: > > Well we have heavy armour, good amount of HP, and we have our own ageis and we can also use Tomb 2 for self condi clean. > It feels somewhat weird to read that the small base HP pool is considered to provide a good amount of HP. Of course it tends to be sufficient, but what would that make the medium and large HP pools? Firebrand gets a permanent +2500 HP due to imbued haste with perma-quickness. It's not the highest HP ever, but it's still better than low hp, and you also have all the nice FB defenses and utility to go with it.

The small adjustments are coming as promised, just not in the suggested timeframe. Instead of getting a normal balance update every 2-3 months, you now get these small patches every 2 months. Enjoy.

> @"Armen.1483" said: > > @"Ganathar.4956" said: > > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > The consumables while fun to use, were kinda gamebreaking too. It was making the game much easier. So it was a double edged sword. I am not quite sure what to think about that change up until now. For me only thing that changed was a tini bit of my gameplay. > > > > > > However as you brought up the CM100 issue. Well everything would be ok, but I found myself asking in lfg only condi firebrands as dps for that boss. Problem is not that there is too much breakbars, but that not all classes can deal with it _efficiently_ . My complaint is that I am locked into playing only condi firebrand there. Of course I am not saying you can't play anything else there and it is not only the Sanctuary that makes Firebrands so good there, but the fact that we see only firebrands there and 1 replacement with some scourge or something is considered something exotic and can even scare off people joing LFGs where they don't see a full firebrand group. > > > > > > I think if the consumables were still present, playing full team of firebrands with sanctuaries +alac would still be the way to go, but that would make playing other classes there less punishing. So in my opinion the removal of CC consumables hurt the accessisibility of CM100 for all classes except for firebrand. > > > > This is purely an issue with class balance and fractal design. Not a good excuse to enable consumables. If anything cFb has needed shaves for a long time. condi burst that nobody else has, ridiculous support for a dps build and lets not forget that it's one of those "melee" builds. What I mean is that it's widely considered melee, but it has much more room to hit stuff while avoiding mechanics than something like weaver. Then the sanctuary cc is the gravy on top. > > Well, while I agree that firebrand is very strong, it is not the **ONLY** burst condi class out there. Condi warrior, condi weaver and ofc condi soulbeast have similar burst because they also do dps with burning and bleeding, which are bursty by nature. For CM 100 you could easily be on par or outdps fbs with those classes, though they don't have the same CC, aegis spam and invuln the aoes utility. Nerfing firebrand too much will make it useless, cutting a lil damage will not change anything in the META though, as it is a rework issue. And if sometime firebrand gets out of the CM100 meta, newer and casual players will suffer the most, which is not a good thing imo. I disagree with your assessment on condi burst. Those classes do have a bit of a condi burst, but it is in no way comparable to FB's. Don't get me wrong, they can still compete for total damage in 100CM, but it's not because of their burst. That fight simply allows their short ramp up to happen. How often exactly do you see other condi classes in the other CMs? You almost never see them, and that's because the quicker cFB burst matters more there. Either way, the main issue with firebrand has always been more about the free support that they can get by giving up nothing. Resolve and liberation mantras are quite frankly completely busted on a dps build. Then they also have the tomes, which may not be as broken, but still provide more nice options like additional reflects and a heal multiplier. I do agree that some players will suffer if there are nerfs, but it is really not good design to have all of those players run the same class. Something needs to be done. Either there are nerfs, or all the dps builds should be bringing something good. Personally, I think that no matter what anyone says, the end result will be nerfs in the pre-EoD balance patch. Anet have a track record of nerfing elite specs for purity of purpose, and to make room for the new ones. They already nerfed builds like condi reaper and power tempest in the pre-PoF balance, due to that philosophy.

> @"Armen.1483" said: > The consumables while fun to use, were kinda gamebreaking too. It was making the game much easier. So it was a double edged sword. I am not quite sure what to think about that change up until now. For me only thing that changed was a tini bit of my gameplay. > > However as you brought up the CM100 issue. Well everything would be ok, but I found myself asking in lfg only condi firebrands as dps for that boss. Problem is not that there is too much breakbars, but that not all classes can deal with it _efficiently_ . My complaint is that I am locked into playing only condi firebrand there. Of course I am not saying you can't play anything else there and it is not only the Sanctuary that makes Firebrands so good there, but the fact that we see only firebrands there and 1 replacement with some scourge or something is considered something exotic and can even scare off people joing LFGs where they don't see a full firebrand group. > > I think if the consumables were still present, playing full team of firebrands with sanctuaries +alac would still be the way to go, but that would make playing other classes there less punishing. So in my opinion the removal of CC consumables hurt the accessisibility of CM100 for all classes except for firebrand. This is purely an issue with class balance and fractal design. Not a good excuse to enable consumables. If anything cFb has needed shaves for a long time. condi burst that nobody else has, ridiculous support for a dps build and lets not forget that it's one of those "melee" builds. What I mean is that it's widely considered melee, but it has much more room to hit stuff while avoiding mechanics than something like weaver. Then the sanctuary cc is the gravy on top.

The problem with the item is that it is usable in fractals, but the menders don't do anything. Basically you waste karma and lucent motes until you eventually realize that the menders are not working. I don't get why Anet couldn't just disable the item like they do in raids and strikes. This is really weird behavior and it shouldn't be an acceptable way to develop it.

> @"Blocki.4931" said: > > @"Jski.6180" said: > > We are down to 1 major balance patches a year then... The last update was NOT a balance patches. > > If you water down the meaning of a word or term long enough, you truly can create your own reality where they absolutely didn't adjust a couple hundred things over the course of last year :) PvE basically got no balancing this year. Almost everything was number changes for PvP and WvW, and number changes can only fix so much.

> @"Sobx.1758" said: > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > @"AliamRationem.5172" said: > > > I'm not opposed to underutilized weapons getting some love, but I think it's working as intended if melee weapons deal better damage than ranged weapons in general. Higher risk should equal higher reward. > > > > Actually this is not ALWAYS true. Being in ranged most of the times is more dangerous than being melee. There are 3 disatvantages of being ranged: > > 1) Low damage because ranged weapon's weakness > > 2) No boons from support classes if they are melee. > > 3) No heals either > > You're trying to force something into being a "weakness", when in reality it's just an added option. You can be ranged if that's safer for you, but you can use ranged weapons to attack from the closer range in case you want to be in a group for boons/heals. So point 2 and 3 is mostly false. > > > Which makes it even more difficult. > > No, having a choice of dealing damage from the middle of your group or just standing back (which isn't the choice for melee, whether you're solo or in a group) doesn't make anything "more difficult". You seem to be intentionally stretching facts for the sake of just counting more disadvantages when they're not exactly real ones. > > > And sure, what he said is not always the case, but that's a pretty sensible justification. I feel like I have to point out that there are different types of "melee" as well. For example condi firebrand and holosmith allow you to stand a little further back with lots of their attacks even though they are technically considered "melee". Now compare this to sword weaver where you have to be right on top of the target and you realize that some melee setups are much more vulnerable than others. Some have just enough range flexibility to avoid most possible dangers, even though they are not really ranged. I think this is something that Anet has not even considered in their balancing. So you have more forgiving melee specs dealing comparable damage. Most ranged weapons dip hard in damage, while they are not that much safer than these "melee" options, since the most dangerous enemy attacks are often point blank.

I am willing to bet that even with a 0 second attunement cd, core ele would be bad. Most of the core weapon skills are simply outdated, and cannot function well without elite specs boosting them.

> @"Khamul.9837" said: > What makes conjures special is the fact that you can share them, howevery this is rarely used outside of prestacking in fractals. Solution would be for me to put the ability to share them into a trait and make the conjures normally work like kits, and half their cooldowns. This wouldn't change their use at all, but would make them way less clunky. What if they were changed so you cannot pick up your own conjure? Basically like warrior banners but in reverse. That way you can support with them still and they work like kits with a cd, and the dps is not balanced around a clunky pick-up mechanic.

> @"Zeesh.7286" said: > I haven't run fractals in ages but don't high level fractals where you get consistent break bars have it as a meta skill? At least I know I used to run it (provided I had an alternate source for fury and reliable team CC) Elementalist has too many damage modifiers and this one is really only useful in fractals. They could just delete 1/3rd of the modifiers and buff the base weapon skills, while replacing the traits with actually useful stuff. Would be good for the class, instead of having this disadvantage of having to get a modifier on every single trait choice.

They could have just increased base hp across the board and balanced from there. Sure, that has its own problems too, but it only takes 2 minutes instead of months trying to nerf at every single skill. That means that the targeted fixes could have started quicker. Now we have a huge list of nerfs that happened too late, causing balance to be even further delayed by work on the expansion. Enjoy!

If you think back just a little bit, you will notice that certain drops like the raven ceremonial garb used to be incredibly expensive. Now it barely costs more than 50g. It is natural for the volacanic stormcaller weapons to be this expensive now, because they were just introduced into the game. Just wait until Anet add more drms and people grind them more. Eventually the prices will crater. If they were affordable this early on, they would end up being absolutely worthless in a few months. Like those charr helmets from Drizzlewood that are barely worth a few silver.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > It's not that ele's staff is bad, it's that the gameplay it offer isn't adapted to sPvP "needs" and "mentality". It's design would work well in a siege war where you can actually hide behind walls or a line of meat shields (WvW in a nutshell). > > I'd say that one of the thing that hurt the most elementalist's weapons is that most are designed to facilitate a gameplay that rely on fields and finishers, yet field/finisher combo has long been left into the dust by efficient traits and utility skills. The gameplay is theoretically adapted to AoE damage. However, even there it is almost useless. Take it to any open world fight or fractal or dragon response mission or whatever, and see reapers do 3x the damage with several times the survivability, especially since you will never hit anything before all the mobs die. Then you also have WvW, where it should be amazing, but is kind of niche instead because of how undertuned the weapon is. Overall it needs massive buffs in every game mode.

Because strike missions use the same rule set as raids. Combat boosters are not usable in PvP, WvW and raids because they are "competitive" content.

> @"Opopanax.1803" said: > > @"SloRules.3560" said: > > > @"Valelutra.9128" said: > > > > @"JohnWater.5760" said: > > > > > @"Valelutra.9128" said: > > > > > I’m thinking our next patch is February > > > > > > > > Why do you think that? T_T > > > > > > Because I have a feeling they’ve cannibalized the balance team to make elite specs. So no meaningful balance will happen until elite specs are further in development or public outcry gets bad. It’s a guess but I put one of those two things are happening around Februaryish > > > > Well post on reddit actually proves it. The balance team -> new elite specs. > > Well that is horrifying! The balance team has always been the team to make elite specs. There has been no cannibalization there. However, I am nort sure if we are getting the full story yet. Their absence is still unusual, because they were capable of releasing balance patches while working on especs before the previous expansions. They may be working on more profession related stuff than just 1 set of elite specs, or perhaps they really have been working on unrelated stuff. Because of course Anet will use the systems team for other stuff. Not like balance is important or anything, right????

The solution to all of your problems is just two words: Zaishen Missions If they added those back, they could add even 100 new maps and it wouldn't matter much.