Noodle Ant.1605

Maybe we need more weapon specific interaction? For core necro, I can visualise using axe for high burst dmg (although #3 and any off hand skill says otherwise) and dagger for a solid auto. Shroud in this case can just flat out dps dagger (but lack axe burst niche) and that would would be a fair-ish rotation.

For the reaper, the greatsword is already undeniably better than dagger. The axe and corresponding offhand (if it gets addressed :skull:) could still have that high burst niche that encourages a quick 10s visit (passed by entering shroud?) before returning to the slowish gs which deals high sustained dmg, much like dagger. Reaper’s Shroud in this case needs an identity. Perhaps it can be buffed into the proper offensive, ‘death-mode’ state Shroud is constantly advertised to be rather than a hp sponge. Maybe this alone could close the 2-3k gap to other classes (although it would require a PvP/PvE split, could imagine reapers being able to pump out ridiculous numbers if this is the case).

Does it have to be Cold Shoulder?

Could this be on core necro (and translated straight over to reaper in the process) considering how weak core is?

If not core, could it be placed in a position where it competes with Decimate Defenses, where overstacked crit chance builds have a potentially more effective option?

Do we really need just dmg% traits to fix the power necro/reaper position?

**Could the frost aura visual be reverted or improved to look better/more in theme?**

Screw my last post if you will. I’m gonna take proper stab at answering the OP.

EoR was flawed in the fact how it got better the more power you loaded up on, like Etheri said. Instead, another stat needed to be used in place of power. It couldn’t be a void stat - a stat that starts at 0 at lv 80, and the devs (if I may assume) thought that using precision (like I suggested) was pretty much the same as using power; power builds already stack both stats to high amounts compared to the more ‘mixed’ builds (e.g. celestial).

Between the choice of toughness and vitality, the devs went for vit as it’s pretty much the go-to defensive stat for eles simply because they lack in HP. For the OP’s suggestion, the trait gives roughly 300 vit at best (a hybrid build + sword) and even if it did synergise, it would - just to not very much effect either way (13% of <300 = <39 fero, ~2.5% crit dmg, prob just more than 2% with power, with a sword? ~1% with power staff?).

You’d still run Master’s Fortitude if you want a ~1.3k hp blanket but equipping marauder gear is where the real vit will come in to play.

> @"cgMatt.5162" said:

> They are better off just making it a flat 250 ferocity gain +10% damage modifier because their vitality stat is just that bad.

The devs seemingly want eles to actually build to utilise the trait in an effective manner.

> @"Etheri.5406" said:

> Why are you talking about condi and weaver being a condi spec?

> The traitline in question gives a POWER dps modifier. It doesn't even buff condi. Ferocity and increased damage only apply to direct damage. So frankly this has nothing to do with power or condi or god knows what. Converting power; a DPS' weavers main stat into more ferocity at a high conversion is too strong. It encourages the problematic "all out DPS build" while hurting any builds which don't go full "all out DPS".

>

> The new trait nerfs balanced builds used in WvW and PvP "less" than nerfing the pure power / DPS ones used in PvE. As such it brings weaver closer to a balanced state, and less likely to be problematic in teh future. It's also a nerf directed at weaver, not other ele specs.

> If you're actually high "condi", there is no reason to use EoR as it doesn't give any damage. Weaver is still a great power elite spec. It quite literally has power DPS modifiers or crit modifiers in every single trait line...

Didn’t I say I was purposely ‘jumping too many boats’ (making too many conclusions) about weaver being a condi spec? I even called my post ‘a rash, fast assumption’... basically, I was trying (very badly) to pull up an answer to the question I had directly quoted (in which we answered similarly, just that I beat around the bush afterwards xD). Also, because it’s the only dmg trait from the other options, condi dps builds would still take it regardless, especially the viper stat which can still use it to some better extent.

Continuing on my (rash and fast) assumption streak, I would compare weaver to the berserker espec line which still supports both condi and power even now. With the release of the Spellbreaker, the power Berserker fell behind and perhaps this may be reflected with ele? Most of us, if not all, don’t quite understand where the devs plan to take elementalist with the recent nerfs, so people like me come up with far-fetched ideas to justify the anet’s decisions (like this one). It’s not that you and others are expecting the next espec **not** to be potentially the next power ele benchmark master, right?

> @"Jski.6180" said:

> Its weird they have made weaver a vit base class why a dmg aimed class seems to be more base off its vit dose not fit a mages ideal at all.

It would seem as though the devs wanted to nerf the effectiveness of this trait (EoR) in some manner. I’m going to jump the boat and assume the recent nerf wave was to support the next elite spec which will most likely be biased to power elementalists. This is a rash, fast assumption by looking at certain things that weaver has brought from the beginning - a heavily hybrid sword, Primordal Stance - which is more effective with condi dmg and Weave Self - which blatantly has +20% condi dmg and ignores power dmg.

If we jump too many boats and assume that Weaver was designed to be a condi espec, wouldn’t that mean EoR would scale off condi dmg or expertise (in which power builds have 0) or grant some other bonus other than ferocity? What other stat is there; precision (which would actually work really well with this trait, except it copies the thief trait too much)? Toughness? And would the devs really force power eles to use tempest, who does *a pitiful* 31k dps?

Assuming the condi weaver design and next elite to be actually power oriented, I think that it’s great having EoR (and Weaver in general) work for both power and condi builds, also that doesn’t just scream ‘power’ or ‘condi’ by using a stat (vit) that may or may not be used by both dmg pathways. Now we just need to pray **excessively** that the devs stop nerfing core ele and actually release a good power elite spec.

We have a weapon with a cool scythe effect yet we can’t do squat with it! It gets better on PvE objects and some bosses (treated like objects!) where marks don’t even trigger, and WvW where the autoattack never makes it to the target, no one cares about the marks and the condis get cleansed in seconds. I can’t say for certain that the weapon is held back by its marks, but I do think that the ‘stand and cast marks’ makes the staff a relatively boring weapon to use.

Like someone said, the AA requires some adjustment as it’s so slow (you can apparently run from it) and unimpactful. I don’t know for PvP, but I do know that marks have very little effect for area denial in WvW and is best used directly on players so that it triggers instantly. The trap-like trigger effect (though they’re not traps, you can see them) doesn’t justify the effects of the current marks, which seem rather weak compared to other options.

I don’t think support works very well with the current system of marks in particular (you’re meant to cast Mark of Blood on enemies to affect allies? Why do symbols do that better?). Personally, I would like to drive the necro away from the consistency between the light armor staff playstyle, and have a moveset similar to guard or rev staff. If marks could somehow still be incorporated into the weapon, along with a defined role (maybe hopefully support?), that would be pretty cool.

(What about Amala in Grenth mode? She could summon multiple marks without the same old casting animation, though honestly you could ignore them xD.)

The skimmer would have to have its named changed the moment it can go under water. ‘B-but... *skimmer* sounds *cool!*’

Stacking dmg% increase buff when necro applies might to himself?

Ok, I just did some very half-hearted horrible testing. I've mixed up the drawing weapons thing between clones and my phantasmal swordsmen. That aside, I tried to test the points I made earlier with the staff phantasm (summons 2, creates 2 clones) before quickly swapping to axe MH. Interestingly, although you summon 2 phantasms and the tooltip says 1200 range, 1 of the phantasms are likely to fire off first when used at max range, thus resulting in a clone being generated milliseconds before the other.

* The transition animation is fast, but it seems mismatched with the circles (i.e. circle pops up a tiniest of fraction of a second **before** the animation) I don't know about the sound since my computer can't play sound anymore.

* Clones will attempt to cast Imaginary Axes if they're not in range, they will run to the correct range first and then attack (sometimes they can run for bit, tested using a fence - they're pretty fast though). They should cast it though, no matter how delayed it may occur *maybe unless you interrupt them first* (not tested).

* No matter the distance, as soon as the circle pops up, clones should be ready to Axes of Symmetry with you (provided they ARE the correct clones).

* Watching your phantasms finish their attack animation will likely psyche you out and make you cast early. Casting when the animation triggers, at that exact moment (can't hear the sound), doesn't always guarantee that the clone is functional yet. Once the clones move, which happens really quickly, they are 100% functional.

* Watching circles *should* guarantee things are cast correctly. I don't claim this to be 100% true though.

I don't think it's very realistic to press shatters as soon as clones are produced so your reaction time should cover this invisible delay. Adversely, my 'delay' may not exist since I play with a permanent 200+ ping. Perhaps it may be internet related?

Edit: the clone 'appears' and is registered before the animation, which is weird.

This sounds pretty awful, but in the case where you have trouble seeing your character, your muscle memory needs to remember when the attack finishes, which only improves the more you play the build. A tip (may or may not be helpful) is to manually press the AA yourself. Alternatively, the last hit usually has a cast time which you can gauge on the yellow 'cast-time' bar in the middle of the screen. With quickness, however, this bar may shoot across without you noticing it.

Also it would be nice if you could state the weapon you're referring to - I'm assuming axe but I'm referring to chain skills general.

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> The proof against this idea has been released with episode 3. At last stage in forearmed is forewarned (the portal phase) I left my character in the camp and went for a coffee. NPCs finished the instance for me. It's bad instance and offers nothing interesting at the end, so I felt nothing but relief, but in terms of fights like caudecus, you would only escalate the problem of lazy players that don't want to learn the game. They would just wait until NPCs finish the fight. And so the leecher culture of GW2 would progress into next generation.

They don't need to do damage. They generally die before they can reduce 1%, at least in my experiences. They just need to *show* you how to do the mechanics (their effectiveness can be reduced to <5% of what you can do, so then it takes forever to just wait for them to do it). They can even call out, 'Hey, I think this is working! Try throwing a shard at him, Commander!' (whatever happens after this is clearly the player's fault). Or maybe the boss gets 'tired' of beating you and expending their power, so the amount of mechanics required to complete decreases (not to 0, just in case you take my point too far), e.g. the AoE shower is less spread out, the boss leaps at you less often, etc. Right now we have this bizarre situation where you literally just get up and continue bashing up the boss from wherever you left off (or so I hear, I have yet to abuse this feature).

> @"Gendou.9620" said:

> Mad raid skills? are you serious? Have you even done a raid? Story bosses are NOTHING compared to raid difficulty, how low does the bar need to be? dodging has been in this game from the start, you think after two expansions they are gonna make things feel like the same difficulty? Because I don't think that is how progression works.

Please don't take my off-comment overseas (it was an off-comment btw, sorry for the confusion). Also, progression (the one that you speak of, and since it seems to be your point of argument) is a horrible thing to be placed in story content. The rewards are minimal compared to doing a meta event in the open world, which are usually easier since the pressure isn't all on you. You'll also find that progression finds itself in the game in instanced PvE (FotM in particular) and PvP anyway.

> @"aceofbass.2163" said:

> Trust me, i still get people asking me: are you dps?

>

> Me: support

>

> Teammate: oh I was thinking that's a lot of water and earth overload for a tempest.

>

> Like, really my dude? You're the one I'm healing the most often.

Then we both know how each other feels. I blow up trash mobs at *DPS DH speeds* (maybe slower :smirk:) and still get confused with support.

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> Play mirage instead.

>

> What, it *is* the best way to indicate you're not a support chrono.

There was a period where I joined as a Mirage, then switched to DPS Chrono mid-instance but that became to fiddly and people still somehow thought I was switching to support. What brought me to play DPS Chrono was having an army of 8 iZerkers and 4 Disenchanters out at once, but sadly that build isn't quite meta in the first place. It did turn some heads though... WAIT... I'M ON TO SOMETHING! :tongue:

> @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> It's definitely a big nerf to the PVE burst and cleave of my DPS Chrono. Big enough that I'm actually considering retiring that character because now she can't even take down trash mobs like she should.

This change shouldn't be much of a buff/nerf to the damage application of DPS Chrono (or any power Mesmer). Blurred Frenzy + Mind Slash (+Gash) should cover whatever damage is missing from the old Blurred Frenzy (it's not that much slower either) - I still perform to pretty much the same standard to see any difference. The only real difference in the playstyle of sword is that you can't just sit there with a ~2s (only ~1s with quickness?) increase in DPS with a free evade, but instead need to start mashing your other buttons (usually AA) a bit sooner. Also, someone here has already calculated that the new Blurred Frenzy has more instantaneous DPS?

> The problem wasn't the sword skills; it's the fact that Mirage is a badly designed spec. It's been OP from the start and needs a full re-design to bring it more in line with other classes. Also, actually testing this stuff more in house before putting it live would probably help too.

Agreed, this what a lot of other people are also saying. But the devs might be trying to focus on something else, like tone down Mesmer's life-long erratic PvP status, though I don't even play that mode to understand this nerf in its entirety...

I dare say that the next few episodes should include a few ‘avoidance’ boss/sequence. To emphasise on mechanics. Besides, my ‘commander’ - a tiny asura, is getting tired of bashing up dragons, gods and supermassive golems with a something relative to a toothpick. We don’t always need something to display our mad raid skills at the end of each episode.

Saying that we can beat the boss doesn’t really solve any problems.

Like some people here, I liked that this boss was more of a ‘find the mechanics’ fight rather than that hp sponge + a ridiculous bunch of easy mechanics you had to keep an eye on from the boss in the latest chapter. But just because I’ve ‘one-shotted’ the bosses from HoT onwards so far (excluding S3E3 with a horrible AI tracking system, and Beast of War getting squished because I was stupid, heh) doesn’t mean ‘hey, it’s okay other people clearly wouldn’t have struggled with this’.

Firstly, I think armor damage should be completely removed from story instances, especially when there’s no anvil/repair station. Something like this already exists - Outnumbered, from WvW. The fact that you lose effectiveness potentially by attempting to learn and also how you can be forced to fight bosses in underwear completely baffles me. Or just add in an anvil somewhere. Fighting the latest boss (can’t specify because spoilers?) in your underwear is a complete joke.

How about we use the NPCs who are always with you but always FAIL at combat? Maybe after a few tries (3?) they start giving hints/actually start helping out (attempting half the effort to do mechanics for you) LIKE ACTUAL GUILD MATES instead of dying all the time? Raids nowadays seem to be learnt on YouTube rather than the actual encounter and people here are already pointing to guides so I see absolutely no harm in implementing this IN THE ACTUAL GAME.

All the bosses after this one appear to be ramped up in to similar difficulty so if you can pass this one *no sweat* than the subsequent bosses should be/have been no trouble. Otherwise...

I don’t think shatters are affected like ambushes are. Clones will always attempt to shatter if they’re registered on the circles. If you’ve noticed, they even break stun to shatter. Furthermore, it would be cheap if you had 3 circles up but only got a lv.2 shatter and all your clones were destroyed (because all of my clones disappear after a shatter, even ones transitioning from phants).

I haven’t touched mirage much so I can’t confirm with ambushes. Do clones break stun to do an ambush or Axes of Symmetry? When the clones change from phantasms, they DO draw weapons (as someone whose build spams phants, I see clones pulling out swords quite often), unlike other clone summoning skills - and this may very well be the small issue that you’re experiencing.

Additionally, it may be about the clone transition, it occurs ~1s after the phantasm attack and in the same position - if your phant manages to get massively displaced (say, the pistol phantasm who shoots from 900 range), it could be possible that a produced axe clone can’t do Imaginary Axes because the target is too far. It needs to get in range first, which all melee clones do.

Welp... I guess we still get an evade 1 second sooner.

Still concerned about the iSwordsmen though, they use practically the same skill :cold_sweat:

From a PvE perspective:

There’s a reduction in cast time though, but I don’t know how it interacts with quickness and the overall dps rotation. Yes, there is dmg loss if you purely cast Blurred Frenzy, but could it output the same dps as before in a single cast or in a rotation?

> @"Pyroatheist.9031" said:

> **The new blurred frenzy has been nerfed to about 82% of old blurred frenzy.**

>

I doubt this means 82% power Mesmer (Chrono) effectiveness... if so, I’ve got a box of tissues ready D:

Does this apply to the iSwordman as well? I’m kinda scared :scream:

Thanks for all the current answers posted so far :smile:

I’m aware that a low effort ‘im dps’ will solve the majority of the issue, but is having to tell every group necessary? This doesn’t seem to affect other similar scenarios like heal tempest (who joins in and doesn’t move from water very often) and support renegade (Ventari tablet says hi). I can pick out other DPS chronos too using aforementioned tactics. If I could somehow display my role without making any effort at all, I would take it... not for myself, but for other players so they know they shouldn’t be playing as if they had perma quickness and alacrity (and they shouldn’t be expecting it).

I often try to be the fourth/last person to join (so everyone gets to know my role at the same time instead of repeating it over and over again), but I remember joining a lone soulbeast once and then tricking three other DPSers into thinking we were some raid comp in LFG :tongue: **Maybe this is an issue in that DPS chrono isn’t known so well?** From my experience, I found that there are three groups of people: 1) never heard of it, all chronos are support, 2) only just heard of it, don’t know how effective it is, 3) yeah, know it, and 4) :hushed: don’t care, let’s get this frac done.

On a more separate topic, it doesn’t help that I play this class regularly so even though it’s already a thing, I am asked questions from time to time, usually ‘What build are you running?’ and ‘Does chrono do good dps?’ I kind of hate giving vague answers like ‘it’s mostly on meta’ and ‘good but definitely not the best’ (especially when you’re blowing the more average pug dps out the water... and they happen to have a meter). Could anyone provide good answers to these general questions so I can copy paste knowing that it is a confirmed response from the Mesmer community?

Without directly telling them.

I pug a lot in T4 FotM, and make an effort to avoid ‘LF chrono/dps’ groups, usually joining blank ‘t4’ or ‘daily’ groups. However, for some reason, people expect me to be playing support chrono even though my Signet of Inspiration doesn’t ever pop up in the last three minutes D:

If there’s already a sup chrono, someone goes, ‘Hey, we have two chronos’, until after a fight where someone has to flat-out say ‘One’s a dps.’ Oh.

And occasionally there’s someone who accuses me of having/giving poor boon uptimes. Okay WHAT.

I’ve tried casting Mantra of Pain, even in the lobby, in people’s faces but to no avail. I use sharpening stones but no one seems to check the buffs anyway. I don’t ever use a shield (excluding situations where more hard cc is requested) and use shiny off-hand skins to indicate that I use S/S and S/F.

My question is, **what is the best way to indicate that you play a dps chrono?**

If it’s one of the ones I’ve already mentioned, I guess I’ll have to deal with it then :/

Edit: fixed title... twice.

Staff Air AA (#1): Chain Lightning

Hit multiple foes with arcs of chain lightning.

Damage: 266 (0.66)

**Number of Bounces: 3**

Range: 1,200

(in-game, wiki and other GW2 related tools)

**Chain Lightning only bounces two times** (hits a max. of 3 targets, tested in PvP lobby). Also indirectly confirmed on wiki by stating that it will hit the first target twice but not the second if two targets are present. **The third hit also does ~%10 less dmg**, as stated by the wiki (bounce 2, also tested in PvP lobby) and isn’t clarified by current tooltip.

Is this just a tooltip error? Being quite an old skill, I’m surprised that neither the skill nor the tooltip hasn’t been fixed yet.

Currently, I don’t think it’s actually a bug. The engage skills do 3.4k tootltip dmg (with engage dmg mastery) at lvl 80, which most regular weapon skills fail to achieve. In low level areas, the higher dmg weapon skills on certain classes (1.5-2k at lvl 80) can already one shot or severely damage mobs meaning that the engage skill is bound to do even more dmg.

Whether this is an exploit or not, practically speaking, at lvl 80, the engage accounts for way less than 50% dmg against a trash mob; the engage is mostly used for the cc. The question now is whether we want to keep this consistent across all levels.

If I were to suggest one change to the current system, I would advocate for a trait in the water trait line that changes the water attunement into a normalised (to reduce amount of rework) set of damage skills (power) no matter the weapon. Of course, a great deal of trait shuffling will have to be done to accomodate this new trait but its purpose is purpose is to provide an alternate role from its usual lackluster form for dps specs. Allow it to be a fast casting 1200 range skill set with decent dps if camping water attunement, providing a simpler damage rotation (perhaps outdpsing untraited campfire staff dps). This is to break up certain weapon dynamics, such as the slow nature of staff or the short range ability of daggers and the complexity of them all. I am aware that this may look like a buff to current elementalist power specs but keep in mind that using these skills would require traiting in water - a traitline I know isn’t really considered in the meta dps weaver. For PvP purposes, change the water attunement icon to ice or whatever to indicate that one of your defensive attunements have been replaced by something that might actually kill them.

The reason why I suggest this trait is because I’m trying to refer back to the fixed roles of attunements and attempting to break them up. Additionally, I decided to look at water due to the abundance of damage traits that already exist within the water traitline - Piercing Shards and Aquamancer’s Training (32% damage increase if both conditions are met) and the fact how water currently doesn’t do much damage at all. This could be an opportunity to reshuffle traits, deleting or modifying some (*cough* Cleansing Water *cough*) to improve other areas of elementalist. This new trait could be one in many that can change the current role of certain attunements and could potentially give elementalist more build diversity by creating other attunement chaging traits as well.

Besides, do you remember the last time you saw an elementalist trying to do damage in Water? I think some of us would appreciate having a choice to make an offensive water/ice mage or at least an alternative to the skills we have now.

> @"Blogert.7510" said:

> **The real idea I want to hone in on is granting all the elementalist weapons a mixture of purpose, and versatility. As it stands, if you aren't using celestial stats, then having 4 attunements is simply a waste when sacrificing the option to swap weapons.**

I don’t think I understand what you’re saying; but I’ll give my interpretation of the situation anyway.

Elementalists are currently built with versatility **within** their weapons (through attunements). Other professions have versatility **across** their weapons. This is what makes certain skills lose purpose for elementalists and weapons lose purpose for other classes. Using your example, a warrior specced for condi will find little use for greatsword due to the lack of condi skills or even support skills. Similarly, an elementalist specced for dps will never use water attunement to its full potential because they have 0 healing power to make any of the healing skills impactful in any way. Versatility does have its use in PvP environments; otherwise, it becomes entirely redundant in PvE scenarios. As it currently stands, the current iterations of the elementalist weapons already follow a guideline listed below:

- Fire: all damage goes here, both power and condi

- Water: mainly support skills, healing and soft cc. Near non-existent damage capability

- Air: ‘single target’ power damage and hard cc

- Earth: condi damage, both hard and soft cc

This type of categorisation has certain issues. The most important issue is that there is always going to be certain skills and even whole attunemnets that will have little use depending on build - Water will usually be almost useless for dps specs, Air for condi, Fire for support...

Ironically, one thing that isn’t versatile on the elementalist is weapon skill range. All elemantalist weapons are range-locked, with the worst offenders being the sword and dagger MH. The conjures are supposedly meant to be our escape from this issue, but the way they are currently implemented makes it hard to even consider them as an possible alternative. Elementalists are already versatile as they are (besides skill range). Outside of PvP environments, unless the roles of the attunements can be directly changed, there will always be two or more ‘useless’ skills in the elementalist’s weapon kit.