Jekkt.6045

> @"UNOwen.7132" said: > > @"Jekkt.6045" said: > > just because core engi is bad and scrapper mediocre doesn't mean nades were fine on those specs. obviously core engi with rifle sucked when i played it and the defense was horrible, but i could still basically oneshot people with a 10k nade barrage.. (this was before nerfs) > > > > Except, *by definition*, if the specs arent broken with it, it is fine on them. I would argue Spellbreakers CC is kinda ludicrous compared to other classes. But Spellbreaker isnt broken with them, so theyre fine. > > > nades were problematic no matter which spec ran it. just because engi sucks doesn't mean you don't have to nerf unhealthy skills. sooner or later nade kit would have been nerfed anyway. > > > > They werent. And no, it wouldn't have. Remember, the kit wasnt even so much as played before the february patch. Or even after, for a while. Nerf Holo, and Grenade Kit would've been left untouched until powerdip reached low enough for core engineer to be an issue. But then again, powerdip is the biggest issue the game is facing anyway, so. it is absolutely possible for single skills or components of a class to be busted without making all builds of that class broken because they are very weak in other aspects. this was the case for engi and scrapper. engi has a very poor weapon choice and is quite vulnerable in melee range if you don't play tool kit. scrapper is kinda slow in applying damage and has longish defensive cooldowns on hammer. nade kit allowed all but condi specs to burst real hard. yes, the builds per se were not broken because they were weak, doesn't mean nade kit wasn't unhealthy for the game. it wasn't even nade kit alone but rather explosive traitline + might + the way you could apply your burst. in comes holo which handles engi's/scrapper's weaknesses way better and can slot the same burst. voila, you have yourself a broken spec. what you say isn't wrong at all. engi and scrapper weren't broken with nades because they had a weakness you could exploit. this is more of a philosophical question about what's more healthy for the game. this is kinda like the old example of a build that kills everything in 1 hit but dies from 1 hit. is it balanced? maybe. is it healthy? no. now let's talk about the spellbreaker cc you mention. i assume your main problem with its cc is full counter, not dagger 3 or shield 4. it would be quite easy to increase the skill cap a bit on full counter by making the counter window shorter so you have to time it better on warrior.

just because core engi is bad and scrapper mediocre doesn't mean nades were fine on those specs. obviously core engi with rifle sucked when i played it and the defense was horrible, but i could still basically oneshot people with a 10k nade barrage.. (this was before nerfs) nades were problematic no matter which spec ran it. just because engi sucks doesn't mean you don't have to nerf unhealthy skills. sooner or later nade kit would have been nerfed anyway. was the damage nerf the only way to do it? no, and i don't mind skills that hit hard and punish you if you fail to dodge them, as long as they are fair. animation clarity is very bad on nade skills if you don't cast them max range and being able to use that kind of a burst from stealth is just plain stupid.

> @"DoomNexus.5324" said: > I have a very very very faint hope that End of Dragons will introduce some new pvp modes or at least 1, since back in GW1 it was (also) the Cantha-expansion that brought Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry. I loved Fort Aspenwood and I'd love to see it return or maybe something similar. > There are actually discord servers specifically for organizing FA matches where for example on saturday evening people will all join at a certain hour and fill queues, so I'm not the only one who loved the mode. You're gonna laugh. I played stronghold the past few days and it's a lot of fun. Sure, the game mode has problems but it could have potential with some fixes and maybe 6v6 instead of 5v5. It just feels way more diverse than conquest because it has more room for strats. Or it might be "novelty" factor im experiencing.

> @"felix.2386" said: > > @"Jekkt.6045" said: > > i honestly never really cared about monetary rewards in pvp. back when neanderthals still roamed the earth we used to get by on glory and finishers. good old phoenix finisher... people in pvp mocked you if you had more than 2k ap lol. > > > > not like other game modes are getting much content either. 1 fractal a year or 0 doesn't make a big difference. wvw? do they have updates other than the mount? > > > > the problem for new players was and is still the very same one. terrible introduction to pvp. the tutorial is so garbage i wouldn't even call it a tutorial. conquest is a terrible game mode that promotes terrible builds. > > back then you had these. > pvp level was something of prestige, which is why finishers were prestigious for the dedicated > > and glory's reward is also tied to pvp level, i remember getting majestic sword or seeing phoenix player wearing runic blade and made me grind more > > and winning match had RNG rare pvp skin drops which also made me grind a ton > > which will all keep players, new players stick. > > now level has nothing related to it, other then finisher which finishes at 80 and easy to get with exp nerf with no point going over 80 > > you can't really single out fractal like a single content like pvp/wvw, it is part of pve. > even so wvw didn't get lot content, but it's still more content then pvp. > as tokens are actually worth using to perfect gears and infusions, and their achievements are actually long term grind > and i find myself grinding wvw level because i need the reward increase and i need the wvw skills. > and has gift of battle which forces player from other content to wvw. > there's nothing that forces other players to pvp and most reward are very short term based and pvp level literally means nothing. yeah you got skins from pvp, but they were just that. pvp skins. they only had worth for people playing pvp as you could only use those and the finishers there (well finishers in wvw too). nobody back then could have known you could carry them over one day. the change to pvp rank was really dumb and i still hate it to this day. the random pvp skins were only up to your own pvp rank as far as i remember. the reason why i single out fractals is because that's pretty much all they got this year. no raids or other relevant stuff. you could include strike missions but eh.. i should clarify that i don't see living story or map events as pve content because it's just mindless farming. you might have a different opinion on that. yeah wvw has infusions and stuff, but as a pvp player i don't really have any use for them so i don't really mind pvp not having them. pvp has the legendary wings. they actually promised us to make them limited and release a new legendary back every 4 seasons... classic anet. we have some ugly armor skins and a sucky legendary armor i guess. oh and the llamas. then the weird toys from mAT which 99% of the playerbase will never get because nobody actually wants to form a team or put any effort in. the pvp "reward" most players are probably after are the ladder titles.

i honestly never really cared about monetary rewards in pvp. back when neanderthals still roamed the earth we used to get by on glory and finishers. good old phoenix finisher... people in pvp mocked you if you had more than 2k ap lol. not like other game modes are getting much content either. 1 fractal a year or 0 doesn't make a big difference. wvw? do they have updates other than the mount? the problem for new players was and is still the very same one. terrible introduction to pvp. the tutorial is so garbage i wouldn't even call it a tutorial. conquest is a terrible game mode that promotes terrible builds.

> @"Cynz.9437" said: > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said: > > > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > > > @"Anomaly.7612" said: > > > > > > @"Vavume.8065" said: > > > > > > Escape/reset potential needed a nerf, I approve of the change. > > > > > > > > > > You realize this is the entire playstyle of Thief, right? Thief isn't a bruiser meant to stand there in a fight for long. They get in, do damage and get out. Now that's even harder. Basically just dunked on the basic Thief playstyle. > > > > > > > > > > Anet has zero clue what they want to do with Thief. I'm sick of this kitten. I was already taking a break from the game and now I'm done. > > > > > > > > > > All while Necro lich form saw no changes at all. What a joke. > > > > > > > > I mean it's broken right ? When you play any non-support class you want to do the same. Get in do damage and get out. But other classes can't do that unpunished. If they get in, do their kill, it's nice. But if you get in and screw up and still get away with it ? Does it really sound fair to you ? It is not about the thief it is about any other class. If you are a guardian and you want to +1 some fight, do you want to get in there, do damage and stay forever ? Apart from some specific bunker classes, everyone class wantsto be able to do that, they don't because they can't. > > > > I don't agree with you that cheesing the hell out of the blink mechanic is the "thief's basic playstyle". It is toxic for the game and it makes playing thief also kinda boring. Thief is just so much more than that. Now you actually gotta play thief how it is supposed to be played. You calculate your chances before engaging in a fight. It is how it should be, just deal with it. > > > > I agree about the necro tho. It needs some nerfs too. > > > > > > Yes when other classes can shake of 3x the dmg a thief can take. > > > > When a fight is happening just 4k damage from a +1 on a good moment can be enough to decide a fight, so having 10 times more damage won't help much either. And btw I can assure you as a mediocre thief player I can demolish 1vs1s with a thief, thief doesn't lack damage at all, especially if you go for a damage build :) It's been showcased so many times by actually good thief players. **Because truth is people just don't know how to play thief, because without his broken mobility, it is actually a hard class to play.** But with so much overtune it doesn't feel that way. Playing different thief builds after the last patch I still think that thief is in a good spot. I can feel the difference, but not as much as I thought. My experience might vary from yours, but it is what it is. > > I am actually confused now. I thought the main consensus was that thief is ez to play, free win, etc. which people basically used to justify any kind of hate/nerf wishes for the class. Now i read this. So which is it actually? > Also, i really would like to remind the community that there have been been times in this game when thieves were built more around evades/dodges and dueling - everyone screamed bloody murder and begged for nerfs, because, oh wonder, thieves playing those builds didn't just lie down and gave free point. Honestly, be careful of what you wish for. > > Does anyone remember the initial explanation from Anet, why thief fighting capability got heavily nerfed pre-HoT? Right, it was mobility. Every patch since then has been justified with "teef should be decapper, not dueler". Now they nerfed mobility (once again) and i do have one question at dev team: what should thief be? What does dev team actually invisions thief to be? It is like mesmers should be clone masters yet balance patch would reduce max number of clones to 1 because people get annoyed by the screen clutter or just hate to fight mesmers. basically everything has been nerfed on thief already at least once. why? because most of the stuff is abuseable. i remember when thief was played with double s/d for a short while. jesus christ was that an abomination of a build. not long after that they nerfed flanking strike and ini gain on weapon swap. i can't tell you what thief is supposed to be in this game but i can tell you what it was in gw1. some builds were heavy melee pressure. other builds ported in, knocked you down and beat the shit out of you and ported out again. but then again, i guess that's why it was called assassin. thief is called thief because it only steals your caps /s

go the dota approach, if you want to play ranked you have to verify your account via phone. should deal with bots/hackers to a certain extent.

> @"DoomNexus.5324" said: > Anet however apparently tries to achieve the defeats necessary to stay at that percentage not by matching you against players on a slightly higher skill level but by putting you in an absolute garbage trash team, but that's a topic for another time. sorry but that's a strawman argument. for obvious reasons you can't always be the "slightly lower level player" and what you describe as "absolute garbage trash team" is/are exactly those players that get matched against higher skill level players. matchmaking is working as intended, the problem is the pool of players and the average queue time. the mmr gap is too loose so it's not uncommon to have a 100 mmr discrepancy between players on a team. even if the cumulative team mmr might be "balanced" it doesn't mean the game will feel balanced. you could tighten that but queue time would go up relative to it, and if you don't find any players the system would just loosen the gap again to find a match for you. the matchmaking is pretty well tuned for what we have left of the pvp community tbh, even if it feels bad.

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > Thieves have 100% evasion uptime underwater while doing damage at the same time. Basically a broken version of unrelenting assault. > > So unless you are a teef: Be careful what you ask for. at least they don't have shortbow under water /s

take courtyard, put a post processing volume on it, done. people would play it once or twice and then never touch it again. under water point on capricorn was rarely defended for a reason.

depends on the skill tbh. first of all, opportunity is conditional. if your target is not movement impaired your damage will not be increased. that's something to keep in mind. also, movement impaired conditions can obviously get cleansed. courage might can be stolen/corrupted and it has "build up time" until you get the stacks to 4. defensively this is worse than opportunity as under pressure your damage might plummet and takes longer to build up again. then there's base damage and power modifier. the impact of power on your damage depends on the power multiplier of a skill. power is more important for a skill that scales by 1.0 instead of something like 0.3 i don't know when opportunity damage is added in the equation, but i assume at the end. you could check in the wiki and calculate it yourself but generally speaking i'd say courage is better than opportunity because of the conditional requirement unless you're running a build that bursts particularly hard in combination with immob/chill/cripple.

cool, been interested in how this format would work out for gw2 for a while. are bans global? meaning, if team A bans a spec for team B, can team A still pick it? best of luck.

> @"Apolo.5942" said: > > @"NorthernRedStar.3054" said: > > > @"Leonidrex.5649" said: > > > > @"Brimstone Jack.3462" said: > > > > > @"Leonidrex.5649" said: > > > > > > @"Apolo.5942" said: > > > > > > > @"Brimstone Jack.3462" said: > > > > > > > > @"Apolo.5942" said: > > > > > > > > > @"Brimstone Jack.3462" said: > > > > > > > > > > @"paShadoWn.5723" said: > > > > > > > > > > Meta builds are only working in Plat+. Below, you can play whatever. > > > > > > > > > > A friendly reminder: high-ranked elitists should not ruin the game for the remaining majority by successfully requesting patches that benefit only them. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Friendly reminder: They balance the game around people who actually know how to play it. Not around people who are misusing their characters and mad because they don't get to just be plat+. Balancing around bad players is never a good thing. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > For all the good its done for the game, and the several stages of pvp when it was essentially dead, may be they should balance around the average player instead.If anything there is too little sustain in pvp. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The explosive meta was the brainchild of a few streamers that no longer play the game and it nearly killed pvp. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > This is not DOTA or League of Legends, you should simply not be able to down someone with a few keystrokes. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I don't see myself ever getting behind the idea of balancing a competitive pvp system around non-competitive players. > > > > > > > > > > > > Why not, balancing around the standard instead of the over performer is the norm in most aspects of life. > > > > > > > > > > > > Retirement age is set around the average age expectancy. > > > > > > The army zeroes its sight around the average infantry engagement distance, not extreme long shooting. > > > > > > Your minim passing grade is based on the minimum acceptable knowledge requirements to perform. > > > > > > Speed limits are set around average response times for the environment. > > > > > > Most sports court sizes are completely arbitrary and not based on physical performance. > > > > > > Most combat sports have arbitrary weight classes instead being all put into heavy weight. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > then we will have kitten like akali from league of legends where good player can beat any other player on the planet with 100% success rate, where if you see akali and know she is good you can not ever hope to win, but hey. average akali stumbles and dies so its balanced. who cares that good joe has 90% winrate in 1500 games, when average jonny has 50% winrate. its balanced that way > > > > > > > > So, your gripe is those good players end up with a much higher win rate than the players they're better than? Nah. Pass. Next? > > > > > > no, my gripe is that the character balanced around " average " end up with absolutely no counterplay. to the point where 2 best players in the world facing eachother will know for sure that the one piloting akali will always win since she is so overtuned for people that know how to use it. This is why she was sitting at 48% winrate for plebeians where at pro play actually competent players could 1v2/1v3 other competent players. THIS is my gripe, im fine with good player smacking bad players, its as it should be. > > > but when a good player grabs OP class/build/prof and other good player doesnt stand a chance there is a problem > > > > Seems like a misunderstanding to me. You both agree on the very same thing. I do, too. > > > > Balancing around the average joes is the best way to anger your veteran players, and make them consider leaving the game for good. As a side note, that's why I think challenge motes are an effective approach to PvE - it doesn't underline either party. PvP's a different beast, though. > > Really?, lets say the worst happens and at the very top end of performance you only have a handful of viable builds that can exploit extreme skill, while at the average joe level you get extreme diversity. > > How is this any worse than it is today with only a handful of viable builds at all levels? MMR DOES EXISTS and it is there for a reason. you're misunderstanding something. to simplify: build skill cap is irrelevant for the top level, because being at the top requires you to be among the best by definition. skill cap is only relevant for everything below top level. this is all theoretical, so take it with a grain of salt: if we assume the best players in the game play their build at 100% efficiency, it won't matter if it's the hardest or the easiest build in the game. the problem is average performance (gold and low plat). let's say build a and build b are equally strong at the top level but build a is really easy and build b really hard. build a will likely outperform everything else and build b will probably be complete trash tier at average levels of performance. that's the tricky part. you can either leave both as they are, because both are equally strong when played to their maximum capability, or you can try to make build a harder while keeping it as strong by increasing the skill ceiling and build b easier by increasing the skill floor. obviously it's not as simple as i describe it here. often times hard builds are more flexible than easy builds. but the gist of it is the same: easy builds and hard builds can be equally strong at the top level. now back to your question. what happens if only a handful of builds are viable at top level (i'll leave the stuff about extreme skill away because it's not relevant). either the top builds need to be nerfed or other builds need to be buffed (without making them broken at lower levels).

> @"Apolo.5942" said: > > @"Brimstone Jack.3462" said: > > > @"Apolo.5942" said: > > > > @"Brimstone Jack.3462" said: > > > > > @"paShadoWn.5723" said: > > > > > Meta builds are only working in Plat+. Below, you can play whatever. > > > > > A friendly reminder: high-ranked elitists should not ruin the game for the remaining majority by successfully requesting patches that benefit only them. > > > > > > > > Friendly reminder: They balance the game around people who actually know how to play it. Not around people who are misusing their characters and mad because they don't get to just be plat+. Balancing around bad players is never a good thing. > > > > > > For all the good its done for the game, and the several stages of pvp when it was essentially dead, may be they should balance around the average player instead.If anything there is too little sustain in pvp. > > > > > > The explosive meta was the brainchild of a few streamers that no longer play the game and it nearly killed pvp. > > > > > > This is not DOTA or League of Legends, you should simply not be able to down someone with a few keystrokes. > > > > I don't see myself ever getting behind the idea of balancing a competitive pvp system around non-competitive players. > > Why not, balancing around the standard instead of the over performer is the norm in most aspects of life. > > Retirement age is set around the average age expectancy. > The army zeroes its sight around the average infantry engagement distance, not extreme long shooting. > Your minim passing grade is based on the minimum acceptable knowledge requirements to perform. > Speed limits are set around average response times for the environment. > Most sports court sizes are completely arbitrary and not based on physical performance. > Most combat sports have arbitrary weight classes instead being all put into heavy weight. > if you do that you will have builds that might be trash for average players and absolutely broken in the highest %. or builds that get nerfed because they perform better for average players but are weak in the highest %. both is bad. you need to balance power level for the top % and adjust skill floor for the average players while maintaining a high skill ceiling to encourage players to improve. i've had this argument so many times already, so forgive me for keeping this short and simple.

> @"Auroraborealis.7310" said: > Returned to the game a couple months ago, only to find a plethora of skill across all classes were atrociously butchered. Specifically skills that have CC tied to them. Now I can certainly see the rationale behind such nerfs, as having a skill with high damage AND crowd control is a mechanical issue in almost all mmo's around today. But to leave like 23 damage (lightning discharge trait for example) on a skill seems a bit weird, and just makes one disheartened as they bask in the nostalgia of what the skill once was. > > It seems the direction they are currently going (and a popular trend in MMO's now) is this meta tank/bunker where everyone is stacking massive defense. This is especially problematic in GW2 as of late as no one can viability play a glass cannon build in Conquest. This leads to very few build options if one wants to remain competitive. As time goes on build diversity in GW2 continues to dwindle down to about 3 meta builds, and a whole handful of significantly crappier ones trailing marginally far behind. > > I just hope that with this upcoming expansion the Dev team addresses some of these seemingly "unpolished" PvP changes, and return the fun back to competitive play in Guild Wars. It's more complicated than you think. Sustain isn't too high in correlation to sustain damage. Or you could say sustain damage is high because sustain is too. Same side of the coin. The main problem actually is the whole balance of damage. The removal of damage on cc skills was kinda the right decision. But that wasn't all they should have done. The main problem is, and people don't seem to realize this, the balance between burst damage and sustain damage. In the past you had lower sustain damage but higher burst damage. You needed less sustain to stay alive because damage in general had more counterplay, namely dodging or preventing your opponents' high damage skills. Now you kinda have to cheese through the high sustain damage with a lot of healing and boons to stay alive while burst damage is just icing on the cake. They would have to streamline skills, make them less bloated, reduce sustain damage, reduce boon "vomit" and in turn buff (fair) burst damage that you can setup with a cc. Then they can reduce sustain. The reason you can't play glass cannons is actually really simple. they just nerfed them too much. shatter mesmer and fresh air ele (not that it was ever any good) were pretty much killed off. same for hammer guardian. thief damage was nerfed because thief as a whole was too good at too many things at the same time, but its mobility is still good enough to make it relevant. another problem with those glass cannon builds was that they were unfair to play against. instant burst, stealth burst, teleport burst etc..

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said: >Either way as much as we complain they may actually be doing what they can with what resources they have left, I think anets having a lot more issues internally than what's known publically I'm absolutely sure that's what they're doing. I don't blame the normal devs at all and i hope they still have the passion to carry on. The ones to blame are the higher ups that constantly mismanage the game, and who knows what stuff ncsoft is pulling behind the strings.

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said: > > @"Jekkt.6045" said: > > > @"Crab Fear.1624" said: > > > If you don't like how the skill functions, change it. > > > > > > > That's where the problem starts. Apparently cmc can't change functionality because pve bois will go gaga. > > > > I wish we could have a complete pve / pvp+wvw split. that way we can have custom skills and even custom traits. > > > > > > Cmc cant change skill functions or designs cuz it requires the skill team to do so and they always seem to be too busy, so over the last yr balance passes consist of number changes only, that's a real professional method to balancing a large mmo if I've ever heard one. They also recently stated that unfortunately those 300 sec traits are here to stay do to the effort required to redesign them, cuz I guess lowering the 5 min cd's to a atleast a amount that makes them useable is too much to ask from these devs. Hire cmc as a balance dev. Then imagine not hiring a programmer / skill designer to go with it. If all other designers/programmers are busy all the time, you might wanna hire more... Why buy a car without wheels. We are at a point now where simple number shuffles won't do much anymore. Pretty much everything has been nerfed to clunkyness. It's time for reworks, it's been long overdue. Multiple trait lines, elite specs and weapon/utility skills require it.

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said: > If you don't like how the skill functions, change it. > That's where the problem starts. Apparently cmc can't change functionality because pve bois will go gaga. I wish we could have a complete pve / pvp+wvw split. that way we can have custom skills and even custom traits.

> @"otto.5684" said: > > @"Kachros.4751" said: > > > @"otto.5684" said: > > > > @"Calanthe.3857" said: > > > > I had just started using Celestial amulet and I wish they had at least given a one-sentence explanation for why it was removed, for those of us not really familiar with the reasons. > > > > > > I doubt it went beyond, 1-2 builds use it, and Anet thinks they are over performing. Instead of addressing these builds they just removed the amulet. > > > > Not entirely correct, i seen a friend using cele amulet guard with hammer, decent pressure and good decap potential while not dying 1v1 or 1v2. THIS was why it was removed, to stop builds like this and most people would want a nerf if another build turned up similar to this. This dealt with an unhealthy aspect of the game in a good way. > > Is it though? I can list multiple builds using celestial that are barely viable. Let’s hypothetically say the build you mentioned is too strong (celestial hammer guardian is garbage). If the build is over performing you nerf the build not remove the amulet it uses. This is kitten backwards in every possible way. take your filthy logic and get out of here!

> @"Kuma.1503" said: > ##Binding Roots > > * Juvenile Jacaranda and his pet ranger still kinda broken tbh. > > I leave it to you my friends. > > > > > too soon. i expect ranger nerfs in 2-3 balance patches. that's about the time i expect the nerf mesmer threads to start too.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > @"Jekkt.6045" said: > > > @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > > How about first introducing sigils, runesets and traits that reduce incoming CC duration? I mean, we already have sigils, runeset and traits that increase CC duration why isn't there anything to reduce it? I'm pretty sure it would help a bit with some of the issues generated by CC curently. > > > > > > Let's not forget that CC like float or sink are usually broken on taking damage in other game. (Thought, they also usually last longer) > > > > > > NB.: I'd add food to the list of thing that reduce CC duration but there is no food in sPvP. > > > > rune of melandru reduces cc duration by 20%. > > > > honestly, sigils should actually be offensive in nature, yet cleansing and energy are the most slotted and most defensive ones... i'm not a fan of another band aid fix sigil, especially one that could potentially be must pick. > > > > sure, you could add sigils that reduce incoming cc duration, 2s stab on swap, or break stun on swap (which would be busted af) but the main problem if you add that is keeping track of everything. > > > > you already have to count dodges, energy sigil, skill cooldowns and stunbreaks. add to that a sigil that could stunbreak or a random % duration reduction and it might be too much. > > > > it would be better if they properly balanced cc skills. increase some cooldowns, reduce aoe radius or change some that are aoe to single target etc. maybe buff a small number of burst skills to make it more rewarding. > > I don't see how it might be "too much". I'm just talking about reducing CC duration not removing them. For me CCs main purpose should be to tactically interupt a skill not make the opponent helpless for who-know-how-long in order to bash him without worry. > > NB.: But yes, I missed _rune of melandru_ and mesmer's _moa signet_. I still believe that we need more of those effects instead of more of the effect that are already all over the professions (stab/stunbreak/block/aegis/dodge... etc.). there are multiple types of cc. there is interrupt, usually in the form of daze. setup cc like bull's charge and peel cc that is a mix between soft and hard cc that is situational. all of them have their rightful spot in the game. dazes should obviously be used for rupts, low telegraph, low cast time skills. the problem lies with hard cc which many lack a good enough tell or long enough casting time (0.75-1s is the right range here)or are simply too spamable. what i mean by too much is, at one point you have to track so much stuff in a fight that it gets tedious. or in the case of % reduction, how are you going to know how much reduction your opponent is running? that's why i think it's a bad idea and just balancing cc skills is a better idea.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > How about first introducing sigils, runesets and traits that reduce incoming CC duration? I mean, we already have sigils, runeset and traits that increase CC duration why isn't there anything to reduce it? I'm pretty sure it would help a bit with some of the issues generated by CC curently. > > Let's not forget that CC like float or sink are usually broken on taking damage in other game. (Thought, they also usually last longer) > > NB.: I'd add food to the list of thing that reduce CC duration but there is no food in sPvP. rune of melandru reduces cc duration by 20%. honestly, sigils should actually be offensive in nature, yet cleansing and energy are the most slotted and most defensive ones... i'm not a fan of another band aid fix sigil, especially one that could potentially be must pick. sure, you could add sigils that reduce incoming cc duration, 2s stab on swap, or break stun on swap (which would be busted af) but the main problem if you add that is keeping track of everything. you already have to count dodges, energy sigil, skill cooldowns and stunbreaks. add to that a sigil that could stunbreak or a random % duration reduction and it might be too much. it would be better if they properly balanced cc skills. increase some cooldowns, reduce aoe radius or change some that are aoe to single target etc. maybe buff a small number of burst skills to make it more rewarding.

> @"Megametzler.5729" said: > > @"Lord of the Fire.6870" said: > > > @"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. > > > > I don't know what game you are playing xD. Fields are often used by experienced players to fill gaps e.g smoke fields for stealth(super usefull in WvW) , fire field gives might and so on . True a lot skills and traits are more efficient but fields aren't useless. For ele they even buffed the fire field in the last big change this also nerfed the might generation of the ele a lot in the same patch (the trait under it). > > > > (...) > > Fields and combos in general used to be much more important though in the core game. They were never buffed following the powercreep so many fields are barely useful anymore. Who cares about 3 might with a blast finisher in a fire field these days? Who cares about one stack of vulnerability for a projectile through a lightning field? > > Some of these effects should be buffed. Not all of them of course! But some are kinda poor, and that takes complexity out of the game. i think the other way is better. might stacking for example these days is quite passive and you're not actively stacking it but rather it happens just by doing what you're doing.. holo heat, ranger axe auto, scrapper stability etc. builds in the past actively tried to stack might (most of the time via fire auras and fire fields) and designed their rotation in a way to achieve that. if anything, fields should not be buffed, but might stacking on other builds (the ones that don't have access to the required fields/blasts/leaps) should be changed in a way that requires more "active" ways to stack said buffs.

fresh air and lightning rod are in my opinion two of the most interesting traits in the game design wise, even though lightning rod is kinda dumb, both of them change the way you play completely. having said that, neither fa builds nor lr builds were ever truly relevant in the game or even close to meta. why is that? because ele design absolutely sucks. ele doesn't deal any damage "on its own". ele's survivability is underwhelming for its armor and health pool. so what do you do? you either neglect damage and build full sustain, dealing any damage at all via might stacked burning, or trait so hard into damage that you have no sustain at all. ever seen the damage breakdown of a d/d ele? ~50k burning ~30k bleeding and ~10k poison damage. bleeding and poison coming from geomancy/doom... fresh air builds always had, in relation to their defense, underwhelming damage. for how squishy the builds are everything should fall over just from you looking at it. but that would be terrible and incredibly frustrating because fa burst has barely any tell and comes down to guessing. i've been advocating for fresh air buffs for years but anet never really cared about the build at all, buffing useless stuff like water 2 on scepter over and over again for no damn good reason when the main problems are mostly lack of damage and sucky auto attacks on scepter. but can you really buff scepter damage? of course you can, you just have to make it fair... it's actually really simple.. i've talked about it on the forums multiple times already. burst on scepter needs a visual indicator and a delay. this was back when weaver didn't exist yet, but it applies to fa weaver burst all the same. my example back then was: you press air 2. a cloud appears above your target, your skill hits after 0.75-1s or whatever after the cloud appears. amazing, now you have counterplay! i have more than 3k games on ele and i can tell you confidently, anet has no clue what to do with the class nor did they ever have any clue what to do with ele. ps: for the person who talked about gw1 spike ele. to this day, invoke lightning ele is a meta dps in gw1.

> @"Quadox.7834" said: > wasnt staff ele kind of meta for a while back in the time of pirate rune parrot it wasn't really meta as d/d was just better overall, but it had the ability to decap a node and was probably slightly better in teamfights because of aoe damage and water fields. there was only one person really playing celestial staff ele.