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Mr. Neutron posted:I'm about to do Vision and one of the items I need sadly cannot be acquired via WvW mastery tracks. How painful is getting the 'A star to guide us' mastery achievement? Any achievements I should avoid? I would prefer to not replay the story instances if possible. You’ll want to do all the collections for Sun’s Refuge for sure. If you’re good at griffon fying that’s up to 4 achievements for silver and gold ranks. If you want actual pants for your light armor classes, the elegy armor quest is worth doing. There are hidden achievements in the Hero menu so be sure to use the wiki to find the lowest hanging fruit.
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Oct 23, 2022 14:45
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| # ? May 23, 2024 12:39 |
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orcane posted:I think in PoF it's worst in the first two zones.
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Oct 23, 2022 15:20
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I found HoT quests more annoying because my client kept crashing during the final cutscene of most missions. Obviously that doesn’t apply to everyone.
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Oct 23, 2022 15:25
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pof has some bosses that are pretty fun solo at least
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Oct 23, 2022 15:40
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Geared up a power Catalyst for T4 fractals and it's relatively fine. It's a lot of button pressing, but I didn't mind because I felt engaged. I do enough DPS to feel accomplished, but I'd often be sitting #3 on the dps chart. Then I geared up a T4 condition Virtuosos and lmao do I now have some opinions on Catalyst. Virt enjoys a much simpler rotation with better damage more consistently than my Catalyst and at longer range (1200 range vs Catalyst forcing you to stand in jade spheres plus half your skills are 600 or melee range anyway). But the effort/dps tradeoff wasn't the issue for me. It's that while Catalysts have lots of buttons they must push, all the buttons do the same thing. The spec has nothing else to do but dps. Crowd control is available on the lightning attunement which can be entirely unavailable on a 8 second cooldown, and even then one of the skills (Wind Storm) forcefully ejects you backwards putting you in mortal danger when fighting on a platform, with the added bonus of glitching you into walls from which you can't escape. There really aren't any non-dps skills to use at all. You can carry a staff for options, but only useful while out of combat as elementalists can't swap weapons in combat. Conjured weapons are on 60 second cooldowns, so you either waste a slot waiting to deploy it or it's on cooldown when one of the conjured skills might be handy. Meanwhile, Virtusos gets skills for portals, swiftness (that's also a pull!), multiple invis skills, Feedback for projectile reflect, and NullField/Arcane Thievery for boonstrips. tl;dr retired catalyst after sampling the purple haze.
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Oct 24, 2022 18:41
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don't forget group stability and distortion!
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Oct 24, 2022 19:07
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Skyscale seems like a lot of work but I would like to fly around on a dragon I guess. I'm almost done with HoT on my Sylvari and this feels infinitely better (and more right) than the first time I played it. VB with a griffon is so, so, SO much better and more fun than ever before.
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Oct 24, 2022 19:18
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You described a lot of core issues with elementalist, mainly that the entire thing revolving around dancing stances with cooldowns gives you less flexibility even though the idea maybe originated as a class with more flexibility. You’re at minimum 1 step farther removed from accessing any skill than any other profession, so even if you have a utility block or stability in Earth, it’s useless unless you’re camping Earth, which makes you useless at other things. I’ve played a good amount of ele and think it can be fun but it honestly just needs a redesign from the ground up.
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Oct 24, 2022 19:31
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jokes posted:Skyscale seems like a lot of work but I would like to fly around on a dragon I guess. Skyscale is so, SO worth it. I've been trying to use other mounts more often but between Scale and Beetle, I don't need anything else.
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Oct 24, 2022 20:14
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If you get the skyscale don't do what I did and immediately move away from POF zones without spending the tiny bit of time to get the masteries. I did a lot of stuff in between getting skyscale and getting the mastery that lets you burn endurance to launch off a cliffside for more flight time, and I can't tell you how many times I got stuck just below the lip of a cliff. I went back for return to season 4 and got all the masteries then saw how much frustration I could have avoided.
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Oct 24, 2022 20:47
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Skyscale is worth it. But ONLY once you have completed its mastery. So be saving casino coins and have your mastery points ready, otherwise prepare for a little more disappointment.
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Oct 24, 2022 20:51
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Yeah I hope they learn from the popularity of virtuoso and mechanist that players want accessible specs to play for whatever they design for the fourth expansion.
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Oct 24, 2022 21:10
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Fun fact: Virtuoso, Mechanist, and Harbinger were all designed by the same dev!
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Oct 24, 2022 22:50
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What a complete SICKO!
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Oct 24, 2022 23:21
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"Balance philosophy" stream this Friday
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Oct 24, 2022 23:51
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DARPA posted:Geared up a power Catalyst for T4 fractals and it's relatively fine. It's a lot of button pressing, but I didn't mind because I felt engaged. I do enough DPS to feel accomplished, but I'd often be sitting #3 on the dps chart. Then I geared up a T4 condition Virtuosos and lmao do I now have some opinions on Catalyst. Weird I don't remember writing this post, 3,500 hours on elementalist and I started branching out to other classes, it's certainly eye opening how much less the others have to do to provide so, so much more. I even tried some simplified rotation condi weaver just mashing fire and earth skills off cooldown and it's still the same problem of not doing enough dps for the high effort and lack of utility. The air hammer knockback is also what made me stop playing elementalist in most content after it sent me flying off a boss platform to my death.
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Oct 25, 2022 03:09
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As an ele main since release, the biggest thing Anet could do to make it not a chore to play is to just get rid of the attunement cooldowns altogether and just let you go into any attunement whenever you want. Engineers already practically have this with their kits. Overloads from Tempest can stay, at a reduced cooldown, but being able to freely swap attunements would go a long way to feel on-par with other classes.
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Oct 25, 2022 12:24
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I'm not even sure that would do it. Their utilities and elites are mostly pretty lame. You really have to understand fields and finishers and the rotations to get them in the right order to get anything impressive out of the class.
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Oct 25, 2022 12:32
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Ele being range-locked in combat is one of my biggest gripes. If they retuned the core weapons to be more like Catalyst hammer where half are for melee and half are for further out that’d help. Or let Ele have in-combat weapon swap to give some tactical flexibility but on a longer cooldown to prevent abuse.
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Oct 25, 2022 13:27
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https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/2165905/boards/contest-and-giveaways-global/Giveaway/guild-wars-2-toy-mini-egg-giveaway get your free mini's also ele needs to like, move away from every attunement having buttons worth pressing on cooldown as a damage gain. you see this as a major sin on catalyst hammer for example, where even water is just jam packed with damage even though it should just be strictly healing. whoever keeps designing ele specs, they keep going full sicko mode on attunement swap spam when really it should be just 2 attunements are worth flipping between - fire for both power and condi, air for power, earth for condi, and then water is just utility. that'd make ele equivilent to other professions, effort wise, and you can keep weaver as the high APM all the attunements spec. Meeko fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Oct 25, 2022 |
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Oct 25, 2022 19:22
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Meeko posted:https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/2165905/boards/contest-and-giveaways-global/Giveaway/guild-wars-2-toy-mini-egg-giveaway Every time I think about making an Ele character, I just take a gander at their rotations. I do not want to put my hands through that obstacle course of a rotation.
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Oct 25, 2022 19:43
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Meeko posted:https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/2165905/boards/contest-and-giveaways-global/Giveaway/guild-wars-2-toy-mini-egg-giveaway Oh it's a steam key? That's...more effort than I was planning to go through.
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Oct 25, 2022 20:01
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El Fideo posted:Oh it's a steam key? That's...more effort than I was planning to go through. It's an arena.net code that you redeem on the portal 
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Oct 25, 2022 20:40
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The second time, yes. The first time it gave me a steam key, which turns out to be for a game called Gato Roboto?
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Oct 25, 2022 21:02
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My very first character was an ele. I always wanted the elements to do specific things: Fire is big dps Water is healing Earth is buffing Air is utility and cc But in reality it was big sad and big effort. Can we just get the guy who did the harbinger, engineer and Mesmer to fix this?
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Oct 25, 2022 22:04
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LordAdakos posted:My very first character was an ele. He was also the guy who used to be the balance lead until he left the company a short while ago, so no.
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Oct 25, 2022 22:45
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LordAdakos posted:My very first character was an ele. Earth is for making big rock explosions (earth dagger 4 and 5). It is also the best.
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Oct 26, 2022 01:03
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ApeHawk posted:He was also the guy who used to be the balance lead until he left the company a short while ago, so no. Yeah, I think he ended up showing more than a little favoritism with those 3 classes getting buffed over and over and over (while already some of the top easymode classes) while the other classes got ignored, followed by the playerbase outrage when the chatlogs confirmed it. On release I remember Elementalist being pretty gosh darn good for a long while and even rewarded the effort put in, but they just ate nerf after nerf after nerf because Anet was terrified of Elementalist having 20 buttons and sometimes adding even more buttons with utilities like icebow, lightning hammer and fiery greatsword so they had to be gutted, the final death knells I think were when they started to finalize the structure of the game systems we know today, like defiance bars and dedicated healer specs, Elementalist has a dozen moves that do CC but only if the enemy walks over the lines and when attunement cooldown allowed which made them terrible at defiance breaks, they used to be pretty good dps/support with being able to swap water fast for area heals or sharing protection, but dedicated healer specs are mandatory for high end content now and they do zdps while providing a giant list of buffs eles can't provide while also being better pure healers, tempest has never been better then "workable but by all metrics worse then the other options" as a healer since release.
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Oct 26, 2022 03:00
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Ele just feels uneven and slapped together. For example: -A lot of their utilities are selfish, mostly useless, or just largely outdated and outclassed (Arcane Wave, Conjure Lava Axe, Cleansing Fire, Signet of Water, Glyph of Elemental Power, Tornado, Ether Renewal, Aqautic Stance, Lightning Flash) -To add to this, the core utility traits don't improve them in any significant way that makes sense other than maybe the signet trait. Conjurer is never taken because it doesn't mesh well with the Conjures, for instance. It would be better if each utility had their own trait (Put Cleansing Fire in Fire Magic and have the trait make it affect allies, for example). Conjurer is never taken because it doesn't mesh well with the Conjures, for instance. -You never feel rewarded for swapping attunements, especially when other classes can sit in one weapon set and deal more dps/support with less effort. So, they either sit in one attunement or swap classes instead. Hell, there's like maybe four traits that do anything substantial for swapping attunements (Fresh Air, Healing Ripple, Weaver's Prowess, Elements of Rage). Note that half of those are in the Weaver traitline. There are other issues but it's just exhausting now and I hope the new balance lead (who's an Ele main) will address these issues, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Oct 26, 2022 06:02
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Ele should get four orbs and an Invoke button. All their spells are some permutation of the four orbs encircling them.
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Oct 26, 2022 10:23
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elementalists should be given gravity magic to aid in their rotations
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Oct 26, 2022 12:04
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Elementalist's elements should just be colors for the same basic abilities for each weapon. Your spec adds different things to the elements you choose, like burning for fire skills and bleeding for earth skills.
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Oct 26, 2022 18:00
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The element swapping is also weird because it’s almost 180 from the GW1 elementalist who usually specialized in a single element (outside of a few utility skills.
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Oct 27, 2022 02:28
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I don't think many elementalist players would be opposed to it having a rework, hardly see it played anywhere anymore.
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Oct 27, 2022 03:02
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Attunements should be augments for weapon skills. Anet absolutely dug their own grave over-designing the core spec.
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Oct 27, 2022 03:40
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Elementalist is used often enough when its numbers aren't trash for no particular reason, they don't have to do anything fancy to it. https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity Probably even overplayed in Fractals in the past!
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Oct 27, 2022 03:40
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There's nothing inherently wrong with the core swapping mechanic. It's just that they've never really properly incentivized it, at least until they made the weaver, and in some ways it's even disincentivized. Since the beginning, ele has had a ton of unusable traits taking design space that could be used to make its mechanic more fleshed out. Even many of the usable ones are really boring and only taken because they make number go up. The interesting traits that more need to follow suit are things like Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Power Overwhelming, Evasive Arcana, Elemental Surge, the aura traits. These encourage a certain playstyle that's enhanced by comboing skills well, and some even favor a specific element in spite of it. Imagine if they got rid of boring poo poo like "+1% damage per boon" in favor of more creative stuff like "water fields enhance other elemental attacks (fire=extra damage, air=daze, earth=immobilize)". Hell, maybe it's time to start tagging all elemental skills, like how engie and bladesworn have "explosions" and virtuoso has "blades". This could allow for a lot more baseline interactions between weapon skills beyond the standard field/finisher. Steal ideas from Genshin Impact for all I care. Its utilities are also way powercrept and in need of renovation. Arcanes are probably the only ones in a good spot. Glyphs are a cool concept, but the variations are unbalanced and the skill type needs better trait support. Cantrips were nerfed in like the first year and never really revisited, also barely any trait support. Signets have cool trait support, but are kind of weak without heavy investment. Perhaps the utilities that are associated with specific elements (cantrips, conjures, signets) can be more effective when used in their corresponding attunement to allow "maining" elements. Also, can we finally get an elite for every skill type (across the board)? Conjures should be revamped to be less janky, which would allow them to be a reliable "weapon swap" for situations when your main weapon is not a great choice. Their kits are actually really solid, but they way they work right now just encourages using them like single cast skills with extra steps while also potentially causing allies to be a hinderence. I think making them 2-charge skills with 30s recharge rather than summoning bundles would be the perfect way to keep them essentially the same but infinitely more intuitive. If they still want the sharing aspect, hell, make it summon one that only allies can pick up. I dunno, I've never had a problem with the core mechanics so much as all the chaff in their traits/skills. No need to rebuild from the ground up when it never felt complete in the first place with so much filler. In 10 years, ele has never gotten the kind of trait overhaul that's been seen in other professions, especially mesmers and engies.
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Oct 27, 2022 09:31
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when catalyst released i tried to like it, but after several rounds of fixes, nerfs, and buffs it's still just bad and i'll keep mainlining weaver for melee dps and tempest for long range and heals. at first i thought it's just getting used to it like weaver was, but eventually i just gave up because it never got good lol the whole spec feels bad and hammer is even worse, what kind of loving maniac decided i need to f1-f4 and push 3 every time to be optimal lmao. i got dagger catalyst to kinda work alright for me, but at that point why not just be a sword weaver which flows better, does same ballpark dps, and cannot die as long as you keep pushing buttons maybe one day anet will release another good elementalist specialization, but catalyst ain't it IMO gandlethorpe posted:I dunno, I've never had a problem with the core mechanics so much as all the chaff in their traits/skills. No need to rebuild from the ground up when it never felt complete in the first place with so much filler. In 10 years, ele has never gotten the kind of trait overhaul that's been seen in other professions, especially mesmers and engies. this too
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Oct 27, 2022 13:04
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True a pass through core Ele traits and utility skills could go a long way
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Oct 28, 2022 01:59
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| # ? May 23, 2024 12:39 |
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https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/123508-guild-wars-2-balance-philosophy/ Not really very interesting however. Mr. Neutron fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Oct 28, 2022 |
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Oct 28, 2022 20:44
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