Barnesy.5839

My #1 QOL request: I hate that channelled abilities are interrupted if I activate another skill too early. Provide us with a toggle option in the options menu which allows us to choose whether channelled abilities are interrupted by other skill activations. A similar issue occurs with various movement skills. I hate that they interrupt all other skills. Give us the option to turn skill interruption off. (You could also provide a similar toggle option for the heal skill. Allow players the choice as to whether their heal skill will interrupt their other abilities.)

You're all looking at this incorrectly. I love fresh air, but if other elements had a fresh air equivalent, then you would just use both fresh air AND fresh fire (or whatever). Then you could rapid fire swap between elements without any cooldowns. You could rapid fire swap between proccing sun spot and electric discharge and do stupid amounts of dps. That would be utterly broken.

Watch some of the recent ele pistol DPS benchmarks that have been released. Auto attacks are used quite a bit. For example, 5 or 6 auto attacks are used in fire attunement before switching (a similar number of auto attacks are used in earth attunement too). These benchmarks show that there is ample time for the pistol ele to auto attack, because all the other skills and attunements are on cooldown. The problem is that "fixing other issues relating to pistol" requires a lot of extra work. Condi Pistol is already doing a lot of DPS in PvE. If the devs rework certain aspects of pistol, they will also need to rebalance the rest of the weapon to compensate. I don't know if the devs are going to invest that much time into reworking and rebalancing a single weapon for one class. The issues with pistol aren't just mechanical/gameplay issues. Pistol is also kinda boring. Tripling auto attack speed, while doing a third of the effects, is an extremely simple change. It doesn't effect the pistol's DPS, but it makes the weapon way cooler. It turns the weapon from a boring pea shooter into a rapid fire hail of bullets. I agree that increasing auto attack speed won't fix all of pistol's problems. However, it will significantly change the feel of the weapon for such little effort (just divide the attack time and effects by 3). It's such an easy change to make, and it doesn't even effect the weapon's DPS. I think it's a no-brainer: It's a decent improvement to pistol for almost zero effort.

Did you ever play engineer rifle before it's auto attack was sped up? Speeding up the auto attack made the weapon far more enjoyable and it hugely reduced clunkiness. Did you ever play guardian hammer when it's auto attack was super slow? Speeding up the auto attack made the weapon far more enjoyable and it hugely reduced clunkiness. PvE Pistol Condi builds already do very high DPS. PvE condi damage builds do not need buffing. What you're suggesting would require significant reworks to the weapon. Simply buffing bullet generation (for example, "auto attacks generate bullets") would make the weapon overpowered. If you buff bullet generation/consumption without rebalancing the weapon, you will make the weapon far too powerful. It would require a lot of work from the devs to properly rework the bullet mechanic. My suggestion is easy to implement and doesn't effect balance. You simply divide all auto attack cast times and effects by 3. Pistol feels clunky and boring to use. My suggestion improves both of these things with minimal effort. Shooting lots of bullets is way cooler than shooting just a few. And, just like with engineer rifle and guardian hammer, speeding up auto attacks makes a HUGE difference in reducing chunkiness.

Let's be real, it's highly unlikely the pistol will be completely redesigned. I think that Anet will choose to make the changes to pistol that have the most benefit for the least amount of effort. HERE IS THE SIMPLEST IMPROVEMENT TO PISTOL: Make all pistol auto attacks fire three times faster, but do a third of their effects. Anet sped up the auto attack of engineer rifle, and it feels SOOO much better to use. The pistol auto attacks aren't projectile finishers, thus speeding up the attack rate but lowering damage/effects won't change DPS. Having a pistol which shoots rapidly is so much cooler. It feels more powerful, and it makes the skills far less clunky to use. Engineer rifle feels so much better to use simply by speeding up it's auto attack. TL;DR: Skip to "Reducing projectile effects" below if you don't want to read all the issues. I think "Reducing projectile effects" are some of my best suggestions. Further issues with pistol: The "bullet" theme is lame. Elementalists should be shooting lightning bolts, fireballs, ice shards, and large rocks. The visuals make the gun feel like a pea shooter. I want to shoot awesome elemental effects, not pathetic little projectiles. Audio: Please no gunshot noises! The gunshot noise is so mundane and repetitive. Instead, just use elemental noises; fire, water, ice, lightning, wind, earth. Gw2 has numerous sound effects for these elemental effects. Take an existing sound effect and just modify it so that it sounds unique and weighty. People do that with music samples all the time. Too many projectiles! Elementalists can't weapon swap. Being stuck using a projectile only weapon in PvP and WvW suuucks. In PvE, single target projectiles are boring. It's too hard to tell when a bullet is stocked. Elemental explosion is not worth the cost of 4 bullets. Pistol is not a hybrid weapon, it does barely any power damage. Elementalist is a hybrid class. All elementalist weapons are hybrid weapons: They can do power damage, condi damage, or a mixture of both. How to fix these issues: Stocking up "bullets" is lame. Instead rename "bullet" to something more elemental. Maybe something like "elemental essence", which keeps the alliteration theme. Hence you stock up "elemental essence" rather than "bullets". By moving away from "bullets" it opens up design and thematic options, rather than every skill needing to shoot a bullet. This also has the potential benefit of reducing the number of projectile skills that pistol uses. The Skills 2 and 3 need to be highlighted or have their icons changed when a bullet is stocked. Audio: Please no gunshot noises! Earth 3, earth/fire dual attack, and earth/air dual attack all sound great because they have no gunshot noise. Please do that for all pistol skills. Elemental explosion either needs to be more powerful (in order to justify the cost of 4 bullets), or needs to be easier to achieve (i.e. not cost 4 bullets, or make bullets easier to gain). Make more skills piercing, aoe or unblockable by default. (Because single target projectiles are boring in PvE and they suck in PvP and WvW.) The pistol can become a better hybrid weapon by improving the damage of pistol air auto attack. Why pistol air auto attack? Pistol air skills currently do pathetic damage in all game modes. Pistol air auto attack is NOT used in the DPS rotation of condi pistol PvE builds. By buffing pistol air auto attack, it buffs the DPS of power builds, however it doesn't buff the DPS of condi builds. (i.e. you can easily buff power builds, while not overpowering condi builds). Reducing projectile effects: Make pistol air 1 shoot out instantaneous, ranged lighting bolts (not a projectile). This attack would be similar to scepter air 1, however scepter channels a constant horizontal beam of lightning. Pistol air 1 should shoot out a single burst lightning strike. The skill would function like necromancer axe auto attack (instantaneous, ranged), however visually, the pistol would shoot out instantaneous lightning bolts that travel horizontally like scepter air 1. Make pistol fire 1 like a real-life flamethrower (not a projectile). Real-life flamethrowers shoot long, narrow jets of fire. Make it a channelled skill like scepter air auto attack. Except instead of shooting lightning, it shoots flames. By making it functionally similar to scepter air auto attack, you have the benefit of it not being a projectile, HOWEVER it isn't able to attack through terrain like engineer flamethrower. (A long ranged flamethrower that could attack through terrain would be problematic in PvP/WvW.) Pistol air 3 should only require two activations rather than three activations. The first activation should do the dash effect plus an AOE attack (like dagger air 2; not a projectile). If the attack hits, then the ele can dash again (without the attack on the 2nd dash). By converting these skills into instantaneous ranged attacks, it reduces projectile effects, and helps with attacking moving targets. By converting pistol air and fire auto attacks into instantaneous ranged, it makes pistol on-par with scepter. (Scepter also has two instantaneous ranged auto attacks; air and fire.) Air and fire are the "offensive" attunements (compared to earth and water). It makes sense that air and fire should have better auto attacks (instantaneous ranged), because they are the "offensive" attunements. A bonus issue: The fire bullet bonus for Molten Meteor (Fire/Earth dual attack) is badly designed. It consumes a fire bullet in order to make the skill AOE. If you're fighting a single target, this skill consumes a bullet for no benefit. Using this skill against a single target makes you weaker if it consumes your fire bullet. (You're weaker, because you've just lost your fire bullet.) This skill is a meteor. It should already be AOE. Consuming a bullet should always do something beneficial. Molten meteor should be AOE by default, and the fire bullet bonus should do something useful, like additional burning.

Not being able to maintain chain reactions due to out-of-sync cooldowns feels bad. Either increase the duration of the chain reaction window and/or make shortbow 2's cooldown shorter so that chain reactions can be maintained. Whatever the solution, there needs to be a non-alacrity rotation such that the chain reactions can be maintained indefinitely. If lowering the cooldowns is too powerful, to compensate just slightly reduce some damage/healing numbers. The top priority should be to have a chain reaction mechanic that flows well and feels nice to play. Damage and healing output can be tweaked with simple number changes.

I've mained Ele since gw2 launch. I play PvP almost exclusively. Pistol feels like utter trash to use. The weapon is so slow, clunky, and weak. Pistol Air 2 and Pistol Air 3 are by far the worst designed Ele pistol skills. Here's why: Elemenalists need to be constantly swapping attunements. Almost all of ele's traits synergise around swapping to new attunements as quickly as possible. Pistol Air 3 is super janky. It requires THREE seperate activations, all with cast times. Once to dash, another to fire a weak projectile, and another to dash again. It takes so long to perform these actions that it is better to just swap to a new attunement rather than wait for all three cast animations. Pistol Air 2 allows you to lower the cooldown of another pistol ability by 33%. Even if you lower the cooldown of another pistol skill, in order to re-use that skill, you need to linger in an attunement and wait for the skill to recharge. It's far better to just swap to a new attunement which immediately gives you all new weapon skills and procs your traits. By the time you return back to the original attunement, the skill has recharged anyway, making the 33% cooldown reduction useless. Additionally, pistol air 3 is bugged: Pistol air 2 does not lower the cooldown of pistol air 3. This is likely caused because pistol air 3 is super janky and is split into three separate skills.

Yep, pistol is TERRIBLE. I'm an ele main. I LOVE playing elementalist, however using pistol makes me hate ele. Pistol is that bad.

Why didn't you provide a poll option for people who like ele pistol? You're going to get a pretty biased sample if the people who like ele pistol don't have a poll option to choose.

The problem with shortbow: The skill which triggers the chain reaction does not benefit from the chain reaction bonus. If you place 3 traps, you will only get 2 chain reaction bonuses. If you place 4 traps, you get 3 chain reaction bonuses. In order to get maximum benefit, you need to first place all 4 traps, and then trigger them all at once. This is slow and clunky. The solution: Allow the pulses from traps to immediately trigger newly placed traps. For example: Place trap #1 and trigger it. Place trap #2. The pulses from trap #1 will immediately cause trap #2 to trigger. While trap #2 is pulsing, place trap #3. The pulses from trap #2 will immediately cause trap #3 to trigger. Keep placing new traps near older traps in order to maintain a chain of chain reactions. If there are multiple traps pulsing at once, the OLDEST trap should take priority when triggering new traps (just like combo fields). Why this is a good solution: It reinforces the theme of chain reactions. Players are incentivised to maintain the chain of chain reactions in order to gain the chain reaction bonus for each trap they place. If the chain of chain reactions ever stops, players would have to restart the chain by manually detonating a new trap. The manually detonated trap would not gain the "chain reaction bonus". Simply put: Players need to keep the chain reactions going in order to keep getting the bonuses. It makes combat less clunky, because traps can be used when the skill is available and they can be triggered immediately. It also helps to hit moving targets. The current way that shortbow is designed requires you to place multiple traps in the same location in order to trigger a new chain reaction. Shooting multiple traps is slow. The target will have moved away while you're placing those multiple traps. By causing the OLDEST trap to take priority when triggering new traps, players can choose to amplify the traps' effects depending on the sequence of traps used. For example: If extra healing is needed, first place down the healing trap, and then shoot multiple traps onto the healing trap while it is pulsing. The newly triggered traps will all be triggered by the healing trap, thus providing many healing chain reaction bonuses.

When you have the grandmaster trait which maintains your signet's passives, Shift Signet's passive is not maintained in WvW and PvP. When Shift Signet is activated, the passive effect is provided by a buff which lasts for 30 seconds. However, Shift Signet's cooldown is longer than 30s in WvW and PvP. Hence you lose the passive before the signet has recharged.

The hammer's orbs can be maintained for up to 60s in PVE and 32s in WvW/PvP. After an orb has been active for ~25 seconds, it no longer deals any damage nor applies any conditions. The orb animation is still visible, but it doesn't do anything. The duration of these orbs should be refreshed each time you activate another orb, however the orbs just stop working.

Necromancer's Life Siphon (dagger 2) was reworked and is no longer a channelled ability. However, the game still treats it as a channelled ability. As a result, Life Siphon is interrupted if you activate any other skill during it's cast animation.

Overall, I think the balance patch is great. But why did you nerf arcane skills by 20%? I thought you wanted build diversity? Consider the three Arcane grandmaster traits: For all group content (PvE, and group WvW), Bountiful Power is by far the best option because you've got so many boons in group content. For PVP and roaming WvW, Evasive Arcana is the default go-to option. It provides powerful utility and versatility. Including an additional blast finisher. Elemental Surge's 20% CDR was useful because it provided additional combo finishers (by reducing your arcane skill cooldowns). With arcane skills not having their cooldowns lowered, Elemental Surge is extremely underwhelming. I don't even want to use it on a Fresh Air build. I'll just use Bountiful Power instead for more damage.

I also cannot load a character who is in the PVP lobby. I can load a character who is in Rata Sum.