Interview with the Live Team – Part 2, The Elementalist update

I didn't see this posted anywhere.

GWOnline.net: Interview with the Live Team – Part 2, The Elementalist update:http://guildwars.incgamers.com/blog/...ntalist-update

Seriously? People call it that? That's very wordy.

So they think having a fixed 5 instead of a conditional 10 (0 with enchantments on, and what ele goes around without enchantments?) makes it less heavy? It doesn't make much sense. And here I thought they made it to prevent mindless spam of some skills...

And so that's a reason why they only worked out elites first...it may work for now, but counting they're changing the rest as well in the future, how will power creep from ele bosses be adressed at that point?

Ive already seen this part 2 posted before, but wheres part 1?

I tried looking through the blog and couldnt find a part 1, I hate blogs because they are sorted by chronological order than part 1 and then part 2.

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No, it just shows how much BS the live team is full of, and how little they know about all the people that actually play PVE in this game.

The live team is mostly made up of hardcore PVPers with little to no understanding of PVE.

Part 1 was about WoC. It's here.

Maybe that's why the dervish update was a disaster for PvP when it came out, but has been extremely well balanced for PvE since day one. And mesmer's update was spot on for PvE, with the exception of some damage numbers that were/ still remain a bit too high.

Ironically though, I can agree that the ele's first new changes are more noticeable for PvP.

That's obviously not true, else they wouldn't ruin PvP more and more with each update. And with this update they made PvE easier for everyone, they obviously care about PvE and don't care at all for PvP.

It's clear that the live team only works on paper theory and zero testing.

Their updates which 'care about PVE' come far too much later than they should have been made. They put these updates out far too late after everyone that was complaining have already finished or left the game, so all it really affects is new players.

This update didnt make PVE easier for everyone, it only made it easier for Ellys using anything other than AP, Invoke or ER, and definitely harder for Rits and Mesmers with the few nerfs that were made to them.

Actually this is a much more accurate description. The PVP changes that they make tend to be completely abysmal. The paper descriptions are also rather hilarious - I fail to see how Thunderclap is creating 'a massive shockwave at target foes location'. The original Thunderclap was so much better than all the versions it was changed to.

You raise a good point I think. I've always wondered why they never gave elementalists a way to remove exhaustion more efficiently than waiting and intimately linked with energy storage. They could even add something like this to attunements...Each time you cast an [element] Magic spell, you lose 1 Exhaustion for every 10 ranks of Energy Storage.

Whilst there isn't a convenient way to remove exhaustion, exhaustion remains a more interesting throttle on skill usage than energy. Provided of course, the skills that cause it have short enough recharges for it to matter.

I found it very odd that this was omitted from his comment. Yeah 10 was "heavy" but it was avoidable. The unavoidable 5 is much worse imo. He noted that it was the "deep wound" of energy storage...deep wound can be removed, exhaustion cannot. Imagine a skill that caused unremovable deep wound condition on its use that was unavoidable. I doubt many ppl would use such a thing.

I am still baffled why they simply don't use the easy fix of ele PvE only skills to solve the issues of ele bosses becomming too hard, and not overflowing into PvP. Intensity is worse after it's rework than it was and Elemental Lord is lackluster. Changing the functionality of either of these could have been a simple fix for eles, but they chose a far more complex route. Work harder not smarter I guess.

I am enjoying the creativity of some of the skills so far. MoM is awesome.

Yeah MoM is looking decent, except there are hardly any skill to use it with. Not only have they not redone the elites well, they've neglected the non-elites entirely.

Armour of frost buff? Fireball has a lower casting time? I didn't realise these were such important skills and deserved such powerful buffs./endsarcasm

The problem is the damage formula. Monsters in PvE deal too much damage, and players deal too little. But tweaking the damage formula would be too risky.

The tweaks to Fireball and Ice Spikes made them decent enough to be used now, and the tweaks to Obsidian Flame made it a strong but balanced skill. You see, sometimes small tweaks is simply what some skills need, and so says the new Unsteady Ground and the new Churning Earth. This is especially important for a profession that has been lacking on good non-elite options and/ or has had some almost-good-but-not-entirely-there skills that were asking for small buffs to make the difference (between being used or not).

Anyways, many of the new elite skills will probably fit better in the builds once the second part of the update comes.

You are either a troll or severely misinformed. The live team is completely made up of casual PvEers who know nothing about PvP at all.

Did you... read the interview? That's a quote of GWOnline.net, not a live team member.

Robert Gee was the person interviewed, and his role on the live team is PvP designer.

Its fitting that he likes exhaustion a lot ... I would really like an explanation of how exhaustion is any good for PVE.

Mr. Gee's comments on exhaustion don't hold much water with me as enemy Hard Mode ele's have huge pools of energy. By reducing the amount of exhaustion on some already powerful skills it really still hurts the players as I have NEVER been in a fight long enough with a Hard Mode Ele monster that ran out of energy before a player due to exhaustion.

The PvP community wanted nerfs to a few select skills, and very minimal buffs to a handful of other skills to increase the number of options, which is not what we got particularly. Whilst some ele skills were/are problematic, there are other areas which also need attention which have been overlooked this time around, much to many peoples annoyance. If this update seems to affect PvP more than PvE at present, all that can be said is that its a PvE update gone wrong, rather than a PvP update done right.

There are just as many (probably more tbh), active PvE players on the live team than there are PvP ones. They get the opportunity to voice their opinions just as much as PvP players do. If they choose to not post comments, or prefer to discuss types of new hats they would like to see implemented, this can't be blamed on the PvP community.

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The issue is that any kind of nerf is seen by the PvE community as bad, whilst any kind of buffs (particularly on such a large scale) causes the PvPers to get upset. Its not a winnable battle from the perspective of the game designers. (as has been discussed many times before, splitting all skills into PvP and PvE versions is neither wanted, nor viable)

I'm friends with a couple people on the TK and they aren't PvE players. Or haven't been for the past x years.

I've seen more changes in PvP come this update than PvE. My few PvE friends only really have changed 1 build in their hero setups on average.

I'll agree with floor, this is a PvE update that's turned more into a PvP one, thats changed some problems, ignored others, and created new ones. Just like every other.

TK isn't the live team. The Live team is a small group of A.Net employees given the responsibilities of bringing updates to GW1 while the rest of A.Net works on GW2. The TK is simply a group of players who provide some input. I know of maybe 2 or 3 respectable PvPers on the Test Krew and the changes they propose are less than satisfactory.

More changes happening in PvP doesn't change the fact that this was a PvE update and PvP was an after thought. Chain Lightning and Invoke Lightning seem to be the only two skills changed with PvP in mind and Invoke seems to still be nearly as viable as pre-update. Everything else is either just amusing or grossly overpowered, and adding grossly overpowered skills to an already grossly overpowered meta just further ruins things.

It isn't a PvE update that turned into a PvP one. It is a PvE update that didn't do enough for PvE and further degenerated PvP because they paid no attention to the problems these skills would bring up in PvP.

Because exhaustion is supposed to 'hijack' that energy from you while it lasts.
There are ways to reduce energy costs or recover energy faster, but exhausted energy is not affected by that, it always goes at the same speed: 1 point every 3 seconds.

It lets you decide between spamming the skills now as much as you want and have to wait later, or control yourself and hold it when exhaustion gets higher.
Exhaustion by its very nature will accumulate more the more exhausting skills you bring. So it's a bit like the limitation of 1 elite skill, but much more versatile. Since you are not forced to choose just one or two directly, but by the consequences of bringing one too many of them.

As much as we all would love to have some way to remove it, if it existed, then people would probably bring that way all the time, and exhaustion would become pointless.
And if you gave that skill a long recharge and high cost, they would still bring it and still use it, just a bit less often.

Now that there are actually decent alternatives even for the previously almost ever-present attunements, there's no need for another 'must have' skill.


Still, I wouldn't mind of exhaustion and energy recovered faster while out of battle much like health does, at least in PvE.
You know, to have to wait less when you get some guy in a PuG that doesn't restrain himself when spamming, and keeps asking for pauses to recover 30...90 exhausted energy every now and then. And that's 90...180 seconds sitting down doing nothing.

I personnaly don't find such a big diference in PvP than before, apart that there are more eles now... But builds are mostly as before, it's either 123earth ele, either bsurge/invoker...

The main problem is that, if it can roughly be handled in GvG or HA in theory, the main counters to those builds aren't really working in 4v4 formats or total random formats when the match is rarely lasting more than 2 minutes.. People will agree that most eles are just spamming their bar on a 40/40 set without much risk, and still get a nice result...

On a last note : I think the PvP community just wants something to do in PvP and not pseudo skill updates barely doing anything.. My ally, which consisted mainly of guilds winning Sb ats, is close to inactive these days, simply because there is nothing to do apart of RA or GvG on quest days...

What in the world did they do when there was only Prophecies (and no skill updates, splits or extras)? Or when there was only Prophecies and Factions, even?

I can't remember this much griping and whining back then. But then again, people actually played the game with the skills provided without constantly QQing.

(Not to say some of us didn't want bigger/badder/better skills; we simply used what we had to the best of our abilities without the constant "gimmee" attitude exhibited so much now.)

Even though there were less skills during that time there was more build diversity. Part of this was that the community was still learning the game, but another large part was that there was far less power creep. The modern powercreep has made certain skills just so much more powerful that they are must haves and after filling your team with the must haves there is less room for variance.

Additionally there were updates during prophecies, a significant number of them, more than we are seeing in current GW. And while many, including myself, have ragged on Izzy's ability to balance the game, the team that replaced him has done a significantly worse job.