Shockwave (PvP)

ANet, if you are reading this, please nerf this very cancerous skill.

It's absolutely overpowered in RA.

Remove the 3 conditions or at the very least get rid of weakness and we will have balance.

Thanks.

I don't know what you are on about, it is easily countered. Earth shield...spirit bond...running away... Sure it's a good skill, but do people use the bad ones?

/unsigned

It's actually a pretty bad skill in RA, since you're already forced by other means to kite and space out. An ele that is moving towards you gives a fair impression that they want to use an Aftershock or Shockwave type skill. So move and/or cripple them. You should never ball up in RA or have a reason to (two can ball, at a push, when the monk has Protector's Defence.

Also, being a 1s spell it's easily interruptible unless 4040 triggers.

I suck at pvp, but still... as a monk against 3 eles (more often than not 2 of them with shockwave) I can't keep my team alive. And even though I'm bad at it, I like playing my monk ><
so /signed

it definitely needs some sort of a balance(maybe removal of just one condition), but it is still fairly easy to counter. basically, dont stand next to an ele using it, or rupt it.

i think its a bit of an over-exaggeration to call it "cancerous" though...

lets nerf stoning and ebon hawk instead to 8 recharge.

but agreed on removing weakness or replacing it with a dif condition cripple or bleed perhaps.

In GW1, each profession isn't supposed to be balanced vs every other profession.
There is no 1vs1.

A shockwave elementalist can be easily defeated by assassins with dazing, melandru+wind dervishes, interrupt rangers, several ritualist and paragon builds, and of course, mesmers with caster hate; and countered with something as simple as stepping away fast enough.

On the other hand, warriors would have lots of trouble vs Shockwave.
If you get a Shockwave elementalist as an opponent, ignore him, and look for another opponent, like I ignore caster-hate mesmers as an elementalist, instead coming here to complain about all the horrible amount of interruptions and caster-hate spells mesmers have, and how getting several mesmers as opponent means death almost always, since they have lots of both caster and attacker hate, plus that annoying Ether feast that pumps up their HP a third of a HP bar every 8 seconds.

Instead going for the ones that can defeat me, I go for easier targets. As an elementalist, that's warriors.

shockwave isn't the cancer, it's the spammability of ebon hawk/stoning that make this build a tad overpowered right now. while these skills are pretty easily interruptable, i shouldn't have to roll a ranger just to play ra and make sure they can't get a cast off. i say increase the recharge, exhaustion, something else. just something to make it less appealing.

A block stance/ enchantment deals with most of that stuff, Melandru dervishes are not seen in this meta, and that leaves mesmers with good skill and good ping to counter one of the most used and easier to use skills in RA. Stepping away won't help much against area-wide weakness, and the Stoning spam to follow. And when Shockwave hits, which will easily hit with just one single KD/ scripple/ snare from someone in your party, the monk needs to at least use two skills to unduo it.

At the moment, Shockwave counters most melee without a monk, or with a busy monk, force the monk to unduo its effects with several spells, it's an extremely strong skill for spike support, it almost ends matches by itself when it caughts people balled, is great for general damage, its great for general defense against an upcomming melee, it fuels the already overpowered Stoning, and its cost, casting time and recharge time are decent, and even great when a 40/40 weapon set hits them.

Only very skilled players can consistently take advantage of Shockwave's/ Stoning's drawbacks, but even then, equally skilled ele players can counter that with the simplest of teamplay or timed play.

Only good rangers with MB shot and good mesmers with rupts can most consistently deal with it in RA, which makes Shockwave the best skill to farm gladiator points.

^this. if anything i have been playing more warrior than usual. i just stay away from SW eles. There is a whole compliment of skills at the disposal of other classes to counter eles running this.

If they can block you in PvP, you better check your build. I always bring something around blocks when I use weapon builds. Always.
All 5 weapon users have skills that bypass blocks, some are neat, others are... well... not so neat.
You can even be creative and change builds for the sake of it, just to see what happens. Once I tried a P/N build with Rigor Mortis and Weaken armor. It worked pretty well to deal damage and some conditions. I just had to bring more adrenaline skills than usual to compensate the extra energy used.

Melandru dervishes my not be seen in that meta, but who cares?
The response of people often bringing certain builds should be changing your own builds, not whining until your build you refuse to change work again.
I would agree that weakness with warriors is a bit unfair. If you don't bring something like Antidote Signet you may be in trouble, but I wouln't make more changes other than modifying the underused Signet of Strength to be something more like Antidote Signet, but with a longer recharge, and removing just weakness and blindness and nothing else.

And I can't say I like how you say "the monk" as if there would always be a monk in the party. Sounds as if there was always a monk in RA.
I hate how some people resign there until they get a 'meta' party to 'farm' Gladiator points.

I really wish they made RA truly random, random parties in every battle or even random builds taken randomly from players that have won battles in other PvP modes, or randomly changing some skills to others in the same line.
That would be hilarious. I would play there a lot more that just on ZC day.

The point of the are should be having fun trying random stuff, not what's now, with people trying to sync or resigning until they have dedicated healers and boring stuff like that.

You misunderstood me. There isn't always a monk. That only strengthens my point in favor of Shockwave. This elite is already tough to deal with even with monks in the opposing party, much more so without them.

Shockwave is a good way to farm for gladiator points without relying so much on a monk.

I've been consistently getting 3+ (sometimes up to 9) wins without a monk in my party as a Shockwave ele, and half those matches were against parties with monks.

This, of course, is also possible because the skill level of the RA players is mostly from newbie to average, but there's no other elite skill that's such an easy button for Random Arenas as there is with Shockwave.

The way Shockwave is designed right now, is to be averagely balanced against high-level players, and extremely overpowered against less skilled players, because Shockwave balances the fact it can be "easily" countered with overpowered effects when it connects. Because the huge majority of players can't properly counter it, even if they are decent players, when against a skilled ele, and in practise this skill is OP for the format and the crowd it mostly attracts. Thus it'll let you farm the RAs easier than with any other elite or any other profession, monk aside.

This is contributing to make RA a worse place to be in.

how do you think the metagame changes?

Shockwave, and other builds, became meta because they were effective vs. the tendencies of prevalent builds.

Eventually there will be builds that become meta because they are effective against Shockwave and other growing/stagnating builds, causing some of the builds they are effective against to decline in popularity.

and so on.

This skill grants wins to players who do not deserve the wins.

Any braindead scrub can just 123 and the whole team dies.

I just want at least some variety in RA. The Shockwave infestation is absolutely clogging up the RA queue. I despise everyone who uses the skill.

Lol, how hard is it to dshot a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing shockwave? Players litterally run straight up to the opponent and "Baam".. If you can't predict that much you don't deserve a win anyhow ;p Besides, there's allready a thread like this