Shockwave (PvP)

This needs to happen.

Shockwave eles infesting RA are a cancer that MUST be removed in order to restore balance.

It's really sickening to see 1-2 of these infestations in EVERY game.

The 3 conditions, devastating in PvP, need to go, since even if you hit someone with the area damage, you can still follow up with stoning.

Shockwave is a good elite. It promotes crowd control and good positioning, as does Mind Burn. When an ele is using Shockwave, you can kite the blind at least and it's easily interruptible unless you run 40/40 and get lucky, which is also good to promote.

Learn to rupt, dodge projectiles, avoid PBAoE and spaced out positioning.

Damn straight it's a good elite. Too good for the amount of skill it takes to pull it off correctly and the amount of skill it takes enemies to successfully counter it.

It's just a bad decision to make Shockwave give so much damage AND utility in one skill during PvP.

There are a lot of counters to it. I prefer using a Star Burst build. Not kiting or rupting is the main reason people die to this skill. Also, if you see this every match, maybe run builds to counter it and be successful that way?

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t10505088.html
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/a...t10510417.html

Some more thoughts.

or there the option of getting good at guild wars its just like dodgeing a pin down in gvg from a archer sidestep stoneing then once you figure out oh wait its shockwave ele hmm hes gonna come near me for shockwave so run from them rupt them kd them kill them do something dont just eat the damage or get a build get good at abuse it or even run a counter to all casters and omg shockwave stoneing become useless

I reckon this bad boy subject needs to be put to rest, as in locked forever more. The butthurt is worse than Shadow Form pleas to nerf.

Bottom line: not OP, has plenty counters.

I know you find it annoying to play against, but I can think of worse bars to play against:

Knocklocking warrior dagger/hammer swap bars.
Magebane, BHA, etc.
Stunning Strike wars/paras
PB/PD/PI/rupt spamming mesmers.

Earth eles definitely aren't in my top 5 or top 10 most hated bars to play against.

Here's a rant taking advantage of the newest thread about shockwave eles.

I don't have a hard time dodging shit on a caster. I have a hard time dodging shit and trying to cast at the same time. If I start a cast right after dodging Stoning or Ebon Hawk, I'm going to have half a second max to dodge the next spell after I finish casting my spell to retaliate. God forbid a melee player attacks me at the same time. And even then, the Elementalist can stop trying to 1v1 a player paying attention and spam on someone else. Interrupting their attacks is pointless because of the short recharge, so you're forced to disable spells. I can sit on my Earth shield all I want as a caster, eating Stoning or Ebon Hawk will still hurt even once. It's not hard to dodge the Blind part of the Shockwave as a caster. It's a lot harder to dodge the other two hits and the Stoning the Ele is sure to follow with. This is especially true if the Ele is closing in on you while spamming Stoning or using Shadow Walk.

As a melee character, you can stay away from the Elementalist, but you can't ignore him. He'll be back by the other casters in the party stone spamming waiting for the melee to approach. I have to get close enough to bait him into using Shockwave while keeping enough distance to dodge stone spam. I then have to kill him before Shockwave is available, which means not eating Ebon Hawk and Stoning in the mean time. I just have to hope he doesn't have Ash Blast or any defensive stances that will prevent interrupting his key skills. Sure I can bring condition removal, but that's time spent not attacking when he can easily reapply it as soon as I remove Weakness because it lasts more than 5 seconds. I don't even want to get close to him though, because if I miss the interrupt because he canceled or uses a random Stoning, I have to back off and wait for Blind to wear off (on my anti-blind set and rune that I brought just for this) while he spams again. I have to do all this without making a mistake and hope the other players don't interfere.

When I'm healing, I have no chance in hell trying to avoid a Shockwave Ele. He's going to chase my ass spamming shit until I stop to heal or someone else stops me. Then he can Shockwave and my shield set is useless. Melee will have to avoid getting hit by the same Shockwave to keep him off my back.

I've seen some eles use Balanced Stance due to devhammer being the biggest threat. Interrupts are a counter to any build, unless you're disabling skills, the ele has much shorter recharges than your skills. Suggesting flux builds and shitty interrupt spammers as more annoying than this is very humorous of you Minion.

Stunning Strike Wars or Paras, and BHA Rangers, more powerful than Shockwave, really? They aren't even close to it in power. Condition removal is common enough to remove just daze (from a teammate if need be); and is far more accessible on caster class builds (the classes that are threatened by it), than it is on physical-based builds who have to use their utility slots up on IaS, IMS, etc, instead, who will have a much harder time handling the upto three conditions Shockwave applies to them, two of which are completely debilitating to their effectiveness in battle.

The damage from the Daze skills isn't particular amazing either, and is only single-target. Shockwave has a much larger range and even in RA is likely to get at least two people to some degree (often more considering the brain-dead caliber of the majority of players in RA); And it goes without saying the damage potential of Shockwave is gratuitously higher than that of BHA or Stunning Strike.

While I agree there's counters to it and methods of avoiding it, there's also tricks an Ele (or other class; It's so powerful I've seen it taken on other classes such as Ritualists and used effectively, and even seen Warriors use it among others - though effective in this case due to the surprise more than anything else; but if classes such as these are now taking it too, it should be taken as a clear sign that something is wrong with the skill) can perform to make it that much harder to use those playing skills to avoid it (it's not like Ele's are short on snare skills for example, is it?).

And just because there is counters to something doesn't mean it's not overpowered, anyway. Think about all the super hard-core counters to shouts and chants that are in the game; Yet that didn't stop them from nerfing Paragons to kingdom-come in PvP.

IMO it needs either a damage reduction in PvP, or a range reduction (it's too easy Stoning Fuel), or probably my favourite option; an excessive cost more suiting to it's capabilities (like 25E or something) that makes it so you actually have to consider when and where you use it, to discourage the current ease of use the skill has, reward skilled play, punish unskilled play more, and make it less of a no-brainer cheap-shot skill in general. This would also help keep it off secondary Elementalists. I guess making it cause Exhaustion would be a viable option too.

TL;DR: It's overpowered, mostly because it feels cheap and is far too powerful for how excessively easy it is to use and get good results. If you zone into RA with three or more of these Elementalists pitted against you, you are totally doomed. Balance it by increasing the risks/penalities associated with using the skill in a thoughtless and unskilled way.

Oh man, I just can't decide who to reply to. Let me explain what's so annoying about fighting these lame fagbuilds first.

The paragon with Stunning Strike can generally spam it quite quickly with To the Limit! whilst also having access to Wild Throw and party-wide pressure with bleeding/maiming. Maiming Strike is a very spammable, long lasting cripple which basically guarantees your melee or Stoning ele their full potential damage. Stunning Strike is icing on the cake. The daze can be drawn to the monk, unknowingly, and screwing them up if you realise fast enough to start camping him. They also have a near-perma Bonetti's defence if they're feeling threatened by a fagwar. Which links us nicely to the hamdag warrior:

Firstly, Relyk; it's not a Flux build. It's damage is improved by the Flux but people use it all the time. Jack The Terrible can't use anything BUT Hamdag war. As soon as you get that first knockdown, you've almost guaranteed a kill unless you can be shutdown. With poor play on your team, this is potentially easy. However, measuring skill vs power of skills is difficult unless you play against and with 7 copies of yourself. There is an even more ridiculous Hamdag-esque bar called Hamdaggaxe which throws Dismember and Lacerating Chop into the mix, which packs even more conditions than seems humanly possible on a warrior (Weakness, Poison, Bleeding, Deep Wound) which is maintainable on two foes max. Very strong pressure+DPS+shutdown. Good thing they are easy to shutdown. SPEAKING OF SHUTDOWN, *link*

Mesmers or Rangers first? well, they're pretty much equal apart from the fact rangers have two *disabling* rupts, which are, were and always will be meta. A decent block stance with IMS, condition removal which can be used to support the team, ability to apply -4 degen party wide. Mesmers have Diversion/Blackout which is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO to play against unless it's rupted. PI, Power Lock, Complicate are amazing skills too. A 3s knockdown from range is a bit shit, considering assassins and other melee can only KD for 2s without the Stonefist Insignia or Reaper's Sweep being the exception.

I almost forgot Avatar of Grenth derwish! Those fackers can survive forever and never be blinded/Weakened when using their build right. Grenth's Fingers is OP with such a low recharge, you can get rid of your Weakness before Stoning hits and dodge Shockwave's Blind range very easily. Especially if you have an IMS, it's not acceptable if you don't try to. Spammable Deep Wound, self-condition removal, stance removal, 29hp life steal per swing and spreads Disease like a bass.

Let me now talk about Stoning.

I like Stoning; I used to use Stoning ages ago because it's always been a "1-2-3" style build, simply by the nature of Ebon Hawk proccing Stoning and Ash blast requiring a knocked down foe for blind; that's just like any assassin build. The difference is cast times; it's very easy to interrupt/disable one of three spells. Catch Diversion on Ebon Hawk and the ele will soon see his energy diminish quickly if he's dumb and keeps trying to spam Stoning for massive damage. You've got him. Weakness can't be spammed and the ele now requires aid from it's team: Enfeeble or Dev hammer assist. Synergy! Synergy is something that is promoted, and team play always makes a single build more effective. It has the disadvantage of Ebon Hawk and Stoning being projectiles and Shockwave being PBAoE. Anet already discussed the risk-factor involved in a squishy trying to move into melee range without much reward, which is why they now have Shockwave and Star Burst, which is great. Great thing about projectiles; you can side-step them easier than trying to kite a warrior because it doesn't require any increased movement speed! Instantly, they deal 0 DPS and don't KD you! Now Shockwave can be slightly trickier at times, and people sometimes rage at me when I say it's easy to avoid, but... Like that guy said in this thread earlier, you will see an ele has cast Earth Attunement, you will see him running towards you or death's charge/that stancestep into you but you still have that one second to react, get the fack out and a moment later, you can safely beat three shits out of the ele. It's that simple. The strength of the elite also promotes good positioning, which shitters are terrible at. Loud and clear, repeat after me: I SHALL NOT BALL WHEN FACED WITH AOE DAMAGING ELES. NEVER! And if you're in a team with multiple melee, pick different targets. ez. If they ball themselves to try and take advantage of Shockwave, have one guy spear them until Shockwave is cast (or maybe they're gimping themselves by balling)


In short, the common counters to a Stoning ele with Shockwave for several professions:
Interrupts: Magebane, Savage, Dshot, Concussion Shot
Disabling skills: Psychic Distraction, Diversion, Blackout, Power Lock, Power Block, Complicate, Distracting Strike
Knockdowns: Dev hammer, HotO, Trampling Ox, Backbreaker, Bull's, Gust, Mind Shock
Condition removal: Mending Touch, Dismiss condition, Draw Conditions
Kiting: NO SKILLS REQUIRED
SIDE STEPPING: LOL. NOW THEIR BUILD DOES NO DOMOGE.
Crowd control: position yourselves atleast more than In The Area range from eachother so Shockwave's damage becomes meaningless and conditons can be absorbed without issue if you can't kite it.

Enjoy.

This is how pvp-build development works:
1: someone finds a new build due to smart thinking and or an update (or even the monthly flux) and it is really good and it's spreading. This is the so called flavour of the month.
2: Due to the popularity people who can't or don't want to run these builds are trying to counteract it. 90% off the time this makes the build go away again.
3: sometimes the build stays popular simply cause it is really good or cause a lot of opponents suck at understanding step 1 and 2.
4: if the build is really unbalanced, meaning not counterable, it get nerfed.

like pointed out there are many counters to shockwave, so it is not OP, and so doesn't need to be nerfed.

I love this argument, because it really betrays a lack of understanding of the term "balance."

The existence of counters in theoryland has shit all to do with the real game. In theoryland, blinding surge (on NF release) was ridiculously, stupidly broken - but a few people honestly believed that because Diversion existed, blinding surge was somehow less imbalanced. Diversion existing had absolutely nothing to do with Blinding Surge's power as a skill - it was an unreliable counter with a long cast time in an attribute that wasn't brought to every match in every game type.

Remember thumpers, a gimmick that lived on for 3-4 years with no nerfs? It was overpowered for the same reason - yeah, in *theory* you could spam blind on it, but in reality the build could spam knockdown, daze and deepwound (in addition to having an unkiteable pet) with zero effort on the part of the player. The effort required to counter the build was far greater than the effort required to play it - ergo, the build was imbalanced.

The fact that counters *do* exist for shockwave similarly means jack shit. The problem is that Shockwave is too powerful for too little skill - it takes less effort to play it than it does to counter it, which is bad skill design. If some mouthbreather can walk around mashing 12345 and dealing immense aoe damage, knockdown, weakness, blind etc and it takes the other team completely changing their builds and playstyles specifically to counter it, then yes, shockwave is overpowered.

In a game of skill vs skill PvP, bringing a skill bar that makes up for lack of player ability by having spammable, difficult-to-counter skills kind of defeats the entire purpose of the game type, even if *in theoryland* you can counter it with XYZ. If the counters aren't equally strong or equally viable ("oh having problems with paragons? bring vocal minority, a joke skill that literally only exists to counter 1 thing and is completely useless against everything else!") , they mean nothing in regards to the actual game.

If Shockwave was broken, everyone would use it. The good players tend not to and there's a reason for that: There are better builds.

Stoning spam is why it is good; the knockdown spam, not the PBAoE spike. Still easily side-stepped and rupted (1s casts, any profession can run dshot)

Also, how can you compare old Bsurge to Shockwave? Shockwave actually HAS a recharge. Bsurge was maintainable and spammable AoE blind at spell range. THAT is OP; pretty sure it was faster than 1s cast too. That was not balanced, and everyone hated the fags who ran Bsurge+Bflash.

People are supposed to change and adapt for skills that are seen in the metagame, lol. It makes it less stale. You also don't just see Stoning eles; you see many many Air eles with Invoke/Gust/Mind Shock which are more QQ to play against as a melee (Gust in particular is pretty gay) Tonnes of traditional Mind Blast fire eles and I've seen several decent water eles in RA in the past few days.

By the way, I'm only talking about Shockwave in Arena terms, because I play RA about 3-5 hours every day. I know what's going on there, buildwise. I'm glad people are being forced to improve, get shield sets, position better to avoid the blind surge from Shockwave, etc. It's a very good incentive to get good which is good for the game.

I conclude that people who cry about this skill being OP are lame who want easy wins with their 2008 TA team they haven't changed because it worked so well then or newbies who need to improve. Rant in caps in the spoiler.->

Sick of this discussion now; you need to stop trying to make the game easier and stale with a less wide spectrum of good skills.

Stoning
Stoning
Stoning

Stoning
Stoning

Stoning
Stoning

Stoning
Stoning
Stoning

Stoning
Stoning
Stoning is the real problem with the earth line, not Shockwave.

Stoning is more of a bugger (lolsodomy) than Shockwave, but it's still a 1s cast and projectile + requires Weakness to knockdown. It costs 15e and requires Weakness and only knocks down one foe. This means you have to either dodge Ebon Hawk or Stoning to avoid KD. Easy.

Also stone = kite...
Shockwave = run away oh RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO still got hit....

Kiting a pbaoe is easier than kiting a projectile.

If anything, Ebonhawk/Stoning needs to be nerfed. Shockwave is just icing on the cake.

Ranger interrupts: only Magebane works against block stances;
Mesmer interrupts: anti- any elementalist build ever created;
Melee Knockdowns: Block Stance + Shockwave counters your counters;
Bull's/ Gust's: Don't run. Shockwave + Stoning spam + block stances inbetween will disable the melee, effectively making a 3vs4 unless the ele is disabled from another source (that must NOT another melee neither, or else massive crowd control, 2vs4, ele's team wins, gg);
Mind Shock: do people use the Mind skills with exhaustion against elementalists consistently, really? A shockwaver has no exhaustion and usually three energy management skills. Mind Shock is far more reliable against other casters.
Condition removal skills: weakness is applied every 5s, Shockwave easily hits more than one player, and shockwave is not only defined by its conditions, but by everything it can do at a single time;
Projectile dodging: pointless when the ele shockwaver is nearby you, and/ or when you're casting. Also pointless unless all your four party members can do that. Good luck having such a team in RA.

In conclusion: Shockwave is not OP because mesmers exist, because magebane rangers exist, because monks can spend all day kiting and dodging instead of healing, and because bad elementalist players can't use it well against good players. Lovely.

I also use Mind Blast/ Mind Shock/ Thunderclap/ Invoke Lightning/ Stone Sheath builds in RA, some of them more questionable than others, and I even got to 25 wins at least once with each of them, but I always end with the feeling that Shockwave+Stoning is superior to them in most situations.

I rate both Gust and Mind Shock eles higher than Shockwave. Think about it: Gust allows your monk to kite like a boss, your frontline to always be able to deal damage unless crippled, to prevent enemy melee from chasing/KDing anyone and can do all of that in two ranges of In the Area. All the while, you have Blinding Flash which is more spammable than Shockwave for a Blind Source and harder to counter than Ash Blast since Ash Blast requires a general chain of either Hawk/Shockwave->Stoning->Ash.

Mind Shock is a massive single-target spike and spammable knockdown. You can knockdown eles by swapping to high energy set (and trust me, earth eles are always easy to KD with Mind Shock). Your energy won't bottom out for a good few minutes of spamming, so just be gentle for drawn-out matches. Generally, if you spam you can turn the tide quickly enough and rupt sigs fast to get the upper hand.

Only projectile in air builds is Lightning Bolt which deals +dmg on moving targets, which is awesome.

Anyway, if I think of something else, I'll edit this post. Need food/sleep.

Mind Shock (and Blinding Flash and Lightning Bolt) are awesome, and it's possibly my favourite build for RA, but it requires the right team to create really deadly spikes. I actually haven't tried Gust even once (for some reason, it just didn't appeal to me), maybe I'll do someday.

Thunderclap is (imo) underated (the results I have with it are not any worse than with Mind Shock). It feels like a weaker Mind Shock at first, and it's also that, but not only that. It sets up spikes like Shell Shock, it gives you an extra source of anti-melee, it offers good crowd control, it rupts key skills (rez, diversion, shockwave and stoning which are easy to predict, etc), and can randomly rupt key monk/ melee skills as an odd extra. The 8s recharge is fine for all that. But Shockwave also offers a lot of versatility coupled with sheer power, the later which Thunderclap does not have, and the Stoning spam that follows it makes earth eles effectively more disrupting than Thunderclap builds.

I don't even think earth eles need drastic nerfs. Increase Stoning's cooldown (up to 7 or 8 seconds) and have Shockwave's weakness only apply at nearby range (give cracked armor to area range instead), and you'll still have a strong build, but where counters and doging get to be more relevant. Running away (from SW) will start preventing Stoning more often, and the later's 2-3 seconds of extra of recharge will give you previous free time to cast your spells inbetween.

I think the main problem with Shockwave earth builds, is that it has the means to counter most of its counters, especially due to Stoning's recharge and extreme synergy between Shockwave and Stoning (on top of what SW already offers). It's the whole combo that makes it very strong, and the RA's format further helps, because of its tight maps, and because the build is extremely easy to use and abuse but requires advanced skill to counter (in RA, that means lots of winning streaks, because even most of the good teams will have one or two members that are less good at countering PBAoEs and projectiles). You can argue that with Stone Sheath it's even easier to apply weakness, but SS does not have the sheer power of SW, and its armor boost is equally easy to counter (armor-ignoring damage, enchantment stripping, no inherent defense against physical rupts/ KDs/ dazes, etc). And SS is a lovely skill.

Spiteful Spirit is a terrible elite, even for RA. You lose 15e and it takes 2s to cast; for the whole of which your team are facepalming that you brought it and hoping you don't get interrupted. Maybe they should increase the distance for AoE damage, but it's just a little weak unless used against melee, who are already countered with Enfeeble, Faint, IP, etc. no need to waste your elite slot.



...Incase you meant Stone Sheath, it's a pretty meh skill compared to Gust for defence. The +AL is well and good, but it doesn't help vs pressure or knockdowns.

wat.

Stone Sheath gives you + one other a massive armour boost and lets you shit out even more stonings.

Unless you can use it so efficiently that you don't need Ebon Hawk, it's going to be a poor elite in comparison.

Yeah, it's such a crap elite that it's the preferred choice for organised teams.

Minion has been talking about it from an RA standpoint. :>

Shockwave is also crap for organised teams, but look at how well it works for RA.

Shockwave is fine, its not strong at all, stone sheath is annoying tho and I would definitely nerf it.