Guild Wars Update - Nov 10 and Nov 11

Ah, good, thanks Memphis, for posting that.

I am quite alarmed by the idea of wanting to "bring the game back to more of a shared-experience feeling." The two distinct factions arise because each group likes to play the game as they deem fit. That is why PvPers are upset at the grind they need to do to get unlocks, and PvEers are upset whenever a skill balance nerfs a decent skill in PvE but was overpowered in PvP. Then there's the fact that both parts of the game are differently designed. I don't think you have to fight as many hordes to reach and win in the Hall of Heroes a few times as it takes to get to the halfway point of the PvE game. Making PvE like PvP is just going to make the PvE game an even worse grind (which I mentioned many pages back).

Above all, however, I am alarmed because this decision wasn't taken on customer feedback, but rather the notion by the game designers on what their games "ought to be". While it is a game they designed, it is also a game that is (was?) being enjoyed by many out there, and I thought that as a business entity the company should at least please a good proportion of their customers (as it is I doubt the new patch pleases even half the player base). Right now that statement reeks of a very strong ego on the part of the game designers, and frankly I could do without that. I want to enjoy the game, not be amazed by whatever new age jargon you use to describe your game.

The AI isn't great yet (still some aimless running), but I thought the new patch was one step towards getting it fixed.. yet reading this reinforces what I felt about WaW: A poor mechanic that solely exists because someone in the design team said so to preserve the (needless and nonexistent) link between PvP and PvE, not because it brought any REAL benefit to the player population.

Now *this* you have to explain to me as well as to others, since I've been playing since day one until now, and with three characters that all made it through the game, always playing in groups of 8 (regardless of them being real players or henchmen) I *never* managed to pile up more than 60k, and that happened *once*.

If you got that much gold by selling each and every drop to other players for ridiculous amounts, it would explain it. I, as well as the people I usually play with, aren't into that, we just keep what we find, or salvage it, or sell it to the merchants.

Ok, so without Fire Elementalists, you went through the mission faster than ever.

But why take a Water Elem or Earth Elem when they don't do as much damage as Fire?

But you didn't need a Fire Elem.

I think you're just making stuff up for drama.

So A-Net wanted to stop solo farming in general and not helping out the economy? They didn't listen to a complain send out by distressed players who hates solo farmers and the way economy are?

This patch really alienate elementlist and the way they do things. You can no longer used AoE spells without getting yelled at by group. You can not depend on using echo nuking as the primary attack skills. Also i seen less and less elementlists being wanted into group. But the new patch last night is a step toward fixing unwanted enemies from moving away than coming back and forth from the spot with AoE attacks.

Thats real nice but remember you were a noob once too and all noobs turn into pros when they actually have the oppurtunity to do so

Reiterated for effectiveness.........

Quote:

That's because Fire is a damage-focused attribute.

Bingo! And now that damage-focus has been reduced, thus spawning me to bring forth the suggestion of either a little more armor, or a lowering in the now overexuberant energy cost of said damage dealing spells. That was my point.

As far as it goes, I can alter my skills. I spent a few hours toying with it here and there, buying new skills I previously did not use. But my encompassing point (and it has been the same throughout this entire debate) is that it is one thing to tweak here and there. It is a whole different ballgame when we, as seasoned fire elementalists are pushed into it by Anet. Furthermore, not just Anet, but by other players, who are quick to kick us out of groups with the mere hint of ANY fire usage. So instead of balancing anything, the complete opposite has been done.

While before rangers, necros and mesmers were overlooked by what so many seem to deem the masses, which in my opinion, are groups you would not want any part of in the first place....fire elementalists are now the scourge.

To confirm that elementlist isn't really needed now on.... I was with a group to do Final Assault last night. We have two monks, two necros, three tanks, and one elementlist. This elementlist didn't even do anything other than use regular attacks and sometime a ice or earth spells. Later on the elementlist drop and we made it all the way into the golem before getting crushed. It seem that more groups are looking for a solid tanking team with some backup like mesmer, necro or mulitple monks.

Not to say elementlist isn't wanted but some people now just don't care for nuking elementlist.... and i seen too many request for "air ele, or earth ele or water ele build" for grouping.

I actually changed 'faster than ever', to 'breezed through' after I read it back to myself
I'm not making it up and I can easily refer you to the 4 other players from my guild to substantiate my story. What I was trying to get across is that Earth and Water Elems just don't have the damage output as Fire. So rather than cut back on damage by having one Elem for snaring and another for nuking, we just took Tanks instead to curb the all the hassle.

But yeah you're right. We didn't needa Fire Elem at all. Let alone one that uses another Element and does even less damage. Not too good for any Elems now eh?

A large number of fire elementalists are now utterly skittish to use their skills, for fear of reprisal and reprimand from teammates, or those oh so fun moments of "YOU *(*$#%@ NOOB!"

1300+ posts! Wow, keep it up guys.

I did some PvE last night with Mage hench and without. Monsters do run a bit when firestorm comes up but that actually helps the team because whoever gets "gangbang" has a chance to breathe.

I agree that monsters shouldn't run as soon as they see AoE spells. That's just ridiculous. I also think different monsters should have different reaction to certain things, although this make take a while to figure out.

Overall, PvE isn't ruined. It is still enjoyable.

Very well said, in all posts, Memphis!

I remeber last night, Gaile was in LA, trying to support the patch. She said something along the lines of, "Well, you all don't want the stupid monsters again, do you?". Roughly 2-3 players agreed with her, but there was a flood of "That's exactly what we want!"

Arenanet, you claim to read the forums, and listen to your playerbase. Now nearly all of your playerbase is rising up to send you one message: We don't want this patch!

($20 until I can afford WoW. Your time is running out, Anet. )

My own elementlist is being affected by this. People acutally asked me now what my build was. If its fire (it still is) they told me to change it or not to used AoE spells. Or they just flat out reject my invite. Good things i'm part Earth and Ice build now. Still, i feel not wanted by groups and farming runs.

You're absolutely right on all counts, and I'm not really arguing it. I think 25 energy + exhaustion for Meteor Shower now is absurd. I whole-heartedly agree that they need to re-do the Fire AoE skills. I apologize if I've come off as if I thought everything was perfect. In the poll, I voted #3. "The idea behind the update was good and I like it, but it was implemented poorly."

I also agree that groups are stupid in their "group selection." I play as a Mesmer, so I do understand what Fire Ele's are going through. Because of this, I henched my way through the game (except for Iron Mines, Thunderhead, and Ring of Fire.) I understand the new AI might make henchies in fact less reliable than they were previously, but I don't think ANet is just going to give us this update and say "Like it or leave." As long as it has bugs and issues, they'll fix them. In the meantime, Ele's are kind of screwed, and I apologize on behalf of all the idiots out there who don't want Nukers now. It doesn't help, but I'm not over here cackling because someone else is suffering like my Mesmer does.

I guess the clearest way I can summarize is to say:

I don't disagree with people who think this was implemented poorly, but I vehemently disagree with people who don't want any part of an AI improvement at all. Hell, this is just one step. I'd actually like Deep Knights to stop swining their hammers away happily while I empathy the lot of them. Stone Summit Heretics who spam away their Fast-Casted spells under my Backfire need to be fixed as well.

It's no consolation, but add me to your friends if you want and anytime I'm on (and not already in a mission or such), if you need a hand, I'll bring my Mes and respec some into Illusion/Water/Earth and bring some Wards or Snares.

I talk a lot for a short answer.


Ah, sorry for misquoting. I read it, then copied&pasted&replied without re-reading. Oops ^^

I can't disagree with you though. It's not good for Elems, but part of is the generic "Tank & Healer" approach to the game. Would a Snarer or two with a Nuker have slowed you down? You'd have to play again with a team as such (competent, hopefully so the comparison is apt) to see. Again, I'm not disagreeing that E's aren't as "omg we need" as they were, but I don't think they're honestly useless in the game. I trust ANet to fix the fire skills or such to fix this. After all, this isn't Star Wars: Galaxies... things don't go broken for very long here, do they?

Not only that but the majority of a player base for any new game are casual gamers. Not everyone can be bothered to get 'pro' and evolve and adapt to new rules and restrictions all the time.
It's a game and believe it or not there are people out there who simply play games to have fun, not dedicate coutless hours to be Teh L33t at it and call other people newbies.

It's the attitude of people such as the user you quoted who think being online 15 hours a day actually makes them somebody, which brings down practically every gaming comunity out there. Plus I found the quote 'move on with life' really rather comical. Games aren't everybody's 'life'.

And yet here are fifty some odd pages filled mostly with human players who are apparently outmatched by the new rudimentary AI . . .

Adopting to changes? I don't even used capture signet. I don't bother spending 1k per cap signet than spend hours or so to find the bosses to get the elite skills. While some people want all the skills unlocked.

People think and react differently in game, not everyone think alike.

So the flipside is better? Fire being completely useless? A whole line of magic that nobody will ever play again? You've got to be waaaay out of "the box" to even consider that a viable solution to the problem of farming.

God I hate that "think outside the box, adapt" garbage, the only people spouting this are people that haven't wasted dozens of hours on a useless character build. Making AoE's useless to combat solo farmers is like banning butter knives because someone slit their wrists with one... its a huge over-reaction. Finding new ways to play is well and good if thats what you want to do... but if you enjoy playing a fire ele and they force you to change by making your current skillset next to useless, thats very uncool. Imagine if all healing monk skills caused exhaustion, or had really long cast times...

All this "just adapt" stuff is BS. If people could have "just adapted" to the game as it was, ANet wouldn't have needed to step in and babysit.

"Think outside the box" is crap too, because people will find what works best and use that. They won't make a unique build for each mission, they'll just wait for the new cookie cutter to emerge and follow it to the letter. Games work like that... like someone else in this thread said, people find the path of least resistance and follow it. That's not just relating to games, thats human nature.

Go ahead and reply to this if you want, but I probably won't see it amidst the chaos of this thread, and I don't plan to look very hard.

Happy trails.

This is why some of us 'pro-patch' supporters react the way we do. "ANet put a patch to update AI, and fire AoE's aren't uber, so now Fire Magic will NEVER BE USED AGAIN FOR AS LONG AS THE GAME EXISTS."

With overdramatic comments... it's easy to see why those of us who want a challenge get frustrated easily. I'm not advocating the "haha, you suck if you can't nuke now," but please... it's not like they're the only ones devoid of common sense here.

I agree, to combat solo farming or to stop bots (like what A-Net say this patch suppose to do) is to give out more drops ratio for peoples. I haven't seen any good or decent drops. People farm to get golds for their characters. Than the golds is used for armor upgrades or weapons or items. I think its dumb for A-Net to take down AoE spells' effect. People no longer like AoE spells being used. My elementlist can't even used it. By improving the AI reaction time, it actually make the battle longer.

I, for one, am not saying this patch makes it impossible to beat the AI. It just makes it more time-consuming. If I wanted to consume time on a grind I'd play a different game. I think its duplicitous of GW to market themselves as this easy game with no grind and then try and force a grind element back into it.

From the looks of this thread, most people aren't excited about the AI going from one dumb extreme to the other. I think it shows a lack of foresight and attunement to the GW community on ANets part to just throw this half-assed update at us and tell us to lap it up...

I agree. 700 hours on my Elementalist (including 60k spent on PYROMANCER's Robes), and I'm supposed to just "adapt"? I don't think so. If Anet wants to tell me they don't care about that 700 hours by ruining that character... Then I'll just return the favor, and tell them I don't care by refusing to buy Chapter 2.

No grind != Easy.

If you mean challenging makes it a grind, then you're right. Might wanna look into racing games, or Madden, in that case.


Pyromancer armor doesn't affect your stats, genius. This update doesn't affect PvP at all, and that'd be the only reason I could see Pyromancer armor being an issue. Why'd you even buy it in the first place?

I edited that to be less offensive after posting. I'm not at all used to forums where I have to conduct myself with a little more decorum

Explain a useful fire build to me.

Every useful spell in the fire line is AOE. I'm not making this up for a good cover story, thats just how it is. A nuker can't be self sufficient anymore, he needs someone working in conjunction with him for his spells to hit at any reasonable rate (considering the 25 energy cost of a met shower).

Can you switch Orion to water magic and get him to try freezing these people in place? Can you force Dunham to cast imagined burden? Anything like this? No... you don't have any control over how the NPCs play, so unless you bring someone along with you every time you play, fire builds are useless.

I'm not making "overdramatic comments", nobody with an iota of common sense is going to build their character up to be less effective than it could be just because they like the word "fire". Fire is essentially as dead as Latin.

Please, show me how I'm wrong. Show me how I can play a nuker with my henches... show me 8 slots of fire skills that won't cause enemies to scatter like birdshot. Otherwise, shut up and move on.

The point is that I built my character as a Pyromancer. I happen to be picky about my armor matching my build. Furthermore, I spent over 10k buying a Superior Rune of FIRE Magic. Not Water magic. FIRE.

Come on peeps, Anet is obviously listening to the many complaints by farmers and elementalist PvE players. I am not saying that the way they improved the AI at first was flawless, but they are making adjustments based on people's reactions.

I think most players want the AI of monsters to improve, as this makes the game more interesting. This is why other games advertise having computer controlled enemies with good AI. This will make the game harder, yes, but it is a little easy as it is anyway. The important thing is that making the AI and thereby improving the player experience is more important than allowing people to farm effectively. I don't mind people farming (it is the only effective way to get gold and ecto's etc. atm), I do it myself sometimes, but farming was never intended to be the focus of the game. You can't expect them to NOT try to improve the AI as this might hurt certain farming methods.

They are trying to make the game better, and admit that some of the changes may have been less then perfect, working fast on finding ways to correct this. And they did say that they consider adjusting some AOE spells to make them interesting again, if it turns out that these changes make them useless.

What more could anyone ask for?

God forbid you should have to have a partner help you nuke. Yeah, that really destroys the game. Look, I said before, and I'll say again, I DO think the fire spells need to be re-worked now. And ANet WILL. Look at all the skill changes they've made since release. Do you really think they'll just ignore fire? You're making it sound like even when chapter 3 comes out, Fire Magic will be useless. You have NO basis to make that assumption, it's a childish over-reaction, which is what this thread is full of. Sure there are some calm criticisms being posted, and very few alternative ideas, but most of it is people like you crying "OH MY GOD IT DOESN'T WORK PERFECTLY, IT'S RUINED FOREVER. It's been like... less than 24 hours since the patch. About 21 or something...

Calm the hell down and relax.

I could ask you to do the same. "Show me a good 8 skill Fire build." What, only 4 or 5 fire skills isn't good? Has to be 8 or 0, eh? Hypocrite.


edit: thank god the forum has an ignore feature. This thread has my list filling up quicker than I'd imagine.

It's amazing these fire eles refuse to change up their skill bar. Adding a snare completely makes your build "useless"? Wow. As if you needed 8 nuking spells on your bar...

Every other class has to do some build changing when they're in groups.

It's not that at all bork. I have no problem altering my skills. I do so on a regular basis in conjunction with what is needed for what I'm doing...the same thing I do with other toons in different professions.

The main problem is that this was a very drastic change to the fire elemental, especially to the molded builds that so many people use. It should never have been released without being done so in conjunction with energy cost reductions, exhaustion removals, etc... that balanced it.

Amazing. This is the first decent post coming from the fire ele side instead of senseless whining. They definitely should have upgraded firedamage, or tweaked the costs... but the World Championships are coming up so I have no idea if they're 'allowed' to do some skill tweaking right now.

Anyone asked Gaile last night if they're actually going to retweak the skills again?

i am a pyromancer who is adjusting a bit.

lets try

flare........hummm no scatter

fireball AOE and .........hummm no scatter

phoenix double AOE (on launch around you and where it hits) no scatter

flame burst AOE and no scstter

immolate

incendary bonds AOE and no scatter

inferno AOE and no scatter

rodgorts invocation AOE and no scatter

hummmmmm

6 AOE and 2 others is a skillbar full

the only ones gone are a few DOT AOE skills and i sent in a useful suggestion concerning them.

I can get my mes up to 16 dom. My Ranger up to 16 WS.
So if he spent hard earned cash on a Superior Fire rune and Fire Weapon for a 16 Fire build then why the hell shouldn't he be able to just use Fire and Storage skills Like my Mes only uses Inspiration and Dom?

The beauty of this game was choice and now the choice of having a Fire build has gone. So yes, I'd like to make a second request for you to come up with an 8 skill 16 attribute points in Fire build also that won't be affected by the update.

And as for having the Fire skills reworked. Don't you think that may have been an idea before the patch was released and 2 whole classes of players made practically useless?
Although I am talking to someone here who makes accusations of childishness before publicly announcing the addition of a poster to their ignore list. Wait, isn't that called 'ignorance'?

Now get my Fire Build, or you are soooo off my buddylist

I just took my fire ele out for a test, outside Augory Rock/SF and it certainly wasn't as bad as it seems. The monsters only ran away from my Firestorm after a few secs and spells like fireball don't make them run. Meteor shower stopped any attempt to run with knockdown. Of course this is after the 2nd patch which improved some of the stupid chicken AI behavior. As for farming, I see that as a sign of a game going downhill when most people only care about farming or doing runs at least for PVE.

First of all for those who are anti farmers.

Wow is a heavy farming game, oh and its the most popular

Yes this is guild wars, a game of skill and teamwork, i chose to play this game for those reasons, BUT i also like to farm it "was" fun, now its still possible but just boooooooooooring. All kinds of playing styles should be welcomed or you just cut out custermers that enjoy that aspect of it, and really what harm have they ever done to you. The way "some" i stress some people react to farmers its like theve killed their family or something

Second, to those that defend anet saying they listen and they will fix this, i say this. They fuzzed up bigtime this is a slobby porly tested buggy patch, amerturish.

Sometimes you just want to take henchies, Anet know this thats why they exist, orion has become redundant for some players, (SOME people SOME so dont give me a list of those who can, save your effort). And the whole lot have become unuasble if you use AOE spells.

Thirdly

Through playing through the game as inteded i made around 30k, with which i spent about 20 on drokners armour and runes. Some people make more, but those quoting millions, you are a teeny tiiny minority, and even then i dont belive it All my 15k's are through farming, and i dont even have a super absorb rune, nor will i for a long time.

FOW armour is only acheivalbe by a huge majority by solo farming UW, you dont get enough in teams, ive spent about 30 hours in UW alone with teams and have so far not got a SINGLE ecto drop (no lie), i really feel im very unlucky here.

Even with ectos at 10k (16 at mo), it would cost nearly a million just for the ectos, and dont you need shards as well?

And lastly

The new AI is easly taken advantage of, a few examples.

1.Some of you say use snare, and someone quoted as one being cripple.

So i cripple my enemy then firestorm him, he will no slooooowly walk away, taking damage from firestorm and he will no not be dealing any damage back.

2.The other night i cast balths on my monk, as a protection spell for UW for a test. When the attaxes got through the warriors wall, i cast baltsh and they just ran back past the warriors, thats DUMB.

3. watch the video posted on these forums of a "lone ranger" using a some fireshot bow skill (cant remember name) against a Drake. The drake just kept running back and forth like ping pong, that drake "could" have FLATTEND the ranger, again that is not a buff to the AI.

I dont care for the idea behind the patch, but even if i did i dont like this version of it whatsoever.

Good point. Though the problem was, there was indeed nothing else to do.
If PvP didn't float your boat then you find yourself making new characters. Then when they have all their quests and missions done what else is there to do? Ahh Fissure armour looks nice, I'll get me some of that while I wait for the update and some more spankingly great PvE missions \o/

Oh wait, now I can't make any money. So now what?

PvP will reign. Noone will buy the expansion as all the PvE'ers are too fed up having the one thing they had left to do taken away and Blizzard get a few thousand more customers.

One thing that I've been thinking about is this:
In this thread people keep saying how now the formerly fire-only eles have to adjust to something else, how they need to eventually switch to different skills to support AoEs by for example slowing targets down with water-magic before one can use an AoE like firestorm and things like that, or how there needs to be a supporting character to slow down the targets before an AoE can be used.

So far so good, but then I look at the henchmen and somehow I'm missing the option to select which skills they are using. The way it is right now the elementalist for example is a no-go, because he/she always brings exclusively fire, always with firestorm. So that would mean that the real players that take the henchmen would have to be Orion's/Cynn's supporters, not the other way around, which for some reason doesn't sound right to me.

The same goes pretty much for the Mesmer-henchman. How do you talk him into not bringing chaos storm?

There's a lot of talk about how you need to now have to alter your build for the specific thing that you'll be doing now, how the "cookie cutter" builds don't work anymore and how teams have to come up with a team-build. And on the other hand here you have the henchmen, who always bring the same few standard skills, that you can't alter, that you can't talk into switching to interrupts or maybe water/air/earth-magic for your next mission/quest.

And to overcome *this* problem (which was made a *big* problem by the recent updates) Anet would have to implement
a) a wider choice of different henchmen
or
b) the ability to pick the skills you want them to use

Now you could ask why I would take henchmen instead of real people.
Well, let me put it this way:
Exploring areas isn't everybody's thing.
Filling a group with henchmen isn't as time-consuming as making a group of real people, especially if you're not doing missions.
Henchmen don't complain when I take a break in the middle of playing, Henchmen don't complain and don't make me feel bad when I go out for the solely purpose of capping a skill and then don't do the mission that would be on the way.
And quite often I would notice that something that I failed to do with a PuG was easily done with henchmen, making them the better choice for certain purposes.

Long story short: the patches also made part of the henchmen useless, and nobody told them (up to now) to adapt in some way, which would be an important thing to do.

* Changed the portal from the Tombs of the Primeval Kings so that it no longer divides parties.




FINALLY!!!
I play PvP characters, but my friends and guild mates who don't use PvP characters (but whos characters are better than 3/4 of the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOtards in Tombs) usually come with me into parties. And it pisses me off to no end when some retarded dipshit decides only PvP characters only are worthy of the team (in most cases my guild mates and friends are twice as good as he is anyways!).

Exactly. This thread is a million pages long so I doubt you saw it, but a few pages back I brought up the point of not being able to change your henches skill sets. Good post.

You didn't misquote, I misposted

I haven't really tried the snare/nuke tactic as yet to be honest. Until necessary I don't think I'd even want to bother.
Though i'm not saying Elems are useless by any means.
What worries me is that teams may just avoid the hassle of making sure one Elem is water and one is Fire, who has snares, wards and spare change for a phone call, and just use other characters instead.
Any AoE spell cast now without the proper support is nothing but a liability.

True that things haven't gone unfixed so far (although the cape option took an obscene amount of time to be addressed for something so simple).
I just hope it does indeed gets fixed eventually and we can all enjoy ourselves again.

I do quite a bit of both, and this update has ruined both.

Farming - As an explanation, I am not one of those Koreans that farms for 8 hours a day. I was a farmer in Augury rock when I got bored...really bored. I did it to acquire Fissure Armor and unlock upgrades for my PvP character(s). I refuse to buy gps outside the game, as that defeats the purpose in playing, but making it this hard to make gps makes some items so unnattainable that it's not worth even trying, hence my looking elsewhere for other games to play. I am afraid that others that are not purests like myself will start to think "hey, it doesn't cost me $15/month to play, so maybe I can spend what I saved on eBay buying 500K". I think this is totally against everything that Arenanet stands for, and actually encourages people to break the rules.

As an aside, what is so wrong with farming anyways? If that's what people want to waste their time doing, more power to them. Let them acquire all the greatest stuff, that's normal in any economy. It also makes items available for the masses. Before farming was big, +25 Hale Staff Heads were like 20K, and 28s were like 75K. Now most ppl can affored a 28 for 10K. I think farming actually made items more available for the masses. Now an item like a Long Sword (req9), with +14%>50%, 10/9 sundering, and +29 health can be bought for under 25K, and is almost as good as a +15%>50%, 10/10 sundering, and +30 health, which still runs 100K or so.
if someone wants perfection, let them farm to get it, or earn the money to buy it.

Ps - I actually farmed griffons as an ele, which I think about 10 ppl in the world do (far too lazy to make a monk just for farming). Now the griffons run away from me like I have the plague, which makes farming almost too long to be worthwhile. I state this to further explain that I am not a pure farmer or anything like that. I actually do NOT like doing it that much, but it allows me to earn enough otherwise.

PvE - What the heck is the point of playing an elementalist in PvE anymore??? Sure you could be an elmo prot, but I mean being a nuker or AoE spiker??? I think this is totally unfair to make NPCs run away from AoEs...Do NPCs sense when a warrior is going to use his best skills after generating enough adrenaline? -NO!!! Do they run outside of the range of a DOT Mesmer or Necro? - NO!!! Do they run from a quickshot/poison ranger? - NO!!! As far as I can see, this update was aimed directly at making elementalists useless. A ranger, necro, or mesmer can deal more damage directly to a single opponent if using the right build, and the DOTers can drop their hexes, and move onto a second target, thus dealing damage to 2 at once. Also, most other classes AoEs deall it instantly, then it's over; as opposed to Fire Storm, Meteor Shower, or Seering Heat, which are over time. Once again, the other classes get to deal their damage and watch NPCs run while they're not getting damaged. Meanwhile, the eles get screwed because the NPCs take off before the AoEs do their damage.

As I see it, the whole point of an elementalist is to deal wide areas of destruction, and without this they are seriously handicapped. This last update has taken so much of the fun out of this game it's not funny. 2 mil XP on my pyro/aeromancer to be turned into a worthless piece of junk...thanks ArenaNet. I have played since the E3E, and now you have taken nerfing to a new level that has completely obliterated an entire class.