Guild Wars 2

This thread’s purpose is to determine all of the current issues with the Elementalist class. Once all of the issues are clearly laid out, we will begin to approach possible changes to our class which directly counter these problems.

This thread will reference many “ELEtism” posts which are located in the Elementalist forums. Conclusions derived from those posts will be summarized in this main thread to help maintain a fluid experience.

I will keep this thread updated with a collaborated response area which will summarize all of points we discuss in this thread and multiple other ELEtism posts.

Collaborated Response: Current Problems with the Elementalist

There are multiple problems with Elementalist.

1. Survivability
Since Elementalist lack basic survivability mechanics (like stealth, mobility, clones, or damage mitigation (armor), we are forced to shape our builds around surviving so that we can actually contribute to a team. If Elementalists do not trait themselves for support and survivability they can be locked down, focused and killed within a matter of seconds before they are even able to make a difference to the team.

Elementalist are pigeon-holed into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to extend to other trait lines. They are also “forced” into running Cantrips which locks out the use of other utilities.

Discuss Lack of Survivability in more specifics here: ELEtism Discussion #2: Ele Survivability

2. Unusable Trait-Lines

There are so many traits which are just plain bad. There are very few traits which I would take into a tournament. Picking traits should be a challenge for the user; it should be a very difficult decision and should make users value each trait that they choose. This is not currently the case, most of the traits I have gone over have not seen any use since launch.

The lack of useful traits is another reason why Elementalists stick to the defensive trait-lines; they synergize well to create the best possible build and that there is nothing else to take which will be as effective as the defensive trait-lines.

The Fire Magic tree does not synergize with anything; it probably has the worst traits out of all of the other trait lines. This tree needs the most work.

3. Unusable Utilities
The only incredibly useful utilities are Cantrips. They are effective in keeping the Elementalist alive. They are almost necessary because they cover the Elementalist’s vulnerabilities. Even though Cantrips are helpful, they are on a HUGE cooldown; other classes have skills which do all of what Cantrips do but better on a SHORTER cooldown.

Glyphs and Signets don’t have very much utility at all. These two need major revamping,;
none of these are worth giving up a Cantrip for because for every Cantrip that an Elementalist does not take, they make themselves a LOT squishier.
(I’m gonna come back and add more information about Glyphs and Signets later)

The lack of effective utilities make Elementalists fall back on the Cantrips which are a sure thing and are effective. The Cantrips also synergize well with all builds.

Discuss all of the utilities in more specifics here: ELEtism Discussion #2: Elementalist Utilities

In order to push us out of these traits/utilities, they have been nerfed terribly but since Elementalists have no other useful traits/utilities to fall back on so they need to stick to playing with the nerfed stuff.

4. Elementalist Class Mechanic – Attunement Swapping
Does this act more obstructive than beneficial?
(More on this later)

To help think keep the conversation going, try answering these questions:

What are some weaknesses that Elementalist have internally?

What are some bad traits? (Useless/Buggy)

What are some bad skills skills? (Useless/Buggy)

Join the ELEtism Community

I would like to start with Lingering Elements. First off to get the full effect you need to go 5/5/5/5/15 which is a total of 35 trait points. As being a master minor trait I do not believe I should have to waste half of my trait points to get the full effect. Also on another note lets say you just pick up Lingering Elements (0/0/0/0/15) as it not being a full build (yes I know this) but this trait has no effect what so ever by it self. It has to be paired with other traits to be effective.

I have only played Elementalist slightly but I always found myself going with 2 cantrips and a conjured weapon (Because I REALLY wanted to use a conjured weapon). I found most skills to be fairly weak, and I always went into arcana. It just seems that elementalist have one of the shortest ends of the stick (Rangers can be considered close).

Ancient Ranger.3276:

I would like to start with Lingering Elements. First off to get the full effect you need to go 5/5/5/5/15 which is a total of 35 trait points. As being a master minor trait I do not believe I should have to waste half of my trait points to get the full effect. Also on another note lets say you just pick up Lingering Elements (0/0/0/0/15) as it not being a full build (yes I know this) but this trait has no effect what so ever by it self. It has to be paired with other traits to be effective.

I agree that the 5pt minor traits should be both reworked and given for free to attunements. My suggestions before were something like follows

Fire: reduce condition duration by 25-33%
Air: +33% move speed (giving all eles some mobility)
Earth: Toughness and bleed procs when struck
Water: regenerate health (slight increase possibly)

The idea is for it to actually matter what attunement an elementalist is currently in and give them some innate defenses to counter their weak hp/armor.

I’ll try to focus on major aspects of Ele issues, I will go deeper next time.
Elementalist problem is the combo of other problems:

1) Survivability
Every class has his surviving mechanic. The stronger the mechanic is, the less heals/base stats/armor that class have. So, coming to ele, we don’t have a special mechanic but we have heals/boon. Unlucky, heals are the most gear/traits based mechanic.
This forces us to get defensive stats to survive, lowering our diversity. Heals are our mechanic and best heals come from traits more then from weapons.
So this mechanic looks strong on paper, that’s why we have worst base stats. Sadly we are forced into defensive traits and are forced into same utilties over and over.

2) poor designed trait lines
We will never get out of arcana, face it pls. We need elemental attunement as base trait. Change it to be passive personal only and team buff with trait. And lower the attunement cd too.
Increase base heals value and reduce scaling.
Remove useless traits / merge them in other trait lines.
3) bad designed weapon skills
Focus any1 ?

U should balance ur game not destroying what works and is commonly used, hoping that ppl get what is not used.
U should boost what is never used, and make baseline what cannot be taken off.

That’s all that comes to my mind atm

Xunleashed.5271:

3) bad designed weapon skills
Focus any1 ?

I love focus. Just the fire skills are absolutely useless. Other then that it’s way superior to dagger offhand for me…

It seems like there are currently three issues with the Ele.

Lack of survivability, lack of effective trait-lines, and lack of effective skills.

The lack of survivability pidgeon-holes Elementalist into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to expand their traitlines.
The lack of survivability also pidgeon-holes Elementalists to run cantrips which makes it difficult for them to use other utilities.

That, coupled with the less than stellar trait-lines and terrible utility skills that the Elementalist have been given make it so that the most efficient use of the Elementalist requires points in water and cantrips.

In order to push us out of these traits/utilities, they have been nerfed terribly but since Elementalists have no other useful traits/utilities to fall back on so they need to stick to playing with the nerfed stuff.

This is not the rule 100% of the time but this is the underlying issue.

Mash Hog.5672:

The lack of survivability pidgeon-holes Elementalist into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to expand their traitlines.
The lack of survivability also pidgeon-holes Elementalists to run cantrips which makes it difficult for them to use other utilities.

The fun part is in my current tPvP build I have 0 points in water and 10 in arcane. I kinda agree that alot of our traits don’t make any sense at all and a rework is not debatable. But I don’t share the oppinion that we have to rely on arcane and water traits. The current change with reduced attunements helped me alot btw.

I also don’t use /rarely use any cantrip at all. Most of them are no stun breakers anymore, which reduced their use for me ALOT.

For useless/bad traits, we really need to mention Arcane Precision, it’s a trait which is just plain bad, the chance of applying is just downright pitiful.

What are some weaknesses that Elementalist have internally?

- Way too low HP pool.

- No deffensive mechanic. We used to have healing but it’s overnerfed now.

- Because of this eles are very weak to conditions. One condition you cannot cleanse and you are mostly dead. Also Cleansing water has been nerfed (moved to master tier. Killing build diversity).

- Elementalist is totally countered by warriors and s/d thieves. When the enemy team has 2 or more of them (happens usually) having an ele in your team is a huge disadvantage.

- No build diversity: Fire & earth lines won’t be really used until the stats they give are changed (condi duration & condi damage are quite useless).
>>: Earth has very solid traits, but it’s still a weak choice because it gives you toughness & condition damage. On the other hand Water is overnerfed, but it’s still the way to go because you need every single point of Vitality & healing power

What are some bad traits? (Useless/Buggy)

- Minor:
Flame Barrier
Lingering Elements

- Major
Lava Tomb
Conjurer
One with fire

What are some bad skills? (Useless/Buggy)

- All glyphs except the heal
- All signets
- Conjure earth shield. Conjure flame axe
- Scepter: Water #2 Shatterstone
- Focus: Fire#4 Flamewall
- Focus: Fire #5 Fire Shield
- Staff: Air #3 Gust
- Staff: Earth #2 Eruption
- Althought the elite skills are not useless, they aren’t good enough.

Suggestions

Giving eles a way to deffend themselves. Either increase HP pool, rework auras or increase Healing power.

If HP pool isn’t increased, eles need more ways to actively cleanse conditions.

- Move cleansing water back to adept tier

- Burning fire that was added last patch is okish, but it’s passive. I’d rather have
something like “every time you blast a fire field you cleanse a condition” instead.

- A cleanse on dodge more accessible than evasive arcana: Stop, drop and roll could see some tweaks: ie moved to fire, cleanses any kind of condition, or maybe to adept water… anything would do.

Also: burning is way too strong vs ele’s. We are supposed to be fire manipulators yet we die to the most stupid burning.

silvershadez.8421:

Mash Hog.5672:

The lack of survivability pidgeon-holes Elementalist into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to expand their traitlines.
The lack of survivability also pidgeon-holes Elementalists to run cantrips which makes it difficult for them to use other utilities.

The fun part is in my current tPvP build I have 0 points in water and 10 in arcane. I kinda agree that alot of our traits don’t make any sense at all and a rework is not debatable. But I don’t share the oppinion that we have to rely on arcane and water traits. The current change with reduced attunements helped me alot btw.

I also don’t use /rarely use any cantrip at all. Most of them are no stun breakers anymore, which reduced their use for me ALOT.

My current build runs 10 in water and 30 in Arcana.
This build requires triple cantrips.

In order to make an effective, well balanced, build which doesn’t fall over and die, thus being liability to your team, survivability is a requirement.

My WvW build has nothing in Water and 10 in Arcana… but this build is very gimmicky and is very situational.

The thing is you cannot just imply by others speccing deep into water or arcane that those 2 traitlines are essential for being ele. It’s an overexaggeration and this thread could not be taken seriously without analyzing the problems of an ele with a cool minded head.

Glad to see this thread.

Conditions. They are the bane of elementalists. I can’t tell you the last time I lost a direct damage duel. But the time I lost a condition damage duel was recent. We have enough clears, but we virtually have to devote ourselves to clearing conditions.

I literally have 30 points invested just so I don’t have to worry as much about hybrid condi builds. And against bomb engineers, why even try as a d/d ele?

One incredibly useless trait that makes chuckle is Stop, Drop, and Roll

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stop,_Drop,_and_Roll

Dodge Rolling removes burning and chilled.

Water master tier has some incredibly good traits like Aquamancer’s Alacrity, Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Wave, etc. I see no reason to trait for this since burning is very easily applied (sadly) and chill is fairly rare. With usually only Necro haveing easy access to it, while other classes sometimes bring Hyrdomancy Sigils or even sometimes Runes of Grenth.

The trait (and other classes have similar condi dodge traits) needs a completely new mechanic or just giving larger condition coverage. like a blanket remove 1 condition on dodge roll.

Mbelch.9028:

Glad to see this thread.

Conditions. They are the bane of elementalists. I can’t tell you the last time I lost a direct damage duel. But the time I lost a condition damage duel was recent. We have enough clears, but we virtually have to devote ourselves to clearing conditions.

I literally have 30 points invested just so I don’t have to worry as much about hybrid condi builds. And against bomb engineers, why even try as a d/d ele?

The reason I didn’t post this was because I felt that we had enough condi clears and good enough access to it. The issue lies more on the fact that condispam is incredibly prevalent and THAT needs to be toned down instead of our defense against conditions moved up.

I wouldn’t say that elementalists have too little survivability.

I would say they have too little survivability on anything other than staff.

If you’re running staff at long range, you have little need for survivability buffs. The 1200 range, the huge amount of control, and Burning Retreat mean that you can completely avoid close-range combat if you so choose. In terms of survivability, staff ele is fine as is and shouldn’t be buffed up.

The problem is that scepter and dagger are short-range weapons, and by choosing a weapon that’s not the staff, you sacrifice the greatest source of survivability the ele has – staying far away and preventing enemies from getting to you. You can’t exactly prevent enemies from getting in your face when that’s where you need to be to deal damage.

The 2 major issues for me as an elementalist are:
1. Lack of survivability
2. Class mechanic being a restriction than a benefit.

On the lack of survivability, everyone has covered it well. We have the lowest hp and armor. Somehow, our heals are not the strongest instead needing skills to augment our healing. As someone commented, the heals on our weapon skills are not 0 cost. Each time you heal, you can be interrupted in cast and/or not attacking. Healing as an act is usually handing the initiative to your opponent because you are now taking a reactive action for self-survival. More heals isn’t the panacea.

On our class mechanics, I see 2 major issues. One being our class mechanic giving us 20 skills. However, a major trade off is our skills have far higher cooldowns. That means your capability uptime is poorer and leads to a weaker sustain. Another problem with 20 skills is we have the illusion of being more capable when on truth, our 20 skills barely give us more capability than the 10 which most classes have(not counting that the AA chain is 3 attacks, which add more capability to the 10). So we suffer from increased cooldowns, while having questionable increased capability over the 10 other classes have. And finally, our mechanic does not add bonus capabilities. Other classes’ mechanics gives free added skills in the f1-4. Our f1-4 is a restriction locking 15 skills away from us at any given point.

Our class mechanic needs to give us more.

And no, do not give the excuse that you can trait for attune meant swapping to give benefits. Most classes have traits for weapon swap benefits too.

Mash Hog.5672:

What are some bad skills skills? (Useless/Buggy)

All Sigils are completely ineffective.
All Glyphs are completely ineffective.

This bit is purely subjective and far from the truth. To me personally, glyphs are very useful. They’re very versatile, the elementals give good utility and added damage and the glyph of elemental power allows for snares on all other skills.

If anything, add some arguments to your statements.

I can’t make glyph of elemental power perform in pvp for some reason… I think that all the skills you would like to use for it (fast hitting) are not the skills you want to use in general… Plus it has a per target icd to ensure poor uptime on top of it

ThiBash.5634:

Mash Hog.5672:

What are some bad skills skills? (Useless/Buggy)

All Sigils are completely ineffective.
All Glyphs are completely ineffective.

This bit is purely subjective and far from the truth. To me personally, glyphs are very useful. They’re very versatile, the elementals give good utility and added damage and the glyph of elemental power allows for snares on all other skills.

If anything, add some arguments to your statements.

Glyphs really need more related traits to improve their effect. In it’s current state they are weaker than other utility choices.

ThiBash.5634:

Mash Hog.5672:

What are some bad skills skills? (Useless/Buggy)

All Sigils are completely ineffective.
All Glyphs are completely ineffective.

This bit is purely subjective and far from the truth. To me personally, glyphs are very useful. They’re very versatile, the elementals give good utility and added damage and the glyph of elemental power allows for snares on all other skills.

If anything, add some arguments to your statements.

I’m working on it!
If only I had all the time in the world!

Mash Hog.5672:

The reason I didn’t post this was because I felt that we had enough condi clears and good enough access to it. The issue lies more on the fact that condispam is incredibly prevalent and THAT needs to be toned down instead of our defense against conditions moved up.

I agree Ele has good condition management options. It is just that conditions need to be toned down. In dueling/roaming in WvW it is different then sPvP balance.

I bring up my time lately playing Guardian alot but I feel that people compare Ele’s defensive abilities to Guards and our offensive abilities to Warriors. It really has opened my eyes playing on both spectrums of offense and defense where Ele should sit somewhere around the middle then you build leaning toward one or the other while not exactly doing the Guard or Warriors job but not as good as the Guard or Warrior.

Sure a ele has to go 30 water and 20 arcana for 50 point investment but a guard has to go 30 honor, 10 valor, and 20 virtues for a 60 point investment and to really click you need some extra runes on top of it with soldier. Ether renewal tips it totally into eles favor since guards just have signet for 1 condi every 10 secs.

If anything I would say using this perspective is that guards have some pretty good group utilites to deal with conditions. Ele could maybe use some help on the utility front to deal with conditions which would help with survivability and bring a bit of extra group support clears besides staff, elemental attunement with 30 water or evasive arcana and dagger 5 in water.

I would like mainhand dagger given something like rock barrier.

oZii.2864:

Mash Hog.5672:

The reason I didn’t post this was because I felt that we had enough condi clears and good enough access to it. The issue lies more on the fact that condispam is incredibly prevalent and THAT needs to be toned down instead of our defense against conditions moved up.

I agree Ele has good condition management options. It is just that conditions need to be toned down. In dueling/roaming in WvW it is different then sPvP balance.

I bring up my time playing guardians alot but I feel that people compare ele’s defensive abilities to guards and our offensive abilities to warriors.

Sure a ele has to go 30 water and 20 arcana for 50 point investment but a guard has to go 30 honor, 10 valor, and 20 virtues for a 60 point investment and to really click you need some extra runes on top of it with soldier. Ether renewal tips it totally into eles favor since guards just have signet for 1 condi every 10 secs.

If anything I would say using this perspective is that guards have some pretty good group utilites to deal with conditions. Ele could maybe use some help on the utility front to deal with conditions and maybe that would allow some people to feel comfortable moving out of water though many don’t go 30 in water and that is really D/D and Staff bunkers.

I would like mainhand dagger given something like rock barrier.

Thats where Glyphs and Sigils can come in:
Once Glyphs and Sigils get turned into more effective utilities, we would be able to build around those utilities and explore new builds.

Mash Hog.5672:

oZii.2864:

Mash Hog.5672:

The reason I didn’t post this was because I felt that we had enough condi clears and good enough access to it. The issue lies more on the fact that condispam is incredibly prevalent and THAT needs to be toned down instead of our defense against conditions moved up.

I agree Ele has good condition management options. It is just that conditions need to be toned down. In dueling/roaming in WvW it is different then sPvP balance.

I bring up my time playing guardians alot but I feel that people compare ele’s defensive abilities to guards and our offensive abilities to warriors.

Sure a ele has to go 30 water and 20 arcana for 50 point investment but a guard has to go 30 honor, 10 valor, and 20 virtues for a 60 point investment and to really click you need some extra runes on top of it with soldier. Ether renewal tips it totally into eles favor since guards just have signet for 1 condi every 10 secs.

If anything I would say using this perspective is that guards have some pretty good group utilites to deal with conditions. Ele could maybe use some help on the utility front to deal with conditions and maybe that would allow some people to feel comfortable moving out of water though many don’t go 30 in water and that is really D/D and Staff bunkers.

I would like mainhand dagger given something like rock barrier.

Thats where Glyphs and Sigils can come in:
Once Glyphs and Sigils get turned into more effective utilities, we would be able to build around those utilities and explore new builds.

Yea I agree the glyphs and signets are a bit selfish with signets being pretty lackluster. I added some more to that specific post you quoted saying the same thing.

Mash Hog.5672:

It seems like there are currently three issues with the Ele.

Lack of survivability, lack of effective trait-lines, and lack of effective skills.

The lack of survivability pidgeon-holes Elementalist into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to expand their traitlines.
The lack of survivability also pidgeon-holes Elementalists to run cantrips which makes it difficult for them to use other utilities.

That, coupled with the less than stellar trait-lines and terrible utility skills that the Elementalist have been given make it so that the most efficient use of the Elementalist requires points in water and cantrips.

In order to push us out of these traits/utilities, they have been nerfed terribly but since Elementalists have no other useful traits/utilities to fall back on so they need to stick to playing with the nerfed stuff.

This is not the rule 100% of the time but this is the underlying issue.

This is, IMO, probably 70-80% of the problem with ele atm. I’d also say that some of the weapon skills are lackluster (long/obvious cast times, etc) and overall a lot of them seem to be fairly similar to one another. Eles also have absolutely godawful choices for healing- Signet heals for very little and requires constant damage output, Renewal makes you extremely vulnerable and has a longer cast than a mantra does, and Arcane Brilliance is too risky, only useful in large fights, and has too long a CD to make the risk worth the possible reward.

The one heal I didn’t mention is Glyph, and that’s because I think that Glyph of Ele Harm (pun half-intended) has the best risk-reward ability and is fairly safe compared to other skills. That being said, it’s still one of the worst heals in the game (it heals for 200 HPS less than HealSig does[!], and even when you’re attuned to water you still heal for around 150 HPS less anyways).

The fact that ANet has completely neglected these problems and/or been ineffective in handling them is just downright bad, and shows either a serious lack of experience or a deep stupidity on their behalf.

EDIT: also, do you mean Signets or Sigils? Because those are two very different things. o.o

Elementalist itself needs several things:

• SURVIVABILITY! This is perhaps the most important weakness to any elementalist. No matter what build we take we’re always subjected to an extremely low health pool. Sure, we have a lot of heals to make up for that, but a lot of the time the damage outweighs the healing (thieves and warriors). Perhaps as others have suggested, increase the base heals and reduce how HP affects them, and, more importantly, an increase in our health pool or a trait that increases our health pool would be benefitial and not OP.
• Better weapon/utility skills. I’m looking at you, focus. Generally staff, dagger, and scepter skills are alright… but looking at most of the focus skills I just can’t use them. Both of the fire skills just need completely reworked. I can go on and on with this, so, in short, focus skills need looked at. A lot. Also, utilities need a lot of work (when survivability is in mind), as the only current viable skills for any PvP elementalist are cantrips.
• Better elites. Seriously, I’m tired of only having one decent skill (yes, Tornado, and even then it’s not that great comparatively) that is only good in certain situations. Maybe an elite signet? Something passive would be nice, especially when it boosts survivability.
• More variety in builds. I know you guys have been working on this a lot, but there’s still tons to do (especially with eles!). I’d like to be able to try any sort of build and not have it be less viable than the current, boring meta (that is, 20-30 in Arcana and Water, which is still unfortunately needed). I like the changes to condition damage elementalist and it would be nice if those changes would be expanded and replicated with other types (direct damage/zerker, bunker, etc.)

Personally, I think Elementalists are fine on their survivability. I think our defensive set-backs, in terms of health and armor should remain as is. I mean, on the Guild Wars 2 profession definition page it defines Elementalists as, “What they lack in physical toughness they make up for in dealing high damage in a single attack.” I think what should be changed is the offensive capabilities of the Elementalist.

I’m not sure if I would stop traiting for defense even if Elementalists had greater survivability. I just naturally spec to be more defensive. But when I do go defensive, it’s tough to deal any significant damage.

I agree that ele feels like it has terrible sustain and only mediocre burst. Even when I win vs HS warrior it takes forever and usually many rotations through water to stay alive

zach.1952:

Elementalist itself needs several things:

• Better elites. Seriously, I’m tired of only having one decent skill (yes, Tornado, and even then it’s not that great comparatively) that is only good in certain situations. Maybe an elite signet? Something passive would be nice, especially when it boosts survivability.

Signet of elements – Cooldown: 60 seconds.
Passive: Reduces the Attunement cooldowns by 2 seconds.
Active: Recharge all attunements

The dream!!

I should note, on my current build, I have very good health regeneration, toughness isn’t bad, health isn’t too low, lots of vigor for dodging, plenty of condition removal, and tons of boons. So the potential of high survivability is there.

What my build does lack is high critical damage/percent chance, and power. So I simply need to have 15+ stacks of might and rely solely on attack as opposed to conditions to do any noteworthy damage.

With most fights, I’m slowly wearing the enemy down and out healing their damage.
So what I’m saying is, Elementalists have no issues with surviving. Maybe condition damage could be toned down a little. But that’s not the main issue.

Basically Elementalists have 3 options: go defensively and kill nothing, go offensively and get killed by everything (Unless maybe you get the first strike or something), or go for a mixture and have no chance to survive against fully damage or be able to kill a fully defensive character.

But this profession has been changed so much that I’m not really sure what I want anymore. Surprise me. Lol.

Lower attunement cooldowns, I want to try with 5s.
Lower skill cooldowns. kitten cooldowns on 1-5 skills sucks for rotations. These should be 35s or less. Above that is ok for utility skills.

Updated Main Thread.

Healing Ripple, Electric Discharge and Arcane wave need to take a hit.
Cone of Cold is a crappy heal and needs its scaling improved.
Bringing a couple of other things down will make the atmosphere easier for the ele, but yeah CoC sucks, Freezing gust still mediocre, Fire Shield has a cooldown that makes no sense as if it is even half the skill Shocking aura is. Whether D/F or S/F, Focus Fire attunement has so much burn it doesn’t know wtf to do with it.
Glyph of renewal has a cast time longer than the planets orbit.
There’s so much 0.5s or less cast time aoes Glyph of Storms feels redundant and that cooldown..

I don’t feel that Arcane is mandatory at all, but there’s a lot of crap options there that make it feel that way because you can’t get any juice out of an attunement.
Also aquamancers alacricity being Master tier makes me cry.

I’d also say that the lack of a real F-Ability gives Eles a huge disadvantage compared to other classes. Our “class-mechanic” is nothing but a simple weapon-swap – and this even has a higher CD than on other classes and gives us no option to swap combat-style (range-melee or offensive-defensive). Our class-mechanic doesn’t improve our combat-experience but is restricting.
All classes have those (mostly low-CD) “oh-kitten-buttons” like steal, all warrior F1s, Death-Shroud, Shatter, etc.

People keep arguing that Eles have their 20 spells but they don’t see that in fact this isn’t even true. Autohits are lacklusters so you can remove 4 of those 20 spells. Some spells are so useless, nobody ever useses them (Scepter Water-2, Dagger Air-2, etc.) – remove 2 further spells per weaponset. So we’re at 14 spells. Now consider that other classes have F-Abilities (about 2-3 on average). So Other classes have 12-13 spells and eles have 14. Not much difference I’d say. The real difference are the huge CDs eles have – on both spells and “weapon-swap”. I’d say this is nothing but unfair. Since we lack real F-Spells we should get and advantage via shorter CDs on other spells and at least same CD on our swap.

You should change sigils to signets :P

ele is fine please do not read this thread or buff us

Maby its just me but they can be VERY bursty and still heal allot..
they can burst me down in 2sec without having troubles landing it..

Dunno don’t play Ele but i see allot good Ele’s walking around bursting people down and can still heal back to full health every rotation they do.. between the burst and the healing they have allot of skills to not get hit and this gives them time to do there next burst.

Maby some balancing so we can see more different builds for Ele’s, atleast they have 1 good build i think.

I would be interested if the elementalist’s D/D build would become useful as a fighter/roamer player, similar to warrior but not as braindead.

Phantom Master.9582:

I would be interested if the elementalist’s D/D build would become useful as a fighter/roamer player, similar to warrior but not as braindead.

For that to work we need Auras to be more effective at mitigating/avoiding damage.

Make Churning Earth like Magnetic Grasp. ie. You charge it first, and use it when you want. Just an idea. Having our biggest burst on a channel that requires a 40s cd Lightning Flash, to be guaranteed hit, is just bad. Churning Earth is our Kill Shot, but misses way more easily, and is thus used way less.

Another idea is to have it knockdown and suck the opponent in toward it, such as an earthquake or twister might do. Something that would make Tornado better as well.

Re-design Geomancer’s Alacrity to reduce cast times on earth spells, instead of cooldowns, because who sits in earth for more than the CC effects anyway? It would make staff earth 1, and scepter earth 1 far better if it was being spammed at the opponent, instead of spurting laughable damage at them.

Hi, Ive been playing elementalist more than 2000 hours. Ive read comments before and there are my opinions:

1: Elementalist is a great character in PVE, WVW and sPVP.

2:The cantrips are not the only “good skills”. BUT there are several utilities that are useless on sPVP such as signets (water and air the worst) and certain gyphs are useless so its pointless to do a glyph build.

3: The elementalist is well balanced between Healing-Damage-Resistance.

4:THERE IS NOT a worthy condition build.

5:ALL weapons have really useful skills for fighting in PVE, WVW and sPVP.

6. I left this for the final. THERE IS NO GOOD ELITE SKILL. Sometimes i wish i could use just a cantrip or a signet instead of an elite skill, really Anet should be on this,. Greatfiresword is great for WVW and PVE, but ele do not have any good skill for sPVP or fractals.

THX and luck

A couple personal suggestions that I haven’t seen in the thread, I fully agree with the bits about Elemental Attunement being made intrinsic to the class (but only affecting the user when untraited) and various other bits, so here’s my suggestions.

Give Us Condition Traits: By this I mean give us traits like Necro’s Dhuumfire/Terror which let us be a condition user if we want to trait for it. A Master Fire trait which causes applications of Burning to inflict Poison (Toxic Fumes!), a Master Earth trait causing Bleed applications to inflict Torment (Serrated Shards?) and finally a Master Water one to cause Chill to inflict damage (Frostbite!) would go a LONG way to making condition Eles viable and could at least in one category help our damage out.

Elementals: This is really something I’d like to see on all summoned minions, but basically there is no real reason why they should have such a limited lifespan. I find them to be incredibly cool and useful, but their short duration means that they often inconveniently poof right in the middle of a fight even if they were doing fine. In addition, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to have them cast their more powerful skills on command. For the Lesser Elementals you can just have a simple button press activate their more powerful skill. For the Elite, have a tap activate one skill (and be a short-ish CD) and holding the button for more than a half second activate their more powerful one (for a longer CD). For both of them, you can have it set up so that holding their button for 3 seconds dismisses the Elemental (in case you want to call forth a different one for whatever reason).

I don’t think ele can ever be played without attunement swapping unless ele can switch weapon. Or, they buff 1 single element and nerf all other element to history.

Any other thought on weapon switching?

silvershadez.8421:

Xunleashed.5271:

3) bad designed weapon skills
Focus any1 ?

I love focus. Just the fire skills are absolutely useless. Other then that it’s way superior to dagger offhand for me…

I agree. Focus is a great defensive weapon and Im using it more and more (althrough firewall is really bad skill). If we are talking about useless skills: how about scepter water 2 – shatterstone? incredibly high casting time for absolutely nothing. 4 Vulnerability for 15 sec is maybe interesting but thats just a condition which can be (and will be) removed after no time.

A month ago, I posted few suggestions about skill changes. I’ll repost it here:

Ride the Lighting D4 air – should be reverted back to it’s original form, ie flat 20 sec cooldown.
Originally, ele’s were outshining the thieves when comes down to roaming, so the change to RTL was made to cut down their roaming ability. Now, that thieves have perma evasion and constant shadowsteping, there is no reason to leave ele’s roaming cut down so much. Also there should be some sort of fixing the bug that you “self-stun” yourself when using RTL while immobilized!

Frost Aura D4 water and Flame Shield F5 fire – bring down their cooldown to 25s, to be on par with Shock Aura, Magnetic Wave and Magnetic Aura.

Churning Earth D5 earth – reduce it’s casting time to about 2 or 2[sup]1/2[/sup]. 3[sup]1/4[/sup] is too much of a time to be stationary, because for that time the ele will be downed even only from the AoE. Plus, it’s a skill that is easily dodge-ble anyways, reducing it’s effectiveness even more.

Dragon’s Tooth S2 fire – reduce drop time. Unless it’s cast right after Updraft, it’s highly unlikable that you will hit the target, making a waste. Maybe reducing the damage done or fire duration a bit, to balance the quicker drop.

Shatterstone S2 water – reduce cast time and/or explode time. At the moment it takes 3 whole seconds to use the skill and due to it’s small radius it’s practically useless and really hard to hit a target with it.

Fire Grab D5 fire – it’s about time this skill have it’s cone range fixed… it’s really annoying to cast it right in front of your target, only to get “out of range”…

Updraft D5 air – like thief’s Withdraw, Updraft should cure/brake from immobilize.

Gale F5 air – seriously? 2 sec knock down on 50(!) second cooldown?! Warrior’s Backbraker is also a 2 sec knock down, but it does a good deal of damage and have 30sec cooldown.

Signet of Restoration - get the passive healing to it’s previous state (like it is in PvE/WvW now). The passive was split for sPvP and it’s healing reduced, but now, when almost every profession have a passive healing that are way better, at least make it fair and up it a notch for eles.

Arcane Brilliance - up the base heal and/or make it scale better with healing power. To counter(if needed) – reduce the healing effectiveness per target hit.

Cleansing Fire - make it stun breaker again. With the current condi and stun meta, having the stun breakers so spaced out in useless skills isn’t helping at all.

Glyph of Storms - have it’s cooldown reduced to 45seconds to be on pair with other glyphs. Also bump up the damage and/or duration, so it can actually be useful to equip it.

Glyph of Elementals and Glyph of Lesser Elementals - increase the Elementals’ health. With all pets, minions, clones and spirital weapons getting their hp increased, so they don’t die instantly in the aoe, the ele’s elementals should receive some love too.

Conjure skills - long, long ago, in one of the State of the Game episodes, the devs stated that they are looking into ways to rework all Conjure skills. Well yea – rework them in some useful state, because right now they are (maybe except for the Frost Bow/Conjure Ice) competently useless in every game mode, not only sPvP.

And few words about traits – with the recent changes, Anet said they want to reduce power creep on eles, but dispite that they moved 2 of the essentials traits (Cleansing Wave and Elemental Attunement) to higher tier, forcing investing 20 points in the respective trait lines…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Ele-Skill-changes-that-should-help-us/3383290

I really like to have more base hp on an Elementlist to make use of ether renewal or have ether renewal heal more for each condition removed. Secondly I’d like to have elusive arcane down a master instead of grand-master to make more use of dodging.

Ele already has great survivability without having to build tanky at all due to trait bonuses and perma regen, protection, stability, and blinks. And you want to buff them more? Insane.

Let’s talk about things the ele is completely OP at. They are the only ranged class in this game that can instanteously burst down a target from ranged offering no counterplay since all the skills at instant cast, while still retaining the evasiveness and survivability due to can trips, blinks, and mobility skills.

The crux of my issue with the Elementalist is on dagger mainhand, particularly in PvP, you are putting yourself at a very vulnerable distance from your target and it feels like you have neither the damage output nor the healing capacity to compensate for the risk.

observer z.6725:

Ele already has great survivability without having to build tanky at all due to trait bonuses and perma regen, protection, stability, and blinks. And you want to buff them more? Insane.

Let’s talk about things the ele is completely OP at. They are the only ranged class in this game that can instanteously burst down a target from ranged offering no counterplay since all the skills at instant cast, while still retaining the evasiveness and survivability due to can trips, blinks, and mobility skills.

Obviously you have a video to support these claims, and I would really appreciate if you could post it. I’d like to see an Elementalist instaneously burst down a target from range with instant cast skills, all while running 3 cantrips. It sounds like a build I need to learn.

observer z.6725:

Ele already has stability, and blinks.

Ele has 1 sort of stability.Its cantip.Its on 90s cooldown.Ele has 1 sort of blink.Its called lightning flash.Its on 40s cooldown.Hi.