Guild Wars 2

Note: given that I’m among the most avid supporters in favor of the elementalist on the forums, I feel that Anet’s devs should consider the content of this post carefully and not dismiss it out of hand.

The thing that would balance elementalists…

…is quite simple: increase their base health to 15,000.

Why?
Eles are super squishy. It’d be in everybody’s interest to make them just squishy. While I get that from a traditional standpoint, warriors should tough and casters should be weak, it just doesn’t work unless you give the caster ample options to avoid the damage. The traditional warrior relies on his toughness, the traditional caster on their tricks or their damage. So the alternative to this change would be to buff ele damage, and that might cause more problems than this change.

Why not?
Anet wants eles to remain super squishy. The counter question I have for that is: why? If you take the mesmer for example: mesmers have an excellent defense mechanics through stealth and clones…and yet they still get more blocks, evades and teleports than the elementalist. I strongly feel these 2 professions should have their respective health bars reversed.

Pros
-It will open up more build options because eles can worry a bit less about their defense.
-It will make a lot of other re-balancing unneeded.
-It will make the ele easier for less experienced players.
-It will not make them supertanks, just add a little survivability.
-Relatively small change that’s easy to implement.
-Diamond Skin and Stone Heart may need to go because they’re overpowered (see note below).

Cons
-Changes the core balance of the game. A solid argument, but I don’t feel it applies here. The balance we have today is different than the one at launch. There was no telling how strong stealth or high health would become.
-May require some rebalancing of some ele skills due to bunkers becoming overpowered (doubtful).
-May make ele too tough in general, if so 12,500 hp can be considered.
-May cause issues with level scaling.
-Other reasons on Anet knows. If they would share them, I’d be much obliged.

Note regarding removal of skills as a ‘pro’: I’m very much against the concept of hard counters against certain builds. Instead of making matches more interesting, it leads to ‘if I have skill x I’ll beat you, otherwise you’ll beat me’ scenarios. That’s not a fun game based on player skill, that’s just dumb luck (or rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock at best).