Guild Wars 2

Cantrips are popular because they provide survivability and defense-something I feel that is sorely lacking. The other utility lines are supposed to offer different utility, yet it feels like some of the skills are just a letdown.

There are several skills in particular that I feel are a major letdown:

1. Signet of fire’s active effect provides a long burn duration that can be removed in PvP, and in PvE, doesn’t really do much since damage conditions aren’t useful.
2. Signet of air was made a stunbreaker and it feels like that the buff was a decision to make the 30 second cooldown justified.
3. Signet of water’s active effect, I believe, is just a weird balance decision. Our passive effect feels way more powerful than its active 4 second single target chill effect. If anything, this signet shouldn’t chill a single foe, but instead, remove 2 movement based conditions.
4. Arcane blast is a low damage auto crit with a 20 second cooldown. What part of this skill is supposed to provide utility?? This skill needs a buff or a rework. Buff example: scale with weapon strength and have a power bonus modifier of .6 or higher
5. Glyph of storms has too long of a cooldown. It deals low damage and can be avoided easily.
6. Glyph of elemental power is by far, in my opinion, the worst offender of weird balance decisions. Why is this glyph, which provides a passive buff that affects your attacks, which is something you want active as much as possible, a stunbreaker, which is something you activate when CC’ed? If you guys decide to keep it as a stunbreaker, at least let it provide better utility in the form of an immediate benefit akin to the cantrips line instead of a 30 second long passive buff.

In all honesty I don´t even use Cantrips on my ele.
Maybe cantrips are popular with new players because they need to learn how to play it, but effectively arcane blast arcane shield have alot of useful sides to it.
Not to mention the fact you can use arcane shield offensive and defensive.

Signet of air is definitly used by some elementalists since in combat movement speed is reduced to a point that signet and swiftness stack up ontop of eachother which grants you faster movement.

Glyph of storms can be useful in WvW.

As for why Arcane blast needing a buff beats me, It´s a free blast finisher and a nice damage boost on top of the damage you already have. Plus it´s an instant cast.

I guess the glyph of elemental power would be the only case where I´m not sure if that one is even used. So you´re probably right there.
Although i really like the 6s weakness from the signet itself, the ease as where people can remove conditions at the moment pretty much renders it useless.
It could really use a change, won´t be seeing condition removal recieving a change anytime soon.

I personally think elementalists wouln´t be needing much of a change if they ever so decide to shave some of the top tier classes in the current meta.
2 in particular for PvP , for as far as WvW goes, unless I´m roaming I´ll probably be running around with a staff anyway…

Nhalx.9735:

Signet of air is definitly used by some elementalists since in combat movement speed is reduced to a point that signet and swiftness stack up ontop of eachother which grants you faster movement.

They don’t stack, only the highest increase applies.

Nhalx.9735:

As for why Arcane blast needing a buff beats me, It´s a free blast finisher and a nice damage boost on top of the damage you already have. Plus it´s an instant cast

Arcane Blast is a projectile finisher, Arcane Wave is the blast finisher.

Starburst.1826:

Nhalx.9735:

Signet of air is definitly used by some elementalists since in combat movement speed is reduced to a point that signet and swiftness stack up ontop of eachother which grants you faster movement.

They don’t stack, only the highest increase does.

Nhalx.9735:

As for why Arcane blast needing a buff beats me, It´s a free blast finisher and a nice damage boost on top of the damage you already have. Plus it´s an instant cast

Arcane Blast is a projectile finisher, Arcane Wave is the blast finisher.

Ok whatever took me 2 seconds longer to walk the same part ´´in combat´´ with signet then when i ran without it. Including swiftness

Nhalx.9735:

In all honesty I don´t even use Cantrips on my ele.
Maybe cantrips are popular with new players because they need to learn how to play it, but effectively arcane blast arcane shield have alot of useful sides to it.
Not to mention the fact you can use arcane shield offensive and defensive.

Signet of air is definitly used by some elementalists since in combat movement speed is reduced to a point that signet and swiftness stack up ontop of eachother which grants you faster movement.

Speed buffs don’t stack.

Glyph of storms can be useful in WvW.

I have never encountered a situation where it was useful. I suppose it’s only me then.

As for why Arcane blast needing a buff beats me, It´s a free blast finisher and a nice damage boost on top of the damage you already have. Plus it´s an instant cast.

Arcane blast is a projectile skill, arcane wave is a blast finisher and the skill you’re thinking about. Skill names shouldn’t be causing this kind of confusion no matter what game.

Although i really like the 6s weakness from the signet itself, the ease as where people can remove conditions at the moment pretty much renders it useless.
It could really use a change, won´t be seeing condition removal recieving a change anytime soon.

What skill are you talking about and what signet causes 6 seconds of weakness??

I personally think elementalists wouln´t be needing much of a change if they ever so decide to shave some of the top tier classes in the current meta.
2 in particular for PvP , for as far as WvW goes, unless I´m roaming I´ll probably be running around with a staff anyway…

What are these 2 classes that you refer to in PvP and why do you think elementalists don’t need much change?

DanteZero.9736:

Nhalx.9735:

In all honesty I don´t even use Cantrips on my ele.
Maybe cantrips are popular with new players because they need to learn how to play it, but effectively arcane blast arcane shield have alot of useful sides to it.
Not to mention the fact you can use arcane shield offensive and defensive.

Signet of air is definitly used by some elementalists since in combat movement speed is reduced to a point that signet and swiftness stack up ontop of eachother which grants you faster movement.

Speed buffs don’t stack.

Glyph of storms can be useful in WvW.

I have never encountered a situation where it was useful. I suppose it’s only me then.

As for why Arcane blast needing a buff beats me, It´s a free blast finisher and a nice damage boost on top of the damage you already have. Plus it´s an instant cast.

Arcane blast is a projectile skill, arcane wave is a blast finisher and the skill you’re thinking about. Skill names shouldn’t be causing this kind of confusion no matter what game.

Although i really like the 6s weakness from the signet itself, the ease as where people can remove conditions at the moment pretty much renders it useless.
It could really use a change, won´t be seeing condition removal recieving a change anytime soon.

What skill are you talking about and what signet causes 6 seconds of weakness??

I personally think elementalists wouln´t be needing much of a change if they ever so decide to shave some of the top tier classes in the current meta.
2 in particular for PvP , for as far as WvW goes, unless I´m roaming I´ll probably be running around with a staff anyway…

What are these 2 classes that you refer to in PvP and why do you think elementalists don’t need much change?

Glyph of Storms

Create a lightning storm at the target area.

Damage Damage: 122
Number of Impacts: 36
Duration: 9 s
Radius: 240
Range: 900

Glyph of Elemental Power
Glyph of Elemental Power.png

Animation

Glyph of Elemental Power

45 Recharge time 1 Skill point

Profession
Elementalist tango icon 20px.png Elementalist (skill list)
Slot
Utility (tier 1)
Type
Glyph
Game link
[&B4IVAAA=]

“

Gain a chance for spells to inflict a condition based on your attunement.

Trigger Chance: 25%
Burning: 3 s (984 damage)
Chilled: 2 s
Weakness: 6 s
Crippled: 5 s
Duration: 30 s
Breaks stun

To answer your question regarding not needing much change, no. If you build your elementalist right and you dont end up getting stunlocked for days I´m pretty sure your fine.
Atleast for D/D it´s possible and you can still dish out the right damage.

If you want to sacrifice some of your damage on Scepter build I´m sure there´s possibilities of receiving more survivability.
It´s like a power necromancer either you snowball or you just get snowballed.
Don´t see how running a build like that should even receive survivability until they actually deal less damage.
They shaved off the initiative on thieves aswel.

So yeah, the way hambows are dominating most of the fights at the moment makes it pretty hard to run an ele that doesn´t have stability.

yes, if you play all the classes for a year and a half long you can mix up a ´´word´´ in the name of a utility skill. :/

Here’s my breakdown of all Utility-Spells:

Heals:
I’d say ele-heals aren’t that bad but some are obviously better than others. Something has to be done to make every heal a viable pick.

• Signet of Restoration: Quite useless in PvE since you’ll usually get hard hits in PvE that have to be healed via burst-heal. Conditions and smaller portions of damage are rare so you’d either produce overheal or don’t heal fast enough. In PvP it’s unviable since the nerf – it lacks utility (like condi-remove, boon-creation, blast finisher) and doesn’t compensate this with superior heal.
• Glyph of Elemental Harmony: Decent Burst-Heal but I’d say the CD is too long for the amount it heals when it’s compared with heal-spells of other classes.
• Ether-Renewal: Best Heal for PvP because of the condition-cleanse. High Risk because of the long chanel but also quite good reward -> well balanced skill. I’d love to see something like a damage-reduction while chaneling though. When playing zerker it usually just removes conditions and doesn’t heal anything because you’ll eat a huge load of damage while you chanel.
• Arcane Brilliance: Bad design. Unnecessary complicated spell. The additional damage is only usefull for zerker-eles but at the same time it profits from many enemies standing around you (something you should avoid as zerker-ele). The range is way too small and both the damage and healing are too low to ever pick this spell (additionally damage can be dodged/blocked/blinded/etc). It has it’s niche for staff-eles but even with a water-field and 2 targets around you it will heal less than the Glyph for example.

Signets:
Signets are just plain bad. They don’t add much to your play, have unreasonable long CDs and also traits for signets are underwhelming. Those urgently need a rework.

• Signet of Air: Since it’s a stun-breaker it’s the best signet for PvP we have. The passive is not that bad and it’s the same boost as other classes’ run-speed-signets – I’m fine with that. It also has quite a low CD for a stun-breaker. The blind is good for finishing enemies. Maybe some damage could be added.
• Signet of Earth: 100% useless for PvE. Passive is not that bad in PvP but nothing I’d prefer over Cantrips. Active should be insta-cast and have lower CD to be viable.
• Signet of Fire: Good for soloing in PvE to keep burning up for the 25P fire trait – useless in groups though because burning only stacks in duration. Useless in PvP (passive is the same as signet of earth and active is to weak because it gets cleansed easily and conditions are crap in general on eles)
• Signet of Water: Worst Signet. Passive is random and underwhelming. Why pick 1 condition removed every 10 seconds when I can remove 8 every 15 seconds with ether renewal? Active is also weak – doesn’t justify the high CD.

Arcane Spells:
Not that bad, obviously for burst-eles. Still some are lacklusters and basically most of them don’t do much but increasing your damage a little bit – which is not worth the long CDs and a whole utility-slot in general. Traits for them are good in theory but still too weak to be worth taking them instead of some obviously better traits.

• Arcane Blast: Needed for burst-builds because we generally lack strong spells that are directed at players (bad autoattacks) so it compensates our weak autoattacks a little bit. Still does too low damage for it’s rather high CD (Lightning Flash does the same damage but is also a blink which is huge). Something additional should be added to this utility (maybe include Elemental Surge into this Utility so that it applies conditions based on attunement)
• Arcane Wave: Seems fine to me. Usefull both in PvP and PvE with it’s blast-finisher.
• Arcane Power: Underwhelming. In theory you can do some nasty stuff in combination with Elemental Surge but in practice it either doesn’t work the way you expected it or it is just weak.
• Arcane Shield: Good spell-design. CD should be lowered though. I’d also like to see the damage increased – people should be punished when they keep hitting you.

[…]

[…]

Glyphs:
Like Signets those are extremely weak. Every glyph has an alternative utility that does a similar thing but is better than the glyph. Need a revamp. Traits boosting them are also kinda weak.

• Glyph of Elemental Power: Too low Procc-Chance to be worth a pick. Useless as a stun-breaker … it should be activated pre-combat and not in the middle of combat when you maybe don’t even need it anymore…
• Glyph of Lesser Elementals: Elementals don’t do much in PvE and die way too fast in PvP so this one’s also a no-go. Make the elemental permanent and reduce the recharge to something like 30s then I may consider taking it. When you want damage arcane-utilites are better here.
• Glyph of Renewal: Way too long cast-time (enemies can either finish downed allies or interrupt you easily while you’re casting it). Also too long CD. I’d rather pick armor of earth/mist-form to manually rezz a player. Also useless underwater since the ground-targeting-change.
• Glyph of Storms: This utility can be either used for damage or for AoE-Blind in earth. While the earth-aoe-blind is something unique on ele and not that bad the AoE-Damage variants in other attunements are underwhelming – even more when you consider the high CD. You’ll get a by far larger amount of damage with conjure-frostbow – and this one even comes with a very strong CC – so why should I every prefer Glyph of Storms over Frostbow?

Conjures:
Old topic. The problems with conjures have been discussed several times. In PvP most of them aren’t worth trading 20 spells for 5 weak ones. Same goes for PvE. Traits are meh. Only the additional charges are good for Lightning-Hammer build in PvE, useless elsewhere.

• Conjure Earth Shield: AA weak, #2 meh, #3 nice in PvP, #4 too long cast, #5 bad because of the self-root and other skills being locked out. Overall useless in PvE and also unviable in PvP. Not a single spell on it is worth trading 20 spells and an utility-slot for this.
• Conjure Flame Axe: In PvE Lightning Hammer is the Way to go so nobody will ever use Flame Axe instead. Maybe not that bad as an escape-tool in WvW but nothing I’d really use in any area of the game.
• Conjure Frost Bow: #1-3 are weak but #4 is ridiculously strong. Very good in PvE for clearing stuff like AC and also quite good in team-fights in PvP. #5 is the best CC in the game – it’s easy to avoid but when it lands it hits like a truck -> high risk, high reward; that’s how it should be
• Conjure Lightning Hammer: Not much to say. Genious tool for PvE (though I dislike that our best DPS as an Elementalist comes from a Melee-Conjure). Useless in PvP though – due to our squishiness we can’t just run around spamming autohits like warriors do.

Cantrips:
Our best utilities. Could use a reduction of their CDs but they’re fine overall. Very nice synergy with traits – that’s why they’re often picked.

• Cleansing Fire: Remove the Burning – nobody will ever pick it for this. Instead add something like Vigor or bring back the Stunbreak and/or lower CD. As it is now it’s underwhelming. I’d only pick it when I’ve fully specced cantrips just because of the low CD which means more boons for me from the according traits. Useless in PvE
• Lightning Flash: I’d say this is our best Utility-Spell. Blink is always great regardless in which area of the game. Additionally it can deal a decent amount of damge. I’d like to see the CD lowered a little bit though to match it with similar spells (like the one from mesmer).
• Mist Form: Used to be our #1 tool to escape difficult situations. But since the nerf it’s only good for finishing or rezzing players – not worth a 75s CD.
• Armor of Earth: Solid spell. Lower the CD to about 60s and it’s perfect.

Elites:
Overall Elites are quite bad on the ele. For PvP there isn’t really a strong one that can be game-changing and also for PvE there’s only Fiery Greatsword (which is pretty good for PvE though). I’d like to see a completely new elite on eles additionally to a buff for Elementals and Tornado.

• Tornado: It has some uses like decapping points or abusing it with Meteor-Shower but that’s not something I’d like to waste a 150s CD for. It’s nothing like Litch-Form on Necro where you think “oh kitten better run or we all gonna die a painfull death” … it’s more like “look ele in tornado-form … freekill yay”. Needs a serious buff.
• Glyph of Elementals: Wouldn’t be that bad if you could actually control the spells the elementals cast. Nice in PvE for soloing. Due to it’s randomness not really usefull in PvP mostly. Lower CD pls!
• Conjure Fiery Greatsword: First choice for PvE. Good DPS and mobility so it’s also nice in WvW as an escape tool. Useless in PvP though because it adds nothing but damage and a bit mobility – again this is not worth locking yourself out of 20 spells.

Tornado really needs an improvement yes.
If you were to compare it to that of a necromancers plague it´s just not going to work properly, we won´t do enough damage to mitigate the damage they can deal to us aswel just by being in the tornado.

They get the blinds weakness from it. Also it grants them about
Health 18320, Armor 2328, Power 616.

Tornado:
Sure we get knocks
Health 9160, Crit damage 44, power 1662

I suppose this could be very useful if you have any ongoing AoE from whatever you had.
But wouln´t it be significantly be more useful if we could use it defensively instead.
I mean, why even bother using it the damage coming from the tornado itself isn´t even that high.
You´re solely relying on the Meteor Storm or whatever else you popped.

I don’t even use cantrips on my ele. I don’t like them. like mist form is only good when you’re getting focused by a large group of players, since it does almost nothing in a duel. you’re invulnerable, but so is your opponent! you can’t attack. The others are situationally good, and I’ll use them occasionally, but in general I prefer the other skills. For staying alive I instead prefer signet of air (shortest cooldown on a stun break, and it’s an AoE blind, and it lets me not have to worry about swiftness when it’s off cooldown) and arcane shield (amazing offense+defense combination). Lightning flash and cleansing fire were cool when they were stunbreaks, as they were also great offense+defense skills, but not anymore.

but I do agree that a number of skills need help
- arcane blast, yes.
- signet of water, yes. one condition at a fixed time every 10 seconds is too unreliable, and too little, for PvP especially, and the active is weak
- glyph of renewal! cooldown and cast are too long!
- glyph of elemental power is a strong enough skill. it has enough power in it, but it is very awkward. low priority, but it could use some changing around

Ele utilities are really bad because baseline survivability of Ele is really bad, in PVP, means cantrips (and 15+ water), as they’re the only utility type that provides a reliable survivability boost.

• Arcane utilities IMO are fine, it’s the Elemental Surge trait that needs a buff IMO, either the condition durations are too short, or the trait should grant a boon to affected allies, or clear conditions, something like that.
• Glyphs lack trait support (Inscription by itself is really weak), cast too slowly (opportunity cost:benefit is not there), and are fairly inconsequential. The non-elite elemental glyph is especially ineffective, IMO it should be replaced completely with some kind of mobility or survivability skill.
• Signets have good trait choices, but the signets themselves are somewhat weak, and again, don’t offer a lot of survivability. It takes a full 70 trait points to make a decent signet-aura build (20/10/10/30/0), and it’s still not all that good.
• Conjures are mutually exclusive with the class’ core mechanic and are too clunky and cumbersome to use for PVP combat. Case in point, FGS is effectively used as a mobility skill.

Overall, I would look at first bringing up the baseline survivability of Ele by making a caster-only version of Elemental Attunement baseline, adding a trait for the AOE version, and swapping the EA effect with the 15 water trait.

Gorni.1764:

Here’s my breakdown of all Utility-Spells:

Heals:
I’d say ele-heals aren’t that bad but some are obviously better than others. Something has to be done to make every heal a viable pick.

• Signet of Restoration: Quite useless in PvE since you’ll usually get hard hits in PvE that have to be healed via burst-heal. Conditions and smaller portions of damage are rare so you’d either produce overheal or don’t heal fast enough. In PvP it’s unviable since the nerf – it lacks utility (like condi-remove, boon-creation, blast finisher) and doesn’t compensate this with superior heal.
• Glyph of Elemental Harmony: Decent Burst-Heal but I’d say the CD is too long for the amount it heals when it’s compared with heal-spells of other classes.
• Ether-Renewal: Best Heal for PvP because of the condition-cleanse. High Risk because of the long chanel but also quite good reward -> well balanced skill. I’d love to see something like a damage-reduction while chaneling though. When playing zerker it usually just removes conditions and doesn’t heal anything because you’ll eat a huge load of damage while you chanel.
• Arcane Brilliance: Bad design. Unnecessary complicated spell. The additional damage is only usefull for zerker-eles but at the same time it profits from many enemies standing around you (something you should avoid as zerker-ele). The range is way too small and both the damage and healing are too low to ever pick this spell (additionally damage can be dodged/blocked/blinded/etc). It has it’s niche for staff-eles but even with a water-field and 2 targets around you it will heal less than the Glyph for example.

IMHO, Signet simply needs to be unnerfed. Glyph is pretty awesome as-is, though it could use a few more seconds of protection in earth. We are just forced into Ether Renewal through low health and the condition meta.

I’m still not sure on arcane brilliance though. I’ve toyed around with a fresh air + 4 arcanes + elemental surge build with a mix of condition and burst damage that seemed like it could go somewhere.