Guild Wars 2

Arken.3725:

And just to further reiterate on the whole “boon hate” discussion. S/D thief/Necromancer are the only professions with access to useful skills/traits. Again, looking at a single profession to balance is probably easier than looking at everyone else trying to find a way to fight it.

It’s because your nerf proposals are often too heavy handed, AKA, you’re going into the ring after dipping your handwraps in adhesive, followed by broken glass shards.

Again, I’m advocating we do a combination of the first 6 shaves as proposed by Phanta, and then seeing where things stand.

Chaith.8256:

Arken.3725:

And just to further reiterate on the whole “boon hate” discussion. S/D thief/Necromancer are the only professions with access to useful skills/traits. Again, looking at a single profession to balance is probably easier than looking at everyone else trying to find a way to fight it.

It’s because your nerf proposals are often too heavy handed, AKA, you’re going into the ring after dipping your handwraps in adhesive, followed by broken glass shards.

Again, I’m advocating we do a combination of the first 6 shaves as proposed by Phanta, and then seeing where things stand.

Then explain to me why they’re so heavy-handed? I haven’t seen any examples from anybody aside from analogies. I don’t mind shaving so that’s where I can agree with you Chaith.

Edit: I’ve given examples and reasons behind these changes. I would hope that someone who’s advocating for/against them would do the same.

I understand that guardian bunkers give up mobility/soft-cc to go full-support, but that comes with being WAY better under focus fire. Eles rely on constant healing, which doesn’t scale nearly as well under focus-fire, to compensate for the superior control capability in regards to an opponent. If eles were as slow as guardians, then being able to skirmish 1v1 or 2v2s better would be irrelevant and you would just take guards 100% of the time.

If you want eles to get away from the bunker spec, you don’t hit the survival, but the damage. When a celes d/d ele feels like their max-defense spec just doesn’t kill anything, or kill things fast enough they will take points out of defense for offense (although the options there are very limited). The reason celes ele becomes a bruiser is b/c there are mechanics that allow it get great damage (might stacking) while still traited full-bunker. Take away that damage and now you have to take some offensive utilities/traits, lowering the defense.

The reason a lot of eles will defend the class so vehemently is because the pain of being garbage-tier for a year because everyone complained out bunker-spec sustained too well is just too stark. When you nerf ele survival (which comes 80% from traits), you hit at the heart of the class and remove the possibility of anything other than full-bunker (which will never be better than a guard) or a YOLO-zerker (which thief makes irrelevant).

Arken.3725:

Then explain to me why they’re so heavy-handed? I haven’t seen any examples from anybody aside from analogies. I don’t mind shaving so that’s where I can agree with you Chaith.

It is unreasonably heavy handed, because you are proposing nerfing might for everyone, as a solution for elementalist. In my opinion, nerfing a boon as a whole based on a single profession is extremely unreasonable on premise alone.

Secondly you making the same suggestion for an entire amulet. I am surprised that someone really needed to explain that suggesting, a massive value change in a boon as a whole for everyone, as well as a amulet changed, both all as a solution for a single problematic build on a single profession, is heavy handed.

That’s completely understandable. If you remember Elementalist’s at release, they were unkillable but didn’t nearly as much offensive pressure as they do now. And the example of being susceptible to focus-fire doesn’t just apply to Elementalist’s but rather every single profession. I believe it’s even less effective against the current state of Elementalist’s due to their high health/armor and overall dmg mitigation.

If you read the example I gave above about Bunker Guardian’s then it’s much easier to see why even if you took away their dmg overall, it still might be a bit too strong defensively.

coglin.1867:

Arken.3725:

Then explain to me why they’re so heavy-handed? I haven’t seen any examples from anybody aside from analogies. I don’t mind shaving so that’s where I can agree with you Chaith.

It is unreasonably heavy handed, because you are proposing nerfing might for everyone, as a solution for elementalist. In my opinion, nerfing a boon as a whole based on a single profession is extremely unreasonable on premise alone.

Secondly you making the same suggestion for an entire amulet. I am surprised that someone really needed to explain that suggesting, a massive value change in a boon as a whole for everyone, as well as a amulet changed, both all as a solution for a single problematic build on a single profession, is heavy handed.

Where did I state nerfing might for everyone? I think you might be talking about someone else. Please quote my post so I can better understand. Also, I never suggested to nerf the amulet but rather looking at the professions using them.

Arken.3725:

coglin.1867:

Arken.3725:

Then explain to me why they’re so heavy-handed? I haven’t seen any examples from anybody aside from analogies. I don’t mind shaving so that’s where I can agree with you Chaith.

It is unreasonably heavy handed, because you are proposing nerfing might for everyone, as a solution for elementalist. In my opinion, nerfing a boon as a whole based on a single profession is extremely unreasonable on premise alone.

Secondly you making the same suggestion for an entire amulet. I am surprised that someone really needed to explain that suggesting, a massive value change in a boon as a whole for everyone, as well as a amulet changed, both all as a solution for a single problematic build on a single profession, is heavy handed.

Where did I state nerfing might for everyone? I think you might be talking about someone else. Please quote my post so I can better understand. Also, I never suggested to nerf the amulet but rather looking at the professions using them.

Your absolutely right. I apologize. I completely confused you for the OP for no apparent reason.

Well it is not always the boon removal there is something else,if p/d thief,condi guard(yes) and condition shatter with no boon removal can deal them(whatever with conquest meta specs). If boon removal is to be more common spread it don’t say:" give thief this(do they need more than others?) , I want my mesmer to have this",just don’t with favoritism . One viable spec on every class should be counter to boons if you don’t spec to counter be countered just like with conditions and no cleansing. Does it have to be conquest reliable?…..not necessarily.

Instead of nerfing it’s time to fill the holes in every class.

Edit: Please zerker and rampager amulets to proper stats AKA no vitality , there is a reason they are becoming inferior.

Arken.3725:

Then explain to me why they’re so heavy-handed?

Just a couple of your previous suggestions:

“Cleansing water: With the sheer access to regeneration, i’d say this needs a slight change. Put a small ICD on it for each other person you apply regeneration to. Example: You apply regen to yourself, you remove a condition but it cannot be done for another 5 seconds. You can however remove a condi from someone else within that time-frame.

This was part of the round of nerfs done last time that destroyed the profession. With an ICD, the trait isn’t GM-worthy. To put it in guardian’s perspective, it would be like putting an ICD (even per-target) on Soldier Runes and Pure of Voice. It kinda destroys the build. Adding an ICD makes this EXACTLY the same as the master-level trait Cleansing Wave, as almost all regen comes while in water. You can’t wait around in water for 5s to get a second cleanse. It also makes any trait that gives regen outside water, like Soothing disruption, a liability as it now procs a random single condi-clear that may negate your water-swap. Any icd deletes this trait from the pool of viable options.

Elemental Attunement: This is a weird one because it goes from making the Elementalist’s attunement swap from being completely useless, to having the highest access of very strong boons. Not exactly sure what to do with this but maybe lowering the duration?"

This literally deletes the class from the game if you want to reduce the defensive boons. Yes, EA is OPAF, objectively. The class is also balanced around every build forever having this, and is basically essential. EA is meant to make-up for the low base-stats of the class so that they aren’t competing at a complete disadvantage being the lowest health/armor tier. Even with celestial amulet, which is practically custom-made for eles, without the prot uptime from EA the class wouldn’t be able to survive anything.

Finally, one more note about boon-hate options. Any bit of boon-hate becomes “ele hate.” There isn’t an ele spec that exists that doesn’t rely on boons. You can’t make boon hate strong enough so your build “counters every boon-based build” because that basically means you counter eles, engies, and guards, immediately.

Arken.3725:

That’s completely understandable. If you remember Elementalist’s at release, they were unkillable but didn’t nearly as much offensive pressure as they do now. And the example of being susceptible to focus-fire doesn’t just apply to Elementalist’s but rather every single profession. I believe it’s even less effective against the current state of Elementalist’s due to their high health/armor and overall dmg mitigation.

If you read the example I gave above about Bunker Guardian’s then it’s much easier to see why even if you took away their dmg overall, it still might be a bit too strong defensively.

The reason Bunker Elementalist is more susceptible than Bunker Guardian to focus fire is because the Elementalist’s tankiness primarily comes from healing, which does not scale with the number of opponents. In fact, the two counters to high healing are (1) poison and (2) focus fire. Guardians have less healing, but they make up for it with multiple blocks and kiting over line of warding, which scales much better vs multiple players. If a guardian is casting shelter, he’s going to be safe (barring unblinded magnet pull, basi+shortbow4, traited necro staff5) no matter how many people are hitting him.

All the ele really needs is a shave to burning uptime, which is where a good amount of the damage comes from once you learn to dodge burning speed. Then eles will either have to shift some defensive traits to offensive traits, or swap out some cantrips for offensive utilities such as arcane blast.

Separately, the offensive traits for ele could stand to be improved, combined with giving the Ele some better disengage potential in its air/fire master+gm traits. This means that offensive eles would be able to survive by disengaging (which means giving up the point), which would be a viable alternative to going full out bunker.

I can sort of see your point on Cleansing water, fair enough.

Low-base stats aren’t a good reason for having at least 65% access to 4 boons. It needs a small reduction. I’d say maybe 3 seconds instead of 5. And if it were the case that it’s absolutely a necessity, it would be baked into the profession I believe. This is also adding on top of the access to auras as well as a decent amount of soft/hard cc.

Arken.3725:

Elemental Shielding: Gonna get some hate from this but this is way too good for an adept. Either reduce the duration or move it up to a master.
Cleansing water: With the sheer access to regeneration, i’d say this needs a slight change. Put a small ICD on it for each other person you apply regeneration to. Example: You apply regen to yourself, you remove a condition but it cannot be done for another 5 seconds. You can however remove a condi from someone else within that time-frame.
Elemental Attunement: This is a weird one because it goes from making the Elementalist’s attunement swap from being completely useless, to having the highest access of very strong boons. Not exactly sure what to do with this but maybe lowering the duration?

Okay. As you wish. Why I don’t like your suggestions:

• Elemental Shielding – getting removed from the meta build, I’m actually pretty indifferent about this, because Eles have another adept in it’s place that would do alright.

• Cleansing Water on an internal cooldown just makes playing a defensive Ele so awkward. You have this 5 second dead time where you don’t get condition removal from: Soothing Disruption (Cantrip use), Soothing Wave, Water Attunement, it’s just going to make it quite awkward and inevitably result in wasted condition removal via overlap. It’s just anti-fun and clunky. Eles would hypothetically have to opt for Cantrip Mastery over Soothing Wave because the random regen putting your condi removal on CD would break the trait. It would probably cut the Cleansing Water Ele’s ability to react to conditions by a ridiculously huge percent. Going from being able to spike remove 3 conditions to only being able to remove one every 5 seconds, meanwhile you can actually whiff your removals on yourself by hitting the invisible GCD? Lol. Who could possibly enjoy counting in your head to 5 on repeat?

• Elemental Attunement – the holy grail ability for all eles. You didn’t actually propose any numbers in which to reduce this by.. so, I can’t really comment.

I disagree Resjudicator, its primary tankiness comes not only from healing but having an insane amount of access to defensive boons and CC. Poison and focus fire effect everyone so I don’t think it’s a good argument against 1 specific profession. Specifying kiting for the Guardian profession is laughable, that’s never ever been the case for any spec a Guardian has run. The same could be said about mist-form for Elementalist’s in terms of even more dmg mitigation through a guaranteed invul.

Edit: To Chaith above, you actually never gave me a negative reaction to all of the changes proposed my friend. I concede to the argument against Cleansing Water.

Arken.3725:

Edit: To Chaith above, you actually never gave me a negative reaction to all of the changes proposed my friend. I concede to the argument against Cleansing Water.

• Meh.

• Hell no.

• You didn’t propose anything specific.

You may consider it a lack of negative reaction, but to get developers to spend time tweaking, I think some positive reaction is needed. Speaking of, I think I’m still gonna have to shoot props to Phanta’s first 6 suggestions for the best balance.

Arken.3725:

Poison and focus fire effect everyone so I don’t think it’s a good argument against 1 specific profession.

Poison affects everyone, but not equally. Poison puts in work against healing over time, and is WAY stronger against these. When you have heals over time, having poison on you puts a lot of pressure to get that off b/c it REALLY hurts. Guardian heals, for instance, are burst heals and it really only matters that you cleanse poison before healing. And not everyone is equal when standing up to focus-fire. As mentioned earlier, ele has no blocks and lower base toughness (significantly) compared to a guard. Sure, prot helps, but its not gonna keep you alive when focused. If you focus a bunker guard on-point, he can survive indefinitely with some team support. If you focus a bunker/celes ele, he is either gonna die or have to run.

The same could be said about mist-form for Elementalist’s in terms of even more dmg mitigation through a guaranteed invul.

Mistform = you lose the point. Not the same for blocks.

I did propose a change to the duration of EA above(3 seconds). I’m sticking with my argument against ES.

I also named many more changes then just the 3 you mentioned. I’d love to hear reasons against them.

Lower based toughness which again, is easily exceeded with the access to protection/auras. And a Guardian will drop faster then an Elementalist. Guardian bunkers aren’t taken for their inherent tankiness. I can name at least 3 professions that would last longer on a point in comparison. It’s the overall team-support is why Guardian’s used to be such a necessity.

Edit: In response to losing a point, my point still stands that you’ll still last longer.

Edit2: In terms of equality of poison, i’d still say the Elementalist is still slightly ahead due to the sheer amount of removal. But I will concede that HoT is affected more by it in the long-term while Burst healing is quite the opposite.

Chaith.8256:

Booms.2594:

Chaith.8256:

Frenk.5917:

Chaith.8256:

Maybe introduce some potent protection-boonhate to some deserving parties?

Mmm, I don’t know.. I feel like Mesmers, Thieves and Necros already fill that role (I believe that Necromancers actually counter D/D Elementalists) moreover D/D Ele is not that good against heavy-condition teams. Which is why we see a lot more condi-ranger and condi-necro than before.

You’re right, at least about boon-hate already being in the Thief/Mes/Necro turf. However, Eles are never a bad option to take against condition heavy teams. D/D Eles are never ‘not that good’, under any circumstances right now.

Back to the subject of boonhate, Mesmers I would like to see them easier to pick up, without devoting an entire comp around it.

Also, I think that Larcenous Strike should steal a second boon if used on a foe below 50% HP. I think if that happened top D/D Eles and top S/D Thieves would be able to go even in 1v1s, instead of the Ele’s favor, and the Ele would be slightly more pressured when a thief outnumbers him.

id like to point out s/d thief can 1v1 a d/d ele it just takes 2-3 minutes vs a good ele.

furthermore I think there needs to be a buff to shatter mesmers so that they destroy d/d eles.. I understand lots of EU teams already run mesmer but I’m going to continue to assert that that is not the most optimal comp until WTS says otherwise. Pretty much every class in thsi game has a decent counter except ele so why can’t ele have one? It would be fair if ele didn’t hard counter anyone either and was just decent vs everything, but that’s not the case as it 100% will win every single 1v1 vs guardians, d/p thieves, rangers, and warriors with no exceptions.

Phantaram v. Magic Toker practice 1v1s are probably 75% win rate for Phanta. Both (the?) two top players at D/D Ele and S/D Thief, respectively.

Translated into conquest, it’s a 2 minute duel on a point the Ele will probably own. I still think the odds are against the Thief, and the threat of an enemy crashing the duel much more threatening to the Thief than the Ele.

It’s not a good investment for the Thief, so considering those factors I’d say the ability for a thief to maybe kill an ele after 60-120 seconds is not very useful.

amonatory doesn’t loses to eles but it’s true I dont know how he would fair vs phantaram.. he does 100-0 zoose in like 30 seconds though

Arken.3725:

Chaith.8256:

Arken.3725:

Sagat.3285:

insanemaniac.2456:

i feel like the answer here is to give us really good counters to boon spam that otherwise arent that great. not necessarily just nerf the offending boon build. for example

This actually makes a lot of sense. However, giving everyone boon-hate is a much more daunting task than just working with the boons themselves.

Eh? No way. Slipping in a little ‘…and removes a boon’ to a PvP centric tooltip is much less difficult a task than changing how good boons are and expecting game balance to be good.

Eh? This has already been tried by a few traits given by a few professions and look how it turned out. It’s incredibly underwhelming. I’ve already given my opinion a few posts above to lower the amount of boon-access to a more acceptable level. Potentially 65% or more uptime on at least 4 boons is too much.

warrior’s trait is just weak, because the little damage increase doesnt matter any way because of protection.

While necro’s new boon hate trait, path of corruption is one hell of a good trait against ele.

Yes nerfing a whole boon for 2-3 builds that abuse it seems a great idea(??!!). It’s obvious rune/sigil nerf is better.
Adding 10s icd with 6s duration for vigor will pretty much ruin the survivability that is already lacking in other ele builds.
The burn and sustain has to go. The rest is fine.

Sigh, why do people KEEP suggesting a nerf across the board instead of specific professions? It’s pretty clear that Elementalist’s are overtuned and yet the responses i’m seeing are, “naaa nerf sigils and stuff.”

Arken.3725:

I disagree Resjudicator, its primary tankiness comes not only from healing but having an insane amount of access to defensive boons and CC. Poison and focus fire effect everyone so I don’t think it’s a good argument against 1 specific profession. Specifying kiting for the Guardian profession is laughable, that’s never ever been the case for any spec a Guardian has run. The same could be said about mist-form for Elementalist’s in terms of even more dmg mitigation through a guaranteed invul.

Edit: To Chaith above, you actually never gave me a negative reaction to all of the changes proposed my friend. I concede to the argument against Cleansing Water.

Just to clarify, for the guardian I said kiting over line of warding. This means stepping over it on one side, then stepping back on the other side. It’s a pretty common strategy that is very effective vs. melee classes when they don’t have stab up. I don’t mean running around in a circle laying down chills.

You’re absolutely right that ele has more access to defensive boons than guardians. But the point still stands that the guardian’s high access to blocks is what makes the guardian better able to survive focus fire. Focus fire is the opposite of what you should be doing when a guardian has shelter up. As a side note, I didn’t say poison was a unique counter to ele’s, I just included it in my list of things that counter builds that rely on healing rather than blocking to survive.

As for your specific suggestions, I agree with lightning whip (obvious change) and shaving burning uptime (specifically Drake’s Breath).

Nerfing frost aura’s duration by ~30% seems completely needless, the skill is on a 40s CD which prevents it from being spammable, and D/D the eles’s overall CC options don’t outpace what engy, terrormancer, and hambow offer. The issue with D/D ele is the attrition damage that it puts out as a bunker class, not the CC it can bring. Nerfing the soft CC would also further impair any DPS builds, which would have to rely on CC rather than healing/boons to survive.

For the same reasons as above, increasing the CD on magnetic grasp also seems completely needless. CC is not what brings eles slightly over the top.

The changes to elemental shielding I don’t care strongly about either way, b/c earth’s embrace and stone splinters are both good alternatives, but all this change really would do is reduce build diversity. I also don’t think nerfing the tankiness traits is the way to go. A class that devotes all of its traits to defense should be able to be resilient, and even then, the ele is far from invincible (and can go down quite quickly to 2v1 fights).

I think it is critical to think about the ele profession as a whole, considering all of their different builds, and then think about what brings the celestial D/D build slightly over the top. To me, the difference is the high burning uptime that D/D offers combined with the ability to build up condi damage via celestial stats + might stacking. It’s probably better to start with shaving the burning, because changes to celestial + might would affect other classes.

By high access to blocks I think you’re looking at other professions instead of the Guardian. Having an Aegis and 2 second block on a 30 second cd doesn’t classify as “high access” to me. It’s not just CC but a plethora of things overall that put them over-the-top. It’s a combination of sustain/mobility/cc. I completely agree with shaving as a start.

Also, a Class that devotes all of it’s traits should indeed be defensive but not also bring mobility and CC. Again, we go back to Guardian as a prime example(I say prime since I consider it to be balanced).

Arken, so you think bunker Guard is balanced, let’s do some math:

Bunker Guard has ~3300 Armor, 15.7 K HP. With IDEAL skill usage off CD, you can get about 67% uptime of prot (but let’s say its more like 45% b/c you aren’t using things off CD). That gives you 4360 armor averaged over time, plus other boons, aegis, and blocks.

Ele with celes has: ~2352 Armor, 18.2K Hp. With 70% prot uptime, your effective armor is 3162.9 armor averaged over time, plus a couple extra dodges.

Ele with clerics has: ~2564 Armor and 13.9K HP. With 70% uptime, the effective armor is 3450, plus the dodges.

Let’s assume the extra dodges of ele even out to the blocks of a guard (they don’t), so we can look just at passive armor effects.

Thus, the ability to stand up to power damage and focus fire, even before blocks is at least 26% higher on guard. Your statement that ele stands up to focus fire as well as guard is therefore completely false, both from numbers as well as experience (otherwise TCG would have a bunker ele instead of Tage). Therefore, shouldn’t the ele have more mobility and soft CC to make up for its lower defense?

With your suggestion of a 40% nerf to EA, ele prot uptime is decreased by 2.6s every 10s, or 26 percent of the time less (meaning 44% uptime total). This makes the max-bunker spec have 3119 effective armor (averaged over time), giving the guardian 40% higher average armor value. This is also LESS prot uptime compared to a guard now, on a squishier body. Why does the ele deserve to have THAT much less defense in its bunker spec because it has some soft CC and mobility?

Bunker Guard does not have 3300 armor, no idea where you got that from. You can’t absolutely not get 67% uptime on protection reliably. First of all, hammer hasn’t been a Bunker Guardian staple since Stunbreaks got a buff. You’re making up numbers with absolutely no basis behind it.

Assuming you run every skill that gives protection(which you won’t as a bunker). You’re looking at less than average access to both Protection as well as Regeneration.

Elementalist’s will, at the very least, maintain protection, regen, swiftness and vigor up at least 65% of the time. Not to mention the added mitigation from frost aura, evade frames from Burning Speed.

It also amazes me that you add aegis and blocks into the equation when you only get one aegis and 2 seconds worth of blocking on relatively long cd’s. And last but not least, the complete passive nature of Signet of Restoration completely overshadows any healing skill the Guardian has access to.

Edit: A standard bunker Guardian build has 15,655k hp, 2943 armor. The utilities include SYG, HTL and Sanctuary. Please tell me where you see the MASSIVE access to boons.

Edit 2: If you want to go even deeper, the EU meta Bunker build has 3143 armor, 15,600 health with FAR less boon uptime.

Chaith et all you really don’t need to waste your time bro, anyone who pays attention to PvP at the upper levels understands the need for cele ele to be nerfed. You don’t need to convince everyone, but if you want to try go ahead.

Yea, I was doing the 0/1/6/6/1 AH-Shout guard, and was looking at them in the shield set (traited), Its 150 less armor untraited not in shield (I didn’t know shield had 61 defense passively, which is interesting). I was considering save yourselves and that the mace would proc prot for you, but if you take those out, the prot access is about 40%. I used 45% in the math, so the numbers don’t change much.

As far as other boons, the guard has roughly 50% vigor uptime, 60% regen uptime, and 25% swiftness, roughly. Compare this to, realistically 100% uptime vigor, regen, and 60% swiftness. Prot was handled in previous armor calcs.

I also assumed the blocks evened out with dodges/weapon defenses, comparing 1 extra dodge per 10s from higher vigor, 1 every 40s from updraft, and an RNG dodge on burning speed to the block from shelter, the mace block/shield projectile hate, sanctuary, 1x aegis every kitten (thanks to renewed focus),

I didn’t count blocks in the calculation of “effective armor.” I only considered actual armor + prot uptime.

At armor alone, even at 70% uptime prot, the ele has 3450 equivalent armor (in clerics) and 3160 armor (in celes). Compare that to the guard at 3776 (assuming 35% uptime prot, 50% time with shield, 50% in staff). That means guard has 10% more passive mitigation than cleric ele and 20% more than cele ele now. With your change that goes up to a 21% advantage over cleric ele, and 28% over cele ele.

I don’t think the soft CC and mobility is worth being THAT much worse. I’m pretty sure most others would agree and eles would disappear.

I’m wondering if it would be more productive to think about how one might buff scepter or DPS ele while nerfing D/D celestial/bunker ele. That way you have to think about how your suggestions affect the class as a whole.

Most people here seem to agree that DD celestial/bunker ele needs some shaving, the only real debate is over how to accomplish this without gimping the class as a whole.

Hmm the way I see it is that might should get nerfed before anything else. The problem with Ele’s isn’t their amount of sustain. Every class should be able to sustain well if traited right and geared properly. The problem is that they have massive sustain while having very significant dps. Once we trim the dps, they’ll have to sacrifice sustain for more damage. If you nerf the sustain, however, then Ele’s will still have massive dps but will struggle when it comes to tanking.

What I’m trying to say is that their ability to tank is in balance. Their ability to deal damage is not. Fix the damage, (obtained through might stacks) and the tanks will adjust appropriately.

ResJudicator.7916:

I’m wondering if it would be more productive to think about how one might buff scepter or DPS ele while nerfing D/D celestial/bunker ele. That way you have to think about how your suggestions affect the class as a whole.

Most people here seem to agree that DD celestial/bunker ele needs some shaving, the only real debate is over how to accomplish this without gimping the class as a whole.

That’s what I was hoping to get at. I really don’t want to nerf the Elementalist into oblivion. I was merely suggesting some changes. I was looking at the ease of access to high-quality boons and was suggesting a reduction.

Edit: Just to further reiterate on my point, seeing as we’ve been in the condi-sustain meta for over a year, the defense behind professions with lower initial armor-value is much less of an excuse compared to the power-meta at the games release.

Arken.3725:

Sigh, why do people KEEP suggesting a nerf across the board instead of specific professions? It’s pretty clear that Elementalist’s are overtuned and yet the responses i’m seeing are, “naaa nerf sigils and stuff.”

The obvious reason is because dagger/x eles are only overpowered in one game mode with one specific amulet. Generally anet doesn’t like balancing separately between game modes, so why wreck the weapon set for all game modes, when the celestial amulet is what makes them powerful. Sure fewer other specs will not be able to use the amulet, but what is more annoying, losing a whole build, or changing your amulet? Keep in mind all of those other specs do have strong alternatives to compete with celestial while celestial is vastly superior to any alternatives for the ele.

I can see that being a short-term solution Arthur and I’ve suggested that quite a few posts back. I just don’t think across-the-board nerfs are healthy.

Arken.3725:

I can see that being a short-term solution Arthur and I’ve suggested that quite a few posts back. I just don’t think across-the-board nerfs are healthy.

Just wanted to point out that a nerf to arcana traits, especially Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement, and Evasive Arcana, are basically “across the board” nerfs for every ele build, when currently only d/d ele is viable. Keep that in mind when suggesting changes.

Unfortunately, that is poor design if there are basically must have traits like that. On paper the elementalist has amazing traits that just do not see use as there are those must not skip.

It puts balancing the profession in a bad place. It is like shaving a severe hemophiliac.
There is also the factor of no one truly wants a nerf, many can agree after the fact that it was necessary, but there will always be some resentment for the action.