Guild Wars 2

Good read – unbiased and constructive. Just a few wording errors like mentioning cleansing wave twice when I think you meant one of them to be soothing wave. Great in-depth analysis though, I hope Anet will implement some of your suggestions without totally borking the spec.

Great post. Thanks, it was a good read.

I agree. Great read. I feel the problem is that all their trees are set up to synergize to well with the traits. For example necro, (arguably the most balanced and versatile class with multiple build possibilities) has traits for death shroud, wells, minions, boons all over the place. You see builds spreading out the traits across the trees. Even our worse tree, the blood line has valuable traits like well reduction.

Putting boon duration, healing, attunement recharge, and vitality in two trees was a mistake. The class gets way to much benefit from healing (great scaling of healing), vitality (lowest base health), attunement recharge (allows swapping faster for boons/other benefits), and boon duration (allows for high boon uptime through swapping etc).

The synergy of the build is too high and limits the build selection. This applies to all classes since each class seems to have 2 varying stats in each traitline. If a class such as ele benefits heavily from vitality and healing due to the nature of their high scaling healing and low base health, then they should split the two stats across different traitlines or make the traits weaker in those respected traitlines. Thats just my thought. Once again, really good read!

Some good ideas here.

One technical note:

With a 9 second cooldown on your attunement recharges

Attunement recharge is 16 seconds base, and 10 seconds with 30 arcana. You see 15/9 immediately because the interface only shows full seconds remaining until you get under 5 and it starts showing decimals.

interesting, i learned some new things

good point with 10 points in earth…

i dont agree with Signet of resto, it doesnt heal 330 per cast… im using boon runes, valk amulet and jewel and 30 water traits and i got up to 270 per cast… dunno where did you got 60 more, maybe with full healing spec? (didnt read whole post, sry if you mentioned its with full heal spec)

anyway, i agree with your suggestions to fix ele, because you are trying to balance him, not destroy

PS: im ele

I linked the build I was using in the top of the post, this is just a full out clerics elementalist. Thanks for the feedback I really appreciate it

Its a good post and I would wish anet would read it. But they see things differently. I wouldnt except any ele nerfs in the near future. They already said in the last sotg that they thought ele healing was fine after their tiny evasive arcana nerf.

So good post which puts in detailed form what we all know. But it wont matter because anet dont think ele is op. So w/e

Lordrosicky.5813:

Its a good post and I would wish anet would read it. But they see things differently. I wouldnt except any ele nerfs in the near future. They already said in the last sotg that they thought ele healing was fine after their tiny evasive arcana nerf.

So good post which puts in detailed form what we all know. But it wont matter because anet dont think ele is op. So w/e

The difference between you and the OP, is that he knows perfectly how “balanced” ( it’s actually below by a moderate level) is the elementalist outside the “well known” full heal bunker build.
Not once the OP has stated that the ele in its entirety is broken! He gives good suggestions that would improve the ele and break the OP build you so much whine about, I’d rather have Anet spend the whole year with these type of suggestions than taking your “suggestions” in consideration even for 10s worth of reading, the ele could be deleted if they’d implement anything suggested by you!

I like the analysis. The biggest reason you see do many dd eles running the same build though, is that elementalists are pigeonholed into this one build cuz the rest frankly do not work or plain sucks in competitive pvp. I do not think that at this point elementalists are still broken after so many nerfs- rather, engineers need to be looked at ASAP and warriors need some help as well. If anything, elementalists right now need other weapons buffed so we can start seeing changes in the ele meta and it would be nice for eles as well to see that they have options.

Was a good read until he said Ether renewal is too strong.

The easiest skill to interrupt in the game, giving you 20 seconds of low hp ele

The fact you can potentially use it 3 times uninterrupted means it is strong.

Oblivion.8307:

The fact you can potentially use it 3 times uninterrupted means it is strong.

The problem is stability then, not ether renewal.

imo the fastest fix would be to remove vigor from soothing disruption

you can easily blind/los etc for a few ticks, it’s huge condition removal and pretty okay healing.

Nice write up, that pretty much sum up about mine Ele play style. You had the same build I’ve been using for months.

I’m partially agree with traitline that without Arcana, Ele is a little harder to maintain the survivability. Ele is powered up on boons and boons are very precious during the combat. Vigor boons is critical for Ele and I almost can’t leave without having 10 points in Arcana for Renewing Stamina.

Some of the numbers were not base (like healing), but overall seems good.

I think the bigger issue is the boon duration runes stacking. 30% extra boon duration from trait line is OK, but it cannot stack with the 40% from boon duration runes.

Quite frankly when the ele runes without using boon duration runes, his sustain drops substantially.

There’s also this issue that the ele, with its low base HP, is simply to bipolar to play if you don’t have any points in water. 12-14k H kitten uicide if you get caught without cantrips.

I’ll also say that the offhand dagger’s issue isn’t mobility/cc versus focus — it’s the damage. Your big burst tools are on offhand dagger, with flame grab, vurning earth, and then the cc that lets you land them.

Ele sustained is pretty bad if you use the focus. You’ll do no competitive burst/sustained without offhand dagger, especially scepter.

Try landing a dragon tooth or shatter stone on a target without CC, and trying killing a target with scepter autos alone — it’ll take forever.

And fire attunement on the focus is horrid, while the cc tools, unlike the dagger are single target while having similar cooldown to the dagger aoe ones. Flame wall is outright pathetic.

As a main-ele, I 100% agree with Symbolic – well written!

Another Idea to control the self-heal but keep the support of the ele good could be to simply tone down the Self-Heal in spells like Cleansing Wave and the Dodge-Version of it, but increase the AoE-Heal. Other than simply reducing what you get out of it from Healing Power, this could have the following benefits:

- It would still completely balance the tanky nature of the Cantrip-Ele
- If Healing Power would still be very useful, we could maybe see cleric-Amu Ele’s as heavy supporters. This wouldn’t be imba, if the Ele wasn’t THAT hard to kill, because even though the support would be very strong, you could still focus him down more easily than before.
- I don’t think that other Ele-builds, especially Valk-Amu builds would suffer too much from a little less Self-Heal but more Support-Heal; ppl might have to revisit their playstyle with the Ele, but it wouldn’t make the builds weaker IMHO.

On other Spells like the Trident, you could reduce the Healing, but increase the Radius or sth. I don’t really like the Option with the increased Radius in exchange for less Healing Power, because I think a smaller radius makes for more important positional play, but I guess it would be hard if the Trident gave the Ele himself less Healing than the other Chars although they stand in the same effect….. Idk, maybe it’s exactly as hard as with Cleansing Wave and Stuff…. ^^’

Or, which would be the easiest way: Just balance the tankyness of the Cantrip-Ele around Ether Renewal/Glyph or Signet. Keep all the AoE and dodge-Heal and stuff like that strong, but tone down the “normal” self-heals. Or work on the Cantrips! With that, you’d still have a strong supporter, but he wouldn’t be that hard to kill.

Remove attunement swap/evasive arcana heal procs from signet of restoration. Tone down passive condi removal and make Cleansing Fire a 30 sec cd so that eles have more active condition defenses. Water attunement at most should remove one condition on switch, and the condition removal on granting regen should have an internal cooldown.

Ether Renewal should remove conditions only every other pulse.

If you’re gonna touch water spells, it needs to be split. It’s fine and necessary in PvE. Also, if the effectiveness of the water heals for the group is decreased, water attunement will become useless since people only use it for the heals — the autoattacks and damage abilities on water attunement besides staff 2 and cone of cold are really bad.

You also need to evaluate that ele damage outside arcana might stacking with duration runes is absolutely terrible, and a large portion of sustained survivability comes from renewed stamina for vigor, and elemental attunement gives on demand protection..

Scepter in particular has horrible sustained, and if you want to prop up air for spike you build for power and your fire autoattack (incredibly slow and next to no direct damage component with mainly burning) and earth autoattacks (small direct damage and 3 bleeds, a condition based auto) become useless while water autos on every weapon are always useless and weak.

If heal is going to be touched, then base hp, toughness, and power need to be touched as well. Ele is sorely lacking in those aspects otherwise.

Great post, but I really think the OP and others underestimate the impact and potential of non-bunker Elementalists and very few if any of the proposed changes are going to affect those, if we start increasing the base heal and simply lower the healing coefficients.

You take an elementalist with a Valkyrie’s amulet and the common 0/20(15)/0/20(25)/30 build with 2 arcane abilities and you can potentially deal 10k damage instantly to any glass cannon without them being able to react (switch to air for Electric Discharge, Lightning Strike, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave). In fact you can even do all that while performing a dodge roll.

I really don’t want to punish a class more than necessary (while I do believe that bunker elementalists are too strong, I am not convinced that they are the strongest build to play currently in terms of sheer impact in fights), but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that not only can you have 4 instant damaging abilities on a low cool down like described above, but that 2 of them (3 if we include Arcane Shield) are utilities that auto-crit and thus can deal great single and AoE burst damage regardless of your crit chance.

If you want to crit on an ability, you’re supposed to invest in crit chance.

Med.6150:

Great post, but I really think the OP and others underestimate the impact and potential of non-bunker Elementalists and very few if any of the proposed changes are going to affect those, if we start increasing the base heal and simply lower the healing coefficients.

You take an elementalist with a Valkyrie’s amulet and the common 0/20(15)/0/20(25)/30 build with 2 arcane abilities and you can potentially deal 10k damage instantly to any glass cannon without them being able to react (switch to air for Electric Discharge, Lightning Strike, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave). In fact you can even do all that while performing a dodge roll.

I really don’t want to punish a class more than necessary (while I do believe that bunker elementalists are too strong, I am not convinced that they are the strongest build to play currently in terms of sheer impact in fights), but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that not only can you have 4 instant damaging abilities on a low cool down like described above, but that 2 of them (3 if we include Arcane Shield) are utilities that auto-crit and thus can deal great single and AoE burst damage regardless of your crit chance.

If you want to crit on an ability, you’re supposed to invest in crit chance.

An ele with valkyrie amulet practically got 13k HP and no stealth or clones, I dunno why somebody should go 13k HP if He doesn’t receive anything in return, both arcane utilities have already been nerfed not once but twice both in damage and CD, furthermore an ele with double-arcana has got a single stun-breaker, couple this with the 13k HP and glass cannon or not, you die with a single mistake, you get a mesmer with duellist and berseker than you don’t see coming and mist form on CD, pretty much you’re dead as duellist deal 7-8k dmg and izerker deal 6-7k dmg..the end

Seriously is that something this class is allowed to do without people complaining?
People have been constantly whining about ele even before launch, Anet has already massacrated the damage, you need to perform some crazy kitten with a s/d to let every single skill to hit, while you need a borderline suicide build to do close to the damage a mesmer or thief can do from safe distance or stealth

How people can complain when a mesmer can deal close to 10k dmg with Iduellist ( 8k dmg + bleeding ) from distance, instantly for half the CD of arcane wave?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Very well written Symbolic.

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

One thing that bothers me, is the fact that all cantrips – and nothing else, are stunbreakers. This makes cantrip-traited builds to be overloaded with stunbreakers, and other builds to be forced to use at least one cantrip to survive a burst. Have you ever considered “nerfing” the cantrips that way: taking away the stunbreaking effects from some of them and putting those somewhere else? (Good candidates are Conjure Shield, Arcane Shield and Signet of Air, in my opinion).

Also, as long as you squeeze a few buffs to fire and air (and earth) traits every once and a while, you are contributing to the possibility of new builds, even when your decisions to nerf bunkers end up affecting the entire profession.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Very well written Symbolic.

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

While doing that I hope you’ll remember other things the OP has mentioned in his blog :

1) Useless utilities outside cantrips ( conjures should be deleted and replaced with something else)

2) Lack of viable ranged damage ( scepter/dagger practically require you to play at mele range to land the overly slow moving phoenix..while landing dragon’s tooth still remain impossible without a min of 3s CC)
3) A single barely usable elite : Glyph of elementals

4) Completely useless fire trait line and partially usable air trait line ( 2-3 traits are decent )

5) Focus need a serious look, there is good defense, but the fire/water skills are UP

6)Staff is far too slow while not enough CC skill ( 2s cripple unsteady ground 30s CD and ground targeting small hit box: gust and shockwave are close to garbage)

Personally I think the water heals should be removed entirely, I can assure the devs that 100% of the players in the ele community has chosen this profession thinking it’d be something similar to the GW1 version, loads of control and very decent damage, we’d be more than happy to have a 3-5k base HP more along with more damage and control and you can then give the heals to some other profession

if u plan on destroying cantrips because paradigm (and everyone who likes to jump on the op bandwagon) decided to complain when they use arcane utilities and dont like others to have 3 cantrips fair enough but can u delete conjured weapons, utility signets and glyphs and give us something usefull then?

Seriously u have done nothing but nerfing so far, when do we see some new viable builds?

Arheundel.6451:

An ele with valkyrie amulet practically got 13k HP and no stealth or clones, I dunno why somebody should go 13k HP if He doesn’t receive anything in return, both arcane utilities have already been nerfed not once but twice both in damage and CD, furthermore an ele with double-arcana has got a single stun-breaker, couple this with the 13k HP and glass cannon or not, you die with a single mistake, you get a mesmer with duellist and berseker than you don’t see coming and mist form on CD, pretty much you’re dead as duellist deal 7-8k dmg and izerker deal 6-7k dmg..the end

You assume I think that phantasm and pet damage in general is fine in this game. You’re also acting as if having only one stun breaker on your bar is a rare thing. 90% of classes you meat in tournaments have a single stun breaker and most of them do not carry a 3 second invulnerability with it.

An elementalist with 13k HP, 2.5k+ armor, mist form, RTL, frost aura and/or AoE chill is currently stronger than any hybrid build of any other class and you see them running about on a daily basis. Now, even if we ignored the fact that Symbolic is proposing very small if any healing changes to such a build by lowering the healing contribution on water skills etc and increasing their base heal, these Valk elementalists with 13k HPs that you see running around rarely die to bursts, because they have the CC and mobility to reposition themselves and escape.

Seriously is that something this class is allowed to do without people complaining?
People have been constantly whining about ele even before launch, Anet has already massacrated the damage, you need to perform some crazy kitten with a s/d to let every single skill to hit, while you need a borderline suicide build to do close to the damage a mesmer or thief can do from safe distance or stealth

I am going to assume you play an elementalist, so it is perfectly fine to be biased, but in order to effectively pressure other glass cannons with a fraction of the elementalist’s sustain, CC and mobility, you do not need to land “every single skill”. Throw both arcane spells on a thief, switch to air for lightning strike and watch that thief run.

Again, it’s all in the way the damage is delivered. 4 instant abilities with 2 of them automatically delivering critical hits and you can perform them while being stunned or dodging through the enemy, they simply can not react. Now that may be fine for low damage abilities, but guaranteed crits of 3k (2 of them being AoE)?

How people can complain when a mesmer can deal close to 10k dmg with Iduellist ( 8k dmg + bleeding ) from distance, instantly for half the CD of arcane wave?

You can not argue it’s fine to have that kind of damage instantly and on a low cool down, because somebody else might have something else that is even more outrageous. The next mesmer joining in will tell you how it’s ridiculous that ranger pets hit harder than their phantasms, have CC, quickness, remove conditions, follow their targets from one side note to the other and don’t die ever.

Please ArenaNet don’t troll. Please don’t discuss how you’re looking into toning down Eles, and then next patch, come out with huge nerfs to Warriors, Thieves, unusual changes to Engineers that pigeon-hole them further, unusual “buffs” to Mesmers even though it wasn’t necessary, and finally a few random buffs to Eles.

That was one awkward patch. Especially after having finished that State of the Game discussion about being more transparent to the community.

@ Arheundel

With all the small buffs conjures have been getting since release, some of them are already pretty nice at pve. Lightning Hammer (excluding its air storm skill) and Fiery Greatsword are extremely strong, the former spiking hard at its radius, with a never-ending source of blind and blast finishers (= lots of party-wide boons) and the later with higher numbers, excellent mobility and low cooldowns. (Frost Bow is up there, but suffers from a bad auto-attack, while the other two are excellent at auto-attacking). Also, sharing them to other players is very fun. Sure, pvp is a different breed, but I’d say some few changes could make them viable in pvp (offering more means to defend/ cc effectively, and maybe an instant casting time to simulate a weapon swap? I know conjure shield would love this one, especially if it also was a stun breaker).

Also, the water heals are awesome for people that love party-support, and even I, who personally don’t care much about it, find it satisfying to heal my party members when I need to heal myself.

Outside of that, I agree with you. I don’t even mind water Focus, I just want its fire version to feel epic like OH dagger’s does. Mechanically, an aura and a burning line will never be awesome like a burning circle and a strong spike. I wouldn’t mind for the aura to be swapped to 4th place (like OH dagger’s frost aura), and if flamewall was “transformed” into something more ultimate-y, something worthy of a 5th skill.

Why would you delete conjures, they’re cool. Just ineffective.

Please fix weapon skills.
You guys said you were limiting the gw1 system to weapons which would be easier to balance. No weapon’s viability should ever be questioned if it’s viable wtf.

Med.6150:

Great post, but I really think the OP and others underestimate the impact and potential of non-bunker Elementalists and very few if any of the proposed changes are going to affect those, if we start increasing the base heal and simply lower the healing coefficients.

You take an elementalist with a Valkyrie’s amulet and the common 0/20(15)/0/20(25)/30 build with 2 arcane abilities and you can potentially deal 10k damage instantly to any glass cannon without them being able to react (switch to air for Electric Discharge, Lightning Strike, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave). In fact you can even do all that while performing a dodge roll.

I really don’t want to punish a class more than necessary (while I do believe that bunker elementalists are too strong, I am not convinced that they are the strongest build to play currently in terms of sheer impact in fights), but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that not only can you have 4 instant damaging abilities on a low cool down like described above, but that 2 of them (3 if we include Arcane Shield) are utilities that auto-crit and thus can deal great single and AoE burst damage regardless of your crit chance.

If you want to crit on an ability, you’re supposed to invest in crit chance.

?

Arcane blast/wave both hit for around 3k a piece under best case scenarios, Lightning Strike for about 4k. Arcane utilities have 20-30 sec cd. It takes a mesmer 12 seconds or less to deal more than that in cooldowns, and the same applies to thieves.

And the efficacy of this combo all relies on the opponent not dodging/invulnerability any single one of them while being glass cannon. You can’t pull this combo on a thief that goes in and out of stealth, and if you’re dealing that kind of damage it means a thief can likely kill you in a mug>backstab>heartseeker sequence.

If the opponent has any decent amount of toughness, the ele will die. Scepter has garbage sustained and requires heavy team support compared to dagger to land his hits.

Zenith.7301:

Med.6150:

Great post, but I really think the OP and others underestimate the impact and potential of non-bunker Elementalists and very few if any of the proposed changes are going to affect those, if we start increasing the base heal and simply lower the healing coefficients.

You take an elementalist with a Valkyrie’s amulet and the common 0/20(15)/0/20(25)/30 build with 2 arcane abilities and you can potentially deal 10k damage instantly to any glass cannon without them being able to react (switch to air for Electric Discharge, Lightning Strike, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave). In fact you can even do all that while performing a dodge roll.

I really don’t want to punish a class more than necessary (while I do believe that bunker elementalists are too strong, I am not convinced that they are the strongest build to play currently in terms of sheer impact in fights), but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that not only can you have 4 instant damaging abilities on a low cool down like described above, but that 2 of them (3 if we include Arcane Shield) are utilities that auto-crit and thus can deal great single and AoE burst damage regardless of your crit chance.

If you want to crit on an ability, you’re supposed to invest in crit chance.

?

Arcane blast/wave both hit for around 3k a piece under best case scenarios, Lightning Strike for about 4k. Arcane utilities have 20-30 sec cd. It takes a mesmer 12 seconds or less to deal more than that in cooldowns, and the same applies to thieves.

And the efficacy of this combo all relies on the opponent not dodging/invulnerability any single one of them while being glass cannon. You can’t pull this combo on a thief that goes in and out of stealth, and if you’re dealing that kind of damage it means a thief can likely kill you in a mug>backstab>heartseeker sequence.

If the opponent has any decent amount of toughness, the ele will die. Scepter has garbage sustained and requires heavy team support compared to dagger to land his hits.

Arcane wave : with 2104 Power, 48% crit dmg, 44% crit chance on light armor golem = 1980 dmg at 30s CD…dunno where the 3k dmg come from, it must be against a pure glass cannon with base toughness 916

Arheundel.6451:

How people can complain when a mesmer can deal close to 10k dmg with Iduellist ( 8k dmg + bleeding ) from distance, instantly for half the CD of arcane wave?

Lol, show me a screenshot of a mesmer’s Iduellist dealing that kind of damage. He has to be insanely bursty and the target has to have close to 0 armor/toughness.

Arheundel.6451:

Zenith.7301:

Med.6150:

Great post, but I really think the OP and others underestimate the impact and potential of non-bunker Elementalists and very few if any of the proposed changes are going to affect those, if we start increasing the base heal and simply lower the healing coefficients.

You take an elementalist with a Valkyrie’s amulet and the common 0/20(15)/0/20(25)/30 build with 2 arcane abilities and you can potentially deal 10k damage instantly to any glass cannon without them being able to react (switch to air for Electric Discharge, Lightning Strike, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave). In fact you can even do all that while performing a dodge roll.

I really don’t want to punish a class more than necessary (while I do believe that bunker elementalists are too strong, I am not convinced that they are the strongest build to play currently in terms of sheer impact in fights), but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that not only can you have 4 instant damaging abilities on a low cool down like described above, but that 2 of them (3 if we include Arcane Shield) are utilities that auto-crit and thus can deal great single and AoE burst damage regardless of your crit chance.

If you want to crit on an ability, you’re supposed to invest in crit chance.

?

Arcane blast/wave both hit for around 3k a piece under best case scenarios, Lightning Strike for about 4k. Arcane utilities have 20-30 sec cd. It takes a mesmer 12 seconds or less to deal more than that in cooldowns, and the same applies to thieves.

And the efficacy of this combo all relies on the opponent not dodging/invulnerability any single one of them while being glass cannon. You can’t pull this combo on a thief that goes in and out of stealth, and if you’re dealing that kind of damage it means a thief can likely kill you in a mug>backstab>heartseeker sequence.

If the opponent has any decent amount of toughness, the ele will die. Scepter has garbage sustained and requires heavy team support compared to dagger to land his hits.

Arcane wave : with 2104 Power, 48% crit dmg, 44% crit chance on light armor golem = 1980 dmg at 30s CD…dunno where the 3k dmg come from, it must be against a pure glass cannon with base toughness 916

Yes, and in WvW. Most people in spvp now run some semblance of toughness o that number will rarely happen obviously.

I was just annoyed by the sheer exaggeration of s/d ele burst when ele burst is among the easiest to dodge/mitigate compared to something ridiculously broken like mug.

JoopFOX.9510:

Arheundel.6451:

How people can complain when a mesmer can deal close to 10k dmg with Iduellist ( 8k dmg + bleeding ) from distance, instantly for half the CD of arcane wave?

Lol, show me a screenshot of a mesmer’s Iduellist dealing that kind of damage. He has to be insanely bursty and the target has to have close to 0 armor/toughness.

Not to mention you would have to trait for phantasms and they die in 2-3 hits.

Phaantasms at the very least crit for around 5-6k on berserker nontraited, and you have to couple them with shatters/landing a blurred frenzy.

Point is, of all the things to complain about eles, burst is not one of them. If anything, burst on all classes should be more conditional and piecemeal like the ele so it isn’t so ridiculously lopsided like “ha! mug+backstab there goes half to two thirds ofyour health!”

Yeah, mug/backstab might be easier to dodge when 1v1, but on a group fight it’s very easy for a thief to land it.

JoopFOX.9510:

Arheundel.6451:

How people can complain when a mesmer can deal close to 10k dmg with Iduellist ( 8k dmg + bleeding ) from distance, instantly for half the CD of arcane wave?

Lol, show me a screenshot of a mesmer’s Iduellist dealing that kind of damage. He has to be insanely bursty and the target has to have close to 0 armor/toughness.

My dueslist hits for 5K-6K + 2K Bleeding and im wearing half zerk half knights. I added 4 more pieces of zerk gear last night and im still wearing full knight armor and my duelist hits for 6-7K now. 8K-9K with DPS food + zerk armor is very possible.

I main an ele since Beta and i fear no ele on my mesmer which ive been playing for 2 weeks total. They try to kill my phantasms and they die to me, they try to kill me they die to my phantasms. This is even with the bugged berserker damage spin atm.

Eles are strong atm but last patch they did more nerfs to “dps” eles than to tank eles which is sad. They nerfed all our dps abilities back in beta so our only viable option is tank eles.

Med.6150:

An elementalist with 13k HP, 2.5k+ armor, mist form, RTL, frost aura and/or AoE chill is currently stronger than any hybrid build of any other class and you see them running about on a daily basis. Now, even if we ignored the fact that Symbolic is proposing very small if any healing changes to such a build by lowering the healing contribution on water skills etc and increasing their base heal, these Valk elementalists with 13k HPs that you see running around rarely die to bursts, because they have the CC and mobility to reposition themselves and escape.

Asserting that Valkyrie eles don’t die to burst attempts is completely ridiculous if you’re playing with at least halfway competent players, especially if a player is running multiple arcane utilities to put out the kind of burst you’re suggesting. Maybe in a world where HGH engineers and trap/bm rangers don’t exist, but certainly not this one. You give up a lot of survive-ability to run the kind of build you’re suggesting with your only consistent mobility tool is RtL, unless you’re attunement swapping or blowing your integral 40 second updraft for swiftness. You’ve also got only 1 stun break on a 75 second cooldown, meaning if you blow it at the wrong time it can cost your team the fight.

DPS ele is stronger than people give it credit for(which is most people), but it doesn’t have the burst potential of thief and has a much smaller room for error than its bunker variants and folds under CC trains. Lower the healing potential without buffing other areas would make any ele with pretensions of building for damage to be food for anyone who can apply multiple conditions consistently, which is why many eles still build around water.

Also great analysis Symbolic, hope Anet puts this to good use for finally curbing how ridiculous the bunker ele is.

I play an ele and I understand the reasons that make the bunker build OP. Very few classes are able to boast the package the elementalist comes with. Symbolic raises very sound suggestions in balancing said build really well in his blog post.

What I just wanted to add to the discussion is the topic of boon hate. This came from the SOTG and it is my belief that it will offer certain classes the option of shutting down boon machines better once they add such a thing. Compounding both nerfs to the ele itself and boon hate could still end up not giving other elementalist specs breathing room for it to succeed. All eles will have boons popping up regularly throughout combat, it’s just the nature of its design.

Lastly, DPS ele can work atm, but it’s far more punishing to play as such compared to the Mesmer or Thief glass specs. Not counting utilities, landing a fire grab after burning speed is crucial to its burst and whiffing it is way more detrimental than missing a shatter combo or a backstab.

Part of the problem is that eles have the worst trait lines of any class in the game. Fully 38 of the ele’s 75 traits are utterly and completely worthless, and others are of dubious usefulness.

Furthermore, it is not ever viable in any way to build an ele without at least 20 points in the arcane tree, because you need the atunement swap cooldown. It will never be viable to do anything else as long as that is the tree’s bonus. The only way I can think to fix this is to reduce the ele’s swap cooldown to 10 seconds base, remove the cooldown from the trait line, and replace it with the “lingering elements” minor trait. So, the more points in arcane, the longer your atunement bonuses would last. This would simultaneously remove the necessity of going into the arcane tree, and make all the traits that only take effect when you’re attuned to a certain element useful.

Puandro.3245:

JoopFOX.9510:

Arheundel.6451:

How people can complain when a mesmer can deal close to 10k dmg with Iduellist ( 8k dmg + bleeding ) from distance, instantly for half the CD of arcane wave?

Lol, show me a screenshot of a mesmer’s Iduellist dealing that kind of damage. He has to be insanely bursty and the target has to have close to 0 armor/toughness.

My dueslist hits for 5K-6K + 2K Bleeding and im wearing half zerk half knights. I added 4 more pieces of zerk gear last night and im still wearing full knight armor and my duelist hits for 6-7K now. 8K-9K with DPS food + zerk armor is very possible.

I main an ele since Beta and i fear no ele on my mesmer which ive been playing for 2 weeks total. They try to kill my phantasms and they die to me, they try to kill me they die to my phantasms. This is even with the bugged berserker damage spin atm.

Eles are strong atm but last patch they did more nerfs to “dps” eles than to tank eles which is sad. They nerfed all our dps abilities back in beta so our only viable option is tank eles.

So what’s your traits? Who are you hitting for 5-6k + 2k bleed? Light armor I presume? Is there any phantasm trait combination I’m not aware of??

OK. Even with a full Beserker amulet/jewel (200 in both power and precision traitlines) I’m dealing under 3k damage on average. So please don’t talk about phantasms dealing more than 4k, it’s nonsense. If I’m lying, then I challenge you to show me. Shatter is so much more viable than phantasm now it’s ridiculous.
And this is all against light armor only. So medium and heavy will get even less damage.

http://i.imgur.com/nfudppy.jpg

6.5K + 265 bleeding per crit (possible 2,120 if all 8 crit). Not all 8 bullets crit i think 6-7 did, the last one did not as you can see by the SS.

Light golem has 2,200 armor.
Heavy Profession base armor is 2,127
Medium is 1,980
Light is 1,836

Keep thinking shatter spec is the best mesmers have right now, ignore utilities i obviously don’t run that in TPvP.

Been playing Mesmer for almost 3 weeks now and i fear no ele 1v1 if they try to take my home point solo.

Arheundel.6451:

2) Lack of viable ranged damage ( scepter/dagger practically require you to play at mele range to land the overly slow moving phoenix..while landing dragon’s tooth still remain impossible without a min of 3s CC)

You sound like me.

Puandro.3245:

http://i.imgur.com/nfudppy.jpg

6.5K + 265 bleeding per crit (possible 2,120 if all 8 crit). Not all 8 bullets crit i think 6-7 did, the last one did not as you can see by the SS.

Light golem has 2,200 armor.
Heavy Profession base armor is 2,127
Medium is 1,980
Light is 1,836

Keep thinking shatter spec is the best mesmers have right now, ignore utilities i obviously don’t run that in TPvP.

Been playing Mesmer for almost 3 weeks now and i fear no ele 1v1 if they try to take my home point solo.

Even with Rune of the Eagle, Phantasmal Strength and Empowered Illusions and berserker’s amulet all together I don’t get more than 4 – 4,5k on average. Pls tell me your build

JoopFOX.9510:

Puandro.3245:

http://i.imgur.com/nfudppy.jpg

6.5K + 265 bleeding per crit (possible 2,120 if all 8 crit). Not all 8 bullets crit i think 6-7 did, the last one did not as you can see by the SS.

Light golem has 2,200 armor.
Heavy Profession base armor is 2,127
Medium is 1,980
Light is 1,836

Keep thinking shatter spec is the best mesmers have right now, ignore utilities i obviously don’t run that in TPvP.

Been playing Mesmer for almost 3 weeks now and i fear no ele 1v1 if they try to take my home point solo.

Even with Rune of the Eagle, Phantasmal Strength and Empowered Illusions and berserker’s amulet all together I don’t get more than 4 – 4,5k on average. Pls tell me your build

20/20/0/25/5 10/30/0/25/5 actually does a bit more damage but I prefer the GS CD.

Have you ever considered “nerfing” the cantrips that way: taking away the stunbreaking effects from some of them and putting those somewhere else? (Good candidates are Conjure Shield, Arcane Shield and Signet of Air, in my opinion).

Good point. I feel like every class should have at least three Stun Breakers, each in a different utility set, so that all but one of the sets has at least one option for breaking stuns (give or take).

Personally I think the water heals should be removed entirely, I can assure the devs that 100% of the players in the ele community has chosen this profession thinking it’d be something similar to the GW1 version, loads of control and very decent damage, we’d be more than happy to have a 3-5k base HP more along with more damage and control and you can then give the heals to some other profession

I agree with a lot of your points about needing better range options and stuff, but I can assure you that at least 1% of the Ele Community doesn’t even know of what GW1 Eles were capable, much less caring whether GW2 Eles bare any similarity. I never played GW1, although I’m sure it was a lovely game, and I made my Ele because D/D Eles are like characters from Avatar, spazzing around shooting fire and rocks and ice every which way and it’s awesome.

Ele’s probably should have a ranged option, just as a Warrior can go into Rifles/Bows or a Ranger can go Greatsword, but the melee range option is a lot of fun and should remain that way too. Specifically, D/D Eles need their healing prowess, because we wrack up a ton of damage otherwise.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Very well written Symbolic.

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

Excuse me but are there ANY other build that works?
So more nerf with no buffs again?
Staff and cantrip (offensive) builds are not so good….

Nice write up. As someone said previously, cantrips bring in too many stun breakers. A better repartition of stun breakers could already improve different builds. Cantrips can do too much damage mitigation when traited, remove a bit of this mitigation from cantrips and give it to other builds. Overall elementalists have too much synergy from two trees (arcana and water).

We probably have a lot of rebalancing to go under, but in any case please help other classes first.