Guild Wars 2

Alright, id like to talk about the build diversity. Im a dps ele but I also play cantrips when my team tells me:

Right now there are only 2 viable specs:

- cantrips: very overpowered, doesnt matter if you make mistakes you wont die 1v1. However in 2v1 its not as strong as it was back in january and 2 good players can get you down. But obv forcing the 2v1 is too much so cantrips should be nerfed

- arcane dps: well build, with a lot of risk comes good damage. I dont have much to say about this one, just that in order to survive you will need all of your heals and it wont be easy. Nerfing the heals would kill this build that relies on them to survive (just like shatter mesmer relies on distorsion and thief on invisibility). Dont forget eles have light armor and around 13k hp. If healing is nerfed without any other boost, every ele will have to play cantrip tank or reroll to another class.

Non viable builds and why:

- conjured weapons: they are big time useless. Although I like the design, the problem is that no conjured weapon is better than your attunements. Also id like to add that when staff air 5 was fixed, devs forgot to do the same on lightning hammer (has same skill). They could be improved in very different ways: fix the buged skills, remove the useless ones (there are many), make them field+finisher based, boost the damage, make them work like kits…

- signets: some of them are good. The problem is you have to spend 30 points in a kitten trait line (earth) to make them work (written in stone). Spending 30 in earth means you will have just-ok healing (ev arcana + 10 water) and 0 damage (less than tanky ele being squishier)

- glyphs: they are just bad. Storm glyph and the condition glyph are useless. The small pet is meh (low damage and very easy to kill) and the rezz glyph cast is way too long. Also its abilities on attunement dont work. Glyph skills so bad that too many changes should happen to make them playable.

On weapons:

Scepter and dagger main hands are good. Scepter fire 2 and scepter water 2 should be reworked imo.

Staff: fun concept but weak. Weak because it will never have the mobility dagger offers and you are forced to stay in one point. Other classes can make this job way better. Also, what happened to unsteady ground (earth 4)? It was very useful and fun back in the betas, but it was nerfed so much it’s now useless.

Dagger off hand: very strong. Good mobility, good damage, good healing, good condi removal, and also has an aura.

Focus: the worst weapon. Useless in everything. It has some skills that are a bad joke.
- Flamewall: small not instant fire field. (dagger has a big, instant fire field that also deals damage on cast).
- Freezing gust: You have to cast a chill. (dagger has an instant aura that will chill on hit and you receive -10% damage. It can also be traited to give fury).
- Comet: It would be nice if it knockbacked the foe or if it was instant. But a daze that has to be casted is meh. (dagger has a 3k heal that removes 1 condi)
- Swirling winds: It should be an air field for sure. Also, its duration/casttime/radius could be improved. (dagger has Ride the lighting, self explanatory).
- Gale: You have to cast a knockback (dagger has updraft, instant knockback that gives you swiftness)
- Earth attunement is fine.

If u want to nerf the bunker cantrip then move the earth 3 trait into master, that makes the bunker ele go from 4 to 3 cantrips, u dont need to nerf the cantrips more than that.

Thanks for the positive feedback guys, it feels constructive! Maybe the devs will take some of these suggestions into consideration from these posts.

It’s good to see a detailed analyse of a player, who actually knows what he talks about.
Though i think Phantaram helped you. Keep up those posts (mabye you can do this for other classes)

Very well written, and everyone that plays tPvP can agree with pretty much all of the content.

Only thing I’d like to add is about Ride the Lightning.

RtL cannot consistently be countered by immobilize, because even if you anticipate an RtL and cast immob before the ele hits his RtL he will still traval the full distance of the skill. There really isn’t a viable counter for it in its current state except for great anticipation and hard CC at the right time. Even then the Armor of Earth trait proc or cantrip can save the ele and allow for an RtL to safety.

RtL should get a nerf+buff. I agree that a chain skill to blow up RtL is a good buff idea, but I also believe that Immobilize should work on it properly and that it should be affected by cripple and chill like other movement skills. If it were changed in this fashion then at least there would be a counter for the mobility.

RtL should be affected by movement conditions but that would mean that it should be affected by swiftness as well, like other movement skills.

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.

Faith restored in the balance team. Thank you, looking forward to the changes.

Instead of buffing Dragon’s Tooth, I think that underpowered scepter skills should be given cc support to make DT hit instead. It would be more strategical and fun this way. Have water #2 or earth #3 add some sort of movement control. A good candidate really is water 2: put its cooldown on 6s, and have it apply 3 seconds of chill on activation. That’ll make bursting with fire much easier.

Also, RTL affected by movement effects would be a nice buff to pve, to compensate for the higher cooldown, while automatically be a fair nerf to pvp. The problem is, it would make elementalists even better at roaming inbetween points, unless the cooldown is, say, increased to 25s. Which could be annoying for pve. :P Also, this skill shouldn’t be affected by the auto-target option.

Signets should have stronger effects, and be balanced to be good without trait support. And then, maybe, make them revolve around lower cooldowns, so earth’s trait is not that important. Or have stronger active effects and weaker passive effects, but that would be a problem with signet of air, whose passive effect is perfect as it is. :P

The valk amulet also synergizes too well with the build in my opinion. When you got high fury uptime and lots of good heals that scale well its too good. You get survivability and good damage output.

pretty solid analysis i guess but a few mistakes here and there like lightning flash cooldown at 45 instead of 40 and not including attunement GLOBAL cd which is at best 1.25 when you claculated the uptime of boons like prot.Besides nobody goes in earth and leaves it immediately which makes those calculations way way off in practice..
Other than that i want to mention too ,like others, that if you play/main ele you most likely have an idea of how garbage other options are.Even arcanes imo after the cd nerf in beta..

also staff is so ..lol (fix that first so i get to play the mage archetype again..i missit :P)

maybe anet should ask some elementalists who made more than 2k tourneygames than a necroplayer. people cry about elebunker because it seems to be unkillable in a 1v1 ???? (engi will rip apart eles, good ranger can do the same…)

cantrip ele is not broken imo (many people just suck 1v1 and have no theorycrafting skills and play bad builds) …just buff warrior

Ultima.8673:

maybe anet should ask some elementalists who made more than 2k tourneygames than a necroplayer. people cry about elebunker because it seems to be unkillable in a 1v1 ???? (engi will rip apart eles, good ranger can do the same…)

cantrip ele is not broken imo (many people just suck 1v1 and have no theorycrafting skills and play bad builds) …just buff warrior

Even Phantaram said the same Thing. If you wanna offend ppl then make sure you’re above their skill Level. Otherwise it’s just embarassing.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Ultima.8673:

maybe anet should ask some elementalists who made more than 2k tourneygames than a necroplayer. people cry about elebunker because it seems to be unkillable in a 1v1 ???? (engi will rip apart eles, good ranger can do the same…)

cantrip ele is not broken imo (many people just suck 1v1 and have no theorycrafting skills and play bad builds) …just buff warrior

Even Phantaram said the same Thing. If you wanna offend ppl then make sure you’re above their skill Level. Otherwise it’s just embarassing.

well phantaram was not making such a big show and he said it maybe needs lil fixing and he didnt say ele cantripbuild is totally broken. and besides of that phantaram plays a different role in his team than i do : he is more offensive roamer while i am more support/ tanky teambuild with ability to fight/hold a node and maybe win 1v1 2v2 situations >:D
and i think i play on the same skilllevel than phantaram so…

Ultima.8673:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Ultima.8673:

maybe anet should ask some elementalists who made more than 2k tourneygames than a necroplayer. people cry about elebunker because it seems to be unkillable in a 1v1 ???? (engi will rip apart eles, good ranger can do the same…)

cantrip ele is not broken imo (many people just suck 1v1 and have no theorycrafting skills and play bad builds) …just buff warrior

Even Phantaram said the same Thing. If you wanna offend ppl then make sure you’re above their skill Level. Otherwise it’s just embarassing.

well phantaram was not making such a big show and he said it maybe needs lil fixing and he didnt say ele cantripbuild is totally broken. and besides of that phantaram plays a different role in his team than i do : he is more offensive roamer while i am more support/ tanky teambuild with ability to fight/hold a node and maybe win 1v1 2v2 situations >:D
and i think i play on the same skilllevel than phantaram so…

Would you agree on having a weapon set specifically for bunkering and another for pure dmg offensive role?
-switch cleansing wave (skill) with comet and change animations, making the new comet a PBaoe daze
In this way I think the weapon sets would have more defined role compared to know and both you adn Phantaram can keep play the ele in whichever way you want

I would like to add my two cents about elementalist.

The main issue I have with the cantrip (clerics) elementalist is the mix of tankyness with healing, most eles do not even use this anywhere near it’s full extent. When you have the high toughness and not to speak of protection uptime, the heals that basicly work as effective HP for the elementalist (due to low hp pool and armor) can 90% of the time be used to heal other members of the team.

From a teamplay aspect this is great, but due to the high tankyness of the ele and if you run Ether Renewal, healing only partymembers rarely even put you in a sacrificial position. You can nerf the healing of the ele and that will be good but it feels like you instead can nerf the tankyness and keep the heals, forcing the ele to choose between healing him-/herself or party members. The main issue here lies in the attributes/stats of amulets, toughness and healing power, as these two stats scale the best off each other. Instead I would love to see amulets that maybe give vitality and healing or even a minor nerf to the vitality and add a forth stat. This way the ele would lose the tankyness but keep the healing forcing them to choose how to use it. It would also give enemies the opportunity to burst them down in between healing rotations.

Another way to hit the tanky attributes of the ele would be to nerf the uptime of protection from “Elemental Attunement” or/together with a nerf to “Armor of Earth”.
Either you nerf the protection uptime given by the cantrip “Armor of Earth” this might make it quite useless as a utility but would be a way to fix the issue or you make it so that the utility and the passive proc from the Earth traitline share cooldown so that you will have to choose which one to get, hence nerfing the uptime of protection.

This is just some “minor” ideas of how you could tone down the bunker ele without breaking the other builds too much.

Please make conjure weapons instant cast time and maybe increase the cooldown or something, so that they are actually usable.

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.

Translation:

We don’t know or don’t want to make everything as good as these traits/abilities so instead we’ll reduce them to make them equally terrible as everything else.

Arheundel.6451:

Ultima.8673:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Ultima.8673:

maybe anet should ask some elementalists who made more than 2k tourneygames than a necroplayer. people cry about elebunker because it seems to be unkillable in a 1v1 ???? (engi will rip apart eles, good ranger can do the same…)

cantrip ele is not broken imo (many people just suck 1v1 and have no theorycrafting skills and play bad builds) …just buff warrior

Even Phantaram said the same Thing. If you wanna offend ppl then make sure you’re above their skill Level. Otherwise it’s just embarassing.

well phantaram was not making such a big show and he said it maybe needs lil fixing and he didnt say ele cantripbuild is totally broken. and besides of that phantaram plays a different role in his team than i do : he is more offensive roamer while i am more support/ tanky teambuild with ability to fight/hold a node and maybe win 1v1 2v2 situations >:D
and i think i play on the same skilllevel than phantaram so…

Would you agree on having a weapon set specifically for bunkering and another for pure dmg offensive role?
-switch cleansing wave (skill) with comet and change animations, making the new comet a PBaoe daze
In this way I think the weapon sets would have more defined role compared to know and both you adn Phantaram can keep play the ele in whichever way you want

nope cleansing wave is a great aoe heal /condiremover that daze is a joke keep it on focus. on high pvp noone plays focus nor staff because it is kitten compared to daggers damage, rtl and the healing and earthquake.
ele truely shines in a balanced build if u fix too much it becomes nothing —- a thief is still best roamer imo… and the role as support tanky healy with some damage as ele fits best for that class.. .

ele proper played = best allrounder if u like or not :P

and if players aren’t able to dodge a phoenix or dragonstooth or churning earth than i dont know what to say…

right atm mesmer ele ranger guardian, engi (<-perfect debunker) and thief are fine as they are … i dont know about necro because i dont play that class but i know for sure that warrior should get a buff to become again a roamer beast & corpse grinder .

funny part is when i started this game i wanted to be an offensive staffele but it really sucked to play staff in comparison to other classes

Ultima.8673:

Arheundel.6451:

Ultima.8673:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Ultima.8673:

maybe anet should ask some elementalists who made more than 2k tourneygames than a necroplayer. people cry about elebunker because it seems to be unkillable in a 1v1 ???? (engi will rip apart eles, good ranger can do the same…)

cantrip ele is not broken imo (many people just suck 1v1 and have no theorycrafting skills and play bad builds) …just buff warrior

Even Phantaram said the same Thing. If you wanna offend ppl then make sure you’re above their skill Level. Otherwise it’s just embarassing.

well phantaram was not making such a big show and he said it maybe needs lil fixing and he didnt say ele cantripbuild is totally broken. and besides of that phantaram plays a different role in his team than i do : he is more offensive roamer while i am more support/ tanky teambuild with ability to fight/hold a node and maybe win 1v1 2v2 situations >:D
and i think i play on the same skilllevel than phantaram so…

Would you agree on having a weapon set specifically for bunkering and another for pure dmg offensive role?
-switch cleansing wave (skill) with comet and change animations, making the new comet a PBaoe daze
In this way I think the weapon sets would have more defined role compared to know and both you adn Phantaram can keep play the ele in whichever way you want

nope cleansing wave is a great aoe heal /condiremover that daze is a joke keep it on focus. on high pvp noone plays focus nor staff because it is kitten compared to daggers rtl and the healing and earthquake.
ele truely shines in a balanced build if u fix too much it becomes nothing —- a thief is still best roamer imo… and the nrole as support tanky healy with some damage as ele fits best for that class..

ele proper played = best allrounder if u like or not :P

allrounder = constant QQ
Just have a tank and roamer option on different sets..and we can finally start to see the light at the end of this tunnel, where we can hope for decent buff and not like the recent ones ( comet now drop faster….you obtain a single stack of might everytime somebody hit you while using fire shield…-_-)

Necro is a support/debuffer class, as it was in GW1, of course this doesn’t sit well with the current community..hence the QQ and UP cries on necro, while this profession in a tPvP match can come and land a pandemonium on a point, killing all your team ( not kidding and we’re talking about r50+)…still you get people crying about necros..yeah I know

HikariNoTen.1402:

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.

I think a huge problem is that the majority of traits (individual ones and entire lines) do not have this kind of synergy. I think the ele needs to be toned down slightly in this area, but a bigger priority should be compression of the sheer number of traits into a lesser number of much more viable traits that have great synergy when you build them correctly.

I honestly wouldn’t want to see the healing scale to be toned down, or at least not much, or else this would make the healing power stat a bit useless.

Also, I always felt that Cleansing Wave should be a focus skill. My immediate reaction to that skill, when I started playing this game, was “wait, this is a OH dagger skill? Why is this not on focus?” :P Especially when the scepter also had the other direct heal skill while MH dagger was left with a slower, more sustained heal skill. It kinda made sense to me that the more traditionally “magical” items would share more similarities with each other. But I suppose that with so much damage mitigation/ prevention in focus, healing like that could be a bit too strong.

Meanwhile, comet is like the ranged, weaker earthquake, and I can’t quite understand why both comet and magnetic surge are blast finishers, you won’t want to exactly combo them with the flamewall all the time, because those skills are more conditional and should be saved for specific times. And now that fire shield gives might, what is the point of all this in the focus, offer a different way to stack might like scepter/ oh dagger do? But it just doesn’t work, because it requires fast switching between three attunements instead of only two (meaning you would have to “waste” one of those attunements), depend on your opponents, and “waste” two utility skills. Might-stacking, in the focus, feels accidental – sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, without any particular strategy nor any direct result from the player’s intention.

I do like the idea of fire aura basically being the elementalist’s “weaker” version of retaliation, that also happens to make them get stronger whenever they get hit, but that kinda goes against the profession’s playstyle, that relies on dodging and rupting, and can’t soak up damage like a warrior or a necromancer. Besides, when a player sees a character covered in a (burning or not) magical shell, what is the first thing a player thinks of? “It’s a defensive/ block animation!” For all those reasons, fire shield (it’s even called “shield”!) deserved as much the 10% damage reduction frost aura got, if not more.

The focus feels kinda unfocused (lol) at the moment. There’s this vague idea that it’s a defensive set with some ranged disruption, but then it has several details that aren’t consistent with the set as a whole. Some weirdly-placed blast finishers, a weird might-stacking subtheme, a random ranged chill, 2 very conditional anti-projectile skills, and a fire skillset that is purely about condition damage while its earth set has no single bleed. Are the chill and knockdown skills even meant to make dragon’s tooth hit more often? But dragon’s tooth is mostly a burst skill, and the focus offers no burst at all… :P The focus is so contradictory at parts.

(And currently isn’t as fun as playing with OH dagger, due to the lack of epic skills, interesting cross-attunement combos, and plain simply some underwhelming or highly conditional effects).

With all these ’’fixes’’ it’d come to one huge nerf. Class close to not worth playing on.
Nerfing heals, boons, viable attack potential (attunement swapping), condition cure.

If Ele is going to be drastically nerfed, so thief, mesmer and few other proffessions build should.

The thing Symbolic is missing that this build (with 1.3k healing power, toughness, close to no criticals) is to provide group support and tank. Elementalist like that basicly doesn’t deal much damage and anyone who isn’t cannon can out-tank that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I honestly wouldn’t want to see the healing scale to be toned down, or at least not much, or else this would make the healing power stat a bit useless.

They already did this with guardian months ago and the class is still pretty good. I’m not sure why ele hasn’t taken a nerf to healing abilities. Unless I overlooked it.

Aza.2105:

DiogoSilva.7089:

I honestly wouldn’t want to see the healing scale to be toned down, or at least not much, or else this would make the healing power stat a bit useless.

They already did this with guardian months ago and the class is still pretty good. I’m not sure why ele hasn’t taken a nerf to healing abilities. Unless I overlooked it.

I don’t play with guardians much. Do they use builds with healing power (cleric, shaman, etc)? If they still do, then I guess there won’t be a problem for eles to get a similar nerf.

Lert.6287:

With all these ’’fixes’’ it’d come to one huge nerf. Class close to not worth playing on.
Nerfing heals, boons, viable attack potential (attunement swapping), condition cure.

If Ele is going to be drastically nerfed, so thief, mesmer and few other proffessions build should.

The thing Symbolic is missing that this build (with 1.3k healing power, toughness, close to no criticals) is to provide group support and tank. Elementalist like that basicly doesn’t deal much damage and anyone who isn’t cannon can out-tank that.

You take damage runes/jewel/sigils so when you assault far you can kill the back point defender easier on a cantrips ele. Without Fire elite out cantrips ele have more damage than most targets have sustain so you can eventually kill. With fire ele elite out you can end the fight in a good 30-45 seconds against most classes if not faster.

Going full support team fight ele is viable and effective and maybe slightly OP, but nothing absurd. It’s also not the reason people are complaining about elementalist, under focus fire they are forced to run or die. Playing an ele effectively in a team fight is something to be admired and I don’t think many can do it well enough to justify bringing an ele to a team fight. I will admit there is some finess to optimizing your attack on far point as a cantrips ele but whether you are a good player or not it is automatically extremely effective because your fire elite and you can win just about any 1v1 especially against what people bring as back point defenders.

I don’t think symbolic is suggesting to do all these nerfs at once, they are just singular ideas. And to those interested, I didn’t help him with this lol. He’s dedicated.

Aza.2105:

DiogoSilva.7089:

I honestly wouldn’t want to see the healing scale to be toned down, or at least not much, or else this would make the healing power stat a bit useless.

They already did this with guardian months ago and the class is still pretty good. I’m not sure why ele hasn’t taken a nerf to healing abilities. Unless I overlooked it.

Ele’s have received a few nerfs to healing. Namely halving the switch to water and evasive arcana, and evasive arcana losing all its blast finishers except in earth.

Phantaram.1265:

Aza.2105:

DiogoSilva.7089:

I honestly wouldn’t want to see the healing scale to be toned down, or at least not much, or else this would make the healing power stat a bit useless.

They already did this with guardian months ago and the class is still pretty good. I’m not sure why ele hasn’t taken a nerf to healing abilities. Unless I overlooked it.

Ele’s have received a few nerfs to healing. Namely halving the switch to water and evasive arcana, and evasive arcana losing all its blast finishers except in earth.

Yes, I know, but their healing skills weren’t still nerfed. My question was, if the healing scale for the skills was also nerfed to half, would the healing power stat still be relevant enough?

EDIT: Just noticed that you were directly replying to Aza’s comment and not mine’s.

Phantaram.1265:

Lert.6287:

With all these ’’fixes’’ it’d come to one huge nerf. Class close to not worth playing on.
Nerfing heals, boons, viable attack potential (attunement swapping), condition cure.

If Ele is going to be drastically nerfed, so thief, mesmer and few other proffessions build should.

The thing Symbolic is missing that this build (with 1.3k healing power, toughness, close to no criticals) is to provide group support and tank. Elementalist like that basicly doesn’t deal much damage and anyone who isn’t cannon can out-tank that.

You take damage runes/jewel/sigils so when you assault far you can kill the back point defender easier on a cantrips ele. Without Fire elite out cantrips ele have more damage than most targets have sustain so you can eventually kill. With fire ele elite out you can end the fight in a good 30-45 seconds against most classes if not faster.

Going full support team fight ele is viable and effective and maybe slightly OP, but nothing absurd. It’s also not the reason people are complaining about elementalist, under focus fire they are forced to run or die. Playing an ele effectively in a team fight is something to be admired and I don’t think many can do it well enough to justify bringing an ele to a team fight. I will admit there is some finess to optimizing your attack on far point as a cantrips ele but whether you are a good player or not it is automatically extremely effective because your fire elite and you can win just about any 1v1 especially against what people bring as back point defenders.

I don’t think symbolic is suggesting to do all these nerfs at once, they are just singular ideas. And to those interested, I didn’t help him with this lol. He’s dedicated.

With Mesmer and Ranger being the most popular back point defender atm. I main ele and play mesmer at the side and I just don’t see how mesmer lose to cantrip eles 1v1. If its taking 30-45 secs to win WTH is the roamer doing on their team.

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.

There is currently no other workable elementalist builds for a reason. You give elementalists far less base stats than other classes, and force them to compensate by picking a few massively overpowered traits in Water/Arcane, which they have been doing from the beginning (as in beta weekends) and have been more or less balanced around. (although the optimal picks in all categories creates some synergy that leaves them slightly ahead of other classes)

These traits are not just 10-20% better than other traits. Instead they are 100-200+% better. And any attempt at nerfing them down so that other traits become usable will totally destroy the elementalist class, as it has been completely and utterly balanced around those traits since beta.

Also, people talk about the cantrips. But really, the only reason the cantrips and their related traits are any good is because they and their traits synergize well with the more powerful traits. Nerfing the cantrips and their traits wouldn’t change a thing except make the elementalist even more locked into the x/x/x/30/30 build.

I mean, what are you going to do?

• Nerf Cleansing Water? Water minors are too good, so we’ll run Alacrity, Cleansing Wave and Soothing Disruption instead.
• Nerf Soothing Disruption (again)? Just run Alacrity instead.
• Nerf both? Just go 25 water, as the water minors are still too good.
• Nerf water minors? The majors are still better than the Air/Fire/earth ones.
• Nerf water majors and minors? Congratulations, you just killed the elementalist class period.

Arcane is even more locked in place. Worst case scenario, you mess up and no-one plays elementalist any more. Best case scenario, every single elementalist migrates to the emergency signet specialty spec, that has even less choices in regards to traits and utility.

The only way you can properly balance things is by doing a massive rebalancing of every single trait, including significant defensive utility on traits in the more offensive trait lines. (especially the grandmaster ones)

^ Wildclaw brings up some good points but it’s a slippery slope. Best case scenario is if they in return buff something else to compensate. But given ANet’s track record with engineers and warriors, don’t expect too much.

Denshee.5917:

From a teamplay aspect this is great, but due to the high tankyness of the ele and if you run Ether Renewal, healing only partymembers rarely even put you in a sacrificial position. You can nerf the healing of the ele and that will be good but it feels like you instead can nerf the tankyness and keep the heals, forcing the ele to choose between healing him-/herself or party members. The main issue here lies in the attributes/stats of amulets, toughness and healing power, as these two stats scale the best off each other. Instead I would love to see amulets that maybe give vitality and healing or even a minor nerf to the vitality and add a forth stat. This way the ele would lose the tankyness but keep the healing forcing them to choose how to use it. It would also give enemies the opportunity to burst them down in between healing rotations.

Love the Idea to nerf the Amount of Toughness on the Clerics Amu! Really nice Idea to nerf Tank-Ele’s, but still have them be useful as a Supporter, even if running exactly the same build as the Cantrip-Ele.

I think going down with Toughness on the Clerics AMU to 284 would be worth looking at. Allocating the stat-points to another attribute would be kinda hard though and it could be hard to balance the Amu’s so we don’t destroy anymore builds or nerf sth. too hard that doesn’t need nerfing.

I do think the whole System with the Amulets needs to be reworked anyways, this would be my Idea:

More freedom: You simply get to choose 7 “Stones” (or whatever) that have either 284 on any attribute or +15% crit-DMG + one of the Jewels

Class-specific restrictions: Now to be able to Balance this, which would be even easier than now, you restrict certain classes on how many of these Stones they can put into certain Attributes or maybe even Combinations: For example, an Ele could only put 3 max in either toughness or Healing Power, but only 4 max in toughness+Healing combined.

I think ANet wouldn’t have to worry about too much on different classes at first: Just set a few Limitations on maybe the Ele and on potential Thief or Ele Glass-cannon-builds and just let everyone experiment with it!

Yes, it could lead to balance-problems in the future, but you’d have an easy way of fixing them with the Limitations you could put into this System. Also, you’d maybe get some really cool and interesting builds and even if some of them could be imbalanced, it doesn’t matter, because it’s at least a change of pace!

I was laughing so much. Guys. Really?
U should learn basic logic. Ele are OP ele are OP i am a bit tired of this.
Symbolic.. you have wrote lots of garbage(no offence mate) I will just highlight couple of moments
>>
Armor of Earth

One of the strongest utilities the elementalist has due to the fact you can have 2 (one traited). Meaning you can have 14 seconds of stability every 90 seconds optimally aswell as 14 seconds of protection, regen and vigor. This ability is also a stun breaker and condition removal once again going back to the traits which synergize too well. Grants too much for one utility skill.
<<
Oh really? u have spent 1st major trait for have one more armor of earth
u have spent 2nd major trait to get your regen and vigor from a cantrip
u have spent 3rd major trait to have condition removal when having a regen
SO what u have wrote its not abou 1 utility skill. its about 1 utility skill and 3(!) major traits. for being more dramatic u should say it has 72sec of cd (4th major trait but who cares)
just let me recall warrior traits here. +12% overall damage from adrenalin, +10%more damage from GS. really..

>>
Let’s calculate the amount of dodges you can achieve with vigor and a sigil of energy over 20 seconds -
Combat Starts – 2 Dodges
200 Endurance from Vigor – 4 Dodges
2 Sigil of Energy Procs – 2 Dodges
Now, you’ve got 8 dodges to use over the period of 20 seconds,
<<
Hey.. it is true for every class with vigor. why do u right it in topic about elementalists? we should nerf ele? or vigor? or sigil of energy?

Armor of Earth isn’t OP itself. It’s the traits that buff it insanely (Vigor,Regen,Condi-Remove, cd-reduction). Compare it to Guardians “Stand your Ground”: 24 cd for 6 sec retaliation and stability, plus 2 condi-remove, which turn into boons.

I know but its all about huge amount of major traits. i made an example of how warrior get +22% of damage which is insane of 2(!) major traits and its all in one branch.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Armor of Earth isn’t OP itself. It’s the traits that buff it insanely (Vigor,Regen,Condi-Remove, cd-reduction). Compare it to Guardians “Stand your Ground”: 24 cd for 6 sec retaliation and stability, plus 2 condi-remove, which turn into boons.

its not op even with the boons from cantrips traits..i hink you miss the point with ele.
The problem imo at the moment is simple.Pick whatever you want to do.
Damage,support,mix
Try and find the best trait lines and you ll end up with arcana and water.Water not only provides survivability which an ele needs but also provides damage which is ..almost comparable in what you get to go 10=20 trait points in fire air instead. :O
Arcana is just a constant for any ele build..simply put.. every 5skill set of each attunement alone is weak compared to other classes weapons.16 sec attunement switch means that you spent an awfull time stuck with 1 set plus you lose a huge uptime of boons that a 13-17k ele seriously needs.Be it regen or protection it simply doesnt make sence to make an ele build without them..
If they nerf the water,arcana traits at this point it will just make ele a chore to play.
Caue after all there would be still absolutely no point picking any other traitline.

If these anomaly in the trait lines dissapear then you would see the problem fixing its self.For example buffing fire and reducing damage from water line would make hybrid eles wanna lose survivability to achieve desirable dps and the bunker unable to kill anyone(far problem solved).And all that WITHOUT any nerf in defence and healing

^ totally agree.
I was just arguing the topic “Hey look how OP eles are, how OP cantrips are, nerf nerf nerf”.
they even say ele is OP cuz of… they can dodge more with vigor and sigil which is ridiculous. Every profession can do this. Just stop complaining.

Why not buff other classes’ utility/survivability builds? Heals on shatter/mantra, venom share, leeching wells on necro, or bomb detonation heals on engi? Current build diversity is already so limited that it makes one weep, with the introduction of boon-hate there won’t really be anything left to play other than a DPS spec on any profession, which is effectively killing the game for anybody who doesn’t fancy playing a glass cannon. I don’t believe that elementalists need survivability nerf, I believe other classes need build diversity buff. What the current balance strategy is doing is just cutting costs in order to achieve a state of “balance”, yet current meta has been stale for months and hardly anybody is ever going to enjoy an e-sport that will bring such little variety. Imagine League of Legends with just 8 champions that do the same every game…

I don’t think this game PvP needs MORE survivability. Survivability = boring. Killing = fun.

Wildclaw.6073:

Also, people talk about the cantrips. But really, the only reason the cantrips and their related traits are any good is because they and their traits synergize well with the more powerful traits. Nerfing the cantrips and their traits wouldn’t change a thing except make the elementalist even more locked into the x/x/x/30/30 build.

Exactly what i wanted to say. Cantrips are the only thing that have decent synergy with traits and are strong themselves. Conjures: useless (also only crappy traits for them), same goes for Glyphs. Signets are kind of usefull (air is nice for finishing downed enemies ^^) but have a too long CD in my opionion and again no usefull traits that buff them.

Also nerfing is never the way to go, since nerfs to cantrips would make GC-builds even weaker (like Wildclaw and many other mentioned before this would push us into the bunker-specc even more). Buff Fire, Air and Earth-traitlines, maybe put some decent survivability-traits in there so you don’t have to specc into water to survive. At the moment you either specc into water/arcane and use cantrips (regardless of which amulett you use) and try to lame your opponents to death … or you die without achieving anything. At least make our damage-skills more reliable … please. I for myself play ele and I’m tired of this bunker-build, but it’s the only competetive build out there, and seriously I’ve tried many other builds.

Also i like the idea of reducing the base-CD of attunenment-swaping and nerfing the CD-reduction from arcana. This wouldn’t force us to go 30P into arcana (and therefore not everyone would use evasive arcana)

This thread is lol-worthy.

The answer to “fixing” the lowest armor/vitality class is to nerf it because people learned how to play evasively through cantrips? This game doesn’t have global CC cooldowns, so giving people CC breakers and having them utilize them is a given. If other classes don’t have several VIABLE ones, then maybe you should instead look at that. IE: Warriors.

Amen to those who see the need to BUFF other classes rather than nerf a working class. Some of the suggestions look like they will have extremely negative impacts to the entire class (perhaps even other classes!).

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

I think other classes don’t need a buff. I think other traitlines than water/arcana from the elementalist need buffs, so we could see some other setups in traitlines as the usual 0/0/10/30/30 or 0/10/0/30/30.

The other traitlines have been nerfed before launch..because people were crying on how good was the dmg on eles…but know you people are crying on how good ele is at surviving so you ask to buff back the dmg trait lines.
I see that the crying go always both directions….

I’m not trying to suggest with my post that elementalists should be nerfed and have any viability removed. I’m saying to tone down the cantrips and regen available and offer more build diversity for elementalists.
In regards to the dodge vigor/energy sigils it’s the fact this class has the damage mitigation of these dodge rolls combined with sustain and a wide array of boons.
The feedback I want from this thread is peoples constructive suggestions on how to change the elementalist making other builds viable while also keeping this viable, just toning the effectiveness of the build itself down because I do love the function of a support class in this game, and the elementalist has the tools do to that very well.

kostbabis.8791:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Armor of Earth isn’t OP itself. It’s the traits that buff it insanely (Vigor,Regen,Condi-Remove, cd-reduction). Compare it to Guardians “Stand your Ground”: 24 cd for 6 sec retaliation and stability, plus 2 condi-remove, which turn into boons.

its not op even with the boons from cantrips traits..i hink you miss the point with ele.
The problem imo at the moment is simple.Pick whatever you want to do.
Damage,support,mix
Try and find the best trait lines and you ll end up with arcana and water.Water not only provides survivability which an ele needs but also provides damage which is ..almost comparable in what you get to go 10=20 trait points in fire air instead. :O
Arcana is just a constant for any ele build..simply put.. every 5skill set of each attunement alone is weak compared to other classes weapons.16 sec attunement switch means that you spent an awfull time stuck with 1 set plus you lose a huge uptime of boons that a 13-17k ele seriously needs.Be it regen or protection it simply doesnt make sence to make an ele build without them..
If they nerf the water,arcana traits at this point it will just make ele a chore to play.
Caue after all there would be still absolutely no point picking any other traitline.

If these anomaly in the trait lines dissapear then you would see the problem fixing its self.For example buffing fire and reducing damage from water line would make hybrid eles wanna lose survivability to achieve desirable dps and the bunker unable to kill anyone(far problem solved).And all that WITHOUT any nerf in defence and healing

I think they could start by increasing the cooldown of renewing stamina to10s.

xehn.3420:

I think they could start by increasing the cooldown of renewing stamina to10s.

Renewing stamina has already been nerfed and it’s not the real problem. Most of the vigor comes from cantrips since a bunker plays with <8% crit chance.

Also, nerf renewing stamina and eles will pick final shielding instead. Doesnt change much.

Rerroll.9083:

xehn.3420:

I think they could start by increasing the cooldown of renewing stamina to10s.

Renewing stamina has already been nerfed and it’s not the real problem. Most of the vigor comes from cantrips since a bunker plays with <8% crit chance.

Also, nerf renewing stamina and eles will pick final shielding instead. Doesnt change much.

But they can’t maintain perma vigor with only traited cantrips ?

xehn.3420:

Rerroll.9083:

xehn.3420:

I think they could start by increasing the cooldown of renewing stamina to10s.

Renewing stamina has already been nerfed and it’s not the real problem. Most of the vigor comes from cantrips since a bunker plays with <8% crit chance.

Also, nerf renewing stamina and eles will pick final shielding instead. Doesnt change much.

But they can’t maintain perma vigor with only traited cantrips ?

They can’t maintain perma either if you nerf cantrips trait. If you nerf renewing stamina you also hurt dps builds.

Hurting dps builds —> less build variety —> more cantrip eles

Oblivion.8307:

I’m not trying to suggest with my post that elementalists should be nerfed and have any viability removed. I’m saying to tone down the cantrips and regen available and offer more build diversity for elementalists.
In regards to the dodge vigor/energy sigils it’s the fact this class has the damage mitigation of these dodge rolls combined with sustain and a wide array of boons.
The feedback I want from this thread is peoples constructive suggestions on how to change the elementalist making other builds viable while also keeping this viable, just toning the effectiveness of the build itself down because I do love the function of a support class in this game, and the elementalist has the tools do to that very well.

You allrdy served yourself. Reduce the duration of boons given through cantrips and attunement switch. It’s the only thing which wouldn’t destroy this build. In the meantime the traits from fire/air should be reworked into something that is usefull (by this I mean not buff it, but make it something an ele can profit from)

There are nice ideas in this thread, too bad arenanet will just reduce % healing of X skill.

I have to say, I kinda love how all those traits synergise together, and rather than see this build nerfed to the ground I would rather see other classes (and other elementalist trait lines) get similar kinds of synergy in their traits. Most classes just have boring old “reduce X-type skills cooldown by 20%” for half their major traits, which is just lazy design!

I’ve always said that the cantrip elementalist can be fixed by reducing the vigour every one of those traits gives them by 20%. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it adds up, and it’ll significantly reduce the amount at which they can spam evasive arcana.