Guild Wars 2

The build needs a nerf, my main is an ele, who happens to play a much weaker scepter/dagger simply because d/d bunker feels cheesy and for mostly aesthetic reasons as well. So let’s get that “you’re biased against eles” crap out of the way.

I know d/d ele will get nerfed, but I would like to point out that necessarily it is not the weaponset or the spec that needs nerfing (besides excessive condition removal from water traits).

1) Boons are too strong. Stability and protection in particular; when you put stability aoe like the guardian can on extremely high damage dealing classes like the warrior or thief or mesmer, this is basically extreme unavoidable damage. The stability durations are too long and it should not be something you can hand out in AoE. Same goes for Protection, which my ele and other guardians can easily provide for teammates at too high a rate.

Put time warp and aoe stability together, and it’s outright ridiculous.

2)Boons are too accessible and only countered steadily by a necro and to a lesser extent a mesmer. Corrupt Boon and mesmer shatter boon removal cannot compete either with the rate at which guardians and eles renew boons by the bunch.

3)Boon duration stacking runes synergize too well with boon duration traitlines like Arcana

The build you see is the culmination of really poor innate ele survivability. Any builds that don’t heavily invest in Water traits or arcana will be 2/3-shot in the current state of burst by the very fact that the ele starts at 13k hp without heavy investment in defensive traits and gear, and our stun breakers are all in rather high cooldowns, some nearly double of my mesmer’s stunbreaker cooldowns. An ele’s burst delivery, unlike mesmer or warrior or thief is delivered piecemiel via chaining highly telegraphed skills, whereas something like blurred frenzy>shatter or steal>cnd/backstab, frenzy>100b is so much more immediate and cannot be stalled. Simply put, a burst specced ele cannot exist in a meta where other classes can deliver the burst more reliably and shut down the ele by virtue of higher healthpool/defensive utility that can be used offensively on shorter cooldowns (the only defensive utility that can be used offensively as far as I see on the ele is Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth, both of which have >75 sec cd’s, versus Blurred Frenzy and Stealth bursting’s much lesser cooldowns).

You will simply not see any d/d or scepter builds that don’t have points in water or arcana, simply because eles need to exploit the OP state of boons like protection and stability to have any chance at staying active among enemy warriors and thieves and mesmers. Unlike a warrior (or thief or mesmer with high avoidance skills that can be used offensively duch as stealth detargeting or immunities), an ele cannot spec for berserker or power/prec builds. Condition builds are weak in the game unless you can spread aoe conditions ala Epidemic for pressure — condition builds will never compete single target with burst builds’ sustained damage in the current state of the game.

So, before you consider touching actual weaponskills or utilities, you might look to removing boon duration runes or making the rune bonus effects non-stacking (so you can’t use 2 sup water and 2 sup monk and 2 major water in wvw and to a lesser extent something similar in spvp), and touching the defensive boons like protection and stability in how accessible they are to the guardian and elementalist.

You may want to do something like making boon duration traitlines not stack with gear, because the fact is that bunker builds are abusing these features, and guardians/ele the most since they have such ample access to boons that completely put them above the other classes in staying power while losing not so much offense because might stacking is so effective in the same build.

P.S. Find me an ele who isn’t using Mist Form. Not only because you can channel abilities through it, but simpyl because it is the only real defensive ability that buys you time to recover and bide someone’s burst sequence in a way the other stunbreakers cannot. Perhaps you should consider making Arcane Shield another stunbreaker to compete with Mist Form. And once you nerf boon durations and stacking on ele bunkers, look at their base health and stunbreaker cooldowns.

P.S.S. A way to fix mist form to not be so dominant is to shorten the cooldown to 30 seconds but make the mist only last 2 seconds. You should also halve the cooldown of Arcane Shield without any nerfs to it (it never warranted such a high cd), and for Armor of Earth you could bring the cooldown to 35-40 seconds and lessen the duration of stability.

D/d is not op.
Well is op in the current meta because d/d is the counter to glass thief and shatter mesmer. Almost all team run thief and mesmer so… btw its more op s/d
And i agree about protection. 33% its too strong. 25% would be better

Excellent post. In particular, you did well to point out the history of how eles have been cornered into this, admittedly overpowered, build.

LiuK.5741:

D/d is not op.
Well is op in the current meta because d/d is the counter to glass thief and shatter mesmer. Almost all team run thief and mesmer so… btw its more op s/d
And i agree about protection. 33% its too strong. 25% would be better

D/D is op, like most bunkers are OP atm. They can still be good offensively while becoming unkillable without a necro around to convert boons at the right time or 2 high DPS players focusing a bunker.

Any bunker is a counter to thieves/shatter mesmer, not just d/d. It’s why you see them as a necessity, because otherwise games would just be about who got in the first few strikes and CC and killed the other players in 4 seconds flat with the current damage in the game.

You don’t see any balanced builds in the game for the very reason that balanced stats are not enough to survive glass cannon builds and cannot kill bunkers. So right now the game is very polarized.

Zenith.7301:

LiuK.5741:

D/d is not op.
Well is op in the current meta because d/d is the counter to glass thief and shatter mesmer. Almost all team run thief and mesmer so… btw its more op s/d
And i agree about protection. 33% its too strong. 25% would be better

D/D is op, like most bunkers are OP atm. They can still be good offensively while becoming unkillable without a necro around to convert boons at the right time or 2 high DPS players focusing a bunker.

Any bunker is a counter to thieves/shatter mesmer, not just d/d. It’s why you see them as a necessity, because otherwise games would just be about who got in the first few strikes and CC and killed the other players in 4 seconds flat with the current damage in the game.

You don’t see any balanced builds in the game for the very reason that balanced stats are not enough to survive glass cannon builds and cannot kill bunkers. So right now the game is very polarized.

D/d ele is not a bunker. s/d ele and shout guardian are bunker. In a team fight a guardian do 0 damage to a thief while a d/d ele can chase the thief . S/d thief need 1/2 mins to kill a shatter mesmer and in a teamfight he do almost 0 damage.

I like where this post is going. A little while back, I was considering D/D Eles, and I personally came to the conclusion that Boons, especially Protection, seem to be causing more problems than interesting gameplay.

Consider the extreme world where boons simply don’t exist. In my estimation, survivability becomes more about skill usage (whether some skills have evasion frames, or parry/block incoming attacks, etc.) and dodge timings. In this world, health and armor must be balanced around defensive timing/ability use, so the learning curve can be made as unforgiving or forgiving as desired (how much damage a class can soak through mistakes).

Now add a boon like Protection. 33% reduced damage for X seconds. If you give a class Protection, you have to balance for it. If a class can naturally live as long as another with regular skill usage, but now the class can also reduce incoming damage by 33% for a period of time, then you have extra survivability that throws the game out of balance. To compensate, the class must be squishier without protection such that protection raises survivability enough to be an investment worth taking, but not too much/little such that it’s either not enough to keep the class alive ever, or it makes the class unkillable.

It’s almost like boons entered into an arms race. Protection was set at 33%, so to compensate, Frenzy has to be 100% inc attack speed for classes that can’t strip boons so they can do enough burst damage to compensate for protection. Or something.

Either way, I agree that the Boons themselves are creating extremes that smoke-and-mirrors the blame onto the wrong source. Of course, if we have to discuss within the strict bounds of these extreme boons never changing, then we’d have to change the discussion a bit. For example, D/D Ele Protection up-time should be decreased somehow, but Ele survivability in general should be increased. That way, the D/D spec is still tankier, but no longer mandatory for survivability.

It’s a tricky question, but I do think often people overlook something like Boons when they very much deserve attention.

Zenith.7301:

The build needs a nerf, my main is an ele, who happens to play a much weaker scepter/dagger simply because d/d bunker feels cheesy and for mostly aesthetic reasons as well. So let’s get that “you’re biased against eles” crap out of the way.

I know d/d ele will get nerfed, but I would like to point out that necessarily it is not the weaponset or the spec that needs nerfing (besides excessive condition removal from water traits).

1) Boons are too strong. Stability and protection in particular; when you put stability aoe like the guardian can on extremely high damage dealing classes like the warrior or thief or mesmer, this is basically extreme unavoidable damage. The stability durations are too long and it should not be something you can hand out in AoE. Same goes for Protection, which my ele and other guardians can easily provide for teammates at too high a rate.

Put time warp and aoe stability together, and it’s outright ridiculous.

2)Boons are too accessible and only countered steadily by a necro and to a lesser extent a mesmer. Corrupt Boon and mesmer shatter boon removal cannot compete either with the rate at which guardians and eles renew boons by the bunch.

3)Boon duration stacking runes synergize too well with boon duration traitlines like Arcana

The build you see is the culmination of really poor innate ele survivability. Any builds that don’t heavily invest in Water traits or arcana will be 2/3-shot in the current state of burst by the very fact that the ele starts at 13k hp without heavy investment in defensive traits and gear, and our stun breakers are all in rather high cooldowns, some nearly double of my mesmer’s stunbreaker cooldowns. An ele’s burst delivery, unlike mesmer or warrior or thief is delivered piecemiel via chaining highly telegraphed skills, whereas something like blurred frenzy>shatter or steal>cnd/backstab, frenzy>100b is so much more immediate and cannot be stalled. Simply put, a burst specced ele cannot exist in a meta where other classes can deliver the burst more reliably and shut down the ele by virtue of higher healthpool/defensive utility that can be used offensively on shorter cooldowns (the only defensive utility that can be used offensively as far as I see on the ele is Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth, both of which have >75 sec cd’s, versus Blurred Frenzy and Stealth bursting’s much lesser cooldowns).

You will simply not see any d/d or scepter builds that don’t have points in water or arcana, simply because eles need to exploit the OP state of boons like protection and stability to have any chance at staying active among enemy warriors and thieves and mesmers. Unlike a warrior (or thief or mesmer with high avoidance skills that can be used offensively duch as stealth detargeting or immunities), an ele cannot spec for berserker or power/prec builds. Condition builds are weak in the game unless you can spread aoe conditions ala Epidemic for pressure — condition builds will never compete single target with burst builds’ sustained damage in the current state of the game.

So, before you consider touching actual weaponskills or utilities, you might look to removing boon duration runes or making the rune bonus effects non-stacking (so you can’t use 2 sup water and 2 sup monk and 2 major water in wvw and to a lesser extent something similar in spvp), and touching the defensive boons like protection and stability in how accessible they are to the guardian and elementalist.

You may want to do something like making boon duration traitlines not stack with gear, because the fact is that bunker builds are abusing these features, and guardians/ele the most since they have such ample access to boons that completely put them above the other classes in staying power while losing not so much offense because might stacking is so effective in the same build.

P.S. Find me an ele who isn’t using Mist Form. Not only because you can channel abilities through it, but simpyl because it is the only real defensive ability that buys you time to recover and bide someone’s burst sequence in a way the other stunbreakers cannot. Perhaps you should consider making Arcane Shield another stunbreaker to compete with Mist Form. And once you nerf boon durations and stacking on ele bunkers, look at their base health and stunbreaker cooldowns.

P.S.S. A way to fix mist form to not be so dominant is to shorten the cooldown to 30 seconds but make the mist only last 2 seconds. You should also halve the cooldown of Arcane Shield without any nerfs to it (it never warranted such a high cd), and for Armor of Earth you could bring the cooldown to 35-40 seconds and lessen the duration of stability.

This is a really good post.

In my opinion, an interesting nerf could be targetted to Soothing Disruption trait. Giving regeneration and vigor to the strongest defensive skills of an elementalist is solid, but isn’t 9 seconds a bit too much? I feel like that, if this duration was decreased to 6 second, it would still be a very relevant trait, especially considering the boon duration you can stack. 6 seconds (that can go as high as, what, 9-10s?) feels strong enough for me, for an adept trait.

Another thing is certainly the boon duration stacking from runes. Everyone is stacking these, which shows how strong they are. Couldn’t they require 3 or 4 of the same rune instead of only 2? This would prevent boon stacking or limit it to only 2 runes.

Finally, boon-removal should become more viable across several classes. One of the big problems with boons, for now, is that they’re not as easy to counter as conditions, while being equally strong.

I believe those three changes would be the best to tone down a D/D bunker ele, without ruining it in pvp, and without having any meaningful negative consequences outside of pve.

Very well written indeed.

I think a Major part of why Bunker-Ele’s are so strong atm., probably even too strong, is because the Heal-Spells of the Ele still scale too well with Healing Power and the DPS-output is a bit high for a class with such high sustain.

I really don’t see anything wrong with S/D or Staff- Eles that use Zerker or Valk-Amu and the only thing I really dislike about D/D-Eles, even the ones that don’t use the Cleric-Amu, is the Perma-Fury on themselves and quite a bit of AoE-Fury for the whole team.

I think one way of tackling this Problem is by toning down the scaling of Healing Power with the Ele’s Spells and/or make the Cleric-Amu Specs more Teamfight-oriented rather than just being tanky.

What I mean with that is: Make the Ele easier to kill on Clerics (weaken the Heal on himself by scaling down Healing Powers effects on the Skills) but make the AoE Heals like Cleansing Wave, dodge-Heal on Water etc. a bit better (bigger in Radius for example), so he’d feel a bit more like a Supporter and still had good healing, but wasn’t just an extremely annoying tank.

Same could work for the Boons on the Ele: Make them aim more at Teamsupport rather than Survival for the Ele. Make it so the Ele doesn’t just pop Protection when he’s getting targeted, but that the Ele is more inclined to look at his Teammates and try to give them Protection.

TL:DR Make Ele Heal/Prot on himself weaker, but try to make his Heal-Prot for Teammates better (for example reduce Healing by scaling down Healing Powers effects on his Skills, but make the AoE on the Heals better and sth. similar for his boons.)

I can see suggestions to reduce the ele survivability…but what about the dmg potential?

There is no larger sustained dmg if you die faster than before, for smaller return on healing I would expect a larger return on offense, this is called balance.
To remove something but give nothing in return, cannot be considered balance

If the base survival for ele/guardian would be incresed, you could remove the boon protection all together for what it count, but without doing that I see no reason for diminishing return on the boon, when you balance something, you balance things on both ends

we could also put spikes on some of their keys to discourage them from rolling their face all over their keyboard! >:-3

Great post, i wish to write like you ç_ç.

I don’t agree with your idea to buff arcane shield because i’m afraid that mist form plus an other strong defence like it would be too tank.

I think the elementalist need a buff for the chance to do some damage. But it need a nerf on this build because it tank like a guardian but with the half of equip in defence. He can use valkirye, sigil of bloodlust and sigil of battle that mean a lot of damage.

A good solution would be to swap Zephyr’s boon with Airmancer alacriry or air training, here so people now can’t go 0/10/10/30/30 anylonger.

But to go an nerf healing power ( again?) when I run with full zerk set in PvP ( Yeah I do more than great, I hold my own again r40 of other professions because I can deal great dmg, s/d is scary as hell, arc lightning + air training + zerk…FTW!)

You can’t simply go and nerf something used by every other build , even those outsied the bunker spectrum, I don’t think that having a skill which heals for 1.4k HP every 40s is OP, especially because I go around with base toughness( 916) on the lowest armour profession.

Laxuar.3504:

Great post, i wish to write like you ç_ç.

I don’t agree with your idea to buff arcane shield because i’m afraid that mist form plus an other strong defence like it would be too tank.

I think the elementalist need a buff for the chance to do some damage. But it need a nerf on this build because it tank like a guardian but with the half of equip in defence. He can use valkirye, sigil of bloodlust and sigil of battle that mean a lot of damage.

But I nerfed mist form already in my suggestion. At 2 secs immunity and then 3 attacks blocked. That’s not significantly better to shield stance and endure pain, on a class with far less HP and even less armor.

And you can disable mist form from channeling a stomp while in the form, just like disabling stealth stomping. Both are deeply disliked mechanics because stomping should have a risk investment, and shadow refuge/mist form/rampant stability availability remove those risk investments that SHOULD exist.

You have to take the changes in view with the nerf to boons and runes that would happen, because the ele will become decidedly squishier, and under my changes to mist form it would neither have the long stalling it used to have, so less bunkering ability. It would just allow for more build variety by giving him the tools to not die the moment he steps out of the door because he didn’t go bunker spec (and I encourage people to play a 13k hp class with 75 sec cd stunbreakers and 916 toughness against current teams with backstab thieves and mesmers; it’s not fun).

Zenith.7301:

Laxuar.3504:

Great post, i wish to write like you ç_ç.

I don’t agree with your idea to buff arcane shield because i’m afraid that mist form plus an other strong defence like it would be too tank.

I think the elementalist need a buff for the chance to do some damage. But it need a nerf on this build because it tank like a guardian but with the half of equip in defence. He can use valkirye, sigil of bloodlust and sigil of battle that mean a lot of damage.

But I nerfed mist form already in my suggestion. At 2 secs immunity and then 3 attacks blocked. That’s not significantly better to shield stance and endure pain, on a class with far less HP and even less armor.

And you can disable mist form from channeling a stomp while in the form, just like disabling stealth stomping. Both are deeply disliked mechanics because stomping should have a risk investment, and shadow refuge/mist form/rampant stability availability remove those risk investments that SHOULD exist.

You have to take the changes in view with the nerf to boons and runes that would happen, because the ele will become decidedly squishier, and under my changes to mist form it would neither have the long stalling it used to have, so less bunkering ability. It would just allow for more build variety by giving him the tools to not die the moment he steps out of the door because he didn’t go bunker spec (and I encourage people to play a 13k hp class with 75 sec cd stunbreakers and 916 toughness against current teams with backstab thieves and mesmers; it’s not fun).

The risk is already included in the fact that you can get oneshotted by an incoming 100b of D/D thief.
By using mist form to stomp , you have actively used your only chance to stop a burst spike ( talking in a figurative way more or less), anyway you better be kitten sure that nobody will target you with a burst spike after having used mist form to stomp.

To use mist form for a stomp is a tactical choice and one which doesn’t always bring you benefits, you may well try to mist storm somebody who ress the instant you go mistform or a thief/mesmer teleporting and so on.

Furthermore I can negate the interrupt from some professions with a single blind, therefore this mistform nerf is nothing more then a nerf for the sake of nerf without actual balance decision behind it.

There is no need to nerf anything, by simply playing around with the location of the traits, you could destroy the “OP” build without brutalizing the rest
E.G
1)Give boon duration to earth line and condition dmg to arcane?to fire maybe?
2)swap zephyr’s boon with air training?

Here I have fixed this OP build without nerfing the hell out of other builds for the sake of it

P.S I play zerk with arcane shield/mistform, no soothing disruption or cantrip mastery or arcane mastery, and I do great

Isn’t zephyr’s boon bugged, and gives boons with higher duration with stun aura than with other auras? Priotizing this bug fix might also be an extra detail to take into account.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Isn’t zephyr’s boon bugged, and gives boons with higher duration with stun aura than with other auras? Priotizing this bug fix might also be an extra detail to take into account.

Is that a bug?

I’ve been waiting for a nerf to Elemental Attunement (Earth). Still hasn’t happened yet but I feel like its still coming. 5s + boon duration of protection seems a little strong. Especially since with 30 arcane your attunements are 9s cd and that protection is 6.5s.

Don’t forget to add thieves to that boon stripping list ^.^ and Ours is spammable.

I have no idea why so many people are saying some classes op oP OP… Just in my opinion, if you got your butt kicked by some others classes, that doesn’t mean that that class is op. I believe that Anet already did the best on balancing each classes’ ability. For the conclusion, I believe that if your PvP controlling skills has reached a good stage, you will not complain about which profession is OP anymore.

Tarcis Rhapsodos.

Anastasis.7258:

I have no idea why so many people are saying some classes op oP OP… Just in my opinion, if you got your butt kicked by some others classes, that doesn’t mean that that class is op. I believe that Anet already did the best on balancing each classes’ ability. For the conclusion, I believe that if your PvP controlling skills has reached a good stage, you will not complain about which profession is OP anymore.

Tarcis Rhapsodos.

This strawman is not useful at all. Keep these out of my thread; guru is a good place if you want to trash talk people.

The OP makes excellent points about the state of D/D ele at the moment.

The problem with D/D ele might not be with the ele itself, but really is because of the boons, protection is a major offender here.

33% might just be too high, and it’s a crutch pushing guardians and ele’s into over-bunkering state.

s/d is the superior bunker, it has 250 more tougness and a beter heal on water + 2blinds and a cond remowal with pheonix and also 900 range. D/D eles play with valkryie which i dont consider a bunker and have their counters such as trap rangers, cond engis some dps guard builds….
Can also be 1shoted by thief if ur out of mistform….

I think most ppl here dont even know the difrence between d/d and s/d as i see far more s/d in paids, op himself doesnt know the base HP for ele is 10,8k not 13k.

guza.6170:

s/d is the superior bunker, it has 250 more tougness and a beter heal on water + 2blinds and a cond remowal with pheonix and also 900 range. D/D eles play with valkryie which i dont consider a bunker and have their counters such as trap rangers, cond engis some dps guard builds….
Can also be 1shoted by thief if ur out of mistform….

I think most ppl here dont even know the difrence between d/d and s/d as i see far more s/d in paids, op himself doesnt know the base HP for ele is 10,8k not 13k.

That’s cause eles have 25 in water as a baseline, obviously :P

@TC:
Great post. I 100% agree with your points, even as a bunker ele. My main issues with protection, regeneration are that they’re not used reactively to counter but for upkeep. When you’re able to stack those boons so frequently that aspect of gameplay quickly goes from strategy to spam. Of course if they tone that down they’ll also need to address glassy burst builds as well, perhaps even AoE burst as a result.

the d/d ele puts me into a position to do exactly what i like and what was advertised about pvp and gw2. i can be in the mix for quite a time and fight epic battles. all i heard about gw2 and its pvp was about good long fair fights. i dont use mistform, my only escape is the zap which has to be placed carefully. every class has escape mechanisms as far as zap goes its a lil better then most leaps as far as range goes but thats it. the cantrips are needed to place important skills while staying alive and make them actualy hit. in addition i wouldn´t put enough pressure on nearly everything but absolute glasscannons without the mightstacks provided mostly by the cantrips.

i can switch to staff in certain situations which makes it a very nice build for pve/wvw.

its a good build and even more powerfull in wvw then in spvp. but my question is, is it realy wrong to be able to be able to counter 1 maybe 2 bursthiefs who drop dead after i was able to barley keep alive using most defense skills at the right time and spamming some aoe simply to stay alive? i think they should have thought about their survivalskills (in their makro maybe:D) and stats, instead of assuming that everthing just has to drop dead instantly.
another question would be if its realy better to let a capture point beeing aoed to death with no1 able to approach. i have a certain amount of conditionremoval which just happens to help the first 5 seks or so if there are some condition spammers. the problem is they have no plan b mostly. every class has multiple stunbreaks and condition removers but they hurt ur dps – too bad.

ele cantrip builts is one of the few selfsustaining solutions. its the pure essence of the philosphy of a nondedicated classes system imho. of course this should count for every class if the player whishes to choose so.

melee should be exactly as rewarding as it is for the d/d ele. and btw. we have position us for everyskill even aoe if we want a followup aura f.e.

i think thats a litle different from letting the system position u behind or at the enemy by simply pressing 1 button. this goes not only for thiefs.

i got the handle on 4 of the 8 classes by now and i can tell u playing mostly responsive in pvp(because i like it) can be quite frustrating whith other classes. i understand the concept of the advantage of first initiative but i dont think u can realy learn whats going on without beeing able to counter attacks and watch the enemy.

anyways hf.
im not scared about any nerfs because in the end i still got a slot free for a thief^^.