Guild Wars 2

Playing through ranked games this season more than any other I have noticed how it has truly become a requirement to have an ele on your team in order to win games.

For me this season has become truly frustrating as most games the outcome can be determined incredibly quickly at the onset depending on team composition – who has an ele, who got stuck with an ele running zerker staff/fa, which team has the dps that pairs well with ele to run mid.

The only thing I can compare this to is looking at the team comp last season and inwardly sighing at whichever team had a warrior.

if your team dont have an ele and enemies do, than play close/far and try to outrotate ele, easy as that

Playing against 1 ele is easy, playing against two is the hard part. A good team can do both. So losing to two eles just depends on how good your team is vs theirs.

Rotate faster and lock them down, simple as that.

Good. Playing an ele solo queueing makes me want to throw my monitor out the window.

It’s only as good as it’s team.

My thread on reversing the order of “Wash The Pain Away” to encourage more thoughtful usage(Soft Nerf)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Soft-nerf-to-tempest

Godmode class that everyone seems to be ok with in it’s immortal healer state for some reason
shrugs
Humans are weird…

Tempests aren’t god mode (they are strong though), and can be countered. If you’re trying to fight on 1 point with a tempest or 2 and the rest of their team, you’re doing it wrong. Out rotate, focus fire, think on your feet.
When the teams start getting multiple tempests or other bunkerish builds, it gets very annoying, and you do have to fight harder/smarter, but it’s still doable.

Any competent DPS can kill a clerics tempest in less than 10 seconds.
Is the healing overpowered? Yes.
Should healing be this strong in PvP? No.
Should the class be nerfed? Yes, if other things are nerfed(eng/ranger tankyness, aoe cc, aoe condition bombs, condi warriors bloated mace burst skill just to name a few).

truth is ele is forced to play support and nerfing the only build they can use will kill the class, shaving its skills potency is viable but not to the point of crippling the class. right now a warrior can put so much pressure to any ele, and if followed by a necro or other warrior and any players will surely kill the ele.

If a team has 2 eles you can easily out rotate them, the class doesn’t really stack that well. They have no personal DPS and kitten mobility, and it just takes a brain to deal with them. Also remember that eles totally depend on their team to do anything anymore, focus fire the enemy team and watch as the ele helplessly runs around. Alternatively you can lockdown and ele super easily and take them out in seconds. They are effective at team support and bunkering, but have a clear weakness and aren’t as op as some of the other specs running around right now.

It’s the only class that whole game revolves around atm.

It’s like…
Enemy/your team has ele = ele team wins 95% of time, even in legend tier.

No other class skews match balance so much, rotations dont matter cos ele will just sit in mid whole game and give his team free points by doing this, not even mentioning that conquest is not the only mode we have. In stronghold ele team vs no ele team is 100% victory to ele team.

No class should be so kitten important that it’s nearly impossible to win without it, it just clearly shows how imbalanced eles are at the moment.

And honestly stop protecting eles imbalanced nature, everyone and their mother who plays pvp knows that they are an imbalanced class.

I feel there’s a lot of hyperbole here.

Yes, eles are great team fighters. But they can be killed, and they can’t save everyone. I think necros are a good counter to eles, because they can corrupt boons and keep poison pressure.

And you can win without an ele, even if the other team has them. I do find you usually need someone that can “tank,” but other classes, like druid, can do it.

Yesterday I fought a team with two eles. We had none, but we did have two necros and a druid. We won handedly. Everyone was in Ruby, so they at least knew how to pvp.

And if you truly think you can’t win without an ele, then you can switch to one. I frequently switch classes in solo queue to balance our composition.

People focus too much on the current buiod, when they should look at why it works.

When you remove a boon, there’s nothing preventing it from being reapplied. And so when two elementalists get together, they can just mindlessly spam stuff around and keep lots of boons and effects up.

One way to prevent the problem without having to worry it ever happening again is changing how removals work.

When removing a boon, there should be a small window of time during which the boon can’t be reapplied right away.

Remember how control conditions turn gray when placed on an enemy with a defiance bar? That same graphic could be used for this. Remove Protection, Protection goes gray for 2 seconds instead disappearing, during that time protection can’t be re-applied and the grayed Protection has no effect. Protection spam no longer works to keep it constaly up.

Something similar could be done with condition removal.

Stun breakers should also give immunity to further stun for half a second, regardless of any stability the creature may have, to discourage control spam from being as effective as strategic use of it and make stun breakers actually useful against it.

With those 3 changes, this kind of spam won’t ever be as effective. And builds will naturally stay away from wasting parts of their build in that kind of tactic, and aim more towards skill over passive stack & spam.

Another way to punish boon spam could be giving one of the remaining conditions with no additional conditional effect the effect of spreading to the boon giver. For example, burning could have a bit less base damage, but get this bonus. So if you place boons on a burning ally, you get burning too. You give yourself boons while burning, you burn a bit longer.

Elementalists do have some amazing support, maybe a bit too much. In fairness, however, right now they really don’t have much of anything else- as least without running a non-viable gimmick. I’d suggest toning down their group support just a little bit, but at the same time buffing their ability to run a more aggressive setup so we don’t see them completely wiped from the game mode.

Its hard to nerf group support in pvp without nerfing it in wvw too. I think the best way to do it would nerf the range of the last heal pulse for wash the pain away to 360 radius. Remove the “frost aura is applied to allies” affect from elemental bastion and have it only applied to yourself.

It slightly reduces potential team heals but keeps the ele’s tankiness the same.

dragonkain.3984:

It’s the only class that whole game revolves around atm.

It’s like…
Enemy/your team has ele = ele team wins 95% of time, even in legend tier.

No other class skews match balance so much, rotations dont matter cos ele will just sit in mid whole game and give his team free points by doing this, not even mentioning that conquest is not the only mode we have. In stronghold ele team vs no ele team is 100% victory to ele team.

No class should be so kitten important that it’s nearly impossible to win without it, it just clearly shows how imbalanced eles are at the moment.

And honestly stop protecting eles imbalanced nature, everyone and their mother who plays pvp knows that they are an imbalanced class.

This isn’t how it works at all. You need 4 competent teammates for the ele to matter.

Ele doesn’t help you win, it just helps you lose slower.

Try to play vs 2 scrappers + ele = gl getting any caps.

Yeah the game is too slow paced with too much healing and too much sustain on bruisers.

Cynz.9437:

Try to play vs 2 scrappers + ele = gl getting any caps.

Actually had a match against 1 Tempest, 3 Scrappers and a DD yesterday in ruby, we didn’t have our own tempest, but we won, was a tough fight initially, but in time we figured out our rotation for the most part and got through.

I can’t believe it’s taken so long for this thread to be made even. By far a team with an ele has a huuuuge advantage over a team with no ele. Druid and Scrapper are not even comparable as the only support class on the team.

A team with an ele will allow its team to make mistakes and still win the mid fight comfortably by healing through the initial bursts. The ele itself is too tanky and most of the time not the best target to focus because of this. After the team with the ele wins the mid fight, they effectively control the map for the rest of the game and the other team has to work 10 X harder to pull off a win by spending the entire game trying to essentially avoid the ele.

My last 15 games I’ve been up against a team with an ele, or when they don’t have one someone quickly switches to one because they know how op they are. I try to convince someone on my team who knows how to play tempest to also switch to an ele but most of the time they don’t want to or don’t understand team compositions. They run into the mid and inevitably lose the mid fight because ele > no ele then we spend the rest of the game playing sides and running around like mad men. If we out play them by a lot maybe we’ll pick up a win.

I had 2 games in a row with the same 10 players on the same team. First game they have an ele, we don’t, we come just short of pulling the upset off 500-470 even though we outplayed them, they won because they controlled mid with the ele. The next game, someone on my team finally listens to me and switches to an ele and we crush them 500-119. This is the difference an ele makes right now.

Try solo queueing as an ele and tell me how much of an impact you have on winning games.

Shiyo.3578:

Try solo queueing as an ele and tell me how much of an impact you have on winning games.

Try to solo as thief and tell me how much an impact you are having :P

See, we all can do it xD

On more serious note, wtb no class stacking in matches. Would particularly solve issue with double eles, scrappers etc.

I still don’t get why people are complaining about double ele….like just take sides and gg, not that hard :I
Not to say class stacking is okay, I hate it and would love for a no stacking rule, but double ele isn’t the problem lol

Cynz.9437:

Shiyo.3578:

Try solo queueing as an ele and tell me how much of an impact you have on winning games.

Try to solo as thief and tell me how much an impact you are having :P

See, we all can do it xD

A lot, actually. Much more than a support that can’t do ANYTHING by itself besides stay alive. Zero offensive pressure.

I swap to my thief when I’m solo queueing because it helps win games, I think thief is the best solo queue class for “carrying”.

In reality though nothing you pick is going to matter because it’s 5v5 and all that matters is your teammates. Ele is still by far the worst possible pick for trying to “carry” games with bad teammates, though. It’s very frustrating and not fun.

Shiyo.3578:

Cynz.9437:

Shiyo.3578:

Try solo queueing as an ele and tell me how much of an impact you have on winning games.

Try to solo as thief and tell me how much an impact you are having :P

See, we all can do it xD

A lot, actually. Much more than a support that can’t do ANYTHING by itself besides stay alive. Zero offensive pressure.

I swap to my thief when I’m solo queueing because it helps win games, I think thief is the best solo queue class for “carrying”.

In reality though nothing you pick is going to matter because it’s 5v5 and all that matters is your teammates. Ele is still by far the worst possible pick for trying to “carry” games with bad teammates, though. It’s very frustrating and not fun.

How is the ability to effectively lock down a point so that the enemy team is going to need multiple players to get you off it and your team technically only has to cap and hold one more point bad for carrying? Of course, real scenarios aren’t even close to being as simple as that, but ele is really good for carrying imo.

Also, Ele has always been anet’s child imo

The ele is an expert at nearly all and a master of healing. It is simply the best class in the game due to its incredible team support and the AoE DPS fields have some strong bite for zoning.

Asherah.7651:

I still don’t get why people are complaining about double ele….like just take sides and gg, not that hard :I
Not to say class stacking is okay, I hate it and would love for a no stacking rule, but double ele isn’t the problem lol

double ele mean losing the game for me, having 2 ele in 1 team is useless, as someone who plays ele i switch the moment i see we have an ele already.

Go play ele if you think it’s so overpowered and good at carrying games.

It’s not. Trust me. I play both thief and ele, games are MASSIVELY easier to win when I solo queue on thief.

Having a 2nd ele is also generally instant loss.

The class is incredibly strong and good, but only with GOOD teammates. It’s only as good as it’s teammates. It’s overpowered with good teammates, useless without them.

Ok, please take a moment, all of you, just a step back, to see the whole picture, looking at every profession in the game and hopefully realizing the following:

(this applies only for spvp)

• The elementalist has the lowest healthpool and a shared lowest defensive stats in the game.
• Because of the above, we’re NEVER encouraged to go full to average dps when taking on a compentent team, for if we do so, as an average, equally competent player, we get farmed on. why? It’s because
  * We do NOT have ANY access to stealth/evades, like the thief.
  * We do NOT have the kiting ability of a mesmer (or a thief),
  * we do NOT have profession mechanics that enable us to fight IN the heat of the battle, dealing damage and taking hits for the team, like the necro.
  * we do NOT have sustain from just pure, base stats like the warrior.
  * we do NOT have blocks for days like the guardian.
  * And last, but CERTAINLY NOT least we do NOT have anough utility to keep us alive like the current, extremely strong engineer. (No, i didn’t forget the ranger and the revenant, i just don’t know them well anough to give arguments)

• These characteristics summed up for these professions all have one thing in common:
  They enable these professions to be VERY viable when running, maximum damage (for example: full berzerker) during matches with competent (team- and/or enemy-) players (while being very competent yourself ofcourse, but it’s very possible.

• in sPvP I’ve seen (damage-/burst-) mesmers take on 3v1’s against competent players and still win, i’ve seen engineers who seem nearly impossible to kill on a outnumbered 2v1 while still dealing crazy damage.
  We, the elementalists, have never had that mutch sustain while still beïng able to win an outnumbered fight against competent players.

• A melee(/close range) elementalist won’t survive one bit if he/she doesn’t sufficiently spec for survival, with al the cleaves going on. A staff elementalist could MAYBE still be lucky with an imcompetent enemy team with no thief and who don’t focus her/him, while she’s freecasting. Our offensive traitlines just don’t have anough defensive traits (especially the fire triat line; a disaster in terms of defensive traits)
  If we could have more trait-, stats- and/or utility- viability while going full berzerk, we would be gods, our damage output is allready a bit crazy (dropping down meteor shower on a team fight with maxed out damage is the most satisfying thing ever :P) we’re therefor punished for it, hence the lowest base stat of the game.

• Now, the reason i mentioned all this is the following: in order to make up for the lack of sustain when not specced for sustain, we specc maximally for sustain. Most of the elementalist sub-community are basically forced to follow this path for two reasons:
  #The tempest elite specialization is waaaay more defense than offence.
  #The defensive path of choice has proven to be waaay more effective than “non-sustainable builds”.

• To conclude:
  It just happens to be that most of our sustain is AoE or share-able. And that our most effective way of sustain just also happens to be our most effective way of support.
  So, while i do believe that every profession should have it’s unique strength and weaknesses, I don’t mind you wanting a nerf for our supportive abilities. But there’s a price to be paid by the “nerfer”: So either you stay OUT of our selfsustain AND ONLY nerf our outgoing support/heal/aura’s, OR you suggest a new way for the elementalist to be viable.
  If neither conditions are respected, then brace yourselves for a dying profession.

Well if you have a bunker ele or healer druid it helps to have a corruption-spec necromancer to corrupt all of their boons. Between that and focusing/cc’ing it shouldn’t be too bad.

The biggest annoyance for me this season has been warriors and scrappers. Scrappers with constant stuns and moas and condi cleanse, and warriors with their ability to stunlock you and pile on 50 conditions in 3 seconds while hardly taking any damage.

All in all I think this season started off a bit better than last. Necromancers are still really strong so I recommend anyone struggling with ranked go for the meta corrupt build. It’s really nice being able to negate some of those auras and extra healing/protection.

Shiyo.3578:

Cynz.9437:

Shiyo.3578:

Try solo queueing as an ele and tell me how much of an impact you have on winning games.

Try to solo as thief and tell me how much an impact you are having :P

See, we all can do it xD

A lot, actually. Much more than a support that can’t do ANYTHING by itself besides stay alive. Zero offensive pressure.

I swap to my thief when I’m solo queueing because it helps win games, I think thief is the best solo queue class for “carrying”.

In reality though nothing you pick is going to matter because it’s 5v5 and all that matters is your teammates. Ele is still by far the worst possible pick for trying to “carry” games with bad teammates, though. It’s very frustrating and not fun.

Best for carrying? Well hats off to you because you must be one hell of a thief.

At best we can attempt to out-rotate the other team, but even then there isn’t much carrying you can do if the rest of your team is accumulating more points in deaths for the other team than you can manage to make up for by capping/decapping.

I’d still say Mesmer is the best for carrying. That and necro. Dragonhunters can be good for cheesing the other team with trap spam but once they’re focused they’re kind of done for.

If you have a good team however then ele can certainly be a great carry, but that takes people doing enough damage and focusing while you keep them up and hopefully get them to protect you while you do it.

The only class left with some kind of condi cleanse is too powerful, please remove all condi counterplay so we can faceroll our warriors even more. Thanks.

cptaylor.2670:

Best for carrying? Well hats off to you because you must be one hell of a thief.

At best we can attempt to out-rotate the other team, but even then there isn’t much carrying you can do if the rest of your team is accumulating more points in deaths for the other team than you can manage to make up for by capping/decapping.

thief carrying works because it assumes your team isn’t just getting absolutely stomped in every engagement

most of the time, the optimal position for a thief to be in is when your team is slightly losing every single fight without your involvement, and your thiefy carrying pushes every fight into a win because you can just bounce between each of them and decide the engagement with your contribution

if your fights are so far behind that you can’t actually engage in time to turn them into 2v1s then it’s not that you’re a bad carry class (unless you’re really slow as a thief for some reason); your team is just so far underpar that you would have no opportunity to swing the match, even if you were the no.1 thief in the universe

Burn.5401:

The only class left with some kind of condi cleanse is too powerful, please remove all condi counterplay so we can faceroll our warriors even more. Thanks.

Still problems with burn wars? Woow, just wooooow.
Lets play a drinking game:
You take a sip for every random warrior complaint popping up even in non warrior discussions.

Alternatively: Take a sip for every condi warr killed by power warr, any type of scrapper (elexir gun and Hammer mandatory though, you know build diversity) boon corrupt nec, condi mes, power druid.

I still do not get why people have such problems to kill those petty condi meta lovers and do not even Start with: but dey hav souw mach invuln, littralllalaly 2 mins.

Thats just sad.

Silberfederling.9302:

Burn.5401:

The only class left with some kind of condi cleanse is too powerful, please remove all condi counterplay so we can faceroll our warriors even more. Thanks.

Still problems with burn wars? Woow, just wooooow.
Lets play a drinking game:
You take a sip for every random warrior complaint popping up even in non warrior discussions.

Alternatively: Take a sip for every condi warr killed by power warr, any type of scrapper (elexir gun and Hammer mandatory though, you know build diversity) boon corrupt nec, condi mes, power druid.

I still do not get why people have such problems to kill those petty condi meta lovers and do not even Start with: but dey hav souw mach invuln, littralllalaly 2 mins.

Thats just sad.

Becasuse you’re obviously a low MMR guy who’s never faced decent condi players without a decent ele. Might aswell drink yourself to death at this point.

Support/tanking is the only crap ele does. Leave those guys alone. I would be furious if I had no proper dps or condi option for pvp. Oh wait! I was and rolled another profession. Ele is only strong if the team has brains. Otherwise, they are just slow cooked birds.

Cynz.9437:

Try to play vs 2 scrappers + ele = gl getting any caps.

It’s the scrappers that are bigger problem in that setup, you know.

Eles have no other viable role than to be team support/healbots. Trust me, I’d love to play a DPS spec on my Ele but it’s just not viable.

Plus, they’re easy enough to focus-fire and take out.

Yep, playing against ele’s just requires changing up your game a bit, if you can’t adapt your playstyle even that much…. I don’t know what to say. Multiple tempest? Outrotate em, stop trying to slam your face on em at mid constantly.

Ive had my fair share of matches against a team with tempest, and ours without, and we win easily enough, even in stronghold (though honestly, Id much rather have a tempest support on our team as well here lol)

MrJefferson.1704:

Ok, please take a moment, all of you, just a step back, to see the whole picture, looking at every profession in the game and hopefully realizing the following:

(this applies only for spvp)

• The elementalist has the lowest healthpool and a shared lowest defensive stats in the game.
• Because of the above, we’re NEVER encouraged to go full to average dps when taking on a compentent team, for if we do so, as an average, equally competent player, we get farmed on. why? It’s because
  * We do NOT have ANY access to stealth/evades, like the thief.
  * We do NOT have the kiting ability of a mesmer (or a thief),
  * we do NOT have profession mechanics that enable us to fight IN the heat of the battle, dealing damage and taking hits for the team, like the necro.
  * we do NOT have sustain from just pure, base stats like the warrior.
  * we do NOT have blocks for days like the guardian.
  * And last, but CERTAINLY NOT least we do NOT have anough utility to keep us alive like the current, extremely strong engineer. (No, i didn’t forget the ranger and the revenant, i just don’t know them well anough to give arguments)

For a second there i thought you was describing GUARDIANS. Because the only thing they have is blocks vs your Ele mega sustain.

Everything else you wrote applies to Guardians too, except they are so bad in other ways they are not mandatory in every pro league team like Eles.

Spartacus.3192:

For a second there i thought you was describing GUARDIANS. Because the only thing they have is blocks vs your Ele mega sustain.

Except they have those blocks. And if they were specced as defensively as eles are, they’d have the sustain. And they don’t have to sacrifice all that sustain to have damage. And they definitely don’t have the weakest armor type – quite the opposite.

So, in short, not like eles at all.

Astralporing.1957:

Spartacus.3192:

For a second there i thought you was describing GUARDIANS. Because the only thing they have is blocks vs your Ele mega sustain.

Except they have those blocks. And if they were specced as defensively as eles are, they’d have the sustain. And they don’t have to sacrifice all that sustain to have damage. And they definitely don’t have the weakest armor type – quite the opposite.

So, in short, not like eles at all.

A full bunker guard still explodes in a teamfight on mid. It can annoy people in 1v1s, but simply doesn’t perform as well as it could (since teams will simply go tell the rev to kill the bunkguard).

But yes, if ele team support gets a nerf all anet will be left with is an even worse version of guardian…and everyone knows that guardian is “in a good spot” so anything beneath them would thus be “in a bad spot”.

Wow, a support build is mandatory in a team game. How OP is that.

The only real problem is that only one support build works in the current meta. If cleric ventari rev or cleric druid or cleric bomb engineer (OMG ANET MAKE IT HAPPEN) were viable, you wouldn’t find it OP at all.

Oh, and I like the suggestion of the reverse Wash the Pain Away. But then again, it might be because I play interrupt thief

edit: cleric amulet does not exist, but you get the idea

The problem is with poor team mates not focussing the ele. I was playing last night with my ele, teamed with my husband who was scrapper. We got wiped in mid initially, and I was so disappointed in our team (and myself actually). Then he and I went far since mid was lost, hubby stole boss (obviously in forest), then we sat there the entire match while they ALL, and I mean ALL tried to wipe us.

Each of us went down just once, but we were both able to rez one another. Our team capped close and mid, got the bosses, and we won very easily 501-168ish if I recall.

In this scenario, it was clear they weren’t all focussing one target. If I were on the opposition, I’d have gone elsewhere to start with, but if they wanted their home back that badly they should’ve called target on me, and wiped me out. It would’ve been easy to do but they weren’t all focussing either of us exclusively. I had to run a bit off point to heal at one point, and just 1 of them followed me, and no ranged from the rest that were on point. An attunement switch and ‘Aftershock’ later, I was back to full health – back in the fight.

One of the biggest things I want to happen if I am against 1 or 2 eles, is grab close and mid before they step on it. If they do, call target and get the group to focus them but not be blind to the scrapper that’s procced trait Elixir S and will go down with a few select hits. Once you start to pick the group, the rest will/should fall. But you need to try and be quick enough so they don’t respawn fast enough to become a problem again. But to be honest, if that happens, we’re spending too much time trying to fight the opposition with just one point ours, so someone is often better trying to break free to snatch far. It is all about communication, map awareness and rotations.

Fully dependant on scenario of course, but focussing and calling those targets is basic IMHO.

Astralporing.1957:

Cynz.9437:

Try to play vs 2 scrappers + ele = gl getting any caps.

It’s the scrappers that are bigger problem in that setup, you know.

That was the point.

Fames.5389:

Playing through ranked games this season more than any other I have noticed how it has truly become a requirement to have an ele on your team in order to win games.

For me this season has become truly frustrating as most games the outcome can be determined incredibly quickly at the onset depending on team composition – who has an ele, who got stuck with an ele running zerker staff/fa, which team has the dps that pairs well with ele to run mid.

The only thing I can compare this to is looking at the team comp last season and inwardly sighing at whichever team had a warrior.

It’s true. I was stuck in the 50/50 ratio, then rolled ele and had 10+ win streaks often till i got my legendary. I never even pvp’ed with ele before and barely know the class outside of using ice bow for aoe in dungeon speed runs. The healing build is super strong and easy to learn. Basically water to heal, earth for defense, air for offense and sometimes fire for aoe and might stacks for team. But heck often I could just stay in earth or air and use my heal to keep team alive.

I’m not going to scream nerf it, b/c I know how to counter it, but its still very very op. Well maybe not ele in itself but just the 5 person matchmaking system in itself. 4 dps and 1 heal > 5 dps. Unless the opposing team is good at sides and rotating and spiking targets which luckily most pugs are not. I heard a joke on mapchat but found it so true. The team with the ele wins.

That being said finally got my backpiece!

Healing is kitten for PVP. This game almost become WOW.

xeonage.1253:

Healing is kitten for PVP. This game almost become WOW.

Nah, you don’t stand behind pillars and run around pillars all game. And there isn’t pvp gear vs non pvp gear to give pvp’ers an advantage if they grinded first. And max levels can’t kill low levels in the world map.

Seriously though, ele ftw.

“Ele too powerful in team play”

Water is wet

That is all