Guild Wars 2

Dear ANet,

I am not sure if you read any of the hundreds of post, but surely you should know by now that the Elementalists are majorly underpowered in Tournaments.

I can not understand, not in a single way, why it takes so long for you guys to understand that this class needs changing.

Guild Wars 2 has one of the, if not thé, most incredible PvP mechanics I’ve ever seen in a game. It feels incredible and smooth, being able to see the enemies movements and act accordingly with dodging or other nice stuff that needs really much concentration and quick acting.

Unfortunatly, skill does no longer matter here. The strongest classes in Tournaments right now have reached the point where it literally requires second to none skill to best an Elementalist in nearly EVERY way.
No matter how good of an Ele you are, enemies kill you in a split second if you are glass, and if you are not, you will not deal enough damage while being FAR from a decent Bunker like the Guardian or Engineer ( We can’t even hold a point, we NEED to be on the move at ALL times (Conditions are much more effective on Ele’s then on other classes), we have no knockback and no fears, we cannot force the opponents to leave the node in ANY way, and on top of that, our Mist Form and Obsidian Flesh prevents capture-point contribution!!! ).
Honestly, every class at this moment is ultimately overpowered compared to the Elementalist. MINIMAL skill required for INSANE outcome. I ask you ArenaNet, what is it YOU think Elementalists have that helps the team??

Not only does it seem like you don’t care about the class. But it also very much looks like you don’t even know what to do at all with the Elementalists! This has been going on for months and months!

Why is it that you did not undertake serious action yet, everyone except you seem to know that Elementalists are simply underpowered. HELL! Nearly every tournament I join has someone saying ‘Ele, Reroll other class, noob’ !!

What do Elementalists have?
Taking 3 stunbreakers will reduce our damage to a point where it is better to play another class anyways, and bringing them will still leave you too vulnerable compared to other classes.
ANet ‘encouraged’ us to leave Arcana and Water last patch. There goes our last bit of surviving called ‘healing’.
I believe Elementalists should not have the lowest amount of health. We need atleast the same health as Mesmer. Preferably the same as Necromancers. With this, maybe we can be able to interact a little more with the team.

Suggestion
What I believe needs to be changed, is the incredible difference between base health and armor between the Ele and other classes. The Elementalists is the lowest in both Health and Armor while NOT having much to keep us from dying. This keeps us from interacting with our team at all. Any AoE is enough to down our health to 50% in no time, while any other class seem to hardly feel it. On top of that, Elementalists are the number 1 focussed target and that is simply because we die incredibly fast.

Please discuss.

~ An Elementalist.

I think there is no need to point out the obvious even more. When Anet hasn’t realized it yet that eles are seriously struggling then they never will.

In b4 PvP-heroes claiming that ele is ok because it has imba burst …

So what now then? ArenaNet is simply refusing to balance the game. What can we do except leaving the game or rerolling another class? ArenaNet not listening to their people. If anyone éver asks me if ArenaNet is a good company I will without thinking say ‘No!’

On top of that, I have seen no red posts in any posts that actually matter for the Elementalists.

There will always be UP professions, it’s the turn of the Ele.

Just remember it used to be Warriors, and look at them now.

Flissy.4093:

There will always be UP professions, it’s the turn of the Ele.

Just remember it used to be Warriors, and look at them now.

Okay, it’s Ele’s turn. Except that it’s our turn for 9 months now.

Have you ever played against Rizadon? He’s Rank 1 SoloQ and an Elementalist that melts down multiple people before you can say hi.

While i agree Ele’s in general are quiet week, the best Eles with their burst are definitely not to be dismissed.

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

this may let us hope and I think that they know that something is wrong with the profession. The problem however is that their attempts to make eles viable tend to change nothing or even make it worse.

Another quote before some larger patch was “once we tone down conditions and fix CC-sigill, I think that eles will be in quite a good spot”. Well they were wrong ^^ Fun fact: This was said after eles’ condi-remove was nerfed and its stunbrakers were removed from cantrips. I seriously think that they know there’s a problem, but they either don’t really know how to fix it (best proof is diamond skin) or just ignore it and soothe players with statements like above to make them hope for the next patch.
Fixing ele is for sure a difficult task because eles have a lot of potential. However the problem is that they can’t unfold this potential because of many restrictions (low defense, clumsy spells, no build-variety, etc. … we all know about that)

In my opinion the biggest mistake they made was nerfing ele and at the same time buffing other classes. Over the last 6 months there wasn’t a patch with a serious ele-buff that actually changed builds and had a larger impact on playstyle (only exception is fresh-air, which in my mind was a genious idea because it eredicates both the problem of high attunement-CD and low sustained damage). But besides that there were only nerfs. They kept nerfing defensive traits and utilties, not realizing that we don’t use them because they’re OP. We use them because they let us survive and make us viable in the first place.

Another thing is that there are tons of good ideas out there and argumentations that point out the core problems of the class. They range from increasing base stats to detailed changes of spells and mechanics. And they’re totally ignored (at least this is what the patch-notes reflect). I know that big changes have to be done carefully, Anet keeps saying that … but then hower I’d like to know who came up with the idea of diamond skin and what was the argumentation to implement something like that into the game.
It seems to me that the developing-process is like “wow that sounds really really cool, we totally have to do this and completely ignore the impact of these changes on the game” and then we get things like dhumfire, old S/D-thief and healing signet… spells that were changed over the last year and have created some of the most annoying and overpowered builds.

Another ridiculous fail is the reduction of attunement-CD. They argue that with this change they want to lower the need for arcana (and water) and AT THE SAME TIME they put the most essential traits into master-tier and nerf the CD-reduction you get from points in arcana. It seems like they’re making fun of us.

meh … I could continue complaining forever. However, I started to accept or let’s say ignore patchnotes and deal with it … it’s just a game after all. Sad thing is that ele is so much fun to play. Why do they bring so much unbalance upon the best designed class? What a pity.

chungiee.8764:

Have you ever played against Rizadon? He’s Rank 1 SoloQ and an Elementalist that melts down multiple people before you can say hi.

While i agree Ele’s in general are quiet week, the best Eles with their burst are definitely not to be dismissed.

The thing is thou what is Rizadon like with other classes?

I suspect if he is very good with a Ele, he would be utterly awesome with other classes.

Why because there are a few very, very skilful Ele players does everyone else after be excluded from playing Ele?

Meglobob.8620:

chungiee.8764:

Have you ever played against Rizadon? He’s Rank 1 SoloQ and an Elementalist that melts down multiple people before you can say hi.

While i agree Ele’s in general are quiet week, the best Eles with their burst are definitely not to be dismissed.

The thing is thou what is Rizadon like with other classes?

I suspect if he is very good with a Ele, he would be utterly awesome with other classes.

Why because there are a few very, very skilful Ele players does everyone else after be excluded from playing Ele?

I wouldn’t call realeasing some instant-burst-rotation and then being useless for the next 30-40s (or dead) an effective or good playstyle. I don’t want to judge anybody (he sure may be a good player) but instant-burst has nothing to do with skill. Basically dealing with such eles is very easy. All the enemy team has to do is focus the ele and strg+T alone seems to kill him.

Alex.5349:

Flissy.4093:

There will always be UP professions, it’s the turn of the Ele.

Just remember it used to be Warriors, and look at them now.

Okay, it’s Ele’s turn. Except that it’s our turn for 9 months now.

Can you give someone else the turn for the highest DPS profession then? You’ve had that for months too.

Seconding this.

And it doesn’t need much to make them good again. Hell, I think even a 1000 HP buff would make eles much more common of a pickup – the low HP is constricting a lot of near-viable builds because of how glassy they become.

What we don’t need, is more Diamond Skin nonsense.

Ele must have its burst nerfed significantly to make way to any sustain buffs. Otherwise we have an insanely cheesy spec (fresh air) which takes no skill outside of an instant burst combo that will become powerful. Nobody wants to be 100——>0 whilst an ele casts instant abilities and is invulnerable/blocking.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ele must have its burst nerfed significantly to make way to any sustain buffs. Otherwise we have an insanely cheesy spec (fresh air) which takes no skill outside of an instant burst combo that will become powerful. Nobody wants to be 100——>0 whilst an ele casts instant abilities and is invulnerable/blocking.

I know that this has been said already, but:
1) That combo has a 30-40 second cooldown and is completely screwed by a dodge/invul. During this cooldown, the elementalist using it is not only unable to deal serious damage, but has also blown most of their defense, and their paltry 14ish k hp and roughly 1k hp isn’t going to make them anything other than a free kill/rallybait for the guy you just took down.
I mean seriously, who takes a build that makes any 5v5 into a 4v4? Which then briefly becomes a 4v5 because the person you took out respawns faster than you cool down?
2) Many classes, thief and some mesmers, an do roughly the same thing on a shorter cooldown without losing all of their defense, and then have some team support capability as well (shadow refuge rezzing etc.).
3) I’m pretty sure that most eles would gladly give up our instant cast and/or instant hit skills for buffs in our defense and various underpowered traitlines. I agree, they are somewhat gamebreaking, even if they don’t actually make us overpowered this type of skill should still not be part of the game (looks at thieves, necros, and mesmers).

You have got to be kittening kidding me, Rizadon is good? 17-0? I’ve never seen him in pvp before, he has 17 GAMES and I’m pretty kitten sure he queues at 5 am in the night when no other good player is queueing for an easy win. roflmao

This ele does not queue at 5am nights, fought him several times.

It’s really “interessting” how he is able to dish out his burst combo while running away from you with some strange animation …. ( but well perhaps it was just a display bug on my end ).

BUt well, this is another topic – i don’t want to rant about other players here.

The problem with ele burst is, if it hits ofc the target is in trouble, or in case of a glasscanon downed.

But well so is it with every other burst too.
Do you know how hard a eviscerate hits these ele players ?
I was hit several times for ~10k in tourney.

Same with thiefs burst option.

I think all of this is absolutely fine, ele has i from range, and its much harder to pull of, while warrior / thief does need closerange , but then its only 1 or 2 buttonpress.

I don’t think the problem is something they could fix with altering some numbers on weapon skills.

It’s more the currenty situation.

Every class that is not bunkerish would have problems if the nmy teams DPS would focus them.

This is the mainproblem.
Every match an ele is in the nmy team it’s like – hey guys just focus the ele .
And ofcourse this is a tough situation to deal with.
You basicly have to back off, and your teammates must perhaps support you.

If they do, and the enemy team overextends you can easily burst one target, but again it involves teamplay.

Same is with staff ele , he is very very powerfull but basicly needs a babysitter agains better teams who know what the ele is capable of.

Support ele is very usefull in teamfights – at least to me.
Condi Cleanse, regen , stability and medicore damage.

Its fine, but well you rarely see and ele playing something like this – perhaps it will need some additional time to see these builds.

Eles defense is movement, and beeing in the right attuments at the right time – ofc this is much harder to achive then what other classes can do.
Well ele HP and armor is really low, but do you really think it would help if ele would get 2k more HP ?

I really though they might could help ele if they would lower base attument swich cooldown, but then other traits like Elemental Attument or fresh air would be too strong.

So its really a big problem to balance ele atm.

If you have the ability to one-shot anything if you really go for it , and you buff the defense to much we will have a problem ( no matter how hard this combo will be, i think its really harder to hit then any other burst combo ingame, but this does not matter ).

thechamp.3092:

You have got to be kittening kidding me, Rizadon is good? 17-0? I’ve never seen him in pvp before, he has 17 GAMES and I’m pretty kitten sure he queues at 5 am in the night when no other good player is queueing for an easy win. roflmao

you are surly wrong, lots of Asian play on US server, when you guys going to sleep, they just started playing, this can be evident by playing around 3 to 5 pm, PTD, the que is not slow and u see some real nimble asian finger.

Is it maybe just worth normalising the base HP of all classes?

Coulter.2315:

Is it maybe just worth normalising the base HP of all classes?

You clearly haven’t played beta. Guardians winning 1v5s. Fun times.
Anyhow, eles. They need all classes’ damage to be nerfed significantly. Including themselves. And mayyyyybe abit more sustainable heals. Mayyyybe. Careful on that one. But the pleasure of playing ele comes from being flexible and assist team mates, as well as good damage and setting up plays. Not just doing 4k lightning strikes every 5 sec offgcd.

the class is probably one of the hardest one to play but it doesn’t make it bad if you can master it …

There are a lot of good ele outside spvp as well. WvW solo roamers. {RIOT} , {oPP} from my server

they steam like every day, you should check it out

Gorni.1764:

I think there is no need to point out the obvious even more. When Anet hasn’t realized it yet that eles are seriously struggling then they never will.

In b4 PvP-heroes claiming that ele is ok because it has imba burst …

I personally think it should be the same story as with necromancers.

Sacrifice some burst for survivability.

I wouldn’t tolerate a Scepter Elementalist with more survivability and still dishing out the damage it can currently do.

As it is now, they are squishy and easy to kill if focused, if they get more survivability it’s going to be hell.

Liza.2758:

the class is probably one of the hardest one to play but it doesn’t make it bad if you can master it …

There are a lot of good ele outside spvp as well. WvW solo roamers. {RIOT} , {oPP} from my server

they steam like every day, you should check it out

WvW is completely different….. There are so many more stats. An ele can afford to go into the defensive trees because they have just that many more stats for damage. Xunleashed’s celestial build for wvw has like 85% crit damage with 30% crit chance with high fury uptime. There is literally no reason to go the other 20 points into air for the extra 20% crit damage. Which frees these 20 points to go into water or arcana to help the ele survive in wvw. In sPvP you’re basically forced into wearing soldiers amulet with berserker rune and going 30 into air for fresh air and the crit damage/crit chance. This leaves the ele with 30% crit chance + low fury uptime and 35% crit damage.

tl;dr stats.

Liza.2758:

the class is probably one of the hardest one to play but it doesn’t make it bad if you can master it …

There are a lot of good ele outside spvp as well. WvW solo roamers. {RIOT} , {oPP} from my server

they steam like every day, you should check it out

The thing about wvw is, the vast majority of the playerbase is helpless in small comitee fights, making them easy kills as long as they’re not running with their pack of 20 to 60 players. Also, given stat bonusses and food, pretty much every class/spec can do well running weird stuff. Things still stand however. Some kitten like d/d ele are suboptimal, easy as hell to counter for an experienced player and not runnable in tpvp anyway coz no application. Some people are lured into thinking d/d ele is good in wvw coz not killable by 30 shadow arts thieves and kitten. Also the nerf to ele heals that occured a while back in tpvp doesn’t affect pve/wvw. All that makes d/d really lame. You won’t really get hurt by it as long as you’re not brand new to the game or complete utter kitten, and the ele will just stale, heal back up and reset and so on. There’s no point in playing it as long as you want to DO things. But then again it doesn’t matter to some people I guess..

KarsaiB.9475:

Liza.2758:

the class is probably one of the hardest one to play but it doesn’t make it bad if you can master it …

There are a lot of good ele outside spvp as well. WvW solo roamers. {RIOT} , {oPP} from my server

they steam like every day, you should check it out

The thing about wvw is, the vast majority of the playerbase is helpless in small comitee fights, making them easy kills as long as they’re not running with their pack of 20 to 60 players. Also, given stat bonusses and food, pretty much every class/spec can do well running weird stuff. Things still stand however. Some kitten like d/d ele are suboptimal, easy as hell to counter for an experienced player and not runnable in tpvp anyway coz no application. Some people are lured into thinking d/d ele is good in wvw coz not killable by 30 shadow arts thieves and kitten. Also the nerf to ele heals that occured a while back in tpvp doesn’t affect pve/wvw. All that makes d/d really lame. You won’t really get hurt by it as long as you’re not brand new to the game or complete utter kitten, and the ele will just stale, heal back up and reset and so on. There’s no point in playing it as long as you want to DO things. But then again it doesn’t matter to some people I guess..

You obviously haven’t seen good roamers ….
get outside the mist and look the world outside bro…

I could throw in a few more guild Tags but at least go check their steams first …

Yo, can we stop talking about WvW ?
This is about sPVP , and its really really different because of the less stats you have to play with.

Like FeelsAlright.5860 already posted, if you can still have > 80% critdmg , you can start to invest into something more defensive, this is NOT possible in sPvP .

And yeah , i agree somehow they should take a look at the different armor / Hp distribution.

Liza.2758:

KarsaiB.9475:

Liza.2758:

the class is probably one of the hardest one to play but it doesn’t make it bad if you can master it …

There are a lot of good ele outside spvp as well. WvW solo roamers. {RIOT} , {oPP} from my server

they steam like every day, you should check it out

The thing about wvw is, the vast majority of the playerbase is helpless in small comitee fights, making them easy kills as long as they’re not running with their pack of 20 to 60 players. Also, given stat bonusses and food, pretty much every class/spec can do well running weird stuff. Things still stand however. Some kitten like d/d ele are suboptimal, easy as hell to counter for an experienced player and not runnable in tpvp anyway coz no application. Some people are lured into thinking d/d ele is good in wvw coz not killable by 30 shadow arts thieves and kitten. Also the nerf to ele heals that occured a while back in tpvp doesn’t affect pve/wvw. All that makes d/d really lame. You won’t really get hurt by it as long as you’re not brand new to the game or complete utter kitten, and the ele will just stale, heal back up and reset and so on. There’s no point in playing it as long as you want to DO things. But then again it doesn’t matter to some people I guess..

You obviously haven’t seen good roamers ….
get outside the mist and look the world outside bro…

I could throw in a few more guild Tags but at least go check their steams first …

This is me. And yes, I gave up on ele for now.

Gorni.1764:

I think there is no need to point out the obvious even more. When Anet hasn’t realized it yet that eles are seriously struggling then they never will.

In b4 PvP-heroes claiming that ele is ok because it has imba burst …

No knockbacks? You got Updraft as far as i can remember.

Prysin.8542:

Gorni.1764:

I think there is no need to point out the obvious even more. When Anet hasn’t realized it yet that eles are seriously struggling then they never will.

In b4 PvP-heroes claiming that ele is ok because it has imba burst …

No knockbacks? You got Updraft as far as i can remember.

wat? wrong quote?

I wont pretend to be very knowledgeable on the subject.
However I’m not quite sure where Eles fit in, outside of a spike build.
Which is all well and good, but my opinion is that Elementalists aren’t really as flexible as they’re portrayed or as their mechanic would indicate.

Updraft! \o/ Only Dagger off hand has that skill. Radius of 180.. it has a minor 200 launch and a CD of 40 seconds. This is definatly comparable to the other classes that have fears and 500+ launch skills, sometimes both, sometimes even multiple. Guess the range on those skills. And compare the CD when you’re at it.
I play S/F btw.