Guild Wars 2

For all of 2016, eles have been the #1 bunking class in the game when talking about pvp. In fact, for all of 2016, if you don’t run bunk ele you’re dead constantly. Few players including myself run scepter/focus marauder or demolisher (or even berserker) and we do decently, but the truth is is that most classes counter s/f and all skilled players, regardless of class, can kill a good s/f ele. Dagger/focus eles on the other hand, are completely unfun to play and play against. They slow down the entire experience of conquest and make duo comps godly.

In my opinion, damage ele should be brought back and be at lest as viable kittenter mesmer and at least be able to keep up with scrappers and warriors. The main problem with damage eles right now is the lack of sustain while overloading. Scepter/focus play style is supposed to be fast and gank well and is heavily reliant on skill and ability to think quickly. Tempest s/f on the other hand is being heavily reliant on just hoping you don’t get ganked while overloading or your overload being interrupted (which commonly happens with the amount of boon steal and boon corruption there is in this current meta, let alone how many interrupts there are that aren’t reliant on boon steals). I also think that shouts should play into the s/f tempest build even a little bit. Most tempest s/f builds do not even use a single shout at all, let alone rebound which is barely a buffer to damage.

I also want to see build diversity in the ele world. When I see damage tempests, they always choose elemental bastion and unstable conduit with harmonious conduit. No one I’ve ever seen EVER has used tempestuous aria. There isn’t even a strong reason why that trait doesn’t reduce the cooldown of shouts. I see very few eles using gale song, myself included and I can count on my fingers alone how many use imbued melodies. I currently use lucid singularity on my build, but it feels too weak in most cases.

What would be healthy for the pvp environment is for at least 1, just 1, DECENT build with staff or D/D that can land a kill on any skilled player. Staff has absolutely no way to deal with melee pressure, condi pressure, or burst pressure. 9/9 classes hard counter staff. With D/D, there’s no way to both keep up pressure and deal pressure anymore with the removal of celestial (good riddance!), and menders is simply nowhere near good enough.

It’s years now that a lot of people ask for a viable dps build for Ele. We still doesn’t have it and I doubt we will never have it.
That said, even if Ele Will have a viable dps build, I mean a decent DPS build, it Will never bè metà since DPS Ele doesn’t give nothing at his team, just damage but nothing more.
Thieves are the best to decap and +1 fights with their mobility.
Revs have mobility + cc + buffs
Mesmers have portal.
What an Ele give to his team? How can it make the metà for Ele change?

That said I don’t get how people can play SF fresh air with tempest. Using overloads make you eat a lot of damage while most of SF survability coming from avoid melee by kiting with superspeed. Tempest provide nothing to fresh air in my opinion since also the shouts arent worth without healing Power. I prefere 10x times take arcane instead to promote a more Dynamic gameplay.

lucadiro.4519:

It’s years now that a lot of people ask for a viable dps build for Ele. We still doesn’t have it and I doubt we will never have it.
That said, even if Ele Will have a viable dps build, I mean a decent DPS build, it Will never bè metà since DPS Ele doesn’t give nothing at his team, just damage but nothing more.
Thieves are the best to decap and +1 fights with their mobility.
Revs have mobility + cc + buffs
Mesmers have portal.
What an Ele give to his team? How can it make the metà for Ele change?

That said I don’t get how people can play SF fresh air with tempest. Using overloads make you eat a lot of damage while most of SF survability coming from avoid melee by kiting with superspeed. Tempest provide nothing to fresh air in my opinion since also the shouts arent worth without healing Power. I prefere 10x times take arcane instead to promote a more Dynamic gameplay.

The most damage I take is not from overloading, my build doesn’t allow that. I play arcane skills with lightning flash and fiery greatsword. I do just fine.

I am new to pvp.
I do meta d/f healbot n its more effective then any dps build.
Just play to win, pvp is not spvp.

The problem with s/f ele is twofold:

1. On the first level, they don’t have enough damage for being a damage build. Yea, their max burst is nice, and maybe on par with other burst, but it comes with at least a 20s cooldown, as it requires hitting a 3x phoenix at least. Other classes can burst much more frequently. They also lack spammable defense like thieves who can chain 5 dodges + 2 more after healing, in addition to stealth and longer range blinks to gtfo of trouble, or revs who can chain invulns/evades/blocks for about 15s, and have good damage in that time as well as cc’s.

2. Even if they fixed the damage by halving the cooldown of phoenix and further buffing air auto-attacks, s/f ele would STILL be worse than the alternative for a burst role:
- Thief has like 3x the map mobility that ele has. Between 450 range dodges they can spam and shortbow 5, thief brings an insane threat to the map when fights go awry and they need to dip out. This makes them the best at the role of +1.
- Rev has more staying power in a fight, and WAY more ability to chase and finish targets. Eles are much better at kiting, but they are relatively easy to get away from for the most part.
- For the best comparison, look to shatter mesmer (which also isn’t top-tier viable). Shatter mesmer is very much like s/f ele, with the abilty to do damage from range, great kiting (probably superior due to staff blink, although superspeed has value too), and has about as much cleanse thanks to inspiration buffs. However, mes can shatter burst MUCH more frequently, AND most of all, brings portal which opens up very big plays.
- DH has about the same burst when comboed, but better sustained damage, and way more invulns/blocks (including a long group block), while packing similar mobility and cleanse.

By the way, I am comparing core s/f ele. Tempest doesn’t work against good players in a dps role. Trying to overload for 5s in melee range, with only prot and a super-squishy body doesn’t work when players get good enough to just interrupt it (its a FIVE SECOND CHANNEL!!) or kite it out then kill. I mean, against teams with a competent thief, not only will you never finish a channel (even with the stab stack), you open yourself up to constant pulmonary impacts to add to your trouble.

BlackBeard.2873:

The problem with s/f ele is twofold:

1. On the first level, they don’t have enough damage for being a damage build. Yea, their max burst is nice, and maybe on par with other burst, but it comes with at least a 20s cooldown, as it requires hitting a 3x phoenix at least. Other classes can burst much more frequently. They also lack spammable defense like thieves who can chain 5 dodges + 2 more after healing, in addition to stealth and longer range blinks to gtfo of trouble, or revs who can chain invulns/evades/blocks for about 15s, and have good damage in that time as well as cc’s.

2. Even if they fixed the damage by halving the cooldown of phoenix and further buffing air auto-attacks, s/f ele would STILL be worse than the alternative for a burst role:
- Thief has like 3x the map mobility that ele has. Between 450 range dodges they can spam and shortbow 5, thief brings an insane threat to the map when fights go awry and they need to dip out. This makes them the best at the role of +1.
- Rev has more staying power in a fight, and WAY more ability to chase and finish targets. Eles are much better at kiting, but they are relatively easy to get away from for the most part.
- For the best comparison, look to shatter mesmer (which also isn’t top-tier viable). Shatter mesmer is very much like s/f ele, with the abilty to do damage from range, great kiting (probably superior due to staff blink, although superspeed has value too), and has about as much cleanse thanks to inspiration buffs. However, mes can shatter burst MUCH more frequently, AND most of all, brings portal which opens up very big plays.
- DH has about the same burst when comboed, but better sustained damage, and way more invulns/blocks (including a long group block), while packing similar mobility and cleanse.

By the way, I am comparing core s/f ele. Tempest doesn’t work against good players in a dps role. Trying to overload for 5s in melee range, with only prot and a super-squishy body doesn’t work when players get good enough to just interrupt it (its a FIVE SECOND CHANNEL!!) or kite it out then kill. I mean, against teams with a competent thief, not only will you never finish a channel (even with the stab stack), you open yourself up to constant pulmonary impacts to add to your trouble.

1 more thing, the skills take too long to hit. Dragon’s tooth, Phoenix (you have to hit it in point blank range), Shatterstone (still)

StickerHappy.8052:

BlackBeard.2873:

The problem with s/f ele is twofold:

1. On the first level, they don’t have enough damage for being a damage build. Yea, their max burst is nice, and maybe on par with other burst, but it comes with at least a 20s cooldown, as it requires hitting a 3x phoenix at least. Other classes can burst much more frequently. They also lack spammable defense like thieves who can chain 5 dodges + 2 more after healing, in addition to stealth and longer range blinks to gtfo of trouble, or revs who can chain invulns/evades/blocks for about 15s, and have good damage in that time as well as cc’s.

2. Even if they fixed the damage by halving the cooldown of phoenix and further buffing air auto-attacks, s/f ele would STILL be worse than the alternative for a burst role:
- Thief has like 3x the map mobility that ele has. Between 450 range dodges they can spam and shortbow 5, thief brings an insane threat to the map when fights go awry and they need to dip out. This makes them the best at the role of +1.
- Rev has more staying power in a fight, and WAY more ability to chase and finish targets. Eles are much better at kiting, but they are relatively easy to get away from for the most part.
- For the best comparison, look to shatter mesmer (which also isn’t top-tier viable). Shatter mesmer is very much like s/f ele, with the abilty to do damage from range, great kiting (probably superior due to staff blink, although superspeed has value too), and has about as much cleanse thanks to inspiration buffs. However, mes can shatter burst MUCH more frequently, AND most of all, brings portal which opens up very big plays.
- DH has about the same burst when comboed, but better sustained damage, and way more invulns/blocks (including a long group block), while packing similar mobility and cleanse.

By the way, I am comparing core s/f ele. Tempest doesn’t work against good players in a dps role. Trying to overload for 5s in melee range, with only prot and a super-squishy body doesn’t work when players get good enough to just interrupt it (its a FIVE SECOND CHANNEL!!) or kite it out then kill. I mean, against teams with a competent thief, not only will you never finish a channel (even with the stab stack), you open yourself up to constant pulmonary impacts to add to your trouble.

1 more thing, the skills take too long to hit. Dragon’s tooth, Phoenix (you have to hit it in point blank range), Shatterstone (still)

I actually kinda like the balance of phoenix, its pretty decent risk vs. reward. In a teamfight, you can fire it into the thick of things and know people just ate a ton of damage, but in a 1v1 it requires intelligent positioning.

Dragon’s tooth and shatterstone don’t even exist in my mind. I occasionally would use DT for downed pressure, but the cast time is so laughably long, in addition to the drop time, its not even worth “fire and forget.”

We all know what shatterstone NEEDS is 1 more stack of vuln. THAT is what is really holding that skill back.

DPS ele will never be viable. Just like bunker or support thief will never be viable. That’s class design

Emdrix.6124:

DPS ele will never be viable. Just like bunker or support thief will never be viable. That’s class design

This is a terrible analogy. Ele is top DPS in PvE, Thief has never been bunker.

hit the nail with tempestious aria. It´s a key trait to make offensive tempests more viable. I say it needs the CD reduction since HOT launch. It won´t buff healbot but make shouts a strong hybrid skills for offensive eles. Fresh air and even condi builds.
Mybe A-net just doesn´t want more offensive tempests. Would be so great to get this ….
And make dragon toth 1/4 cast time so we can fire and forget. It drops so slow anyways.

They could give Tempestious Aria a CD reduction based on allies hit, just like the reaper has shout cd reduced by enemies hit.

Hi there, here’s a thought for Ele, how about a nerf? How about the profession gets booted out of the meta for a change? Also, it’s the highest DPS profession in game and you are asking for more? Give… me… a… break!

higest DPS ? I can do 20k in a second with warrior and this maters more then some average DPS. We talk about PvP not staff ele in PvE ….
Eles want diffrent more offensive builds for PvP. Stay out of PvP forum with PvE stats please.

DeWolfe.2174:

Hi there, here’s a thought for Ele, how about a nerf? How about the profession gets booted out of the meta for a change? Also, it’s the highest DPS profession in game and you are asking for more? Give… me… a… break!

In PvE maybe… Nobody in this thread cares about that. These changes could be made for PvP only now as ANet has proved they are willing and capable of making such changes.

Opening up additional playstyles for ele should be a priority. I used to love D/D ele some years back but it’s not very viable right now. It wouldn’t take much as I’m already having some mediocre success with a sage D/D but it completely lacks offensive pressure if I take defensive utilities, and completely lacks sustain when I take any offensive utilities.

Fire traits also need major buffs. One with Fire should be merged with Pyromancer’s Puissance in some way and replaced with a trait that has defensive synergy. Blinding Ashes needs a cd reduction and a blind duration reduction to make it more reliable but equally potent.