Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

in this thread I am trying to explain why I think Anet did not completely nerf the ele D/D bunker build. I know this will most likely cause a lot of QQ (which is the case in a lot of other threads) but I hope this helps some players to understand how balancing works.

First of all here is what I feel like people rate the current ele bunker build after reading some threads / talking to a lot of players:

Don’t main ele and don’t know how to counter it: OP
Don’t main ele and know how to counter it: strong (sometimes OP)
Main ele and don’t know how to counter it: strong
Main ele and know how to counter it: ok (sometimes strong)

(If you want to know how to counter them feel free to read some of my previous posts )

I main ele and know how to counter it. That’s why the build seems ok to me but I also understand why I lot of people complain about it. It is really difficult to deal with.

Constant heal and condition removal, ok damage with 2 bursts and a lot of mobility obviously means this is a strong build for PvP.

Difficult to deal with
=> a lot of players don’t like playing against it
=> a lot of players will complain about it
=> “main ele” players will say the build is not OP or try to teach others how to beat it (that’s at least what I do); they will also complain about other builds not being viable
=> arguing starts and another 10 page thread is born

Here is where Anets balancing starts:

On the one hand Anet wants to satisfy the majority of players. On the other hand they also want the “main ele” players to enjoy the game. This is a big problem which will need a lot of time to be solved. The first step was a little nerf which was not enough according to several threads I read.

In my opinion D/D bunkers should be changed so they are easier to deal with without being useless. The main problem I see are the boons. If they are up you will most likey not be able to kill the ele. If there are not up you can easily kill them unless they use a Cantrip. Imo bunker eles should be weaker if all boons are up (compared to right now) and stronger if no boon is up (also compared to right now).

Besides that other builds should be more viable. A good example are glass canon builds. The first and only time I saw a glass canon ele was back when I started playing PvP. After that I never saw one again. This is a huge opportunity. You could satisfy the ele players by giving them more builds to play with and also make the other players enjoy the game more because there would be less bunkers.

(Some off topic here: Currently the only good glass canon builds I see are Mesmers and Thiefs. This is most likey because of stealth which has no counter. If there would be equal chances to have a good defense while being a glass canon I can see other professions for example eles as a viable glass canon.)

As you can see there are many ways to improve the current situation but this will take time. The last balancing patch was a good first step and I am sure more patches will make it even better.

What do you guys think about this thread and the topic? Please read the whole thread before writing a comment. Thanks.

Actually Zoose Main an Elem, and agree that DD Elem are OP right now. And I’m pretty sure he knows what are the counters.

Problem With ele Isn’t bunker build itself.

It’s WATER atu.

Yes You heard me.

With IT a good ele can go form 5% to near 70-80% each 15secs with additional heal skill.

This is why it’s so op.
No other character have such healing possibilities.

It’s like Elementalist Is DPS/healer Char. Because no matter what gear your in You still can outheal pretty much everything.

Oh and where did You see balance patch ? Cause tbh all i’ve seen in 26th patch was ele buffs.

Also people play Bunker/Power builds instead of zerker ( crit ) because it’s superior.
Ele Dmg is about proper skill rotation Use. Where Crit and crit dmg are near to useless because noone of those skills are spammable.

So it’s more reliable to have 3k armor and over 3k power with no crit/crit dmg and hit ~6k flame blasts or so, instead of being squishy as hell and hoping for 10k+ crits.

@Kardiamond.6952

Thanks for your answer. I don’t know about Zoose’s opinion but maybe google can help me.

@Mrowqa.3861

That’s what I was trying to say:

“Constant heal and condition removal”

I was mainly referring to water here. Maybe I should make it clear next time. It looks like a huge heal because of the low HP. It’s not like we have an 8k heal but we have 1-2k heals every few seconds. The longer the battle lasts, the better our heals are. Besides that water is the main reason why this build is called a bunker build. I though this would be kinda obvious.

@Mrowqa.3861 again after edit

Good luck finding a bunker build with that much damage.^^ I can tell you there are only very few skills which can hit that hard if you run the current 10 air/earth 30 water 30 arcana build. The only reliable one I can think about is “Fire Grab” (which is on a 45sec CD), the rest either does not hit as hard or is easy to dodge (e.g. “Churning Earth”). The damage is really low compared to any other build I know.

3k armor, 3k power and 10k health every 15s. Build plz.

So many of these “Ele OP” threads completely miss the point. Good players know how to “counter” Eles, or in other words what is effective at killing them. Burst condi is very strong vs low HP/high toughness class/builds like Eles. When top players/teams say Eles are too strong they aren’t talking specifically about killing them or their 1v1 capability which a lot of these forum posts seem to focus on.

The strength of the Ele is and has always been their versatility. They are one of the best roamers, one of the best 1v1 classes, one of the best sustain DPS classes, one of the best support classes, one of the best lockdown/CC’ers, one of the best far point assaulters, one of the best flag carriers, one of the best treb assaulters… all in essentially the same build.

Note how I don’t say “the best.” Every other class/build does not have nearly the same versatility. OTOH that is supposed to be the Ele’s strength, their attunements were designed to provide Ele’s with this flexibility. But a lot of people feel (myself included) Ele’s are just a little bit too strong (I don’t think they are grossly OP at all) when you combine their relative strengths in all these areas. This versatility makes them essential in almost any team composition/strategy/map you run. You cannot say that about any other class. The 2nd closest would probably be bunker guardians.

Ele’s were supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, but they are more like masters of everything.

I will say it once again : nobody would need heals if there would be something else which could be used as defense mechanism!
Why water heals should be nerfed if ele got nothing outside water heals to stay alive? We’ve got no stealth, no HP, no clones and no armor..and for sure not the control of guardians( we lack stability on demand and KD/knockback ) and engineers ( able to apply multiple conditions and plenty of control skills)…on top of all this we lack theburst of mesmers and thieves..and definetely there is no 1 hit KO build like 100b

Therefore eles use sustain healing to stay alive while delivering their mediocre damage, it’s rather pointless for people to mention people like Zoose, did you actually check his page?.. HE runs 0/10/0/30/30 and then tell others that eles sustain is too much, really? He plays a more bunker build than I ever played and then He tells me that ele sustain is too much??

If’ you nerf even more the sustain of eles without compensation in damage and base survival then..GG, the ele will become the new paragon of GW2, forever nerfed profession with no place in PvP meta

The only possible solution is this :
raise base HP by 5k, add evasive skills to water + small regenen solution ( something on the line of water trident) remove huge heal skills like water trident and cleansing wave (while remaining the single condition removal) and remove heal from EA+condition removal and add 3s chill, increase damage of auto-attacks and buff a couple of skill, finally make so that fire/air trait lines have more synergy with the rest of the attunement/utilities..done fixed ele for you

2ND POSSIBLE SOLUTION ( a dream really)
remove the 4 attunement mechanic and make ele a single attunement as it was in GW1, but this time we can equip a second attenement as our secondary weapon set, again raise base HP by 5k along with base dmg and of course rework all skills and trait

Any other solution is simply unacceptable, the design of the ele is flawed to start with, now to fix it , they should implement my first suggestion..but if only possible I’d wish for Anet to redo the ele accordingly to my 2nd suggestion…sigh

Says the “only” possible solution
then provides a second solution.
Strong sense of “only”.

I have been called troll many times ( although from individuals whose reasoning is not worth listening), I can relate anwyay to those people who genuinely feel for the game, I can say that extreme bunker and burst should go, no question about it.
I believe everybody here would like to play his/her own profession with the knowledge that every encounter against any other profession can go both ways, win or lose.
As it stands now the extreme bunker/burst builds are a result of great design ideas badly implemented.

Ele innate defenses have been dumbed down too much with the excuse of the water healing, they should have made so that the ele had better innate defenses with far smaller heals to be used mostly for support.

In GW1 my ele was far stronger than the GW2 ele, there were no heals and definetely didn’t need a monk to beat any profession, in GW2 the ele lack both the damage and control of the previous version , both have been replaced by this water heal..and in all truth nobody ever asked Anet to do that!

ensoriki.5789:

Says the “only” possible solution
then provides a second solution.
Strong sense of “only”.

I’d normally ignore the likes of you as you’re just a waste of time..but I’ll use your post to clear any doubt about my post..so for this time only I’ll “fall” into your trolling trap.

The only possible solution= The easy one to implement as it stands now, considering the current resources at disposal of Anet

Second possible solution = clearly identified as DREAM, do you know the meaning of this word?..well check the dictionary it may help, this is the solution I hope for….

Hope now my message it’s a bit more clear for the rest ( of course I don’t count the likes of ensoriki)

Arheundel.6451:

raise base HP by 5k, add evasive skills to water + small regenen solution ( something on the line of water trident) remove huge heal skills like water trident and cleansing wave (while remaining the single condition removal) and remove heal from EA+condition removal and add 3s chill, increase damage of auto-attacks and buff a couple of skill, finally make so that fire/air trait lines have more synergy with the rest of the attunement/utilities..done fixed ele for you

Only nerf/balance suggestion that ever made sense from all the endless “NERF PLX” posts around. You have my sword!

hharry.1967:

Arheundel.6451:

raise base HP by 5k, add evasive skills to water + small regenen solution ( something on the line of water trident) remove huge heal skills like water trident and cleansing wave (while remaining the single condition removal) and remove heal from EA+condition removal and add 3s chill, increase damage of auto-attacks and buff a couple of skill, finally make so that fire/air trait lines have more synergy with the rest of the attunement/utilities..done fixed ele for you

Only nerf/balance suggestion that ever made sense from all the endless “NERF PLX” posts around. You have my sword!

Add my sword! Then we swordfight!

Thanks for all the answers.

Please try to stay friendly and keep posting good ideas.