Guild Wars 2

Thought I’d post this here but I hope Phantaram is gonna put it into an more elequent post than I could ever do because I think a lot of players (and Arenanet) think him an great source for ele balance info:

http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram/v/35802778

He starts talking about how ele is falling apart without celestial from the 2 hour mark.

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

Sadly some of the audio cuts out after around 8 minutes because of a copyrighted music track

Lordrosicky.5813:

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

Not sure if serious.

Lordrosicky.5813:

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

this troll…. Anet haven’t tested this and their metrics cannot theorycraft that far. Cuz if what you say would be true, DD ele, Dhuumfire,Bunker meta all those horrors from the past would’ve never seen the light of day

SlayerSixx.5763:

Lordrosicky.5813:

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

Not sure if serious.

The guy is a forum troll

Phanta is a great player, but honestly, I’ve never seen him play sth. creative nor have his speculations and build-ideas turned out to be valid all the time. I don’t think his words on this topic should be taken as gospel.

The whole meta will likely change completely and ele will surely change in one of the more drastic ways, anything more atm. is just speculation.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Lordrosicky.5813:

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

Not sure if serious.

He’s a known troll, don’t waste your time with him

Lordrosicky.5813:

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

If their metrics and foresight are so good the bunker mesmer 0 point stalemeta meta wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Case. Fracking. Closed.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Thought I’d post this here but I hope Phantaram is gonna put it into an more elequent post than I could ever do because I think a lot of players (and Arenanet) think him an great source for ele balance info:

http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram/v/35802778

He starts talking about how ele is falling apart without celestial from the 2 hour mark.

He pretty much made some pretty biased comments in the “Helseth on upcoming mesmer nerfs” thread regarding mesmer, he can join rest of the mesmer community in living with the terrible nerfs in the upcoming patch. Besides, ele has dominated meta for long, Mesmer never had the longevity that ele has enjoyed, you guys really have no place to complain.

As much as I feel for the Ele, I do think this does prove one thing that we should all be very happy about and not under-play.

At least they balance the game (or take new directions) without the need to appease the top 1% of players all the time. That might sound kind of strange, but knowing how much they do collaborate with their top players for balance, this is kind of a good thing to know.

As for state or Ele, they are leaving time before S2 on purpose. The first step to balancing Ele properly is removing the crutch so we can explode Ele design’s real problems and fix them.

PowerBottom.5796:

Phanta is a great player, but honestly, I’ve never seen him play sth. creative nor have his speculations and build-ideas turned out to be valid all the time. I don’t think his words on this topic should be taken as gospel.

Actually he was pretty much spot on about tempest IIRC.

this just in: after two years of meta dominance, ele players unable to cope with proper balance

We need to see all of the changes before making any doom and gloom predictions even if it looks like doom, remember we saw a preview.

What i can see working for a fresh air build is a more defencive setup , that basicly deals low sustained damage but has good burst. Basically a bruiser who acts as a executioner.

the build would look something like this:
Paladin’s Amulet (1050 Power,1050 Precision, 560 Toughness, 560 Vitality) with runes of the worm ( 175 vitality 100 ferocity 7% of vit is given as a bonus to ferocity) air, earth (or water), arcane, scepter dagger (or focus).
You will have good defencive stats and gain ferocity through the rune and trait (ferocious wind), while getting a large boost to it whenever the new fresh air trait triggers (250). So you get poor critical damage, that boosts up when you got for the standard burst combo.
If you choose to go for water you can trait for stop drop and role (because of how popular necromancers will get), soothing disruption, and cleansing water and role out with cantrips (cleansing fire, armor of earth/misrform, and lighting flash) and maybe tornado as the elite for the knock backs to disrupt a team fight (or just go with fgs).

There is a viable build in there somewhere, it is just not a carbon copy of the old fresh air builds.

Currently people are in the “revenge” mentality which means some people just hate certain classes so much that they are going on personal vendetta to remove the class from the game as much as possible. While there are lots of sound and civil discussion regarding the upcoming balance change some ignorant children are making absurd comments and insane reasons such as "I don’t like “insert class here” so who cares better nerf them so people can’t play" etc.

Now one thing that people don’t know or refuse to acknowledge is that Elementalists have one of the lowest vitality and toughness. The only reason it was sustaining was because of boon (protection, regen) and healing power and only Cele amulet was able to perform that. Now since Cele amulet will be removed Elementalist are severely handicapped in both bunker and assaulter role due to very little health (easily hunted by other marauder classes) and danger of relying on boon (boon corruption).

Elementalist’s role has always been glass canon in pve and wvw and I don’t mind if anet wants to embrace and carry the same logic into pvp. However in pvp there are classes that do way better job as assaulter roles and elementalist’s glassiness becomes the ultimate reason that it falls out of any competition. The only way that elementalists can be viable are giving them an absurd amount of damage especially in scepter so that they kill before being killed, but that is game breaking and overpowered.

So solution? Currently eles are now will be from Master of all trades to mediocre of some trades due to loss of Cele amulet. Marauder elementalist in conquest 5v5 are already countered (both soft and hard) by marauder thieves, mesmers and scrapper (due to sustain). Revenant could be different matter but on current sustain meta Fresh Air ele will do very little or no pressure while compromising its own survival.

I honestly don’t see any solution to Elementalist’s problem given that it is an extreme glass cannon class that can easily be overpowered or fall out of meta. Some of the skills have arguably long cool down for their function (arcane shield 75s) while some of the offensive skills have very little cd for damage (air 2 in scepter).

dont panic! lets just wait and see. i think ele can still work, the big buff to Diamond skin helps a lot too. there are new amulets and nobody can really predict the new meta with so many changes (lot of them havent been even announced yet). in any case, ele has been super dominant, meta defining, A++ pvp class for basicly the entire lifespan of the game, its not that big of a deal if its slightly underpowered for couple weeks.

lol how can there be an honest class balance discussion if all classes haven’t experienced what its like to be on the bottom?

Yes ele has one of the lowest health pools, while that is true it is also true that they have the highest sustain among all of the classes. When you can out heal damage the amount of hp isn’t a big issue. Yup it may suck at first but its better this way rather than inadvertently recreating another warrior with healing signet fiasco. If can’t handle it you can always do what teefs/wars did this go around and use your other characters slots to reroll lol.

rchu.8945:

He pretty much made some pretty biased comments in the “Helseth on upcoming mesmer nerfs” thread regarding mesmer, he can join rest of the mesmer community in living with the terrible nerfs in the upcoming patch. Besides, ele has dominated meta for long, Mesmer never had the longevity that ele has enjoyed, you guys really have no place to complain.

Lol I was cracking up at that

Stilgar.6437:

dont panic! lets just wait and see. i think ele can still work, the big buff to Diamond skin helps a lot too.

Buff to diamond skin? Wat?

I don’t want to sound rude, but Elementalists have been at the top of the food chain for a very long time now. Tempest just made it even worse. They have been overdue for a good few balance changes, and the Diamond Skin change was so very needed.

As many experienced players have said, removing celestial was a lazy fix. Celestial was never the issue, passive traits were. Instead of going in depth and analysing how to nerf or rework passive traits, anet decided they were either too lazy or indept to do it.

So boom, remove celestial. Some of you may disagree but consider this, game was healthy 2012-2014 even with celestial, so it never was the issue. It is the power creep and passive traits carrying bad players.

I’m a little ticked off at the removal of celestial but I still have a little hope for ele, maybe. Let’s hope phanta is wrong.

Atharian.7092:

I don’t want to sound rude, but Elementalists have been at the top of the food chain for a very long time now. Tempest just made it even worse. They have been overdue for a good few balance changes, and the Diamond Skin change was so very needed.

No sane or decent elementalists wanted diamond skin. It was just necessary due to nature of meta relying on condi and sustain. Also I’d argue thieves were at the top of the food chain way longer than elementalists yet they are getting buffs and elementalists are getting nerfs (which some are deserved)? Tempest was like that because anet didn’t balance any specialization before the start of HoT PvP season. Also at least elementalists were using celestial and being tanky while marauder engi performed the similar role except with more mobility, dps and similar level of self-sustain.

Just because one class/profession was at top of food chain doesn’t mean it should get utterly removed from competitive plays. There were times when elementalists were regarded as trash (before d/d cele) and people didn’t want them. For thieves it was different because other classes got overbuffed instead of getting nerfed to oblivion.

What stat amulet would work best for ele? Maybe if we can get enough support for one choice anet will add it next patch. Here is my best guess:

eles ammy
1050 power
1050 healing power
560 vitality
560 toughness

Stand The Wall.6987:

What stat amulet would work best for ele? Maybe if we can get enough support for one choice anet will add it next patch. Here is my best guess:

eles ammy
1050 power
1050 healing power
560 vitality
560 toughness

Would be a good replacement for celestial if it’s never gonna be brought back.

Stand The Wall.6987:

What stat amulet would work best for ele? Maybe if we can get enough support for one choice anet will add it next patch. Here is my best guess:

eles ammy
1050 power
1050 healing power
560 vitality
560 toughness

The problem is that amulet will turn us back to sustain/bunker meta, and with combination of runes and sigils it will make eles master of all trade, or at least outperforming certain classes while filling in multiple roles. Celestial amulet needed to be toned down a bit if anet decided to keep ele as the lowest healthpool/armor class in the game but that would have made other class unable to use celestial.

It is a difficult job and anet may have chosen the easy way out by removing elementalist from competitive pvp scene completely in order to balance out remaining 7 professions.

Stand The Wall.6987:

What stat amulet would work best for ele? Maybe if we can get enough support for one choice anet will add it next patch. Here is my best guess:

eles ammy
1050 power
1050 healing power
560 vitality
560 toughness

The mender amulet is probably what I will be using at least to test it out.

People wouldn’t need to complain about bunkers if conquest was removed or changed with something else. If that something else rewarded killing at a moderately fast pace, I’d wager that bunkers would matter less. Oh well, I’d take the removal of bunkers instead, but ANet should really work on a better game mode.

See my response to Helseth’s complaints. So what. Plenty of classes have been non meta for sooper long periods of time. Eles have been meta more then any other class in the game. This is all speculative anyway.

Ridiculous and thoughtless buffs to Thief DPS and Necro boon hate are going to be even more detrimental to find a decent build on eles than the removal of Celestial amulet.

Mefiq.7039:

Thief dmg boost toughtless hmm cuz thief deals less dmg with backstab than Rev on autoattack… I bet thief is considered worst class cuz his dmg is so high… Anyone who even played thief 10 min will know that Risk for going melee to deal dmg is not worth cuz NOT ONLY DMG IS LOW AS kitten but any aoe/stun/passive trait will kill you.

Exactly the same argument you are using for thieves not being viable is for eles as well not being viable as fresh air. If thief with all the mobility can’t make it through how exactly you expect eles to pull it off?

Also, nerfing the only thing eles have due to the low health pool, the sustain, won’t make any builds viable. That’s just lazy

brannigan.9831:

See my response to Helseth’s complaints. So what. Plenty of classes have been non meta for sooper long periods of time. Eles have been meta more then any other class in the game. This is all speculative anyway.

No thief has been meta more than any other class in the game. And that is not a positive or a constructive attitude towards balance.

Mefiq.7039:

Thief dmg boost toughtless hmm cuz thief deals less dmg with backstab than Rev on autoattack

That hyperbole.
I don’t think I’ve ever hit that hard with an autoattack.
In fact, the only good burst move Revenant has right now is Hammer 2.

Mefiq.7039:

seems like u guys forgot what anet said about seasons. 1 season 1 build rox 2nd season this build will sucks. Do we rly need everlasting tempest that kittens on everyone drop firefields and spam auras? NO. Do we get chance for Power ele? Yes. Buff on fresh air, nerf on tanks and sustain will make it viable again. .

The only problem for eles who have been around for a while: we have seen this EXACT thing play out before. Ele was great at release, toned down to a pretty good spot, then obliterated by dhuumfire patch. Then, for more than a year, eles were considered more garbage than warrior is right now. At the end of all that, Anet did nothing but just revert back to the same build it started nerfing at release, before finally getting tanky water/arcana ele in a pretty decent spot prior to HoT.

Ele sustain is pretty high right now, especially with tempest, but that requires only a few tweaks here and there. Nerfing celestial and giving a wee bit more damage will not make dps ele a thing. DPS ele isn’t unviable b/c of damage, it is unviable b/c the defensive mechanics afforded to ele are not hard mitigation (blocks, invulns, ports, and stealth), but mostly soft mitigation (damage reduction with prot, heals, auras) that require having a decently sturdy body so you can survive taking a hit and recover. With celestial, eles could build max-defense and have that sturdy-enough body. Without celestial, the whole thing falls apart.

DPS ele will get maybe 5-10% more damage, but still just get 1-shot from stealth by thieves, mesmers, scrappers, and owned by dodge-spamming shiro revs who have infinitely more active defense. Arcane shield on a 75s CD, mistform on a 75s CD, lightning flash on a 40s CD, and obsidian flesh on a 50s CD is not enough defense to keep up with the on-demand stealth of thief, or high evasion uptime of mes and rev, or high block uptime of scrapper (and maybe guard/DH).

I dont know if a lot of u been playing ele for a long time, but ele has been on top of pvp 3 times.
1. before signet of restoration and mistform nerf, this around launch (2012) of the game.
2. when stats on celestial amulet got buff. signet of resto. got buff again (april 2014)
3. tempest elite. (hot launch2015)

ele dead weight around betwen 2013-2014

PowerBottom.5796:

Phanta is a great player, but honestly, I’ve never seen him play sth. creative nor have his speculations and build-ideas turned out to be valid all the time. I don’t think his words on this topic should be taken as gospel.

The whole meta will likely change completely and ele will surely change in one of the more drastic ways, anything more atm. is just speculation.

BlackBeard.2873:

Mefiq.7039:

seems like u guys forgot what anet said about seasons. 1 season 1 build rox 2nd season this build will sucks. Do we rly need everlasting tempest that kittens on everyone drop firefields and spam auras? NO. Do we get chance for Power ele? Yes. Buff on fresh air, nerf on tanks and sustain will make it viable again. .

The only problem for eles who have been around for a while: we have seen this EXACT thing play out before. Ele was great at release, toned down to a pretty good spot, then obliterated by dhuumfire patch. Then, for more than a year, eles were considered more garbage than warrior is right now. At the end of all that, Anet did nothing but just revert back to the same build it started nerfing at release, before finally getting tanky water/arcana ele in a pretty decent spot prior to HoT.

Ele sustain is pretty high right now, especially with tempest, but that requires only a few tweaks here and there. Nerfing celestial and giving a wee bit more damage will not make dps ele a thing. DPS ele isn’t unviable b/c of damage, it is unviable b/c the defensive mechanics afforded to ele are not hard mitigation (blocks, invulns, ports, and stealth), but mostly soft mitigation (damage reduction with prot, heals, auras) that require having a decently sturdy body so you can survive taking a hit and recover. With celestial, eles could build max-defense and have that sturdy-enough body. Without celestial, the whole thing falls apart.

DPS ele will get maybe 5-10% more damage, but still just get 1-shot from stealth by thieves, mesmers, scrappers, and owned by dodge-spamming shiro revs who have infinitely more active defense. Arcane shield on a 75s CD, mistform on a 75s CD, lightning flash on a 40s CD, and obsidian flesh on a 50s CD is not enough defense to keep up with the on-demand stealth of thief, or high evasion uptime of mes and rev, or high block uptime of scrapper (and maybe guard/DH).

QFT. People like to act as if eles have always been at the top of the food chain since the beginning, which is just plain BS.

And if Anet wanted the class with the lowest base defensive stats to stop going full sustain, they need to give us the tools to survive without it. Sigh. Been saying all of this for at least 3 years.

tbh, I’m actually hyped to see what happens.

this is a HUGE change, instead of some Whimzy Power creep exchange between the good and bad proffessions in the last meta. Anet finally actually delievered and did something in the deep end rather then number buffs and nerfs and did something that will actually Change the Meta completely.

this could be doom for the Ele for season 2 but it also could become amazing in another sense, i’d say realistically wait on the full patch notes and see what really happens… maybe there is something Eles will be given to become something else.

do I like all the changes? no, I think the fact thiefs are getting unblockable added to everything to be ridiculous and I think the Mesmer nerfs were OTT but tbh… Cele Amulet removal is good thing in the long run, maybe not instantly, but in the long run it’ll prove to be a much greater thing then it seems.

the removal of that crutch will hopefully lead to More profession Sided balancing rather then these bandaids covering 3/4s of the profession choices. cele amulet was pretty bad for the game.. more and more proffessions were sinking into it as their only choice and it was getting ridiculous, sure its a massive impact for the Elementalist, but all u can hope is that they reliese how much of a blow this is for the proffessions and puts Some proper balancing into what they leave the Ele with weather that’s as a Support a DPS or a bunker.

Mesmer and Ele are trash tier if these are all the changes. Instead of spending time on ele they will just give us cele back.

Compare ele to scrapper/revenant/guardian/reaper/chrono in terms of defense and offense and its easy to see why ele is done.

@Drayos

I don’t know where you got that idea. ANET is notorious for making huge kneejerk moves rather than fine tuning.

In addition the game really now only has 7 classes of which 1 or 2 are marginal. You think that’s a good move?

foste.3098:

We need to see all of the changes before making any doom and gloom predictions even if it looks like doom, remember we saw a preview.

But we HAVE already seen all the changes. Remember, 100% of the time Anet “previewed” balance changes, those “previews” turned out to be 100% of the changes.

It would be foolish to believe that it would be otherwise this time.

brannigan.9831:

See my response to Helseth’s complaints. So what. Plenty of classes have been non meta for sooper long periods of time. Eles have been meta more then any other class in the game. This is all speculative anyway.

Stop outright lying for once. Eles have NOT been meta more then any other class in the game.

Guardian has ALWAYS been meta, as have Thieves. You, like all ele-haters, forget that there was ONE FULL YEAR where ele was so attrociously bad that you were harrassed for even having the guts to play one in unranked.

BlackBeard.2873:

Mefiq.7039:

seems like u guys forgot what anet said about seasons. 1 season 1 build rox 2nd season this build will sucks. Do we rly need everlasting tempest that kittens on everyone drop firefields and spam auras? NO. Do we get chance for Power ele? Yes. Buff on fresh air, nerf on tanks and sustain will make it viable again. .

The only problem for eles who have been around for a while: we have seen this EXACT thing play out before. Ele was great at release, toned down to a pretty good spot, then obliterated by dhuumfire patch. Then, for more than a year, eles were considered more garbage than warrior is right now. At the end of all that, Anet did nothing but just revert back to the same build it started nerfing at release, before finally getting tanky water/arcana ele in a pretty decent spot prior to HoT.

Ele sustain is pretty high right now, especially with tempest, but that requires only a few tweaks here and there. Nerfing celestial and giving a wee bit more damage will not make dps ele a thing. DPS ele isn’t unviable b/c of damage, it is unviable b/c the defensive mechanics afforded to ele are not hard mitigation (blocks, invulns, ports, and stealth), but mostly soft mitigation (damage reduction with prot, heals, auras) that require having a decently sturdy body so you can survive taking a hit and recover. With celestial, eles could build max-defense and have that sturdy-enough body. Without celestial, the whole thing falls apart.

DPS ele will get maybe 5-10% more damage, but still just get 1-shot from stealth by thieves, mesmers, scrappers, and owned by dodge-spamming shiro revs who have infinitely more active defense. Arcane shield on a 75s CD, mistform on a 75s CD, lightning flash on a 40s CD, and obsidian flesh on a 50s CD is not enough defense to keep up with the on-demand stealth of thief, or high evasion uptime of mes and rev, or high block uptime of scrapper (and maybe guard/DH).

Please developers, listen to this guy.

For a sake of science let’s assume that these aren’t all changes and there is something significant.

Then there come question why they don’t leak more about changes? cuz our fears about balance are high, cuz of experience with other balance patch there should be leaked more. There is no explain why they didn’t do it. Maybe I can find one: the leak grain of changes, the know that it will rise suspicions and negative marks and then show proper balance update to made us ashamed. If that is the case I will be the first one to say my ’’thanks’’ for that ‘attempt of education’ us to not haste with making opinions, cuz you/we can be ashamed.

I think we can mark thinks before reveal of everything. I’m not afraid to be ashamed. I treasure my will to mark things without experiencing it. That what I am truly fear is to be silent when there can be introduced something awful.

So better these balance changes be real, cuz we put there our requirements here. If that is not the case[.]

Yeah that’s the thing, the previews were always 100% of the changes. THIS is all we get, and everyone can see to which meta this will lead and which classes it will completely crap on.

Drama, drama. We don’t know all the changes yet.
People were saying nobody would play Tempests, too.

Even if ANet’s baby drops out for a few weeks or months, it’s only for good. With no Celestial, they can start balancing for something other than bunker.

Rym.1469:

Drama, drama. We don’t know all the changes yet.
People were saying nobody would play Tempests, too.

Even if ANet’s baby drops out for a few weeks or months, it’s only for good. With no Celestial, they can start balancing for something other than bunker.

Yeah that’s the thing, the previews were always 100% of the changes. THIS is all we get, and everyone can see to which meta this will lead and which classes it will completely crap on.

Also, eles were already complete utter garbage for a whole year, everyone seems to forget that. And did they then at least get the much needed rebalancing? No, they simply undid some nerfs and buffed celestial.

And that’s exactly that they’re gonna do, mark my words, when ele and mesmer and others are complete garbage tier for the next season, then they’ll reintroduce a new celestial amulet with a bit less stat and they’ll call it “good design”.

Lordrosicky.5813:

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

SARCASM DETECTED.

Rym.1469:

Drama, drama. We don’t know all the changes yet.
People were saying nobody would play Tempests, too.

Even if ANet’s baby drops out for a few weeks or months, it’s only for good. With no Celestial, they can start balancing for something other than bunker.

Anet’s ‘previews’ are 99% of the changes. Eles are dead.

Axialbloom.8109:

Rym.1469:

Drama, drama. We don’t know all the changes yet.
People were saying nobody would play Tempests, too.

Even if ANet’s baby drops out for a few weeks or months, it’s only for good. With no Celestial, they can start balancing for something other than bunker.

Anet’s ‘previews’ are 99% of the changes. Eles are dead.

100% of the time Anet “previewed” balance changes, those “previews” turned out to be 100% of the changes.

It would be foolish to assume that it’s gonna be different this time.

and the forum bug where it shows a blank page when the post limit for 1 page is reached is still in after 3+ years…

Malchior.5732:

Mefiq.7039:

Thief dmg boost toughtless hmm cuz thief deals less dmg with backstab than Rev on autoattack

That hyperbole.
I don’t think I’ve ever hit that hard with an autoattack.
In fact, the only good burst move Revenant has right now is Hammer 2.

Because, you simply can’t. Every rev sword AA has way lower base damage and coeficient than backstab (assuming you hit back). The chain does take over 2 sec, but with quickness it’s obv faster. Imo, the damage on the AA is too high and there’s zero counterplay to revenant AAing you to death. So the nerf was justified.

However, buffing thief AA? So sword will be even faster than dagger? The damage is already high, and it was never the problem for thief.

And AA shouldn’t be burst damage.