Guild Wars 2

Anlyon.8375:

Ele nerf incoming. Finally, hopefully all the FOTM rollers and ele bots go somewhere else.
ohwait.

le sigh.

I kitten a brick every time a see an ele playing out there besides me. There are so few of us left playing anymore. This class is simply a joke. I can spec glass cannon and do less damage than other classes that are specced for more balance. Not to mention I die in 3 hits. This class is a joke in PvE, a joke in sPvP, and is somewhat useful in WvW because we can exploit through a door and AoE a ram down. Balance my kitten.

Haha! Same here. Its always nice to see an elementalist in the field once a week :P.

But seriously, I think the only reason people may find elementalist OP is because they have played against them in WvWvW (the only thing elementalist stand out in). Why? AOE’s.

Everything else we are just decent at to be honest.

Not even in wvw eles are the best. Healers maybe, but not dpsers. Grenadiers do just as much if not more aoe damage, and even have longer range.

“Balance. Really, balance is pretty good”
——-
No it is not. Pretty sad you can’t see it.
And no, Handsome Jack is not going to defeat himself- similary Moa transformation is not going to nerf itself.

It waits for YOUR action – as gw2 players do.

I love reading this on the main GW2 page where it describes the elementalist:

“Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”

ANet…may want to change that wording….

Let’s go over a list. Just not, that after this, I’m done with you. It’s obvious that you’ve not

1)You call me a liar for saying that mesmer can spamm phantasm every 8-10s, which is true, this means that destroying a phantasm is pointless, with over 2k HP a phantasm takes more than “one aoe” to kill; within those seconds that you hit twice the phantasm your health go down by at least 10k…but the mesmer got other 2 phantasm to summon after the one you just destroyed, and by the time you (eventually) destroy the third one…the first one is already fully charged again, in the meantime the real mesmer has maybe lost 2k HP ( if hit by your aoe luckily) and has already used the 2 stage daze to lock you in place

Let’s investigate these claims a moment.

The only two Phantasems that can gain an >10 second cooldown is pSwordsman and pDuelists. You must choose one as they’re separate traits on the same line, and you must invest a full 30 into dueling to do it effectively or else you sacrifice important traits such as deceptive evasion and/or phantasmal fury.

Assuming you’re talking about this specific build (10-30-0-25-5 is the build.) The mesmer himself is an absolute glass cannon, as are his illusions. No toughness worth to speak up means those Illusions are dead within the span of decent AoE not that it would matter as you should be applying them on the actual Mesmer at this point.

That 9 second cooldown won’t matter if your force the Mesmer to sit on it. It’s not a matter of blindly spamming your AoE’s, it’s about placing them to pressure the mesmer

2) No profession can spamm 3k dmg aoe at the same speed that mesmer spamm clones

Shatter specific Staff builds are powerful in that regard, I’ll grant you that. The root of this problem, however, isn’t in the fact that they can do 3k Damage with a clone burst AoE every 10.5 seconds. It’s that they can immediately follow with a slightly lower damage burst + confusion. It’s my opinion that confusion, as a condition, should be doing more damage in general, and Cry of Frustration shoulden’t be doing Any damage at all, but rather apply more stacks of confusion for long duration.

3) if not enough…mesmers go stealth and use MoA form

No love lost on me if they flat out get rid of Moa. If you’ve actually paid any attention to my posts, you’d already know that. I’d prefer something more thematic to the actual profession than a polymorph on steroids. That said, I still retain that Moa isn’t unbalanced, just broken (As in for there’s glitches that are moronic to have such as loss of all pets when moaed.)

Failing that, it’s a general understanding among Mesmer players that they’d willingly trade a shorter cooldown for a shorter Moa duration and to fix the issue with Pets. I typically run without it.

4)Playing tournaments and no spvp zerg, it’s normal to find mesmers on cap point, where dodging clones is kittening impossible given the restricted space and large radius of the shatters and if this wasn’t enough dodging a shatter won’t save you from the bleeding/cripple blast you get in your face, meaning that….destroying phantasms/clones won’t solve anything as you still get loaded with condition.

1. Where’s your roamer? Your roamer should be on your Mesmer like white on rice in any situation in which an offensive mesmer shows up, if you’re playing the bunker. Mesmers are one of the reasons the roamer role is needed. Rangers and Thieves make great roamers, btw, and do well against Mesmers if you don’t build them glass cannons.

The stealth that helps Mesmers reset fights plays against them if they’re trying to cap points.

2. I’ve said this before, but conditions inflicted by killed clones has a range limit. If you’re bunkering down, this kinda sucks for you because your’e to focus of a Shatter Mesmer’s ire.

But a ranged roamer should have no issues whatsoever if the shatters are headded to you.

5)Talking to you ..it’s really amusing, this is why Anet will nerf the mesmer…they can see what’s going on, Jon doesn’t come here telling us bullkitten like :" dodge or aoe spamm to kill mesmers"

Mesmer’s is all about timing, all about illusion management. When you play one, you realize how much you’re actually juggling all of it to work for you, and a lot can go wrong.

But you overly generalize my advice to sit and learn Mesmer a bit more, and it’s due to my continual frustration with you.

Dodging an important skill against a mesmer can set their entire rythim out of wack. You dodge a stun you can flee a shatter, you can evade the swap-imoba (all in the same time)

You chose to ignore these weaknesses and want Anet to make sweeping nerfs to Mesmer instead of the adjustments that need to happen (BOTH Negative and positive) to allow more diverse Mesmer builds to work, while discouraging adhering to just these specific ‘broken’ builds.

Essentially, you want to snuff Shatter and Phantasm builds completly, while most of us Mesmer want them to tweak those builds down, and buff/fix other builds of our so we can actually play other builds while still being effective.

6) Your idea of balance is to have only specific class to counter mesmer , aka stealth thief, sorry Anet has delivered us a non rock-paper-scissor game..or at the very least that’s what they’re trying to do.

No. No no no no no. You’re not reading! Pay attention here. That’s NOT what I’m saying.

No matter how many times Anet tries to tweak the game, Capture and Hold will always have specific roles Each role will have classes that are best at them, and classes that are best at countering them. Anet would have to rid the game of professions all together to prevent that from happening – it’s just too deep into the core of a class mechanics.

If they nerf everything it will become a simple DPS war. Skill won’t even be involved simply a matter of who does the most damage, and the classes that do so will be consitered broken. That’s why people hated the glass cannon builds early on.

What Anet is trying to do is balance it out so that each Profession is capable of many if not all roles, something I fully support.

To accomplish that, they will of course have to tone down the higher-end performer’s specific peak roles, as well as buff specific ones that are lagging. Let me make this clear: I support this and I’ve full confidence in Anet’s ability to make intelligent adjustments

Glad to see that no all mesmer players are like you…some actually care about balance, and frankly I couldn’t care less if few trolls have learned my name…as I have said, you can’t have a forum without trolls/haters

You ignore what people say in favor of insulting them, and you call other people troll’s. The reason why I have such a low respect of you isn’t because you want mesmer to be nerfed. It’s because you want Mesmer to be ruined.

There are plenty of abilities on Mesmer I’d like to see changed, downwards as well as upwards. My issue is, you’re painting with an awfully big brush insulting anyone who tells you to learn the class better with this giant ‘bandwagon’ stamp.

You’re the hater here, Arheundel. You hate Mesmer. And you blind yourself with that hatred by fixating yourself onto issues that are playability issues, NOT mechanical issues. Separate the two if you want to talk civily.

Umweltplakette.2109:
God kitten … why don’t people just stop Flaming about Pistol Whip Thieves or 100hb Warriors…

because pistol whip combined with some other abilities (like mace head crack etc..) makes it reallllyy hard to avoid the pistol whip, and with over 1900 toughness i’m still hit for over 10k. seems a bit excessive.

A great joke to nerf ele while there is almost no ele in sPVP.

It’s funny reading all the posts from bad eles saying that staff ele is the only viable build lol.

What is funny is reading all the posts QQing because of an expected “ele nerf”, while Jonathan actually just wrote the devs were having an eye on one single build that is not particularly UP at the moment. You definitely need to change your view from class-wise balance to build-wise.

And you need to realize that ele only has 1 viable build.

Also, eles are punished much more for dying than any other class because they cannot interrupt stomps at all.

Sprawl.3891:

i like how ele’s try to validate their overly tankiness by saying it’s the only viable build.

Here’s the catch: while a warrior / thief achieve 2-3 shotting with 2-3 buttons, the “overly tankiness” off elementalists comes from frantic and active juggling a dozen of spells, CC, dodge, “blinks”. Only then the elementalist becomes “overly tanky”. I.e. it’s active and quite frantic and skillful gameplay, certainly more skillful than 2 button killing or 3 button super-tanking.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keeping an eye on something means we’re watching it, seeing how it plays out, and making sure we don’t make knee jerk reactions (nerfs or buffs).

Having said that, Dagger/dagger Ele needs help. Some defensive Ele specs are too good. Some of their sustained damage is too low, while some spike builds are pretty rough. Keeping an eye on it means we’re not going to nerf/buff it without thinking very carefully about it – that’s what my first update was about.

We’re also keeping an eye on Thieves, both in regards to damage output and sustained defense through stealth.

We’re also looking at the balance for all the downed skills for all classes. Some are riding the high end of the power curve, while others feel weaker in comparison.

Anddddddddddd we’re also looking at buffs/nerfs to all classes as apropos – I’m just not listing every single one. For many classes this means that we want them to have different builds that are equally viable, and making sure that no single build outshines all others in efficacy. Also, this means that JUST BECAUSE I DIDN’T SPECIFICALLY CALL OUT YOUR CLASS in a post, that DOES NOT MEAN WE’RE NOT LOOKING AT IT.

Communication in-and-of-itself is a complicated thing, and the inherent complication of human communication is further exacerbated when it’s done via a web-based medium. We’re trying to do our best to communicate with you, so please understand that just because I say “keeping an eye on something”, that doesn’t mean we are nerfing X from orbit with a Nerf nuke – as it’s the only way to be sure. It simply means we’re keeping an eye on it.

/salute

Wow posted this as I entered the thread, thanks for the clarification. I play D/D ele, some good news

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keeping an eye on something means we’re watching it, seeing how it plays out, and making sure we don’t make knee jerk reactions (nerfs or buffs).

-snips-

Communication in-and-of-itself is a complicated thing, and the inherent complication of human communication is further exacerbated when it’s done via a web-based medium. We’re trying to do our best to communicate with you, so please understand that just because I say “keeping an eye on something”, that doesn’t mean we are nerfing X from orbit with a Nerf nuke – as it’s the only way to be sure. It simply means we’re keeping an eye on it.

/salute

Just as I took it.

All my <3s. They are yours now.

Tinius.1380:

What is funny is reading all the posts QQing because of an expected “ele nerf”, while Jonathan actually just wrote the devs were having an eye on one single build that is not particularly UP at the moment. You definitely need to change your view from class-wise balance to build-wise.

When the single build IS the one used build for the whole class, then it becomes class-wise.

JonathanSharp

Keeping an eye on something means we’re watching it, seeing how it plays out, and making sure we don’t make knee jerk reactions (nerfs or buffs).

I’d love to know what’s on the owen for eles.
Since my other main is a necro, I am that close to quitting this game as is.

I know Necros seem to have a lot of problems lately, or at least from the complaints I see.

But a lot of necros I’ve actually played with preform really well. What are your guy’s biggest gripes about your class in particular?

Kinda funny that you spend so much time on a blog post and people can STILL find fault with it.

When in doubt, use large amounts of vagueness and uncomplicated language…. “We are reviewing all classes across the board. There are several things that concern us regarding all classes and we are in constant discussions on what to do about them and when to do it.” Something like that.

Thanks for clarifying your previous posts.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Having said that, Dagger/dagger Ele needs help. Some defensive Ele specs are too good. Some of their sustained damage is too low, while some spike builds are pretty rough.

Rough really isn’t the right word. Train wreck may be better.

Tinius.1380:

What is funny is reading all the posts QQing because of an expected “ele nerf”, while Jonathan actually just wrote the devs were having an eye on one single build that is not particularly UP at the moment. You definitely need to change your view from class-wise balance to build-wise.

If u said this in case that there were as many ele’s as other classes playing in sPVP, u were definitely correct. However, the fact is what u have undoubtly known. In addition, I mostly see ele’s with D/D in sPVP so idk how tank/heal ele’s are widely exploited as thieves’ fancy tricks.

Nice to have an update.

BUT, I really don’t get how you guys can watch anything or even consider any balancing changes when so many skills and traits don’t even function properly. You guys are watching Mesmers, but Mesmers have three traits off the top of my head that either don’t quite work, or conflict with each other. How can you balance things when the class isn’t even working right yet.

No matter how much i love arenanet, no matter how much i adore their way of thinking i have to agree with Sabbath….
Quite some proffesions have nice bugs in their skills and traits. For easier balancing it would be better to make sure everything works as it should be before changing anything, cause some characters strenghts/weaknesses can lie in bugged traits or spells

Dont forget to bring some good boots though cause squashing bugs can be a nasty job

This thread is becoming evidence why devs often stop communicating in other games. Mentioning you are keeping an eye on something doesn’t mean they aren’t fixing all the profession bugs… heck he even said nearly those exact words.

Ayestes.1273:

This thread is becoming evidence why devs often stop communicating in other games. Mentioning you are keeping an eye on something doesn’t mean they aren’t fixing all the profession bugs… heck he even said nearly those exact words.

You mean all the bugs that have been in the game since the first BWE? Why would we think they are working on it? The fact that they released the game with some very major bugs in the Prof shows they don’t care about fixing them. Even now they have not fixed any of the major bugs with the Necro Prof.

I just hope that my lovely Thief won’t get nerfed to the Ground as it happens in most of the other MMOs with the “assassin” classes. Would be great if he would just need a higher Skill Cap so that I won’t have to shame to love and play this class.

Hopefully if you are watching thieves you’ll change the skills so that not every single build is just about 1 Button for the dmg.

D/D .. Heartseeker or Backstab or Death Blossom
S//P .. Pistol Whip

Combined with Shortbow or Double Pistols (that are rarely used due to the lack of movement)

the other weapon sets aren’t even to mention since there are almost no thieves out there playing them due to the lack of dmg compared to the other ones

“Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.”

^Well thats just fantastic. /endsarcasm

haven’t you guys done enough. Nerf Guardian’s stability, Retal. (two biggest Guardian buffs) You do know that every single patch has been a Guardian nerf right? I mean someone has gotten to have noticed on that office.

Go pay attention to the warriors they are the FOREVERALONE ignored class of GWs and Leave Guardians alone!! unless you gonna throw some buffs at them in which case is ok and you Sr may go right ahead.

“Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.”

JOKING RIGHT? Please tell me your joking. Ele’s suck balls my friend, no matter the spec. They sport well against noobs thats about it. Advanced players can run circles around us in tournys, and the ones that say ‘they are versatile and balanced’ don’t play against advanced players.

Please, buff the ele. we are a sad pile of **** used for target practice.

Add to that, ele downed state is a joke, and ele auto attacks don’t even do as much damage as every pet auto attack in the game. lol this poor class

Some of you people should read all dev comments in this thread and read them well, before getting mad at this time.

Several issues for the elementalists were already pointed out by anet.

Whether I’m playing as a glass cannon 0 toughness ele or a bunker support role, I’m using the exact same build. There is only 1 build worth using as an elementalist the only real option you have is what amulet you want to use. I assure you no one is complaining about eles being hard to kill wearing a berserker amulet, but you put on a clerics amulet with the same build and now all of a sudden you’re op?

Also the bunker roll doesn’t have to be weak, use sigil of superior battle + evasive arcana to get 25 stacks of might. Use dual daggers+zephyrs boon for 100% uptime on fury.

mhmmm we’re complaing about a blogpost…… a blogpost with only annoucements….and no changes. How long will changes will take? :/

Thanks Jon again for putting yourself out there and sharing your thought processes with us! I for one appreciate it immensely and look forward to the upcoming news!

Thanks again Jon for putting yourself out there and sharing your thoughts on the game and the game plan goin forward! I for one appreciate it immensely, keep up the great work, man!

Thanks again Jon for putting yourself out there and sharing your thoughts on the game and the plan going forward! I for one appreciate it immensely, keep up the great work, man, and don’t forget to take a break here and there!

@JonSharp, why do you not have a test realm so you can tweak things 24/7 and have players test it?

Aether McLoud.1975:

@dimyzuka: Condition spammers are hard counters for low health high toughness/healing tank eles.

Ele has amazing condition removal in that spec though. Especially when a certain bug gets fixed on staff.

I think we should be more happy that they are looking at eles. Im pretty sure they had a vision for elementalists and also pretty sure that the tank heal ele isnt anywhere near what they had in mind. They arent stupid, they will notice it when people are feeling forced to use something that neither Arenanet or the Players had in mind when they created their ele’s. They’ve even posted on our class forums that at least Main Hand Dagger needs some help.

At least we know that they know something’s wrong with the class.

I play a support ele exclusively, and I run a stream for nearly all my tPvP matches. Now, I’m going to say here that I’m not an kitten stroker, but we run a team that scrims against the best right now in the EU, paradigm, mace stun etc. From my experience running as a support ele I would say they no where close to being “too strong”.
My advice would be this: Anet, take a look on twitch, look at the top teams right now, see how they deal with this particular spec, or if you like I will provide a link to mine so you can see just how this spec handles against highly skilled players and teams.

Ugh too much qq. I think the problem so far with this game is the fact that it actually take some experimenting, patience, and practice. OMFG my build doesn’t work…. Try to make a new one.. or try to improve your play. I would rather people who come up with good builds keep them to themselves. The lazy people will never learn to play their class otherwise lol.

I have finally come up with a build for my necro that is super tanky and does tons of dmg. Melts peoples faces with bleeds lol. But really it isn’t so much the build it is the fact that I changed my play style with it. I started using a combo rotation to build up like 16 stacks of bleeds in 3 secs. This isn’t wow where you just mash buttons you actually have to use your abilities wisely. I will see one person with the same spec destroy people and another person with the same spec just completely suck and complain that it is underpowered.

Honestly there are a few things that need to be fixed but atm I think it is more the players then the classes.

Anet makekitteniggle..
the guy has time to talk about features ingame with some random 5 “noobs” standing next to him (thank god one of them was a champ and made a post about the discussion to reddit so ppl can actually read it.)
Also seen posts about him telling things on some stream at random times.
BUT opening the forum and writing there is suddenly “out of the working time”.

Now we have been waiting for over a month to see anything sPvP related and the best we have got is a blog post about what WILL happen someday.
Its been in translation for a week(?) now and if you look at the front page you can see what articles were prioritized over it.

So what im saying is, just move along and find another game to kill your freetime with. Come back in a ½ years or so.
Atleast the blog post should be done by then

Can we please get something said about how you guys feel about the Mesmer portals on Khylo? I feel that forcing a mesmer on to every team is really hurting the tournaments right now and forcing team comps is the last thing anyone should want. It seems like something that should of been hot fixed but has made it through several patches now, is it actually something you guys want to see?

“Balance. Really, balance is pretty good. We’re very observant of the meta, we read the forums, and we’re playing the game with you. We don’t want to make knee-jerk balance decisions. And if did whatever the community wanted, what would happen to balance? How many threads are basically: “NERF X OMG!!” “Learn to play , X is fine” “Omg no, we can’t beat X at all!” “Just saying, none of the people I know even run X anymore” “Hey you guys forget X, let’s buff Y!”….then this just repeats over and over. We can’t just do exactly what players ask for in relation to balance, because different players at various skill levels view balance differently. So what we do is balance community feedback with gameplay results. We don’t want to play whack-a-mole with balance, so we don’t just nerf/buff everything as soon as someone posts about it. It would ruin the game if we did. We try to be patient, see if the meta fixes itself (because a lot of times, once you learn how to deal with something, you realize it may not be as imba as you first thought), and then make long-lasting balance changes. We don’t want to nerf X, then realize no one uses it, and buff it again, then have to nerf it again, etc. etc.”

ok that is just NOT the way to adress game changes. YOU guys are the experts. not a bunch of complainers getting faced roll because they dont know how to pvp a specific class.

All I see from your ways of doing things is that if enough ppl(Right or wrong) complain about a skill for long enough then you will nerf it. What the hell is that?? You have to hold your ground and give your selfs more credit. YOU have all the tools and graphics to know what is balanced and what isnt. not this players who frankly 90% of them just roll one class and that’s it.

Also please create a test server and test your changes b4 just throwing them on live ones because THEN is an ever bigger problem of making a mistake but you dont want to look like an idiot for releasing something that wasnt ready so now you are just gonna leave it alone and learn from your mistake quietly.

Never have I ever seen a community control game patches like this one. Also DO NOT MOVE MY POST TO THE SUGGESTION’S THREAD. I swear to God, happens every single time.

if they really wanted to do that , they would have nerfed guardian thief and mesmers

Well… The thing is you can never say an profession is underpowered. Cause according to gw2, any proff can be any role. For example
Offensive guardians should be buffed, normal dfensivebased guardians are quite nice, guardians 100% made to survive anything and to troll people in an 5 man guardian team with 100% winratio due to pointholding should be smashed into the ground..Can you imagine esports if any team with 5 guardians yust wins anyway…
(dont say you have an counter.. Cause if you can counter it as it is atm its due to the guardians being inexperienced)
Yust saying its better to point at a certain role instead of an profession

Why push ten buttons for a mediocre reward when you can press between one and three for large one?

Thats the problem that elementalist has at the moment and the fact that they are having to spec into healbots just to get anywhere shows how grim their situation is.

I run an Asura guild and thus we have a lot of elementalists….or should i say we had a lot. They now run as rangers, mesmers, warriors and even and engineer. I only stick with elementalist because that character is the guild master and i do a lot of WvW. I hear a lot of comments like “i chew through mobs now” and “this is so much easier” and i know they arent coming back to their ele’s unless major changes are made.

I stick with my ele….but every time i`m in that downed state i am wishing i had a button to just kill my character instead of being so helpless. Oh yes and every time i do those wvw puzzles in the borderlands i am wondering why my class is the only one not to reduce fall damage.

I regret sticking with it most of all when someone whacks me for 14,000 damage and the best i can do to them is a fraction of that, despite me being “glass cannoned”. I get the glass alright, but the cannon isnt there.

Nothing is there except some AOE and if i didnt have that, i wouldnt exist.

chronometria.3708:

I only stick with elementalist because that character is the guild master and i do a lot of WvW. I hear a lot of comments like “i chew through mobs now” and “this is so much easier” and i know they arent coming back to their ele’s unless major changes are made.

I stick with my ele….

Come on dude, you can do it. Elementalists 4 life! Dont go to the light! … uhm… i mean.. the dark side! In the end we will be victorious!

(p.s. i have checked the dark side… they dont have cookies)

Been running 8v8 spvp all weekend. Average game had 6-9 thieves out of 16 players. Is that enough meta to know something needs to be fixed?

I run a elementalist with 30 points in toughness but still get burnt down in less than a second. The record was 1 hit for 10500 damage.

Wolf.4739:

Been running 8v8 spvp all weekend. Average game had 6-9 thieves out of 16 players. Is that enough meta to know something needs to be fixed?

I run a elementalist with 30 points in toughness but still get burnt down in less than a second. The record was 1 hit for 10500 damage.

i dislike that your name is similar to mine lmao.

its well documented that there are bugs and fixes needed for a thief. what we dont need is OMG THIEVES SO OP NERF!!!11!!

stealth needs its bugs fixed

things like assassins signet (backstab builds) and haste (pistol whip builds) need to be adjusted.

those changes alone would fix issues people are having with thieves stealth (and mesmers too) as well as the over the top burst said two builds posess.

after those changes we can then take a better and clearer constructive look at thieves.