Guild Wars 2

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480

-reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced)

-reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s

-reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2

-increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s

-reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s

What do you think? Too much? Not enough??

Leave celestial amulet alone, its already garbage on warrior and engi now and such a nerf would throw elementalist far into the trash bin along with them, and make celestial necromancer unviable, so we’d have to go back to playing squishy carrion builds. Nerfing cele is too unspecific to elementalist, it doesn’t belong in this iscussion.

I agree with nerfing ring of fire. 3 stacks? What on earth were they thinking. Thats way too much for skill with such a low cooldown. I’d also raise its cooldown to be more in line with flamewall and firewall. I’d raise it to be 25-30 seconds, but I’d be fine with the current cooldown if the burn stacks got nerfed.

Nerfing the damage modifiers in fire slightly is fine too, but thats it. Nerfing protection from arcane swapping would kill the current build. It’d also probably force future eles to go water/earth/tempest if that were the case, but thats just specualtion. Ele has to spam defensive skills in order to stay alive at all, its a strange balance to manage.

Anyone you should edit the title of this thread, since besides your reasonable changes to fire skills/traits/burning, your other suggestions are wholly unrealistic and would destroy the ele as a whole, and would take so many other classes that are trying to use celestial out with it.

Celestial amulet is fine. In fact it is suboptimal for most professions. Celestial rifle engineer and celestial shoutbow warrior have fallen out of the meta, leaving just 2 professions which use celestial amulet: d/d elementalist and celestial necromancer. Most others use marauder amulet. There was never a celestial meta for other game modes: pve has always favored berserker and WvWvW has favored PVT in zergs and condition (e.g. carrion/sinister etc) or berseker in roaming. Based on these statistics, it should be berserker/marauder which needs to be toned down or skills/sigils/traits benefiting from using these stat combinations.

They should however nerf D/D elementalist’s:
- ability to stack might (blasting fire fields, Pyromancer’s Puissance, might stacking runes like rune of strength)
- ability stack burn (OP’s suggestions to adjust drake’s breath and ring of fire make sense)
- soothing ice is too strong indeed
- too high uptime to protection (but nerfing from 5 s to 2 s from earth attunement swap is too harsh, maybe 5 s to 3.5 s as Elemental Contingency, Elemental Shielding and Armor of Earth also grant protection)
- Blinding Ashes trait allows blind spam from a passive trait, increase icd to 8 s
- Diamond skin and Stone Heart are badly designed traits (though rarely used in this meta)
- cleansing water needs 5 icd
- signet of restoration base heal per casting should be reduced 10%

Celestial amulet has 3920 stat points compared to basic 3 stat amulets that have a total of 3000. 4 stat amulets have 3220 stat points. Which means that Celestial amulet gives 21,7 and 30.6% more points then other amulets!

With what I suggested the amulet would have 3400ish stat points which would still make it better then other amulets in the total stat pool.

Also, Cele engi is non viable because of mesmer spikes first and foremost. Warrior shouts got nerfed and even if they did not, the build would not be viable because Mesmer is bonkers.

Its conceptually wrong to justify one OP thing because another thing is OP. Also, Celestial amulet in itself is bloody OP.

Leave eles alone, they are fine where they are. They’re way glassier celes now.

Meanwhile Mesmers run around with easy access to interrupts, blinds, stuns, stealth and high burst. Do you have any idea how annoying that is when put in the hands of competent PvPers?

Eles are fine. The problem lies with rangers, thieves, engies and non-rampage warriors needing buffs.

Chokolata.1870:

Celestial amulet has 3920 stat points compared to basic 3 stat amulets that have a total of 3000. 4 stat amulets have 3220 stat points. Which means that Celestial amulet gives 21,7 and 30.6% more points then other amulets!

With what I suggested the amulet would have 3400ish stat points which would still make it better then other amulets in the total stat pool.

Also, Cele engi is non viable because of mesmer spikes first and foremost. Warrior shouts got nerfed and even if they did not, the build would not be viable because Mesmer is bonkers.

Its conceptually wrong to justify one OP thing because another thing is OP. Also, Celestial amulet in itself is bloody OP.

Just because 1 class can make Celestial amulet work, doesn’t make the Amulet OP. Ele has always been op due to the fundamental values of his traits, certain skill functionalities (the now, ring of fire) and his resiliency through mobility. I agree with everyone else in that Celestial amulet isn’t’ the culprit.

Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire is more strategic than anything. People stop in front of it, ignore it, and sometimes have no choice but to run through the AoE burns because it procs under their feet. To be honest, it needs a 3/4 cast time just like Guardian’s Purging Flames. I can’t tell you how many times my PF gets back on cd because of a cc effects.. I shouldn’t have to waste a Stability to pull it off. I think a 3/4 nerf for Ring of Fire is fair, considering the huge effect it has in team fights now.

Diamond Skin
Diamond Skin is just a poor mechanic. They can change it while keeping its core functionality, defenses against conditions. Stone Heart is a perfect example of how Diamond Skin should be. For goodness sake, please give it some counter play.

Mesmer Clones
Make clones move 2x or 3x slower when Mesmers use their shatter effects. This makes it so that we can at least have some form of counterplay against their huge 1shot burst potential… especially when they’re Stealthed..
Mesmers themselves have to play a little more strategic to make clones’s shatter hit. They can use their numerous Swiftness abilities effectively. Not to mention they actually have to time their stunlocks effectively in conjunction with a shatter effect.

The truth of the matter is, there’s no counterplay against a Mesmer other than focus targeting them in a team fight (if you can). Their Shatters are unpredictable and incredibly hard to negate.. especially when they stunlock you – you have little room to react and counterplay it. If their clones are 3x slower, we can see them coming and react accordingly for a chance to miss their first burst effects.. at the very least.

My suggestion? Ele, as a class, is fine. In fact, as a class, they need some buffs. As has been said a million times, D/D is the only viable spec, and that’s with specific traits too. My suggestion is to scrap celestial entirely. There’s already a bunker power amulet, let there be a bunker condition amulet (settler is good, but the lack of vitality is troubling for low vitality classes). Since D/D ele was all about blasting for might and bunkering, they’ll compensate for their low power and actually still deal decent burn damage from the get go, which would probably make the burn monstrously high, but its one condition to deal with. They’d be able to bunker with a good amount of toughness, vitality and HP. The choice, though, lies in their decision between power and condition damage. They (no one) should be able to choose both AND still bunker.

Tl;Dr make a cvth amulet.

Chokolata.1870:

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480

1)reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced)

2)reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s

3)reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2

4)increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s

5)reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s

What do you think? Too much? Not enough??

1) No – Guardians posses other damage modifier traits at adept and master level where eles got almost none

2) Don’t mind

3) Don’t mind

4) Don’t mind

5) Don’t mind…but maybe 3s would be ideal

Regarding other suggestions seen in this thread :

1) nerf on SoR = NO – it’s inferior to all passive heals in the game ( including vamp signet ), it requires huge investments in healing power to be actually useful , without healing power it heals for 200 pts on cast which is nothing compared to warrior and necro 360 pts on action

2) ICD on cleansing water = NO, this is the ele main trait, without which the profession is basically unplayable, an ICD would kill the profession as it’s the only source of reliable condi cleanse that ele possess

Math behind the trait =

1 condi cleared every 11s ( if you go arcana )
1 additional condi cleared for every cantrip you use ( min cantrip CD is 32s )

Even a ranger can clear more condis than an ele, but ele holds a slight advantage thx to EA burst heal without which a ranger regen bunker would effectively prevail in every possible scenario.

To the OP, the question is not what should be nerfed, the question is what can be changed so that people who invested years in the profession ( with some having played at the TOP level) don’t suddenly become cannon fodder for even your typical scrub who bought the game just yesterday.

-Reducing burn application is fine but let’s not forget skills like:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Flame
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bonfire (lowered to 20s with ambidexerity)

And other similar skills that apply burn stacks and on low CD similar to ring of fire

Changes must be applied in a smart way that promotes high play and punish poor play: reduce protection gained passively ( EA / EC ) but increase ele access to weakness [lightning touch radius increased from 30 degree to 120 degree cone ]

Supreme.3164:

2) ICD on cleansing water = NO, this is the ele main trait, without which the profession is basically unplayable, an ICD would kill the profession as it’s the only source of reliable condi cleanse that ele possess

I suggested 5 icd, which could theoretically trigger 12 times in 1 minute. I would hardly call this much of a limitation.

Elementalist has a lot of other condition clears:
- cleansing wave trait (removes a condition when attuning to water)
- cleansing fire skill (removes 3 conditions + 3 stacks of AoE burn)
- burning fire trait (triggers cleansing fire automatically with 3+ conditions)
- cleansing water dagger skill (removes a condition)
- healing rain staff skill (cures conditions on a huge AoE every 3 seconds, 3 pulses)
- signet water skill (removes 1 condition per 10 s)

Maybe I forgot some? Anyways elementalist has one of the best condition removals in the game. Engineer has much worse condition removal, but that is an intended weakness of the engineer profession (besides being weak towards hard CC). Each profession should have at least 2 weaknesses to offer enough counter play. Now elementalists and mesmers break this rule. They can do multiple roles, without much weaknesses, making them overpowered in both spvp and WvWvW.

Elementalist has other viable builds besides d/d. Staff elementalist maybe requires more skill and more careful positioning in spvp, but I would surely argue that staff elementalist is viable. Metabattle ranks staff elementalist as a great build for spvp
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Celestial_Staff

In WvWvW staff elementalist has been meta since 2012 ( http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Staff_Backline ). One could argue also that d/f is viable. Elementalist has one weak weapon and that is scepter.

Why would ring of fire need a nerf? The skill is supposed to be a TRAP, cross the field and pay the price. I think ppl are not used to it being a dangerous skill, since it was a complete joke in the past (you could dance over it, really), just learn how to deal with the aoe, it’s not very different from wells, traps, marks or ANY other dangerous field. Don’t think eles need a nerf either, we lost healing, we lost HP, we have very little choice when it comes to amulets and trait lines… all that for a class who has to basically facetank/mitigate all damage without stealth, clones, aegis, etc…

Dolores.5471:

Why would ring of fire need a nerf? The skill is supposed to be a TRAP, cross the field and pay the price. I think ppl are not used to it being a dangerous skill, since it was a complete joke in the past (you could dance over it, really), just learn how to deal with the aoe, it’s not very different from wells, traps, marks or ANY other dangerous field. Don’t think eles need a nerf either, we lost healing, we lost HP, we have very little choice when it comes to amulets and trait lines… all that for a class who has to basically facetank/mitigate all damage without stealth, clones, aegis, etc…

I still think a 3/4 cast time is fair :P

Instead of nerfing eles, I feel buffing or reworking trait synergies on certain classes could have a more positive effect to pvp.

It’s been stated that the company has committed its development resources towards expansion. I don’t know if that means they have no time for PVP and is only committed to the PVE mode of the expansion. I’m hoping that’s not the case

I would take a look at their weapons, first.

Elementalist sets do everything. Power damage, healing, condition damage, CC, mobility, boons and what not. Celestial does the same.

Make each weapon specialize in one aspect across attunements with a little addition of usual effects.

Only then Elementalist will finally have a chance to be something else than D/D celementalist faceroll.

Nerf burn damage by 1/2 . Will fix guardians too.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Supreme.3164:

2) ICD on cleansing water = NO, this is the ele main trait, without which the profession is basically unplayable, an ICD would kill the profession as it’s the only source of reliable condi cleanse that ele possess

I suggested 5 icd, which could theoretically trigger 12 times in 1 minute. I would hardly call this much of a limitation.

You know what’s funny? They nerfed it to have 5s icd before, and Ele became too trashy that they had to revert it back to no cooldown.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-30-2013/first#post1958243

Cleansing Water trait: Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds (only in PvP).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3957343

Cleansing Water: This trait no longer has an internal cooldown while in PvP.

Now you suggest kitten icd again.

Hahahahaha

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I wouldn’t nerf ele because the moment Burn is fixed it won’t even tickle.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Supreme.3164:

2) ICD on cleansing water = NO, this is the ele main trait, without which the profession is basically unplayable, an ICD would kill the profession as it’s the only source of reliable condi cleanse that ele possess

I suggested 5 icd, which could theoretically trigger 12 times in 1 minute. I would hardly call this much of a limitation.

Elementalist has a lot of other condition clears:
- cleansing wave trait (removes a condition when attuning to water)
- cleansing fire skill (removes 3 conditions + 3 stacks of AoE burn)
- burning fire trait (triggers cleansing fire automatically with 3+ conditions)
- cleansing water dagger skill (removes a condition)
- healing rain staff skill (cures conditions on a huge AoE every 3 seconds, 3 pulses)
- signet water skill (removes 1 condition per 10 s)

Maybe I forgot some? Anyways elementalist has one of the best condition removals in the game. Engineer has much worse condition removal, but that is an intended weakness of the engineer profession (besides being weak towards hard CC). Each profession should have at least 2 weaknesses to offer enough counter play. Now elementalists and mesmers break this rule. They can do multiple roles, without much weaknesses, making them overpowered in both spvp and WvWvW.

Elementalist has other viable builds besides d/d. Staff elementalist maybe requires more skill and more careful positioning in spvp, but I would surely argue that staff elementalist is viable. Metabattle ranks staff elementalist as a great build for spvp
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Celestial_Staff

In WvWvW staff elementalist has been meta since 2012 ( http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Staff_Backline ). One could argue also that d/f is viable. Elementalist has one weak weapon and that is scepter.

You’ve listed the cleansing options of a class, how that helps your argument? I can go and list the cleansing options of every other class and we would end with a bigger list , wanna see?

Ranger( considered weak by few ):

-empathic bond = 3 condis every 10s ( take a tanky/high HP pet done)
-wilderness knowledge = 2 condis for survival skill ( min CD on survival skill is 20s)
-evasive purity= remove poison/blind/cripple 10s CD
-signet of renewal = 1 condi every 10s, 48/60s Cd pet takes all condis on you
-brown bear shout = 2 condi removed 20s CD

There are shouts that works with trooper runes to remove 1 condi each, lyssa runes that works with the low CD elites like rampage as one and entangle thus removing 5 condis every 48s CD

Now you can’t have staff and dagger in one build so…

A non viable d/d ele fire/water/arcana with water signet can cleanse 7 condis every kitten ( cleansing fire x2 +cleansing water) +1 from signet of water every 10s , 2 from arcana every 10s = total of 9 condis

A viable ranger build with 5 survival skills + brown bear can have 12 condi removed; 6 condis every 20s, 4 condi every 48s and 2 every 32s and will still have more regen than ele ( seen as you use cleansing wave trait over soothing disruption)

So the ranger would actually win easily against an ele using the build you’ve proposed

As you see numbers won’t help your argument on the contrary…

But there is more:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Strength_of_the_Fallen and it’s adept tier, the ele version is GM and still works every 10s and only for a single condition, if you want more condi removal you need to use a cantrip and its min CD of 32s

Weaknesses should not be exploitable by players of all levels, I see no profession being weak against the lowest level opponent, at the highest level no profession is unstoppable but as a rule of thumb :do not engage sustain builds on a non sustain build because you’ll lose most likely

-note- in the past cleansing water was nerfed and that made ele unplayable not only for those you lot consider being “carried” by the profession( despite having played it for years) but also for TOP players like @Phantaram, feel free to contact him and see what he says about an ICD on cleansing water GM, you may not trust my word..but do you trust the words of one of the member of the most successful team in this game?

@Supreme & Sunshine

Ele prepatch was OP towards conditions. No condi class in their right mind would ever target him in a group thanks to his numerous cleansing abilities. His Water trait should of had an ICD of 1 … not 5 and definitely not none. There was a reason why they changed it to 5 in the first place…the icd was just too extreme.

Thanks to the power creep, the icd is fine where it’s currently at, imo. In fact, Ele darn near got a nerf thanks to the other power creeps we have… not even a bunk guard can outsustain 2+ burst classes. Eles and Mesmers only need a slight tweak.

Leave cele alone but a higher ICD on Blinding Ashes,a rework of Diamond Skin and more importantly making Elemental Attunement only apply to your self would be greatly appreciated.

Chokolata.1870:

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480 <— no its okey

-reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced) okey with that

-reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s <— no, revert the burning " buff "

-reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2 <— no, revert the burning buff

-increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s <—- are you kidding?!!?? decrease it to 15 sec, its too weak for 3 sec update and 20 downtime…

-reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s <— no, if you dont play earth traitet its your only protection…

= revert burning changes, fix poison bug, revert vigor nerf and fix mesmer or stealth.

Eles will never be balanced as long as 100% of their defense comes from traits and stats, especially water and arcane, making those 2 lines mandatory for every pvp mode.

We’ve seen how ele “balance” works on ANet’s side: they go from dominating the meta (after launch) to being completely and utterly worthless to the point where you get flamed for even playing an ele within a single patch with small changes only (from the dhumfire patch to the amulet feature patch). Then after a year of being the worst class in the whole game they go back to dominating again with the celestial amulet buff and a few minor un-nerfs to the ele.

Eles NEED healing power + toughness + vitality to survive, and they NEED some power + crit + ferocity + condition damage to do some amount of damage because they cannot spec for either power or condi damage, all their weapons do both by default, and rather weak by default too.

Ele would need a massive rework to make it actually balanceable and sadly we all know that Anet won’t do such a thing – removing most of the defense from water/arcane, making elemental attunement baseline, and rebalancing the whole class and traitlines around it.

They had the chance the rework it with the june spec patch but they didn’t. So we’ll be stuck with the same ele design until GW3 I guess

Ring of fire does absolutely no burns at all unless you cross over that fiery ring, just dodge over it, I have absolutely no issues with ring of fire in particular when I vs it unless I make a horrible mistake… There are too many people here making suggestions who don’t even play the class. Yes Elementalist has a build thats pretty over the top when it comes to 1v1, potential burning application could be toned down but not on ring of fire that skill is way too easy to avoid.

Supreme.3164:

So the ranger would actually win easily against an ele using the build you’ve proposed

Good point. Close call! We wouldn’t want rangers at the top of the food chain again. Their reign lasted too long; it’s time for celestial Eles to shine.

Kolache.3964:

Supreme.3164:

So the ranger would actually win easily against an ele using the build you’ve proposed

Good point. Close call! We wouldn’t want rangers at the top of the food chain again. Their reign lasted too long; it’s time for celestial Eles to shine.

The ranger build that I suggest actually already exist and it works, a shout bunker ranger that can hold/win vs eles np, as a matter of fact ranger is one of the best duellist professions in game superior to ele also. The problems that ranger face got nothing to do with ele and more to do with the players behind it, the class when played well can prove to be a serious challenge for anybody; on a survival build ranger I have pretty much lost solely when heavily ganked, other than that the class possess the tools to deal with every profession on a personal level. What ranger needs is more team fight presence…but ranger as duellist is and remain top notch, if you think otherwise, you just need more practice

Why isn’t anybody mentioning buffing their really bad specs. Didn’t all the ele come out and say it was their only good one.

Also nerfing cele just for ele nty. This suggestion is so bad it actually spreads off onto nerfing other classes.

What bothers me most about ele is not cele stats, specific skills or things they can do, but the ridiculous access to all skills thanks to joke CD’s in attunements.
This allow the class to do a perma rotation of spamming of skills, which turns the class OP since they can do everything (damage, CC, healing…) any moment without the drawback of the cooldown management.

Chokolata.1870:

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480

-reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced)

-reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s

-reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2

-increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s

-reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s

What do you think? Too much? Not enough??

Good changes. I would do the celestial change obviously. And then all of the others. Would make ele balanced but still strong imo. Good post OP

First of all ignore Lordrosicky because he calls for nerfs on everything except necro.

Now to a real point, before you nerf ele (basically all ele specs require arcane and water to function), take a look at the sad sad weapon that is scepter, which is also ignored in tempest interview. Scepter has about 5~6 useless placeholder skills that need to be reworked, including scepter water 3 which does no damage and very little heal for main heal skill. And now lets look at other weapons which almost all of them have at least 3/4 sec casting time.

The correct title for this post should be “how to nerf d/d ele without killing off all ele specs”. You can’t nerf water/arcane without killing all form of ele as a whole. So buff weapon effectiveness and then talk about nerfing “d/d ele”. Which i think nerfing the burning is good enough.

protip, don’t cross RoF and you won’t get the 3 stacks of burn on you.

I really don’t think eles are OP, or if they are; barely. Most of the suggestions are a joke with how bad it would gut the class. I play all classes btw.

I can largely ignore eles because most of their big damage is easy to avoid. Can’t say the same for god like mesmers atm or a rampaging warrior or lich form necro. But skilled players don’t often main warriors or necros. And guardians are far far better at bunkering.

And I think its more an issue of players complaining not about eles but about being out played by better players. They look at the class, and its an ele so they blame the class instead of looking at themselves.

Honestly, you’re complaining about a class that is mediocre at everything. Learn to avoid the big hits and largely avoid them unless you outnumber them (which is a good general policy for pvp in this game). Eles are good at 1v1s (not even the best) but that in no way makes them OP as this isn’t a game balanced around 1v1s.

Seriously stop trying to 1v1 an ele (and standing in their fire) and then complain when you get beat.

My proposals to both nerf uncounterable sustain, and buff other specs:

Fire
- Blinding ashes has a 10s ICD, now has a per-target ICD (not global). This makes burning less a source of random blinds, while increasing the impact of skillful application for dps specs.
- Ring of fire has a 3/4s cast, only burns for 2 stacks if crossed
- Burning fire – Might duration reduced to 10s

Water
- Cleansing wave (dagger 5) now has a 20s CD and heals for 100% more and cures 2 condis instead of 1(see below) – this skill IS INTERRUPTIBLE
- Soothing disruption – no longer gives regen (only if cleansing wave cures 2 condis). Instead cantrips restore 25 endurance (half a dodge) instantly to make up for it.
- Frost aura (dagger 4) now lasts for 5s baseline
- Frozen Burst – this skill is no longer a blast finisher
- Powerful aura extends aura durations by 20% as well, or reduces aura skill CD’s. Even better, merge powerful aura with the new tempest trait that clearly belongs in water traitline.
- Stop, drop, n’ roll – move this trait to fire. In its place, I would take the “aoe vigor on attuning to water” trait from the tempest traitline that clearly belongs in water.

Arcana
- Elemental contingency now procs on successfully dodging a skill (instead of on-hit). Prot duration from earth is now 5s.
- Elemental attunement: prot duration from earth is now 2-2.5s
- Evasive Arcana: no longer heals at all when dodging in water (this is why cleansing wave on dagger 5 has reduced CD)

Cantrips and defensive utilities
- Armor of earth has a 50s ICD baseline, gives 5 stacks of stab and prot for 4s on activation
- Mistform has 60s ICD baseline
- Arcane shield has 50s ICD baseline
- Lightning flash is now on ~30s ICD

Many adjustments need to follow to fix scepter, and continue shifting some survivability to skills/utilities and out of arcana/water traitlines. This not only opens up new builds that aren’t water/arcana, but also makes classic “stack all the defense you can” d/d ele more counterable while also being strong. Now they have a heal that is very important AND CAN BE INTERRUPTED.

The most important change here is:
- Overall healing is slightly reduced.
- More healing comes from skills (dagger 5) instead of from dodging (which can’t be interrupted). This means that eles need to be more careful about using the heal skill, while enemies can actually break them down by interrupting the skill.
- Some cleanse options are moved out of water, making it less mandatory. Less access to regen outside of water makes eles more vulnerable to condi-bursts after leaving water without appropriate utils (cleansing fire, focus earth 4, shouts with trooper runes, etc).
- Less prot for just swapping (but still some, so you can use it as a defense). Same overall prot if you are intelligent with your play and make sure you dodge an attack while in earth to get that prot. Ele contingency is no longer passive bull-crap.
- Defensive skills have much lower CDs now that eles have less sustain by just rotating skills. This opens up higher dps-builds that rely on critical CD’s. These builds now no longer are FORCED into water/arcana, as they can survive without them.

Mightybird.6034:

I really don’t think eles are OP, or if they are; barely. Most of the suggestions are a joke with how bad it would gut the class. I play all classes btw.

I can largely ignore eles because most of their big damage is easy to avoid. Can’t say the same for god like mesmers atm or a rampaging warrior or lich form necro. But skilled players don’t often main warriors or necros. And guardians are far far better at bunkering.

And I think its more an issue of players complaining not about eles but about being out played by better players. They look at the class, and its an ele so they blame the class instead of looking at themselves.

Honestly, you’re complaining about a class that is mediocre at everything. Learn to avoid the big hits and largely avoid them unless you outnumber them (which is a good general policy for pvp in this game). Eles are good at 1v1s (not even the best) but that in no way makes them OP as this isn’t a game balanced around 1v1s.

Seriously stop trying to 1v1 an ele (and standing in their fire) and then complain when you get beat.

This post is hilarious. You say L2P, eles aren’t op. Then you say rampage and lich are. If you have problems fighting lich you are bad. That’s a fact, every class can counter it hard.

Your third paragraph is a massive kitten on the whole ele community. Ele players aren’t better than other classes players. Unless you can show overwhelming evidence supporting this, which you can’t, this is just pure speculative B.S.

Eles are not mediocre at anything. That is their problem currently. Eles are good at almost every single team role. They are good at 1vs1s, while also being extremely mobile and very good in teamfights.

Also, the class is meta in every game mode, and often taken twice in 5 man groups in every game mode. That is the definition of op.

On to some other points in this thread.

“Cele amulet OP.” Two classes have decent builds with this amulet. How can you say it is op when marauders/zerker has been on half the meta builds in every single meta in this game.

“Eles have had to little build diversity having to spec d/d and water/arcana forever.” Sorry ele players, no one feels bad that you have had one really strong meta spec forever. Sure scepter could use buffs, and eles need more build diversity outside of water/arcana, but every other class is in a similar position. At least your weapons are useful somewhere, the same cannot be said for necromancer axe, or ranger shortbow.

Realistic shaves to ele will involve shaves on their burning damage, and probably some protection uptime nerfs. What really needs to happen is they should go up in health to like 13k base along with guardian and thief. Then they could nerf water/arcana a little and hopefully some more build diversity would pop up.

BlackBeard.2873:

My proposals to both nerf uncounterable sustain, and buff other specs:

Fire
- Blinding ashes has a 10s ICD, now has a per-target ICD (not global). This makes burning less a source of random blinds, while increasing the impact of skillful application for dps specs.
- Ring of fire has a 3/4s cast, only burns for 2 stacks if crossed
- Burning fire – Might duration reduced to 10s

Water
- Cleansing wave (dagger 5) now has a 20s CD and heals for 100% more and cures 2 condis instead of 1(see below) – this skill IS INTERRUPTIBLE
- Soothing disruption – no longer gives regen (only if cleansing wave cures 2 condis). Instead cantrips restore 25 endurance (half a dodge) instantly to make up for it.
- Frost aura (dagger 4) now lasts for 5s baseline
- Frozen Burst – this skill is no longer a blast finisher
- Powerful aura extends aura durations by 20% as well, or reduces aura skill CD’s. Even better, merge powerful aura with the new tempest trait that clearly belongs in water traitline.
- Stop, drop, n’ roll – move this trait to fire. In its place, I would take the “aoe vigor on attuning to water” trait from the tempest traitline that clearly belongs in water.

Arcana
- Elemental contingency now procs on successfully dodging a skill (instead of on-hit). Prot duration from earth is now 5s.
- Elemental attunement: prot duration from earth is now 2-2.5s
- Evasive Arcana: no longer heals at all when dodging in water (this is why cleansing wave on dagger 5 has reduced CD)

Cantrips and defensive utilities
- Armor of earth has a 50s ICD baseline, gives 5 stacks of stab and prot for 4s on activation
- Mistform has 60s ICD baseline
- Arcane shield has 50s ICD baseline
- Lightning flash is now on ~30s ICD

Many adjustments need to follow to fix scepter, and continue shifting some survivability to skills/utilities and out of arcana/water traitlines. This not only opens up new builds that aren’t water/arcana, but also makes classic “stack all the defense you can” d/d ele more counterable while also being strong. Now they have a heal that is very important AND CAN BE INTERRUPTED.

The most important change here is:
- Overall healing is slightly reduced.
- More healing comes from skills (dagger 5) instead of from dodging (which can’t be interrupted). This means that eles need to be more careful about using the heal skill, while enemies can actually break them down by interrupting the skill.
- Some cleanse options are moved out of water, making it less mandatory. Less access to regen outside of water makes eles more vulnerable to condi-bursts after leaving water without appropriate utils (cleansing fire, focus earth 4, shouts with trooper runes, etc).
- Less prot for just swapping (but still some, so you can use it as a defense). Same overall prot if you are intelligent with your play and make sure you dodge an attack while in earth to get that prot. Ele contingency is no longer passive bull-crap.
- Defensive skills have much lower CDs now that eles have less sustain by just rotating skills. This opens up higher dps-builds that rely on critical CD’s. These builds now no longer are FORCED into water/arcana, as they can survive without them.

All staff builds, focus and future warhorn builds nerfed for the sake of nerfing d/d?
Do you know how long it would get for a decent player to beat a decent ele after your “suggested” nerfs on sustain?….not even 50s

Assuming your suggestions would really be taken in consideration, I then take the “best” of you lot and and place him on an ele, I then jump on ranger, necro or warrior, engi…I promise you that I’d explode you in less than 40s, I’d totalize you..period

Actually we can do this now, you play ele with no soothing disruption and no evasiva arcane, let’s see how long you last..I dare you

Most of your suggestions are not that much more atrocious than what I see on the forum daily…but removing healing from arcana and regen from soothing disruption that has been over 70% of ele sustain on every build only since…launch? It’s simply ridiculous…it’s like you’re proposing to remove Monk’s focus from guardians…I get it you must be joking, that’s it.

P.S To be precise I agree with your line of thought, reduce the sustain/defense of the ele..but that must be done in a smarter way, your sustain proposal would bring the ele down , from hero to zero basically

BlackBeard.2873:

My proposals to both nerf uncounterable sustain, and buff other specs:

Fire
- Blinding ashes has a 10s ICD, now has a per-target ICD (not global). This makes burning less a source of random blinds, while increasing the impact of skillful application for dps specs.
- Ring of fire has a 3/4s cast, only burns for 2 stacks if crossed
- Burning fire – Might duration reduced to 10s

Water
- Cleansing wave (dagger 5) now has a 20s CD and heals for 100% more and cures 2 condis instead of 1(see below) – this skill IS INTERRUPTIBLE
- Soothing disruption – no longer gives regen (only if cleansing wave cures 2 condis). Instead cantrips restore 25 endurance (half a dodge) instantly to make up for it.
- Frost aura (dagger 4) now lasts for 5s baseline
- Frozen Burst – this skill is no longer a blast finisher
- Powerful aura extends aura durations by 20% as well, or reduces aura skill CD’s. Even better, merge powerful aura with the new tempest trait that clearly belongs in water traitline.
- Stop, drop, n’ roll – move this trait to fire. In its place, I would take the “aoe vigor on attuning to water” trait from the tempest traitline that clearly belongs in water.

Arcana
- Elemental contingency now procs on successfully dodging a skill (instead of on-hit). Prot duration from earth is now 5s.
- Elemental attunement: prot duration from earth is now 2-2.5s
- Evasive Arcana: no longer heals at all when dodging in water (this is why cleansing wave on dagger 5 has reduced CD)

Cantrips and defensive utilities
- Armor of earth has a 50s ICD baseline, gives 5 stacks of stab and prot for 4s on activation
- Mistform has 60s ICD baseline
- Arcane shield has 50s ICD baseline
- Lightning flash is now on ~30s ICD

Many adjustments need to follow to fix scepter, and continue shifting some survivability to skills/utilities and out of arcana/water traitlines. This not only opens up new builds that aren’t water/arcana, but also makes classic “stack all the defense you can” d/d ele more counterable while also being strong. Now they have a heal that is very important AND CAN BE INTERRUPTED.

The most important change here is:
- Overall healing is slightly reduced.
- More healing comes from skills (dagger 5) instead of from dodging (which can’t be interrupted). This means that eles need to be more careful about using the heal skill, while enemies can actually break them down by interrupting the skill.
- Some cleanse options are moved out of water, making it less mandatory. Less access to regen outside of water makes eles more vulnerable to condi-bursts after leaving water without appropriate utils (cleansing fire, focus earth 4, shouts with trooper runes, etc).
- Less prot for just swapping (but still some, so you can use it as a defense). Same overall prot if you are intelligent with your play and make sure you dodge an attack while in earth to get that prot. Ele contingency is no longer passive bull-crap.
- Defensive skills have much lower CDs now that eles have less sustain by just rotating skills. This opens up higher dps-builds that rely on critical CD’s. These builds now no longer are FORCED into water/arcana, as they can survive without them.

Nope to your evasive arcana suggestion. You just crippled every non dagger offhand ele there. Stop designing balance around d/d only.

Lettuce.2945:

Nope to your evasive arcana suggestion. You just crippled every non dagger offhand ele there. Stop designing balance around d/d only.

This was meant to demonstrate a method of balance without being too long. Obviously, you also increase staff 3 healing a bunch, and cleanse on staff 5. Focus 4 could have some healing added to it as well.

The general gist is to:
- Move survival from traits to weapon skills and utilities
- Reduce the ability to just cleanse everything with cantrips as a be-all, end all
- Allow water to have a good deal of cleanse, but also enable builds to survive condis with alternatives in other lines, making “cleansing water” less of a “necessary on every build forever” trait.
- Reduce passive sustain from just following a rotation, and require more actual execution by interacting with your opponent.

Supreme.3164:

Most of your suggestions are not that much more atrocious than what I see on the forum daily…but removing healing from arcana and regen from soothing disruption that has been over 70% of ele sustain on every build only since…launch? It’s simply ridiculous…it’s like you’re proposing to remove Monk’s focus from guardians…I get it you must be joking, that’s it.

The sustain wasn’t removed…it was MOVED to other places. Healing from arcana was taken away, so that more could be put on weapon skills. Regen was removed from soothing disruption AT THE SAME TIME more cleanse options were added to skills and the fire traitline. All the suggested improvements have to be taken together. The point is that being able to just swap to water and dodge to get 2x heals/cleanse with no counterplay is kinda dumb. If you put that some of that healing onto skills WITH CAST TIMES, now there IS counterplay by trying to interrupt important skills. Also, because you don’t get all your survival from just swapping through a rotation, you can now make defensive utilities that don’t have stupid-long CD’s, a massive boon for dps builds that rely on those.

BlackBeard, thanks for the feedback, but it won’t work. Your “nerfs” will further push Ele into D/D and cantrips because there is no alternative. Ele will instantly die to a Mesmer/Thief burst if they pick Signets or Glyphs. It’s even worse with your “nerfs” and make people run full bunker Ele.

The right way to nerf Ele is to give more innate defense into weapon (Blink/dodge/boons) while reduce the effect of water/Arcana traits. Ele must go to Water/Arcana now is because there is not enough defense built into their weapons, and they would die without the traits.

BlackBeard.2873:

Lettuce.2945:

Nope to your evasive arcana suggestion. You just crippled every non dagger offhand ele there. Stop designing balance around d/d only.

This was meant to demonstrate a method of balance without being too long. Obviously, you also increase staff 3 healing a bunch, and cleanse on staff 5. Focus 4 could have some healing added to it as well.

The general gist is to:
- Move survival from traits to weapon skills and utilities
- Reduce the ability to just cleanse everything with cantrips as a be-all, end all
- Allow water to have a good deal of cleanse, but also enable builds to survive condis with alternatives in other lines, making “cleansing water” less of a “necessary on every build forever” trait.
- Reduce passive sustain from just following a rotation, and require more actual execution by interacting with your opponent.

-You don’t take in consideration the passive sustain of other classes like mesmer, guardian ect ect

- You reduce the cantrips potential to cleanse condis by adding a 10s ICD to soothing disruption, so that spamming all cantrips at the same time will actually give you a single condi removal and 5s of regen/vigor; you don’t remove the sustain from cantrips

-Yes it’d be great if most of the sustain would be moved from traits to weapon skill, but that will require huge amounts of work for the devs, anything less like you propose would leave the profession crippled.

-You basically want to change the ele into a guardian where the devs years ago already stated the difference between the two : the first rely on frequent and smaller heal burst to stay alive, the latter rely on huge heal burst and blocks to stay alive

-edit- you’re wrong to think that an ele with no enough access to regen but with faster access to arcane shield, would fare better or at least equally to the current ele.

-90% of Guardian healing abilities are instant cast : meditation are instant cast and the elite makes you invulnerable, shelter it adds block while you heal, virtue of resolve is instant also ect etc..so where would it be the counterplay for ele when facing a guardian then if you’d remove the current iteration of healing?

Sunshine.5014:

The right way to nerf Ele is to give more innate defense into weapon (Blink/dodge/boons) while reduce the effect of water/Arcana traits. Ele must go to Water/Arcana now is because there is not enough defense built into their weapons, and they would die without the traits.

This is EXACTLY what I was going for with my suggestions: moving the healing/cleanse onto weapon skills, and giving greater access to defensive utilities. Maybe this wasn’t so outwardly apparent because there were other minor tweaks included in there.

Supreme.3164:

- You reduce the cantrips potential to cleanse condis by adding a 10s ICD to soothing disruption, so that spamming all cantrips at the same time will actually give you a single condi removal and 5s of regen/vigor; you don’t remove the sustain from cantrips
-Yes it’d be great if most of the sustain would be moved from traits to weapon skill, but that will require huge amounts of work for the devs, anything less like you propose would leave the profession crippled.

-You basically want to change the ele into a guardian where the devs years ago already stated the difference between the two : the first rely on frequent and smaller heal burst to stay alive, the latter rely on huge heal burst and blocks to stay alive

1. That is a good suggestion too for soothing disruption. My approach was to make them have less innate cleanse, but have more ability to give defense against power-burst. This also helps the trait-line, as you would take cleansing wave if you want more cleanse, and soothing disruption if are worried about bursts.

2. It isn’t REALLY that much work: you don’t need to write all new utility dialogues. It also is necessary because the current design is massively flawed, resulting in both something that is too strong while also massively pigeon-holing the class.

3. Not really going for long-CD, big heals, as much as short-CD small heals with cast times. Heck, put healing skills on the weapon skills on a 10s CD so that they cast every rotation, but can be interrupted, and you instantly make play better for both the player (who now has to think) and opponent (who now has a viable attack strategy).

Blackbeard, can you please count the cd and casting time of ele weapons, and test it on golems to see how ridiculously long and obvious ele bursts are, and that goes for all weapons of ele. The reason you think d/d ele is strong is burning, and in sustained fight, ele takes a rotation or two to start ramping up their damage to deal decent amount of damage (other than burning).

Look at staff cele ele. No one calls that strong and op yet it uses cele like shoutbow, engi, dd ele, and now cele signet necro. It can’t kill anything 1v1 but it also has earth and arcane. And look how telegraphed and long cds are, especially meteor shower and auto attacks. The healing is actually suboptimal unless blasted, and that requires ele to either put down eruption in the beginning, limiting its ground, or having to use water skills then dodge into the field while attuning to water, putting evasive arcana into 10 sec cd as well as using one of the valuable dodges especially with vigor nerf.

Now D/D. The main hand dagger attacks that do decent amount of damage are lightning whip (3/4 cast time), drake’s breath (2 and 1/4 castime with 3 1/4 cd if traited), and burning speed (3/4 cd). In earth ring of earth (3/4 sec cast time). Do you see how all these do mediocre damage and also has casting time? Firegrab is 45 seconds (30 1/4 with trait) with 3/4 casting time, ring of fire is 1/4 casting time with 10 sec with trait. I’m not even gonna mention churning earth or earth quake because those have really kittened damage or needlessly long animation.

Now let’s go to scepter, the one that needs most work. All air is the only one that does decent damage, and water is the only one that can be used to damage someone without targetting. I’m not gonna go in depth into this but lets just say out of 12 weapon skills, water 1 water 2, water 3 (not enough healing), fire 1, 2, earth 1, 2 and 3 are used to proc fresh air trait. and all these skills have casting times as well as animation.

Also with having the lowest health pool, lowest armor, eles have to build defensively no matter what build they play, which is water and arcane. Basically ele’s weapon skills suck major kittens. Revamp those even d/d with reduced casting time and change some to instant, and give more healing powers and put improved defensive mechanisms into those weapons, then let’s talk about how to nerf water and arcane.

BlackBeard.2873:

Sunshine.5014:

The right way to nerf Ele is to give more innate defense into weapon (Blink/dodge/boons) while reduce the effect of water/Arcana traits. Ele must go to Water/Arcana now is because there is not enough defense built into their weapons, and they would die without the traits.

This is EXACTLY what I was going for with my suggestions: moving the healing/cleanse onto weapon skills, and giving greater access to defensive utilities. Maybe this wasn’t so outwardly apparent because there were other minor tweaks included in there.

Not really. Moving healing skill to Water just makes it much easier to kill an Ele. It doesn’t help with defense. What I ask for is movements skills and boons, to actively avoid damage with good timing and positioning. Without cantrips (you try to nerf it) Ele will die instantly to any burst outside of Water. Your “balance” will not give Ele the innate defense it needs.

Class balance is about so much more than simply making them all about the same powerlevel (but of course that’s a big point of it). Every class should have a LOT of different builds that actually offer different playstyles. Mesmers and Necros right now got a lot of new options and you see quite a lot of different builds from them (condi, power, cele, signets, wells, etc.).

Eles (and Guardians to an extent) are basically the only class that has used basically the exact same build since the start of the game, with only 1 or 2 traits getting changed. Playstyle basically never changed.

You can’t really go full bunker on ele because you lack the stability and raw team support of guardians, and you can’t go full zerker because you lack the innate active defense (and health) of other classes. You can’t go full condi either because most of your weapon skills do either power damage or power + condi. Also there’s no condition damage/toughness/vitality amulet which would be needed for ele full condi to have a chance. Also you don’t even have any real condition damage outside of burning anyway (there’s basically zero support for bleed on ele).

So celestial it is, for basically all our builds. Scepter Fresh Air zerker does see play but overall simply loses out to cele d/d or d/f mostly by scepter having zero sustain or damage outside of it’s few burst moves. Also thieves and mesmers and even medi guards do the zerker job much better.

Eles have always gone from either dominating the meta to utter bullkitten with very few “shaving” changes. And I’d argue that what brought them back from almost extinction in pvp after a year was much more the celestial amulet stat buff than the few unnerfs on ele traits.

I was really hoping that Arenanet would do some much needed rework on eles – exactly like Mesmers and Necros got with the specialization patch. But alas, we got nothing basically. Still every ele will use 3 cantrips + healing signet and whatever elite you think is the least bad. And of course, water + arcane because you simply cannot survive without them, like it has always been.

As long as this is true and Anet only balances basically around that one spec eles will be either over- or under-powered. If a lot of different builds and playstyles are all about viable a class has a much wider range of viability range, rather than only having one option that than basically has to be extremely strong because there’s nothing else you could viably play if it didn’t perform (i.e. the year between dhumfire patch and cele amulet feature patch).

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Class balance is about so much more than simply making them all about the same powerlevel (but of course that’s a big point of it). Every class should have a LOT of different builds that actually offer different playstyles. Mesmers and Necros right now got a lot of new options and you see quite a lot of different builds from them (condi, power, cele, signets, wells, etc.).

Eles (and Guardians to an extent) are basically the only class that has used basically the exact same build since the start of the game, with only 1 or 2 traits getting changed. Playstyle basically never changed.

You can’t really go full bunker on ele because you lack the stability and raw team support of guardians, and you can’t go full zerker because you lack the innate active defense (and health) of other classes. You can’t go full condi either because most of your weapon skills do either power damage or power + condi. Also there’s no condition damage/toughness/vitality amulet which would be needed for ele full condi to have a chance. Also you don’t even have any real condition damage outside of burning anyway (there’s basically zero support for bleed on ele).

So celestial it is, for basically all our builds. Scepter Fresh Air zerker does see play but overall simply loses out to cele d/d or d/f mostly by scepter having zero sustain or damage outside of it’s few burst moves. Also thieves and mesmers and even medi guards do the zerker job much better.

Eles have always gone from either dominating the meta to utter bullkitten with very few “shaving” changes. And I’d argue that what brought them back from almost extinction in pvp after a year was much more the celestial amulet stat buff than the few unnerfs on ele traits.

I was really hoping that Arenanet would do some much needed rework on eles – exactly like Mesmers and Necros got with the specialization patch. But alas, we got nothing basically. Still every ele will use 3 cantrips + healing signet and whatever elite you think is the least bad. And of course, water + arcane because you simply cannot survive without them, like it has always been.

As long as this is true and Anet only balances basically around that one spec eles will be either over- or under-powered. If a lot of different builds and playstyles are all about viable a class has a much wider range of viability range, rather than only having one option that than basically has to be extremely strong because there’s nothing else you could viably play if it didn’t perform (i.e. the year between dhumfire patch and cele amulet feature patch).

There has always been at least an ele since launch in most teams, since celestial amulet got buffed and other specs got nerfed ( spirit ranger ) , you see double ele..but yeah it has always been the same spec regardless

cele eles shouldn’t be able to faceroll into 25 stacks of might and perma prot. the burning is a secondary issue because you can actually have control over this by evading/cleansing.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

I was really hoping that Arenanet would do some much needed rework on eles – exactly like Mesmers and Necros got with the specialization patch.

I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but necros didn’t get much. The signet build is good, but power necro didn’t change much. Other than that the terrormancer build died, axe is still worthless everywhere, and the class is still incredibly vulnerable to cc. Most of the classes need a lot of work, not just eles. I know you probably feel like ele needs more work, but I assure you most classes are in a similar position.

^but at least the signet build is incredibly strong in the hands of a good player. in that sense, necros got a lot – a competitive spec.

Chokolata.1870:

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480

-reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced)

-reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s

-reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2

-increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s

-reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s

What do you think? Too much? Not enough??

Why not just gut the class with a rusty spoon, make dagger main-hand only, and increase attunement recharges to 75 seconds while you’re at it?

Nerf protection duration? Sorry, but ele has lowest hp and weakest armour. That boon is one of the few ways eles are able to survive getting in to do our combo and getting back out alive.

Nerf ROF? This has got to be the silliest suggestion I see going around. Once the ele drops ROF, it’s up to you to walk into and out of it as many times as possible to get the burn stacks you’re complaining about. If you don’t like the heat, stay out of the fire!

Nerf celestial stats? kitten right off. Ele burst potential got castrated with an old butter knife and the only way elementalists have any versatility in their build right now is to run celestial. Otherwise they’re either glass cannons or impotent tanks who rely all the more heavily on the boons you’re all too eager to deny them.

You don’t want to nerf ele, you want to kill it.

Provost.6210:

Chokolata.1870:

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480

-reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced)

-reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s

-reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2

-increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s

-reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s

What do you think? Too much? Not enough??

Why not just gut the class with a rusty spoon, make dagger main-hand only, and increase attunement recharges to 75 seconds while you’re at it?

Nerf protection duration? Sorry, but ele has lowest hp and weakest armour. That boon is one of the few ways eles are able to survive getting in to do our combo and getting back out alive.

Nerf ROF? This has got to be the silliest suggestion I see going around. Once the ele drops ROF, it’s up to you to walk into and out of it as many times as possible to get the burn stacks you’re complaining about. If you don’t like the heat, stay out of the fire!

Nerf celestial stats? kitten right off. Ele burst potential got castrated with an old butter knife and the only way elementalists have any versatility in their build right now is to run celestial. Otherwise they’re either glass cannons or impotent tanks who rely all the more heavily on the boons you’re all too eager to deny them.

You don’t want to nerf ele, you want to kill it.

This.

Hasn’t ele had enough nerfs?

Who cares if an ele can beat your class, other classes can beat ele.

Playing cele signant necro will destroy an ele or any boon reliant class, MM necro beats cele ele, power longbow ranger beats ele, rampage warrior beats ele, thief has trouble but can beat an ele, mesmer will end a fight with ele before it begins…

Why nerf ele even more? do you play guardian or something?

I think the real issue is the mobility, everytime you’re about to beat an ele, they will disengage heal and engage again, STEALTHLESS thief tactics ftw

I main ranger, have no problem with ele except:
- Burn: Too many burn, skills apply 3 stack burn need to be reduced to 2 stack, keep those 2 stack skills, also please look at the guardian and reduce the stack of burn.
- Diamon Skin: lol, just lol. I once fight a bunker staff ele runing this trait. Hell even you run a hybird build, you simply cant 1v1 the ele with this trait. Ele has many way to heal back and keep the 90% HP gap, then condition cant be apply on them. Unless you run power build, better call your teammate to 2v1. So i think this trait need diffrent ways to work.
- Stone Heart: Same problem, ignore crit dam ? Maybe decrease crit hit dam the ele takes by 33%-50% so ppl with high ferocity may have some chance.

To Supreme.3164:
- Ranger touch #5 Bonfire only apply 1 stack burn last 3s per tick. The tooltip shows the dam you take when you stand on the aoe for entire 8s which is never happen.
- Empathic Bond has the second name is Empanic Bond; Signet of Renewal is Kill-The-Pet button. They are useless when the pets go out of range or die which are usually happen, even with the brown bear and the cd to swap pet is like 60s if both pets are dead. And most important, they are not clean on demand. 10s cd is enough to be killed by condition burst.

- Tbh, it is not the ele OP, it is other classes like ranger, engi, nec,… (sorry no room for guardian or mesmer here) suck. So instead of nerfing the ele, just buff the ranger, engi, necro and everyone will be OP. Happy ending.

The two problems with ele are too much access to protection/damage reduction plus the burn issue.

The protection on Elemental Contingency should be switched to 2s of resistance. Elemental Attunement protection should be reduced by 1s. Elemental shielding should have a small CD to keep from chaining auras and stacking protection. Soothing ice should have a 25/30s CD. Blinding ashes CD should be per target and raised by a few seconds.

I have said this many times before, but we need to buff other classes, and other builds on ele. We have all noticed this, but elementalist has always become OP with buffs and useless with nerfs. This means that a nerf would make this class useless again, if we are going by the same logic as before. Why don’t we buff scepter and/or staff (Not all classes have useful weapons in PvP or at all, we have to deal with that, (EG, necro axe, mace guard, staff guard)
I don’t want to say it, as this isn’t true, but maybe elementalist is closest to what Anet’s vision is. So I think even though this would be harder, we should buff the other classes. Tbh, we could go any which way with the next PvP balance patch.

Now, I’m not going to suggest a lot direct changes, but more like the problems and where they come from.
1. Elementalist has too much condition immunity, pretty much every trait line, besides air and kind of arcane give massive condition immunity. (Perhaps, change some regeneration giving skills should give soothing mists instead, this lowers the amount of conditions cleansed from a lot of things, and it also would allow for health regeneration that can’t be boon stripped.) Currently elementalist has a condi clear on all can trips because another trait gives condi clears on regen and another trait gives regen on cantrip, so that is 3 condi clears that are normally accessed through a fight, dodging, switching to water and cleansing wave are condi clears, so that is 6 condi clears, all because of water and arcane. I don’t agree with many of these nerfs but elementalist needs one on condition clears(Maybe the regen trait should only apply if you don’t have regen, this means that your condi clears are timed a lot more, so that lowers it down to 4 conditions) However, now to earth, the grandmaster trait on earth means that if you heal back up you are immune to conditions, so that is all conditions cleared. The minor trait on fire uses cleansing flames which cures 3 conditions, 4 counting the regen trait that cures conditions. So that is a whopping 10 conditions able to cured within such a small amount of time. Even for someone who has been a D/D ele since they’ve started the game, that is ridiculous and it spoils the game for every condi build and arguably the elementalist for ruining what would be a very good fight. This definitely needs to be lowered somehow, asother classes don’t have good condi clears, but they excel in different parts of the game. D/D Elementalist doesn’t have a said weakness but on top of that can do so many things in the game.