Guild Wars 2

So, you would rather buff 7 classes and god knows how many builds instead of nerfing 3 builds on 2 classes that are head and shoulders above the rest at the moment. Much logic, such wow!

MadCat.9172:

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.

I agree on everything except stone heart, I believe that there is counterplay, it’s just a matter of luring the ele out of earth by using condis, he’ll inevitably leave for condi cleanse and as I always use the owl+taunt, I then F2 him at the right moment.

Don’t take me wrong the trait is strong and I would not mind your suggestion, as a matter of fact I wouldn’t even need it against power necro, ranger, engi, ele…..but with the current iteration of mesmers, thieves and rampage warriors…sorry man, without that trait you just get flattened out of stealth.

Did you watch yesterday ESL, those fire eles with no stone heart?..exploded in like 3s, as I wvw a lot also, without that trait these days you don’t stand a chance with all the perma stealth mesmers/thieves roaming around, in T1 there are freaking stealth gankers behind every corner….

About ranger, yeah I personally love it , it’s my second main and for good reasons :
-good condi clear
-good 1vs1 options
-majority of traits are good and interesting

With that said, I do find the skirmishing line pretty horrible and pets can be a little too much on the weak side but this only becomes apparent during team fights.
-the radius increase of traps and bonfire removed for no reason
-empathic bond reworked : let it give resistance somehow..but maybe druid will get resistance who knows

So yeah ranger would need a little more condi pressure, non-rooting sword AA, more durable pets, skirmishing line buffs, couple more traits reworked, make spirits movable again…kk I stop here

Limit the burn stacks to max 3 and burning on the drakes breath to 2s then Ele will be fine. It is not OP in the levels of Mesmer and my opinion the real culprit is the burning stacks more then cele or so.

I mean if you have 3 stacks you can’t have the 4th stack.

Yesterday, I was not paying attention, a burn guardian put me 10 stacks of burning which was ticking like 6K, 6K on a dot WTF!!!!!!!!!!

Chokolata.1870:

So, you would rather buff 7 classes and god knows how many builds instead of nerfing 3 builds on 2 classes that are head and shoulders above the rest at the moment. Much logic, such wow!

Yes, in the long run. I never said that we wouldn’t rebalance elementalist first. I find it quite odd that the OP would call me out on this out of all people, because you made this thread to get ideas on how to go about rebalancing elementalist. If I didn’t make myself clear (Which I fail to do sometimes), I was talking on a long-term scale.

Timiok, buddy I am not calling you out, I am responding to many a post of how we need to leave Ele because reasons.

The fact of the matter is that the class is over represented in every game mode. In PvE you have 2 elementalists as a must, in WvW it is one of 4 viable classes for team oriented play that makes up the army volume.

But seeing how this is a PvP forum, we are discussing PvP related changes and scenarios it is quite obvious that Mesmer and Ele are OP, specifically the builds that are being played right now. Not Ele or Mesmer, but both classes have OP builds. And the builds need to be toned down.

As for the whole argumentation that Ele does not have other builds other then DD, this is not true. They have but DD is so overwhelmingly strong that there is no need to explore anything else. Are those build comparable to DD, Mesmer and so on, ofc they are not. But those builds are comparable to other classes builds.

Chokolata.1870:

Timiok, buddy I am not calling you out, I am responding to many a post of how we need to leave Ele because reasons.

The fact of the matter is that the class is over represented in every game mode. In PvE you have 2 elementalists as a must, in WvW it is one of 4 viable classes for team oriented play that makes up the army volume.

But seeing how this is a PvP forum, we are discussing PvP related changes and scenarios it is quite obvious that Mesmer and Ele are OP, specifically the builds that are being played right now. Not Ele or Mesmer, but both classes have OP builds. And the builds need to be toned down.

As for the whole argumentation that Ele does not have other builds other then DD, this is not true. They have but DD is so overwhelmingly strong that there is no need to explore anything else. Are those build comparable to DD, Mesmer and so on, ofc they are not. But those builds are comparable to other classes builds.

Explore what?

-Scepter fail against anything and staff does nothing more than d/d, it’s just more support in return for less 1vs1 potential and you still use the same traits water/arcana. Eles have indeed no other viable alternative other than sustain bunker in a form or another, anything else just get …out-sustained and easily killed in return.

Eles has no profession inbuilt defensive mechanism like other profession, all defenses come from traits at 100%, so while people may agree on your ideas to bring down d/d ele, to go and say that this profession can have more than d/d bunker in pvp….it’s an atrocious lie, everybody knows that..including the devs, sustain bunker it’s all this profession is good for

sephiroth.4217:

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

D/d such a wonderful design, being a in-Fighter pretty legit in teamfight.
though i’m a bit disappointed when someone like OP is asking for nerf. remember it is by design for this upcoming Specialization patch. wonder how many specialization they can give on a single Class. i’m intrigue, we’re going eSport.

The easiest way to nerf them is decrease burn damage and the duration of some of their burn skills.

Once they tone down mesmer and maybe even rampage warrior you will see more scepter eles popping up.

This isn’t new to anet. Tone down powerful builds and buff lessed used ones until all builds reach an equilibrium. Honestly, pre-trait change patch was probably the most balanced this game has been in my opinion.

FrownyClown.8402:

The easiest way to nerf them is decrease burn damage and the duration of some of their burn skills.

Once they tone down mesmer and maybe even rampage warrior you will see more scepter eles popping up.

This isn’t new to anet. Tone down powerful builds and buff lessed used ones until all builds reach an equilibrium. Honestly, pre-trait change patch was probably the most balanced this game has been in my opinion.

Nah, scepter is too badly designed sorry, while nerfing extreme burst may help the game in the long run, it won’t surely help scepter eles to come out from the hole they’ve been dumped into

-You have extremely poor AA, with low dmg, long casting times on AA..absurd
-A plethora of useless mid range skills that do no dmg and simply bring nothing to the table : shatterstone, dragon’s tooth, dust devil.
-Lack of effective defenses ( dagger MH got evades, block, stun, weakness and staff got evade, CC, etc )

The weapon just lack in general

D/D ele are so overpowered
I don’t know how Anet dare make esport events with such a godmode class that ignore any sort of balance by being more durable than a bunker guard on celestial amulet and deal as much damage as a zerker warrior.
This class has everything literally mobility sustain burst condi aoe might stacking team healing …
It’s way too durable for a supposedly “squishy class”
No wonder why every team play at least 2 ele.

FrownyClown.8402:

The easiest way to nerf them is decrease burn damage and the duration of some of their burn skills.

Disagree with the nerfing part, ele burns are fine, an ele cannot insta burn down a person (unless that person commits several mistakes), most of our burning skills are telegraphed and easily avoidable. Perhaps changing the way burning escalates so that you actually have to take a condi amulet to reach high damage, but even that sounds extreme and kind of a double standard if you take in consideration how crazy some power oriented specs are atm.

As an ele main, I suggest the following REASONABLE nerfs to ele.

1.) Tone down burning (Everyone knows this one)

2.) Rework diamond skin to proc resistance every time you enter earth while above the 75% hp threshold to promote more active counterplay to condis. Similar set up to stone heart.

3.) Increase icd of soothing ice to 40s or remove regen from it so it doesn’t sync with remove on regen trait (less rng cleanses)

4.) Rework blinding ashes and raise icd to 10 secs but make it PER TARGET so fire traited eles can have some survivability. Nerf and buff.

5.) Reduce overall might stacking capabilities of ele. Nothing should stack that much might by themselves. This includes hgh engis too.

Those are my top 5 things to nerf at the moment. It’s either that or bring up the other professions up to par with Mesmers and eles at the moment. I would think that would require much more work for Anet though. As it is, right now, Mesmers have the most viable build diversity I’ve ever seen in GW2. Their traitline synergizes so well with one another, no matter what you take. And some classes are pigeon holed to 1-3.

RevanCorana.8942:

D/D ele are so overpowered
I don’t know how Anet dare make esport events with such a godmode class that ignore any sort of balance by being more durable than a bunker guard on celestial amulet and deal as much damage as a zerker warrior.
This class has everything literally mobility sustain burst condi aoe might stacking team healing …
It’s way too durable for a supposedly “squishy class”
No wonder why every team play at least 2 ele.

yet ppl complaining about rampage (That IS still quite op in some cases) but when in esl final and semifinal you find 8 eles and 1 war (rom) i have to say that rampage doesn’t really look so broken compared to those ele guys doin whatever they want all over the place

just make them unplayable like they were before the big PvP change.

ele can’t handle CC, range and strong condition builds. they are NOT op.
ele burning is not OP unless you just stand in their fire attacks ele condi can not take you down engi and guard burning is the OP burn.

SnowHawk.3615:

just make them unplayable like they were before the big PvP change.

I agree.

There are only 2 ways of realisticly balancing any professions.

1- Cut down the trait lines to 2 at max.

2- Bring the 6th trait line to all classes.

Anet planned all the profession balances according to the 6th trait line that will be coming. But Almighty knows why, they did only release 5, to keep the hype, or to work on the others more. Now most of the professions do not have any balance because of this problem. They shouldn’t have released this big patch without all trait lines and skills.

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??

So, almost all of your proposed changes nerf ele as a whole, although there’s arguably only 1 build that is being played like crazy and considered OP.

D/D-Ele needs to be toned down in DPS a bit, that’s all and I’d probably simply nerf mainhand-dagger dps by toning down the physical DPS on drakes breath, burning speed and cone of cold by 30%. It would put the ele more in the niche of condition-dps (which would make him less of a jack of all trades and less bursty).

PowerBottom.5796:

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??

So, almost all of your proposed changes nerf ele as a whole, although there’s arguably only 1 build that is being played like crazy and considered OP.

D/D-Ele needs to be toned down in DPS a bit, that’s all and I’d probably simply nerf mainhand-dagger dps by toning down the physical DPS on drakes breath, burning speed and cone of cold by 30%. It would put the ele more in the niche of condition-dps (which would make him less of a jack of all trades and less bursty).

that would hurt builds that don’t use celestial or might stacking.

What I’d like to see:

• Ring of Fire burning stacks reduced from 3 to 2 on cross. This skill does too much damage for its size and uptime, especially with Pyromancer’s Training. The size, duration, or cooldown could be altered instead, but I think any of these would disrupt this skills might stacking potential too much, and that a simple stack reduction is the better solution.

• Burning Speed: Either reduce the damage of this skill by 15%, or change this skill’s interaction with Lightning Flash so that it does not cause the end effects early.
  This skill does a large amount of damage in a large area on a relatively low cooldown, made even better by the two damage mods and large cooldown reduction d/d eles now pickup through traits in the fire line. On the cele d/d build with a decent amount of might built up, this does burst damage as good or better than some marauders builds can achieve.

• Blinding Ashes: Either increase the cooldown to 8s per target or change the functionality to only blind foes that already have a burn stack or two on them. This trait simply blinds too often as is, and is nearly random as to when it does. I would prefer a rework into something with more strategic use and counterplay, but knowing ANet it probably isn’t going to happen.

1. How about you simply stop running in and out of Ring of Fire all the time? It doesn’t do a single burn unless you cross the ring´.

2. Blinding Ashes isn’t random. Elementalist burns aren’t random, they all have extremely good tells (besides the 33% chance on crit which basically no build takes).

80% of ele complaints are clearly learn 2 play issues, like they’ve always been.

Avoiding going through ring of fire is perfectly fine most of the time in a 1v1 setting, but when you add more fighters into the mix it becomes simply unviable. RoF has nearly 50% uptime on the meta fire/water/arcane build, and covers the majority of a small conquest point with its 240 radius. Like everything else besides the autoattack in fire, it can easily force a dodge or other important defensive cooldown, which is why d/d is so strong right now.

FrownyClown.8402:

PowerBottom.5796:

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??

So, almost all of your proposed changes nerf ele as a whole, although there’s arguably only 1 build that is being played like crazy and considered OP.

D/D-Ele needs to be toned down in DPS a bit, that’s all and I’d probably simply nerf mainhand-dagger dps by toning down the physical DPS on drakes breath, burning speed and cone of cold by 30%. It would put the ele more in the niche of condition-dps (which would make him less of a jack of all trades and less bursty).

that would hurt builds that don’t use celestial or might stacking.

well, nerfing mainhand-dagger would probably hurt way less potential builds than nerfing like celestial amu stats or physical DMG bonus on fire.

Also, the only build that doesn’t use cele is probably S/F-ele with marauder, which most often doesn’t use dagger mainhand.

Realistically, without a huge overhaul of ele in general, we’re probably looking at staff, dagger/X and scepter/X builds all using cele and glasscannon-builds that use marauder, most likely S/F, as viable builds.

Nerfing physical DPS on fire would greatly hurt S/D (more than D/D) which I think isn’t necessary. Nerfing cele-stats would hurt tons of builds on several classes and nerfing protection-duration would hurt ele in general as well.

I don’t think that is at all warranted when 90% of ele’s in the competetive meta play D/D. It’s obvious that the mainhand dagger is the best target to nerf D/D-Ele without overly nerfing the other builds.

Actually, going by that logic Water + arcane is the best target for a nerf because every Ele runs these xD

remove burning damage from cleansing fire. (cmon its supposed to be a cleanse but now people just pretty much spam it cluelessly and still gain high dmg along with the passive proc…)
blinding ashes 15s icd.
make scepter viable.

with today’s patch, the message is clear: there’s no realistic way to nerf Ele!

Prisoner.2419:

Avoiding going through ring of fire is perfectly fine most of the time in a 1v1 setting, but when you add more fighters into the mix it becomes simply unviable. RoF has nearly 50% uptime on the meta fire/water/arcane build, and covers the majority of a small conquest point with its 240 radius. Like everything else besides the autoattack in fire, it can easily force a dodge or other important defensive cooldown, which is why d/d is so strong right now.

An area denial skill actually denying areas? INCONCEIVABLE!

What you just said is true for basically every good aoe in the game, and ring of fire happens to be d/d ele’s. Mesmer Staff 5 covers a small conquest point and basically spells doom for everyone under, power necro wells almost instant-kill, warrior longbow burst burninates even bigger points, even ranger longbow 5 does quite some damage if you stand in it for full duration…

Chokolata.1870:

Actually, going by that logic Water + arcane is the best target for a nerf because every Ele runs these xD

Actually, it is. And both water + arcane would need quite some nerfs to actually make eles have some build variety and actually be balanceable instead of always being either over- or under-powered.

Eles need ways to survive without the combination of stat power from cele amulet, constant condition removal from water, power of buffed cantrips, and boons and cleansing wave from arcane.

On a sidenote, we need to be able to cast in mistform again, it’s insane how focus earth 5 can be a 33 second cooldown better mistform with ease.

Anyway, some defense needs to be put from traits (especially water+arcane like mentioned, but also maybe protection on auras from earth) into the base class, and then everything rebalanced (i.e. nerf water+arcane, buff air, give earth some actual condition damage stuff, buff and/or rework scepter) around that.

Maybe even switch default healthpools on eles and mesmers. I never understood how mesmers have all these illusions and stealth and low cooldown blocks and teleports but end up having much more base health than eles that have neither of these things.

Eles now can’t really go bunker or zerker, or support, because we’ll always be cele sustain with might stacking and water+arcane by default, because that’s all we realistically have, even if you switch daggers for staff.

If we actually had some survivability by default, we’d be able to spec for zerker with maybe glyphs as utilities, or full bunker with conjures (earth shield for focused allies!) maybe, or an actual condition build that doesn’t do 70% of it’s damage as power still.

—

In the end, maybe that’s class design – jack of all trades, master of none – but that could be said for engineers too and yet they have so much more build options and varied playstyles between builds.

I disagree on the notion that Ele cannot be played as either berserker or sustain. The perception is skewed twofold however.

It is a mater of internal and external balance.

Internal balance:
- Water and Arcane are extremely dominant when it comes to both PvP modes. But this is not something that is Elementalist specific. For example, Warriors need both Discipline and Defense, Rangers have needed either Wilderness or Nature for the longest time too.

The issue arises that the combination of Celestial amulet, Water + Arcane, passive proc traits and DD create something that is head and shoulders above any other Elementalist build. But, even though DD is the dominant build, does not mean that FA, Staff bunker or even that Wooden Potatoes silly bunker res build are bad. There is simply no reason to go anything other then DD.

Celestial amulet + DD + might stacking + Elemental A + Evasive arcana + Cantrips + condi cleanse on regen have pushed DD before the patch and now we can add the stupid frozen aura trait.
Of course the burning is an issue in itself, but it is not so for all classes. Currently only Ele, Engi and Guardian can deliver mass burns and the ele issue is derived from might stacking and the Master of all trades issue atm.

On the issue of internal balance, EA is totally an over budged trait especially for a minor. So is evasive arcana. And by god, so is cleansing water. Perhaps if Anet considered reducing the number of procs on regen would open up the other 2 GMs up for play?

External balance:
- This is in relation to other classes obviously. A big part is how a build compares to another classes build that has a similar function. For example, a bunker Ele is not bad but Guardian is simply better at the role. It can sustain itself, sustain allies, it can res people and pretty much covers the role perfectly that, in an organised team, there is no need for any other bunker build.

There is a similar issue with FA Ele. This build is amazing when you compare it to many a burst build of other classes. The issue is, Thief is better at +1 due to mobility and map coverage… and now we have the new and improved Mesmer. Thief + Mesmer is the ultimate spike combo is it not? But that does not mean that FA ele does not have skills to die for, spikes that deal significant damage in a short amount of time, but the biggest issue is… IT HAS NO STEALTH. Guess what have people been complaining for 3 years about? What has really poor counter play? And why has Thief shut down any other class DPS build?

Conclusion:

So from my list of components that make the current DD build OTT the most reasonable thing to tone down would be, considering both internal and external, as I have said in the opening post:
some burn duration on skills and/or stacks, shave the Celestial amulet a bit, definitely tone down some of the boons and passive procs

I fail to see how any of this will QUOTE Ruin the class !! That is utter nonsense. Elementalist being this strong with a single build is not healthy for both the Elementalist and other classes. Because the Ele is this strong, the Mesmer needs to remain strong. And i dare say, it would not be a sad thing if we arrive at a point where the Ele is not a class that has a guaranteed spot on a PvP team, 2 slots in a dungeon run or be mandatory for GvG organised play!! It should be one of the options, but not THE option, as with any class.

I don’t think Celestial is too strong. Instead, I would personally rebalance runes of Strength to give +30% duration (like similar runes) instead of the current +45%.

Also, I think one or more of these issues should be taken care of:
- too many fire fields: either lasting too long or cooldown is too short
- combo gives too much might stacks, or there’s too many blast finishers.
- burning base damage is way too high.

There’s too much of everything. Shaving required.