Guild Wars 2

S/F, in pure theory, should be a top build at the moment. It has okay sustain (terrible in any meta game), pretty good cleanse, and no damage. Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it, it is outmatched by every single damage build in the game in the damage department, and it has 1 burst, which is phoenix. The fact that out of s/f’s 16 weapon skills, 6 of them are instant casts. Only two of which are offensive.

Thief, on the other hand, has no classes that counter it in the sense that it can kill a thief consistently and in a reasonable time (like Druid countering DH, or DH countering Mesmer). Every class has a counter, and every class counters(except meta ele, which counters nothing and thief, which has no counters). Why S/F buffs would be good is that it can counter thief if it were properly buffed. A good ele would be able to spike a thief sufficiently enough during one of the thief’s burst to make the thief flee or die. The S/F buffs would give ele a damage build, and give them the ability to 1v1. It’s been over a year since ele could do any damage, before S6 would be as good a time as any to let them do something other than auramancing.

The buffs I propose:
-Shatterstone also applies chill (so it can actually be apart of any type of rotation)
-Lightning Strike, both the trait and skill do the same amount of damage, and the damage of each is increased by 50%. (so we’d have more than 1 spike)
-Dust Devil would now work more similarly to Cyclone where it doesn’t simply disappear when it hits it object, but it actually goes through them and apply another blind to the enemy behind it.
-Water Trident’s cast time is now 1/4th second
-Dragon’s Tooth’s cast time is now 1/2 second and the after cast is reduced by 30% (this time it can actually EXIST to an ele)
-Magnetic Wave’s cooldown is decreased to 20 seconds and the damage it does is increased 20%.
-Phoenix removes 2 condis
-Weak Spot’s chance on crit is increased to 75%
-Lightning Flash is now a stun break
-Elemental Surge now also increases the effects of all arcane skills Arcane Brilliance) 30% healing increase per target, Arcane Blast is now unblockable, Arcane Power now has 7 charges, Arcane Shield now has 5 charges, Arcane Wave now has a radius of 450 and a range of 1200
-Signet of Earth now has a 1/4 second cast time and applies 1 stack of stability on activation
-Signet of Fire is now in a 240 AoE
-Signet of Water now additionally heals and applies regen on activation
-Rock Solid now applies 1 stack of stability for 5 seconds
-Soothing Mist’s base healing is increasedto around 130 heal per second and the healing power contribution is decreased (to stop from buffing the meta build)
-Arc Lightning no longer has such a long break between auto attacks, it’s a more continuous stream
-Ice Shards works similarly to Arc Lightning (after my proposed buffs)
-Conjure Fiery Greatsword now has a cooldown of 60 seconds

Yeah, this is long overdue and it’s embarrassing they haven’t made scepter the power weapon it should be. Ele NEEDS a power based spec. Every profession NEEDS a DPS spec. It doesn’t make any sense they’ve been forced to be essentially healers.

If they don’t consider anything you said, I hope they at least buff scepter damage by 10-20%. Something needs to be done. Remove all of this sustain/healing mess

mrauls.6519:

Yeah, this is long overdue and it’s embarrassing they haven’t made scepter the power weapon it should be. Ele NEEDS a power based spec. Every profession NEEDS a DPS spec. It doesn’t make any sense they’ve been forced to be essentially healers.

If they don’t consider anything you said, I hope they at least buff scepter damage by 10-20%. Something needs to be done. Remove all of this sustain/healing mess

You can say this about alot of things since HOT came out.

Rev needs help with its stances and spec lines.

Thief sword and potential support/bunker build

Warrior with shouts, banners,physical skills and playing anything other then DPS

DH with not being able to play at ESL levels ( im not sure about this since we wont get another tournament)

So on and so on.

A good PvP patch is long overdue.

SF Ele main here.. your changes are absurdly op.
FGS on 60 sec + Phoenix CD + dragon thoot cast time and after cast time reduction would be already a huge buff

lucadiro.4519:

SF Ele main here.. your changes are absurdly op.
FGS on 60 sec + Phoenix CD + dragon thoot cast time and after cast time reduction would be already a huge buff

yeah, that’s the point. I used these buffs to spark a conversation and to get the dev’s attention. Also, it’s not OP at all.

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

ye show s/f some love

Phoenix isn’t the only burst. With a FA build, just swapping to Air does some and then skill 2 is likely off CD as well. This in combination with Phoenix actually creates one of the higher bursts I’ve seen by any build.

The changes I’d like to see is a CD reduction and damage reduction from Phoenix, slightly faster dropping Dragon’s Tooth almost no cast time, CD reduction on Water Trident, a significant damage buff to Shatterstone (none of this 10% BS), Dust Devil CD reduction or AoE effect, and a difference between Water and Earth AAs (they both shoot 3 projectiles and one does more damage and the other bleeds)

Focus itself does not need buffs. If anything, it needs nerfs. It has plenty of projectile hate, one of the best condition cleansing skills, IMO, in the game (Earth 4 cleanses 3 conditions on a short CD), and an immunity on too short of a CD still (this goes for many immune skills in the game). These are the most powerful things, but then there’s a chill skill, two CCs, an aura, and a long lasting fire field.

After that, OH dagger should gets some changes to make it a bit more defensive. Since Anet refuses to give back a nerfed Celestial Amulet, OH dagger is out of the question on all builds due to the lack of defensive skills.

But before any buffs are addressed, Anet should address the strength of other professions as well. Scepter can’t compete with Thieves because Thieves do too much damage, not because scepter does too little. Thieves also have more mobility, but that’s not because scepter eles have too little, but because Thieves have too much. Take a look at Scrapper. They have all the defences in the world and can still do comparable burst if they do it right. It’s not as easy to burst on Scrapper, but it’s pretty kittening high and frequent for something that can tank so much damage, heal so frequently and stay so mobile.

Once things are nerfed, which will never happen because that would be admitting that Anet made a mistake, scepter Ele might actually be fine and would really just need minor QoL buffs like a reduced cast time on Dragon’s Tooth or lower aftercasts and things like that.

Exedore.6320:

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

Wrong. Every meta build counters it, most war builds counter it, most scrapper builds, mesmer builds, revenant… Tell me this. Do you expect to EVER see an s/f ele in legendary? No, you don’t, because they suck.

Zintrothen.1056:

Phoenix isn’t the only burst. With a FA build, just swapping to Air does some and then skill 2 is likely off CD as well. This in combination with Phoenix actually creates one of the higher bursts I’ve seen by any build.

The changes I’d like to see is a CD reduction and damage reduction from Phoenix, slightly faster dropping Dragon’s Tooth almost no cast time, CD reduction on Water Trident, a significant damage buff to Shatterstone (none of this 10% BS), Dust Devil CD reduction or AoE effect, and a difference between Water and Earth AAs (they both shoot 3 projectiles and one does more damage and the other bleeds)

Focus itself does not need buffs. If anything, it needs nerfs. It has plenty of projectile hate, one of the best condition cleansing skills, IMO, in the game (Earth 4 cleanses 3 conditions on a short CD), and an immunity on too short of a CD still (this goes for many immune skills in the game). These are the most powerful things, but then there’s a chill skill, two CCs, an aura, and a long lasting fire field.

After that, OH dagger should gets some changes to make it a bit more defensive. Since Anet refuses to give back a nerfed Celestial Amulet, OH dagger is out of the question on all builds due to the lack of defensive skills.

But before any buffs are addressed, Anet should address the strength of other professions as well. Scepter can’t compete with Thieves because Thieves do too much damage, not because scepter does too little. Thieves also have more mobility, but that’s not because scepter eles have too little, but because Thieves have too much. Take a look at Scrapper. They have all the defences in the world and can still do comparable burst if they do it right. It’s not as easy to burst on Scrapper, but it’s pretty kittening high and frequent for something that can tank so much damage, heal so frequently and stay so mobile.

Once things are nerfed, which will never happen because that would be admitting that Anet made a mistake, scepter Ele might actually be fine and would really just need minor QoL buffs like a reduced cast time on Dragon’s Tooth or lower aftercasts and things like that.

You really think that our only burst should get a damage nerf… (And yes, it is our only burst. any damage at all doesn’t equal good damage. Lightning strike (trait) isn’t strong enough)

Poelala.2830:

Exedore.6320:

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

Wrong. Every meta build counters it, most war builds counter it, most scrapper builds, mesmer builds, revenant… Tell me this. Do you expect to EVER see an s/f ele in legendary? No, you don’t, because they suck.

Every meta build is an elite spec. Nerf elite specs back to core levels, and s/f is fine. How is that hard to understand?

Nerf elite specs PvP only. In PvE anybody can use anything, except in Raids, maybe dungeons and fractals.

If we nerf elite specs in PvE, raids might become impossible. In PvP where it’s player against player, this is perfectly fine.

By nerfing elite specs, elite spec builds will lower to core-level specs. Not only will non-HoT players be able to have a chance in duels, sustaining, and overall survival, but everyone will be able to run their own builds that they come up with (except for those that are truly poor or dull) with success.

I don’t wanna derail this too much. S/F needs buffs but so do some of elementalist’s utilities. Offhands like warhorn and dagger need buffing too.

If we were to never see a nerf in HoT traits, then…

…let’s make a list of buffs (because lists are fun to make)!

—Scepter—

- Buff Dragon’s Tooth by reducing animation time by 75%, but reducing physical damage by 1/4
– Ice Shards heal health
– Shatterstone close to instantaneous in animation time
– Arc Lightning could channel more quickly
– Give Dust Devil the ability to generate 3 Bleed stacks

—Offhand Dagger—

- Fire Grab deals 5 stacks of burn
– Reduce Cleansing Wave’s CD by 10 seconds (40 -> 30)
– Cleansing Wave cleans 2 conditions rather than 1 (including the dodge on Evasive Arcana)
– Reduce Frost Aura’s CD by 10 seconds (40 -> 30)
– Increase Ride the Lightning’s speed by 100%; stun enemies upon hit for 1 second
– Earthquake grants 1 second of 5 stacks of Stability on cast (often gets CCd in teamfights)
– Churning Earth has a reduced animation time by 33%;
dazes enemies in the AoE during channel

—Warhorn—

- Heat Sync grants 10 seconds of Fury
– Wildfire animation time reduced by 50%
– Tidal Surge has a larger CC
– Lightning Orb core dazes (core only, not secondary projectiles)
– Sand Squall cleans off 1 condition
– Dust Storm is now a rectangular smoke field similar to Wildfire (game changer!!)

—Utilities—

- Armor of Earth and Mist Form CD reduced by 15 seconds
– Glyph of Lesser Elementals now spawns 3 of selected elementals
– Glyph of Renewal reduced to 80 from 165 CD
– Glyph of Storms are now proper fields
– Arcane Power CD reduced to 30
– Arcane Wave range increased to 1200
– Signet of Earth passive: grants 3 seconds of Protection every 10 seconds
– All signets: 240 radius on active
– Conjures:
– Wielding Lightning Hammer grants permanent superspeed
– Wielding Frost Bow applies permanent Frost Aura and 240 radius Chill PBAoE
– Wielding Flame Axe applies permanent 10 stacks of Might and Fury
– Wielding Earth Shield grants permanent Protection and Magnetic Aura

{{CONJURE META}}

- “Eye of the Storm!” now grants Shocking Aura; CD reduced by 5 seconds
– “Aftershock!” CD reduced by 10 seconds

—Heals—

– Arcane Brilliance CD reduced to 20
– Ether Renewal has one channel, not two seperate ones

—Elites—

- Wielding Fiery Greatsword grants permanent Fury, 10 stacks of Might, Swiftness
– Tornado (all-class buff) now reflects projectiles
– Glyph of Elementals now spawns 2 of selected elementals

. I don’t recommend buffing all of these since other classes will need buffs too, but choosing some of them (especially the weapon section, conjures, and glyphs) will introduce a plethora of viable builds for the meta scene.

This thread seems familiar.

Why shouldn’t S/D, D/D, S/W or D/W be the DPS set?
Why should Focus be the only viable Ele weapon seemingly ever?

I’m not exactly sure why you brought focus into the discussion. If anything, focus is part of the problem. Dagger offhand needs to be adjusted more for offensive purposes. Focus, as is, is currently too good.

Poelala.2830:

Thief, on the other hand, has no classes that counter it in the sense that it can kill a thief consistently and in a reasonable time (like Druid countering DH, or DH countering Mesmer)….

You lost me there.

Why are you spreading misinformation?

DH can basically one shot thief, scrapper can kill thief while being semi-afk, war can kill thief with 1 timed stun.

I can tell you why ele dps will never see love: it is support class. Period. You know what happens when you buff dps side of support class? Look at bandwagon of DHs atm or celestial eles from before HoT. It is imbalanced and just broken.

Cynz.9437:

Poelala.2830:

Thief, on the other hand, has no classes that counter it in the sense that it can kill a thief consistently and in a reasonable time (like Druid countering DH, or DH countering Mesmer)….

You lost me there.

Why are you spreading misinformation?

DH can basically one shot thief, scrapper can kill thief while being semi-afk, war can kill thief with 1 timed stun.

I can tell you why ele dps will never see love: it is support class. Period. You know what happens when you buff dps side of support class? Look at bandwagon of DHs atm or celestial eles from before HoT. It is imbalanced and just broken.

Thief only dies to scrapper or DH because he lets himself die. If you are +1ing a scrapper, run away. If a DH has locked onto you, dodge. Now this is what a true counter is. If you, as a necro, see a ranger, you can’t run. Accept your death. If you as a DH see a ranger, same thing. If you as a Revenant see a mesmer, it’s gg. Thief is the most mobile class in the game, the only time a thief dies is at the fault of himself.

Some of the listed changes are reasonable, but for S/F’s damage to be substantially increased I would also rework several of the instant casts.

Currently S/F already has decent 1v1 matchups even on a vanilla build. This is because it can simply outkite and slowly pressure out cooldowns until the ele is able to bait their enemy into a larger burst. Frankly the “Buff S/F” movement has become a bit of a kitten that might do more harm to ele than good in the long run. S/F is not the underdog kit everyone wants to make it out to be. It has the potential to be very very broken with the wrong buffs because of its reliance on instant (and therefore untelegraphed) pressure.

Also buffing magnetic wave is a non-negotiable no unless you nerf other focus skills. It’s currently a very effective and loaded skill.

I won’t speak about the buffs because i don’t ele enough to make valid points but on the why the buff is asked.

A lot of class (warrior/dh/necro/rev) can already pressure a thief enough for him to leave, it’s pretty much the reason thief never 1v1 apart thief and a rev once in a blue moon. I don’t see the point of buffing S/F ele for making the thief leave (= using its mobility) considering that as you say thief has no counter because of mobility.
You are basicly saying : X is OP because because it has Y so let’s buff Z so X can/must use Y. What ?

On the mobility topic :

Dying on point instead of going away in a 1v1 is the worse thing you can do as a 1v1er. If you are defending a point and in a bad matchup, just kite around and do some jumping puzzle and if you know you won’t hold pretty much longer, disengage. Your oponent won’t follow you, he will cap. Why ?

Because he had a choice, either help his team in the teamfight and cleanup (because outnumber) or push into a node with a favorabe matchup. If he follows you, he gives up the node so the whole purpose he didn’t helped his team : no value. I’m speaking about someone pushing into you since you pushing into a bad matchup is a non sense unless you reasonably expect a +1.

A thief running away is either a thief running away from a 1v1 he should never take (apart vs thief/rev), a teamfight he should never be in, or a 2v1 he failed to +1. In all cases i fail to see why someone would want to chase the thief. The thief counter is the enemy team rotating so he got no good +1 (you can even play 2 nodes, thiefs hate that).

I think reducing cd on phoenix is justified because its a harder to land burst than a thief spamming 5 on staff

I also think reducing FGS to 60s is fair because the build lacks in the out of combat mobility department which is necessary for roamer builds

reducing fgs cd to 60sec just for the mobility is dumb
“hey guys lets give necro a 1200 port on a 15sec cd cuz they are so slow”
lawl

This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.

Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.

ViceBlack.9017:

This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.

Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.

SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.

For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.

We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.

Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.

PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them

lucadiro.4519:

ViceBlack.9017:

This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.

Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.

SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.

For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.

We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.

Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.

PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them

I agree with everything lucardio said. I’m a geat s/f ele, I know how to kite and land bursts and the whole works. If you think that s/f ele with its ATTRITION hard counters warrior’s unkitable gs, 10 seconds of invuln (10 seconds of last stand, 10 seconds of endure pain, 11.25 seconds of resistance from zerk stance), you are the one who knows nothing about s/f. Warrior dominates us to. death. He can literally afk and heal more than we do on our auto attacks. We have to play perfectly to kill him. We. Stand. No. Chance. Rev’s a decent matchup because rev’s in the kittenter right now. Ask anyone in legendary, rev’s an easy 1v1. I also have no idea where you got that scrapper idea from. We cannot even come close to pretending doing enough damage to kill them.

I play nearly exclusive S/F and warrior is propably the hardest to fight. Thief is way easier except that he will run away often. Necromancer, mesmer and warrior are the “counters” for me. While i can get the first two on their wrong foot warrior is to much sustain, cc, damage and mobility packed for an ele.

FrownyClown.8402:

I think reducing cd on phoenix is justified because its a harder to land burst than a thief spamming 5 on staff

I also think reducing FGS to 60s is fair because the build lacks in the out of combat mobility department which is necessary for roamer builds

Both of these things could have been done in even pre-HoT meta, and I support them.

I also support buffs to OH dagger, like un-nerfing RtL CD (15-20s CD, this has been needed for over a year, and can be safely done as OH dagger is 100% unusable and irrelevant), reducing CD’s on other OH skills, and still it probably won’t be used b/c hard mitigation is so important in the post-HoT power-creep.

However, S/F ele will never be anything but a bad thief. As a burst build, your job is to +1 and end fights quickly. S/F just can’t compete with thief, even with 60s FGS, to make an impact anywhere near the same due to mobility issues. Now, it is possible that adding some more damage makes it more effective as a 1v1, with decent support (cleanses/heals/swirling winds), and good teamfight capability, but then you are competing with mesmer/ranger/warrior/dh/etc for that “bruiser, good at 1v1, can teamfight pretty well” as opposed to “roaming dps.” Even as a bruiser, its hard to compare to a druid’s 12s RtL that evades.

If you want ANY class to compete with thief for roaming dps role again, you either need to:
1.) Make it OP from a damage/survivability + high mobility like rev was pre-nerfs (now the damage is average, and you don’t choose rev over thief)
OR
2.) Nerf thief mobility so other classes aren’t so far outstripped. With 450 range dodges (and up to 7 in a row) + shortbow + shadowstep, with a stealth kicker (for sneakiness), nobody can compete with thief in terms of mobility except for mesmer thanks to portal (and that is on a completely different implementation).

Lightning Hammer granting permanent superspeed when held will change the game. Not only do you have access to insane mobility, but one other teammate can as well.

I’ve adjusted some of my buffs in my list above.

Poelala.2830:

Cynz.9437:

Poelala.2830:

Thief, on the other hand, has no classes that counter it in the sense that it can kill a thief consistently and in a reasonable time (like Druid countering DH, or DH countering Mesmer)….

You lost me there.

Why are you spreading misinformation?

DH can basically one shot thief, scrapper can kill thief while being semi-afk, war can kill thief with 1 timed stun.

I can tell you why ele dps will never see love: it is support class. Period. You know what happens when you buff dps side of support class? Look at bandwagon of DHs atm or celestial eles from before HoT. It is imbalanced and just broken.

Thief only dies to scrapper or DH because he lets himself die. If you are +1ing a scrapper, run away. If a DH has locked onto you, dodge. Now this is what a true counter is. If you, as a necro, see a ranger, you can’t run. Accept your death. If you as a DH see a ranger, same thing. If you as a Revenant see a mesmer, it’s gg. Thief is the most mobile class in the game, the only time a thief dies is at the fault of himself.

Running away is effectively a loss . You give up point, points is what wins games.

As necro you can run away, use wurm. It is your choice for not using it.

As DH you have plenty of blocks and gap closers to get away as well.

Same goes for rev, you have a choice of leaving fight when you really want to.

If you are talking about the case where those classes really committed to the fight and blew all CDs so they can’t get away, well, then newsflash thief will die in such case as well.

Once again, stop posting misinformation.

Elementalist is a concept mistake. It has 30 spells, not reaching high level of damage, not reaching high level of support, not reaching high level of bruising.

Elementalist is complex trying to do everything and nothing at the same time, with a lot of spells combined very very fast in a player’s brain.

The concept mistake of elementalist can not be fixed by damage. If you put full dps (berserk amulet) player can never reach the high damage of another dps profession (necromancer for example). Besides, many spells will be rendered useless (such as healing because of no healing power, no support because of no real support for team, no bruising because of no crowd control, etc.).

If you put ele on heals and dps (mender amulet), you might get something interesting combining heals with damage; but without real crowd control like engineer has, all this support and dps will never reach maximum potential, as elementalist will get targeted and interrupted (and all those 30 spells will be in cooldown).

The only moment in history when elementalist was great, was in 2013/2014 (if I remember right), because of celestial amulet for dagger/dagger. Celestial completed all features of elementalist: a bit of support, a bit of condi and condi removals, a bit of damage boosted by might, a bit of toughness to resist, a bit of vitality against conditions, a bit of healing extended to others, and so on. Combine this with 30 spells benefiting from celestial, and you have a complex rock solid class. But, because people enjoyed this difficult ownage, children started complaining about elementalist being overpowered. And so, celestial got removed to help children grow.

Now elementalist is stuck in a strange position. You got 4 attunements with big cooldowns (if you dare using overcharging in tempest), and none of them is best at anything.

Let’s assume you create a ele, you get fascinated by all those spells, but then you realize that you will rarely use half of them if you go as DPS (and we all know you need dps in this power creep era). For example: why would anyone use water overcharge with berserker amulet or marauder?!

You want an ele? Forget it. Use it for PvE. Children destroyed this game (not devs, not elite players) with their simplistic requests, such as: remove celestial amulet, reduce might stacking, make ranked seasons for soloq only, do not allow teams in PvP, allow class stacking, allow rewards for loosing so we can farm it, and so on.

Hey! We should all be happy. We got what we asked for so far.

Poelala.2830:

lucadiro.4519:

ViceBlack.9017:

This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.

Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.

SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.

For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.

We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.

Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.

PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them

I agree with everything lucardio said. I’m a geat s/f ele, I know how to kite and land bursts and the whole works. If you think that s/f ele with its ATTRITION hard counters warrior’s unkitable gs, 10 seconds of invuln (10 seconds of last stand, 10 seconds of endure pain, 11.25 seconds of resistance from zerk stance), you are the one who knows nothing about s/f. Warrior dominates us to. death. He can literally afk and heal more than we do on our auto attacks. We have to play perfectly to kill him. We. Stand. No. Chance. Rev’s a decent matchup because rev’s in the kittenter right now. Ask anyone in legendary, rev’s an easy 1v1. I also have no idea where you got that scrapper idea from. We cannot even come close to pretending doing enough damage to kill them.

Idk how great you are if warriors are giving you trouble. You don’t have to play absolutely perfect to beat a warrior, you have arcane shield as a stunbreak if you mess up. They are the most telegraphed class in the game and you have every ability to kite them out. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 to a warrior while playing S/F. If you need more dodges then play a Water Cantrip build instead of Earth. Your superspeed will allow you to kite the majority of their attacks alone.

As for your points about traited stances, why even bother bringing this up? It triggers me to see people make bad arguments as an excuse for their losses. I use Last Stand on my joke hammer build, but it’s not a competitive trait for a reason: you need the condi clear and adrenaline generation from Cleansing Ire. There’s a clear choice there and pretty much nobody chooses Last Stand. If a warrior chooses that, then yeah, they have an advantage over you. But they’re gonna fail hard against condi necro or mesmer, and won’t contribute as much in teamfights due to the lack of adrenaline. There’s a big cost to choosing that trait, and that’s why nobody does. Also, warrior is the best all-around 1v1 profession, that’s how it’s designed. Idk why you’re complaining about that, ele has team support options even with S/F that warriors don’t. Every profession has its strengths.

What kind of nonsense am I hearing here? Fresh air/Ele countering warriors? and people seriously making arguments for this? Jesus christ. Do you not realize that warrior still procs adrenal health on scorched earth and combustive shot. Yes fresh Air ele is not kitten. But don’t spread misinformation about how ele supposedly counters warriors and is gods gift to the world. Yes I can also beat warriors if I massively outskill them. that counts for every kittening build made no matter how good or bad they are.

Warrior has better condi managment then ele, that is a fact!! resistance on healing signet+berserker stance+cleanse on weapon swap+cleansing ire. It also has 19 k base health for crying out loud..

Warrior has better defence against direct damage. heavy armour stats, double endure pain, shield stance, block on mace 2, whirling blade for disenage+evade, stability on stunbreaks tnaks to etenal champion and simply pulsing stability, +dead or alive

DPS is higher. generally speaking for both condi and power builds. is generally higher. Ragezerker can do without the primal bursts from skullcracker and flaming furry, for example
GS/Mace burst, practically has his own version of lightning strike on his kittenign sigils . Heck u can do 2 k auto attacks on mace roughly or higher. doesn’t also help that primal burst have a 3 sec cd either. Heck because of that fact u can argue that even macebow has higher dps then fresh air ele(debatbale) thanx to skullgrinder.

No need to spread lies. Just because one can beat an fresh air ele on warrior. Doesn’t mean that the build counters warrior, If u have to far, and far outskill your opponent to be of win, doesn’t mean that the build is better in the grand scheme of things, U’d think that a fresh air that can beat a warrior or no rather counters a warrior would be higher on the foodchain and seen more light in last season.

If asked a couple years back, my answer would have been a clear and loud NO!
With pretty much all the reliable damage ouptut being packed on instant or almost instant casts, Scepter ele was IMHO the prime example of bad design.

Right now I don’t really know what to say.
After all the elite specs, trait merging, sigil changes, … the game has evolved into an state where everything seems to have both ridiculous damage sources (be in the form instant or unreasonably short casts, spam or continous AoE pressure) and overtuned defenses to counter those. I guess there’s no way back at this point, so promoting the scepter to competitive level is probably not a problem at all.

Vargamonth.2047:

If asked a couple years back, my answer would have been a clear and loud NO!
With pretty much all the reliable damage ouptut being packed on instant or almost instant casts, Scepter ele was IMHO the prime example of bad design.

Right now I don’t really know what to say.
After all the elite specs, trait merging, sigil changes, … the game has evolved into an state where everything seems to have both ridiculous damage sources (be in the form instant or unreasonably short casts, spam or continous AoE pressure) and overtuned defenses to counter those. I guess there’s no way back at this point, so promoting the scepter to competitive level is probably not a problem at all.

To be fair sceptre on ele has always been in a weird spot, it’s a burst damage weapon but also a condi weapon. Doesn’t help it has some very long cast well telegraphed attacks that can be walked away from. At this point I’d say the sceptre needs a rework completely and the auto attacks need to allow you to keep pressure on targets effectively.

I laugh at people claiming ele burst is not telegraphed high damage, air attunement and lightning strike will not for a total of 3.5k on marauder, most classes will do more than that going to the bathroom.

maybe some facetank the ele and eat 3-5 phönix hits from marauder ele + double lighning (swap + bolt) and say he has top burst. I did 10k SINGEL hits with warrior. An ele is gone in two hits if protection is down.

apharma.3741:

Vargamonth.2047:

If asked a couple years back, my answer would have been a clear and loud NO!
With pretty much all the reliable damage ouptut being packed on instant or almost instant casts, Scepter ele was IMHO the prime example of bad design.

Right now I don’t really know what to say.
After all the elite specs, trait merging, sigil changes, … the game has evolved into an state where everything seems to have both ridiculous damage sources (be in the form instant or unreasonably short casts, spam or continous AoE pressure) and overtuned defenses to counter those. I guess there’s no way back at this point, so promoting the scepter to competitive level is probably not a problem at all.

To be fair sceptre on ele has always been in a weird spot, it’s a burst damage weapon but also a condi weapon. Doesn’t help it has some very long cast well telegraphed attacks that can be walked away from. At this point I’d say the sceptre needs a rework completely and the auto attacks need to allow you to keep pressure on targets effectively.

I laugh at people claiming ele burst is not telegraphed high damage, air attunement and lightning strike will not for a total of 3.5k on marauder, most classes will do more than that going to the bathroom.

Back in early days, when fighting thieves and mesmers on my medi guard, the instant AoE damage from smite condition played such a primary role that almost felt like cheating.
As I said, everything has gone so on steroids (both in defense and offense) that a low CD 3.5k instant hit seems even something reasonable.

Some of these changes are a bit too much, I’d personally start by buffing scepter alone and go from there. Not need to make another overbuffed kitten like DH right? You should be more careful with some of these too, since some of them are a buff to the meta build which is staple in high level play already.

Huskyboy.1053:

Poelala.2830:

lucadiro.4519:

ViceBlack.9017:

This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.

Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.

SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.

For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.

We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.

Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.

PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them

I agree with everything lucardio said. I’m a geat s/f ele, I know how to kite and land bursts and the whole works. If you think that s/f ele with its ATTRITION hard counters warrior’s unkitable gs, 10 seconds of invuln (10 seconds of last stand, 10 seconds of endure pain, 11.25 seconds of resistance from zerk stance), you are the one who knows nothing about s/f. Warrior dominates us to. death. He can literally afk and heal more than we do on our auto attacks. We have to play perfectly to kill him. We. Stand. No. Chance. Rev’s a decent matchup because rev’s in the kittenter right now. Ask anyone in legendary, rev’s an easy 1v1. I also have no idea where you got that scrapper idea from. We cannot even come close to pretending doing enough damage to kill them.

Idk how great you are if warriors are giving you trouble. You don’t have to play absolutely perfect to beat a warrior, you have arcane shield as a stunbreak if you mess up. They are the most telegraphed class in the game and you have every ability to kite them out. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 to a warrior while playing S/F. If you need more dodges then play a Water Cantrip build instead of Earth. Your superspeed will allow you to kite the majority of their attacks alone.

As for your points about traited stances, why even bother bringing this up? It triggers me to see people make bad arguments as an excuse for their losses. I use Last Stand on my joke hammer build, but it’s not a competitive trait for a reason: you need the condi clear and adrenaline generation from Cleansing Ire. There’s a clear choice there and pretty much nobody chooses Last Stand. If a warrior chooses that, then yeah, they have an advantage over you. But they’re gonna fail hard against condi necro or mesmer, and won’t contribute as much in teamfights due to the lack of adrenaline. There’s a big cost to choosing that trait, and that’s why nobody does. Also, warrior is the best all-around 1v1 profession, that’s how it’s designed. Idk why you’re complaining about that, ele has team support options even with S/F that warriors don’t. Every profession has its strengths.

If you are in EU just pm your name ingame and come to to duel my Warrior with your fresh air ele on a capture point please

Acrisor.8097:

Elementalist is a concept mistake. It has 30 spells, not reaching high level of damage, not reaching high level of support, not reaching high level of bruising.

Elementalist is complex trying to do everything and nothing at the same time, with a lot of spells combined very very fast in a player’s brain.

The concept mistake of elementalist can not be fixed by damage. If you put full dps (berserk amulet) player can never reach the high damage of another dps profession (necromancer for example). Besides, many spells will be rendered useless (such as healing because of no healing power, no support because of no real support for team, no bruising because of no crowd control, etc.).

If you put ele on heals and dps (mender amulet), you might get something interesting combining heals with damage; but without real crowd control like engineer has, all this support and dps will never reach maximum potential, as elementalist will get targeted and interrupted (and all those 30 spells will be in cooldown).

The only moment in history when elementalist was great, was in 2013/2014 (if I remember right), because of celestial amulet for dagger/dagger. Celestial completed all features of elementalist: a bit of support, a bit of condi and condi removals, a bit of damage boosted by might, a bit of toughness to resist, a bit of vitality against conditions, a bit of healing extended to others, and so on. Combine this with 30 spells benefiting from celestial, and you have a complex rock solid class. But, because people enjoyed this difficult ownage, children started complaining about elementalist being overpowered. And so, celestial got removed to help children grow.

Now elementalist is stuck in a strange position. You got 4 attunements with big cooldowns (if you dare using overcharging in tempest), and none of them is best at anything.

Let’s assume you create a ele, you get fascinated by all those spells, but then you realize that you will rarely use half of them if you go as DPS (and we all know you need dps in this power creep era). For example: why would anyone use water overcharge with berserker amulet or marauder?!

You want an ele? Forget it. Use it for PvE. Children destroyed this game (not devs, not elite players) with their simplistic requests, such as: remove celestial amulet, reduce might stacking, make ranked seasons for soloq only, do not allow teams in PvP, allow class stacking, allow rewards for loosing so we can farm it, and so on.

Hey! We should all be happy. We got what we asked for so far.

D/D Cele ele wasn’t the problem. Many classes went celestial during the atrocious S1 bunker meta. You would have damage, healing, etc. A lot of builds were sort of made possible, but it was really bunkery. It’s a good thing the ammy was removed. With the introduction of amulets people kept choosing celestial for two whole years with ease, until when it was finally removed in 2016.

I’ve made a cele ele D/D tempest build that I really like using Sage’s amulet. Sage provides condi dmg, healing power, power, and vitality, only missing toughness, precision, and ferocity. Toughness is replaced by Stone Heart, Precision is procced by Rune of Rage (18 sec Fury, 30 sec interval) and aided by Sigil of Accuracy, and Ferocity is helped by Rune of Rage.

I’ve been running Signet of Restoration, and a earth/water/tempest cantrip build, but I have Signet of Water instead of Armor of Earth. If a thief is on the opposite team I take Armor of Earth, though (because D/P).

I think I tried running Earth/Water/Arcane… it’s definitely got more glass than Tempest. First of all Tempest provides heals, vigor, and regen on aura (frost + shocking + overload auras). That’s huge! Now I know evasive arcana + arcane attunement is good and all, but arcane doesn’t have a key ingredient that we need: extra precision. In the past the cele amulet provided 30% precision. When swapping attunements, fury was generated for 3 seconds (50% precision) which was enough time for bursts. In the current state the 30% fury precision is not enough. We need AoE damage. The reason why classic d/d worked with arcane was that it had extra might duration and precision. We don’t have that. Tempest on the other hand provides a lot of might using fire overload which also happens to be a fire field. Lots of might stacking potential there. Sigil of Strength is also taken for helping cover up the might duration gap that we’re missing.

So you see, in this meta, Tempest D/D ele is the only way to play if one wants to taste more of cele ele, except it isn’t marketed as a cele build. Sage’s also steps a little down in the power department and a little more in the condi department, which is okay. Is it as good as cele d/d? Many will flat out say “no”, I mean noone used D/D since S1. Maybe people just hate Tempest, or maybe the auramancer is people’s perceived reality of the new ele.

lucadiro.4519:

Huskyboy.1053:

Poelala.2830:

lucadiro.4519:

ViceBlack.9017:

This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.

Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.

SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.

For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.

We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.

Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.

PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them

I agree with everything lucardio said. I’m a geat s/f ele, I know how to kite and land bursts and the whole works. If you think that s/f ele with its ATTRITION hard counters warrior’s unkitable gs, 10 seconds of invuln (10 seconds of last stand, 10 seconds of endure pain, 11.25 seconds of resistance from zerk stance), you are the one who knows nothing about s/f. Warrior dominates us to. death. He can literally afk and heal more than we do on our auto attacks. We have to play perfectly to kill him. We. Stand. No. Chance. Rev’s a decent matchup because rev’s in the kittenter right now. Ask anyone in legendary, rev’s an easy 1v1. I also have no idea where you got that scrapper idea from. We cannot even come close to pretending doing enough damage to kill them.

Idk how great you are if warriors are giving you trouble. You don’t have to play absolutely perfect to beat a warrior, you have arcane shield as a stunbreak if you mess up. They are the most telegraphed class in the game and you have every ability to kite them out. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 to a warrior while playing S/F. If you need more dodges then play a Water Cantrip build instead of Earth. Your superspeed will allow you to kite the majority of their attacks alone.

As for your points about traited stances, why even bother bringing this up? It triggers me to see people make bad arguments as an excuse for their losses. I use Last Stand on my joke hammer build, but it’s not a competitive trait for a reason: you need the condi clear and adrenaline generation from Cleansing Ire. There’s a clear choice there and pretty much nobody chooses Last Stand. If a warrior chooses that, then yeah, they have an advantage over you. But they’re gonna fail hard against condi necro or mesmer, and won’t contribute as much in teamfights due to the lack of adrenaline. There’s a big cost to choosing that trait, and that’s why nobody does. Also, warrior is the best all-around 1v1 profession, that’s how it’s designed. Idk why you’re complaining about that, ele has team support options even with S/F that warriors don’t. Every profession has its strengths.

If you are in EU just pm your name ingame and come to to duel my Warrior with your fresh air ele on a capture point please

I am NA, otherwise I would. However if we’re limiting it to fighting on a capture point, where you’re actively trying to cap, then I have the advantage in the fight. Good luck sitting on point with your melee-range attacks while I hit you from 900. Range and the ability to keep range is what makes S/F a decent matchup against warrior, you can kite endlessly with LF and superspeed from air attunement.

Exedore.6320:

Poelala.2830:

Exedore.6320:

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

Wrong. Every meta build counters it, most war builds counter it, most scrapper builds, mesmer builds, revenant… Tell me this. Do you expect to EVER see an s/f ele in legendary? No, you don’t, because they suck.

Every meta build is an elite spec. Nerf elite specs back to core levels, and s/f is fine. How is that hard to understand?

Because s/f ele was already mediocre before elite specs.

It has extremely long cd’s outside fresh air attunement, with fire grab having a horrendous cooldown that doesn’t even hit harder than an eviscerate and has three times the cd .

On the squishiest class that will die to a steal+backstab combo, or 3 autoattack chains.Or a single shatter.

11k base HP, lowest armor, defensive cd’s are all 50+ seconds cd

S/F has no sustained damage whatsoever because scepter autoattacks suck, so once they block/mitigate part of your burst you’re useless for the next 20+ seconds

Good luck dealing with a 8 seconds damage immune warrior whose HP pool can absorb the entirety of your burst including fire grab and then heal it back up via healing signet+adrenal health and just needs to autoattack you to death while your cd’s refresh, or can just end it by landing arcing slice+whirlwind and a couple of autos.

There’s a reason only warrior, thief, and mesmer can run berzerker stats in pvp. They’re the only classes with easy to land burst and accompanying strong cc/immunities; they’re also the only classes with remotely decent disengage, as dragonhunters are super immobile and cannot escape, and so are necromancers and eles whose ridiculous nerf to ride the lightning killed them

Huskyboy.1053:

I am NA, otherwise I would. However if we’re limiting it to fighting on a capture point, where you’re actively trying to cap, then I have the advantage in the fight. Good luck sitting on point with your melee-range attacks while I hit you from 900. Range and the ability to keep range is what makes S/F a decent matchup against warrior, you can kite endlessly with LF and superspeed from air attunement.

Ok, lets do like this…. If we are dueling we are mostly on a side node so:
1 lot of side point have something for hide behinde making obstrutced most of Ele skills, so I can Easy decap/cap ignoring the Ele. So a point for Warrior.
2 if the point is already mine I can just hide behinde something waiting for you to come in the node.
If with Ele you come in the node for win it in melee range vs a Warrior you have already Lost. Another point for Warrior.
3 I would never stand on the point and take damage, I can just decap and then fight the Ele. Another point for the Warrior.
4 At 900 range I will never get hit from Phoenix, nor dragon thoot, so if i have a longbow I can just proc adrenal healt and stand on the point, blocking evading and recovery most of damage ele Can do, and cap it.
Another point for warrior.
5 Ele hard counter Warrior only in open field, and that means the Warrior should Chase you out of nowhere (wondering why someone should do it) Maybe in wvw you are right.
6 superspeed alone is not enough to kite a GS Warrior, so if you have lighing flash in CD Warrior can close gap easy
7 if we are talking about a duel in a 1v1 server then I stop to talk here

So don’t come here to tell me SF counter Warrior please

lucadiro.4519:

Huskyboy.1053:

I am NA, otherwise I would. However if we’re limiting it to fighting on a capture point, where you’re actively trying to cap, then I have the advantage in the fight. Good luck sitting on point with your melee-range attacks while I hit you from 900. Range and the ability to keep range is what makes S/F a decent matchup against warrior, you can kite endlessly with LF and superspeed from air attunement.

Ok, lets do like this…. If we are dueling we are mostly on a side node so:
1 lot of side point have something for hide behinde making obstrutced most of Ele skills, so I can Easy decap/cap ignoring the Ele. So a point for Warrior.
2 if the point is already mine I can just hide behinde something waiting for you to come in the node.
If with Ele you come in the node for win it in melee range vs a Warrior you have already Lost. Another point for Warrior.
3 I would never stand on the point and take damage, I can just decap and then fight the Ele. Another point for the Warrior.
4 At 900 range I will never get hit from Phoenix, nor dragon thoot, so if i have a longbow I can just proc adrenal healt and stand on the point, blocking evading and recovery most of damage ele Can do, and cap it.
Another point for warrior.
5 Ele hard counter Warrior only in open field, and that means the Warrior should Chase you out of nowhere (wondering why someone should do it) Maybe in wvw you are right.
6 superspeed alone is not enough to kite a GS Warrior, so if you have lighing flash in CD Warrior can close gap easy
7 if we are talking about a duel in a 1v1 server then I stop to talk here

So don’t come here to tell me SF counter Warrior please

I’m not going to respond to each individual point, I’ll pick a few:

1. The warrior can’t hide behind an obstruction and cap at the same time. Saving your unobstructable attack (Comet) for when your enemy is trying to kite and heal is part of being a skilled player.
2. While what you say is true, why as a S/F ele would you go attack a point where a warrior is bunkering? Even if you win it will take a long time, no matter what you’re playing it takes a long time to 1v1 a warrior. This is a mistake.
3. If warrior decaps then leaves the point, that’s not a win. Warrior’s rotation speed is slow, their role is not decapping. And if the warrior decaps then goes and fights the ele, they aren’t doing much to help their team. If in this instance the warrior won, they’d have to go back and cap the point, then slowly make their way to the next node. Even if the warrior did exactly what you say they would, this would only be a slight gain for the other team. And the warrior still eats a bunch of damage during the ~6s you spend decapping. Maintaining damage via air auto is how you keep them from regenerating health after you burst.
4. So now we’re discussing Macebow, which is great but not meta. To be fair I did not clarify, I meant that S/F ele can beat GS power warr.
7. I am purely discussing Conquest, capping a point is irrelevant in a 1v1.

Huskyboy.1053:

lucadiro.4519:

Huskyboy.1053:

I am NA, otherwise I would. However if we’re limiting it to fighting on a capture point, where you’re actively trying to cap, then I have the advantage in the fight. Good luck sitting on point with your melee-range attacks while I hit you from 900. Range and the ability to keep range is what makes S/F a decent matchup against warrior, you can kite endlessly with LF and superspeed from air attunement.

Ok, lets do like this…. If we are dueling we are mostly on a side node so:
1 lot of side point have something for hide behinde making obstrutced most of Ele skills, so I can Easy decap/cap ignoring the Ele. So a point for Warrior.
2 if the point is already mine I can just hide behinde something waiting for you to come in the node.
If with Ele you come in the node for win it in melee range vs a Warrior you have already Lost. Another point for Warrior.
3 I would never stand on the point and take damage, I can just decap and then fight the Ele. Another point for the Warrior.
4 At 900 range I will never get hit from Phoenix, nor dragon thoot, so if i have a longbow I can just proc adrenal healt and stand on the point, blocking evading and recovery most of damage ele Can do, and cap it.
Another point for warrior.
5 Ele hard counter Warrior only in open field, and that means the Warrior should Chase you out of nowhere (wondering why someone should do it) Maybe in wvw you are right.
6 superspeed alone is not enough to kite a GS Warrior, so if you have lighing flash in CD Warrior can close gap easy
7 if we are talking about a duel in a 1v1 server then I stop to talk here

So don’t come here to tell me SF counter Warrior please

I’m not going to respond to each individual point, I’ll pick a few:

1. The warrior can’t hide behind an obstruction and cap at the same time. Saving your unobstructable attack (Comet) for when your enemy is trying to kite and heal is part of being a skilled player.
2. While what you say is true, why as a S/F ele would you go attack a point where a warrior is bunkering? Even if you win it will take a long time, no matter what you’re playing it takes a long time to 1v1 a warrior. This is a mistake.
3. If warrior decaps then leaves the point, that’s not a win. Warrior’s rotation speed is slow, their role is not decapping. And if the warrior decaps then goes and fights the ele, they aren’t doing much to help their team. If in this instance the warrior won, they’d have to go back and cap the point, then slowly make their way to the next node. Even if the warrior did exactly what you say they would, this would only be a slight gain for the other team. And the warrior still eats a bunch of damage during the ~6s you spend decapping. Maintaining damage via air auto is how you keep them from regenerating health after you burst.
4. So now we’re discussing Macebow, which is great but not meta. To be fair I did not clarify, I meant that S/F ele can beat GS power warr.
7. I am purely discussing Conquest, capping a point is irrelevant in a 1v1.

1 Comet does irrilevant damage to a Warrior, they heal it back like instat, same for shatterstone that is the only other skill that you can use to someone hiding (Will not talking about dragoon thoot lol). and also warriors doesnt use any healskill that you can interrupt.
Also in point like legacy’s sides nodes you can cap while hiding… In other points you can just hide for obstruct some skills/recovery health then go back to cap.

2 read my second comment in this post, I already said that is pointless go 1v1 a Warrior on his point with an Ele.

3 I’m not saying that decap is a win I said is a point for Warrior. If he decap then kill you is a win, then can full cap or move to teamfight, depending or what your team is doing.

4 to be honest SF Ele had better chance vs macebow than Power GS thank by all the proictiles hate, while mobility+unblockable attacks eat Ele.

Zenith.7301:

There’s a reason only warrior, thief, and mesmer can run berzerker stats in pvp. They’re the only classes with easy to land burst and accompanying strong cc/immunities; they’re also the only classes with remotely decent disengage, as dragonhunters are super immobile and cannot escape, and so are necromancers and eles whose ridiculous nerf to ride the lightning killed them

Last time I have checked thiefs run marauder and mesmers run sage or carrion.
A thief running zerk has 11khp and is unable to +1 against a DH or scrapper because it just dies from cleave.
A mesmer running zerk is a one trick pony.

Disengaging can be done by nearly every class. Most of the time people don’t even bother chasing you because that’s pointless when the disengager know what to do.

S/F ele can beat a war when in an open field and there is plenty of terrain for us to kite onto. Although in a 1v1 on a node, war wins. War wins easily. And the S/F only kills a war when the war overextends.

Poelala.2830:

S/F ele can beat a war when in an open field and there is plenty of terrain for us to kite onto. Although in a 1v1 on a node, war wins. War wins easily. And the S/F only kills a war when the war overextends.

Yea, I think this is what people are trying to get at when they say “fight on a point.” In the context of pvp, if you want to 1v1, a warrior always gets an easy decap and quick cap as you can’t contest or kill in any timeframe that makes it a net positive to even stay and 1v1. The amount of pressure and ability to completely ignore anything you do (invulns, pulsing stab to ignore hard cc, cleanse of soft cc, resistance to ignore blinds) just require ceding the point.

As an s/f ele, you really shouldn’t be 1v1 just about anyone (except other squishies that are based on projectiles, like power ranger, rifle engie, and maybe DH if they aren’t good or are low on CD’s). Those matchups you CAN get a kill outside of this require giving up a cap for so long that its a loss in pvp context, besides the point that a thief will just come +1 you and instagib you while low on CD’s for taking so long to “win” the 1v1 and kill anyway.

That said, 1v1ing isn’t even the role that a roaming dps fulfills. I am not even sure what possible niche burst ele could be given that would make it a viable pick for teams.
- Rev has a spot when played well due to high mobility and still good burst to take out targets in teamfights and +1’s. This is the roaming dps that teamfights and stalls some 1v1s well.
- Thieves obviously own +1’s with their INSANE mobility. This is the standard for all roaming dps.
- Mesmers (even condi) still have portal, good sustain to act like a bruiser, and a huge condi burst/moa to be excellent in +1’s.

S/F ele doesn’t have a viable niche to even compete against what these alternatives can offer. A burst build that can give some heals makes no sense, and giving boons is already done better by rev (which isn’t even OP atm). Maybe s/f needs to be catered toward a bruiser build, but that role is already so bloated with engies, druids, warriors, and DH’s. Perhaps if you give s/f enough mobility and damage, it can be a middle-ground between revs and thieves, with higher mobility than rev, but lower than thief. Better single-target damage and decent burst compared to rev, and better survivability (thanks to range) in teamfights than thief (but still lower mobility).

Lucadiro is a great ele (Para?), he knows what he is talking about, so do I. I have to learn to dodge a 0,25 second skill (which I know how to). A good gamer reflex is 0,1-0,2 seconds. Taking ping into equation, do you think headbut is a fair skill?

Fighting warriors, my camera is turned 180 degrees always, while warrior is chasing me until he dies. The thing is, a good warrior will always dodge Phoenixes, the highest burst damage skill an s/f ele has. The other thing is, a warrior can tank multiple Phoenixes which makes the class highly rewarding and s/f ele not so rewarding (how much do you have to kite to be called a kitten by every warrior and their mothers?). Add to this, Marauder amulet barely does damage to warriors, I have to go zerker amulet in hopes of killing them (I take more damage with marauder from retaliation than I do damage). It doesn’t matter how perfectly I play, one misstep on my side and I am dead, even when I dodged every skill possible before, one 0,25 second skill can turn the tide, while I can hit every phoenix and the warrior will still have plenty of sustain to mitigate + heal the damage.

Warriors ask me why I climb sides during 1v1’s, they walk away from the duel and tell me ’’I’m not going to fight a runner’’, while kiting is art itself.

I agree with Lucadiro, I am not experienced with a warrior, and I would bet that if a warrior main goes FA ele, and I go HoT Warrior, the win would be mine, 9 out of the 10 times (I have witnessed Lucadiro doing this to Goku [a solid warrior himself] with a core warrior build), Goku himself called me a kitten for running but got rekt by Lucadiro while Lucadiro went warrior, and Goku went s/f ele (guess he failed to kite enough and didn’t know how to dodge important skills under pressure).

An s/f ele needs much more micro management and general awareness of its surroundings, warriors are gimmicks, hit one skill and it is over.

It seems to me, you have no understanding of how ele works, and 1v1’s in general, or you just fought bad warriors (good ones will completely destroy s/f ele’s, unless they are core warriors).

Hey octa! Yes I’m para! Nice to see you on forum o/

ich.7086:

Zenith.7301:

There’s a reason only warrior, thief, and mesmer can run berzerker stats in pvp. They’re the only classes with easy to land burst and accompanying strong cc/immunities; they’re also the only classes with remotely decent disengage, as dragonhunters are super immobile and cannot escape, and so are necromancers and eles whose ridiculous nerf to ride the lightning killed them

Last time I have checked thiefs run marauder and mesmers run sage or carrion.
A thief running zerk has 11khp and is unable to +1 against a DH or scrapper because it just dies from cleave.
A mesmer running zerk is a one trick pony.

Disengaging can be done by nearly every class. Most of the time people don’t even bother chasing you because that’s pointless when the disengager know what to do.

+1

Poelala.2830:

S/F ele can beat a war when in an open field and there is plenty of terrain for us to kite onto. Although in a 1v1 on a node, war wins. War wins easily. And the S/F only kills a war when the war overextends.

S/F ele isnt beating just about anything at even skill level. In the end that all that matters we all have played weak builds and beating people with them but that just skill difference. There are lots of bad players but what will people do when they face a good one. On a S/F ele that would be lose.

Here is how I matchup 1v1 with s/f

thief 50/50
Warrior 20/80
DH 30/60
engi takes too long
necro 50/50 depends on how well i kite
revenant 80/20
mesmer 50/50
ranger-havent 1v1 but will probably outsustain me
support ele-not enough dps unless I run berzerker

All of these fights take at least a minute (minus thief and rev) and none of them involve me being on point

We are lacking in damage and moblity (our sustain is fine do to combat speed)