(edited by Cosmic Teapot.9162)
Tank or glass still only 1 viable elementalist build?
I run Sigil of Energy. With Vigor, it’s dodging everywhere!
Herein lies the problem, how can you nerf the bunker build without ruining elementalist completely?
Easy, you make the class simply unplayable for several months and slowly, VERY slowly buff tiny pieces here and there till you re-create a farce of the class itself. Has plenty been done in other MMOs, I don’t know if ANET follows the same methods.
The premises are here: game designer only looking at the after effects (all go bunker build) without asking himself why nobody goes for more aggressive builds. But then, he’d have to admit their BW3 nerf was done in the wrong directions. Not many are great men enough to admit their mistakes however.
(edited by Vaerah.4907)
a good example of what Vaerah said would be Jay Wilson and shut up pvp guy or peter molyneux and every fable game ever made
The problem is two-fold. Elementalist skills are so unbelievably easy to avoid, yet they do moderate to low damage. It makes no sense. People should be afraid to stand in your AoE like meteor shower or lava font / big hitters like dragon’s tooth, yet these impossible to not avoid, highly noticeable skills with moderate to high cooldowns do substantially less damage than most spammable warrior and thief skills. Sure we have a lot of diversity with attunement swapping, but this should not be mandatory for a successful build. If you want to go glass cannon staff ele, you should be able to dish out huge damage on ranged foes, and accept getting 2 shot when you let them close the gap. Since this doesn’t exist, we are forced to build tanky and try and outlast our opponents with boon stacking and heals.
tl;dr unless they buff our damage OR make our skills more effective (especially DT, churning earth, and eruption) we can’t be expected to “diversify” to sub par options.
Thanks for the feedback.
Easy, you make the class simply unplayable for several months and slowly, VERY slowly buff tiny pieces here and there till you re-create a farce of the class itself. Has plenty been done in other MMOs, I don’t know if ANET follows the same methods.
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This is what I’m afraid of.
tl;dr unless they buff our damage OR make our skills more effective (especially DT, churning earth, and eruption) we can’t be expected to “diversify” to sub par options.
I agree completely.
I agree. I play an Ele full-time and I find 2 choices with only 1 being viable. Glass cannon is pretty weak since our damage is predictable and insubstantial. Our tank builds work but now they are nerfimg them. I play a similar spec to what you posted with scep/dag and valk amulets. It works because I outlast most classes. If this gets nerfed they need to buff damaging spells to be less avoidable. DT and FG are really too easy to avoid.
feLIVEar: Your resident forum king.
Even using tanky builds, a good thief will still drop you. It only makes bad thieves manageable, aka the ones who only press 1 and 2, not so much the ones who press other buttons too.
You can land a DT/phoenix combo 100% reliably if you look into your skills further, and they don’t pop a stun breaker (how it is for any classes burst). I agree though, comparably, it is much harder and doesn’t do as much as other classes bursts (you can still 1 combo glass thieves though), so it might need a damage buff.
The only cantrip you REALLY need to run is mist form, and I run glyph over twister. While the time throwing everyone around is cool and all, you can be doing a lot more out of twister to help your team, and you have to hold still for 2 seconds to cast it (never good as an ele to be holding still).
Running a roaming DPS ele, you can kill targets pretty quick and move in between points with ease. Maybe you aren’t running your build offensively enough or you aren’t reacting quick enough to enemy bursts, but you still have decent survivability with sig of restoration and water attunement.
You can land a DT/phoenix combo 100% reliably if you look into your skills further, and they don’t pop a stun breaker (how it is for any classes burst). I agree though, comparably, it is much harder and doesn’t do as much as other classes bursts (you can still 1 combo glass thieves though), so it might need a damage buff.
The only cantrip you REALLY need to run is mist form, and I run glyph over twister. While the time throwing everyone around is cool and all, you can be doing a lot more out of twister to help your team, and you have to hold still for 2 seconds to cast it (never good as an ele to be holding still).
Running a roaming DPS ele, you can kill targets pretty quick and move in between points with ease. Maybe you aren’t running your build offensively enough or you aren’t reacting quick enough to enemy bursts, but you still have decent survivability with sig of restoration and water attunement.
I don’t actually use the twister elite for the twister form. I cast it and then cancel it immediately for 24 seconds of stability (15 base +60% duration). As a matter of principal I don’t use pets.
Mist form’s cooldown is currently bugged at 75 seconds. If you can be successful with only 1 stun breaker on a 75 second cooldown then props to you. I personally need lightning flash to avoid burst (or stomping thieves/mesmers), armor of earth for stomps/rez , and condition removal for when I just can’t shake that immobilize. With so much invested into the water traitline why wouldn’t you use all cantrips. Plus the 25 point water trait skill is +2% damage for each boon. The cantrip build gives perma regen/vigor on top of 100% fury, swiftness, and might for +10 percent dmg total.
What utility skills/ build varation are you using? At this point it doesn’t seem like we even disagree on that much so without that info there really isn’t anything to argue over. Also I use dual dagger’s exclusively, so admittedly my knowledge is lacking for the other weapons.
S/D, arcane with mist, 0/25/0/15/30
I am not saying I can evade every burst that gets thrown at me, but it isn’t extremely hard to get out of most. Most classes you can reliably tell when they will burst you, and as long as you arent sticking yourself in the middle of them all and picking your target, you can manage just fine.
Im not really disagreeing with you at all, more the people that say “DT is impossible to land,” or the people that say thieves will drop them.
I am not a huge fan of d/d, so I can’t talk too much on it, and it seems on the build you are running that it is more important to swap attunements as much as possible rather than when it is as right as possible, which is what I like about s/d. The 100% uptime of vigor and regen is quite nice and has given me something to think about, and I may switch my build around to include it but stay s/d as I prefer the range option.
All weapon sets being viable doesn’t mean every build is viable. We’re kind of pidgeonholed into a few variants of similar builds. Damage and bunker builds both benefit heavily from Evasive Arcana, so speccing into Arcane is required. Support builds need the Water trait line, as do most builds given it’s the best choice for survivability.
Currently, I just run the typical 0/0/10/30/30 setup and swap weapons as needed. The only trait I ever change is the 10 Earth to Air on occasions. Fire isn’t viable in the least for the vast majority of specs. The only one that benefits is the SoF condition build.
Unfortunately having mostly useless/bugged traits, with a few really powerful ones spread only between 2-3 lines makes every build similar. The only change being the focus of the build, which is determined pretty much by weapon and amulet choices only. But in every build, except the healing build, we’re overshadowed by other classes.
D/D being the primary damage weapon setup is outclassed by just about every other damage build by other classes. The damage is unreliable (Fire Grab has a small cone, doesn’t home the target, and is very easily avoidable, Churning Earth has a 4 second channel that roots you, and Burning Speed more often than not misses due to slight movement from the enemy, is only usable as a gap closer or in combination with Updraft, and sometimes just pops the explosion at the beginning instead of the end), requires setup (Fire Grab requires burning to maximize damage, and Churning Earth requires heavy CC, or Lightning Flash to be usable), has long CDs (40~ seconds on the 2 big hitters, Fire Grab and Churning Earth), mediocre damage (even as a full glass cannon, the most I get on my two 40 second CDs is 5k), and is still only viable when using a Might/Fury stacking build where 10+ stacks of Might is achievable.
The bunker builds are still outclassed by Guardian and even Engineer builds because they lack point control. Is there really a point to tanking 3 people when you can’t get them off the point, and using certain skills removes you from the point/allows them to cap? (Think Burning Speed, Burning Retreat, and Mist Form) Engineers and Guardians having multiple knockbacks along with stability, still makes them better choices for point holding. Tank/Heal is the only place Eles aren’t overshadowed by superior classes/ builds.
Just need some bug fixes and animation tweaks all-around, I think, to make us viable. After that, focus on the traits so we can branch out a little and not get stuck always speccing 20 in Water and 20 into Arcane at the minimum.
(edited by Animosity.5231)
There are a number of viable elementalist builds, most using staff or scepter mainhand.
The best for tournaments is, i argue, staff tank support.
Regardless of other details, all of the viable ele builds go 30 arcana. Most go 20 or 30 water as well.
While this is a dissapointing lack of diversity, its really not bad when you compare it to other classes.
I don’t actually use the twister elite for the twister form. I cast it and then cancel it immediately for 24 seconds of stability (15 base +60% duration).
I used to do this, but eventually decided that while a long stability was pretty good, it wasn’t worth the massive cooldown (to me). Switched back to Glyph simply because it adds some very helpful extra damage on the odd occasion I run into a mes 1v1 when I’m roaming.
Other than that, my build is pretty similar. 20 Air for Bolt to the Heart while dropping down to 20 Arcane and losing Evasive Arcana (I can’t justify spending a trait on something that only does about 30% of what it’s advertised to do) for a more aggressive damage-oriented play. Runes of the Fire with Sigils of Battle and Minor Accuracy on weapons.
I’ll probably go back to Evasive Arcana once they actually fix the Earth dodge.
Potaters!
There are a number of viable elementalist builds, most using staff or scepter mainhand.
The best for tournaments is, i argue, staff tank support.
Regardless of other details, all of the viable ele builds go 30 arcana. Most go 20 or 30 water as well.
While this is a dissapointing lack of diversity, its really not bad when you compare it to other classes.
Holly kitten! First person that actually knows what they are talking about. And here I thought that we are bound for ever to people who say that only viable thing is D/D.
There are a number of viable elementalist builds, most using staff or scepter mainhand.
The best for tournaments is, i argue, staff tank support.
Regardless of other details, all of the viable ele builds go 30 arcana. Most go 20 or 30 water as well.
While this is a dissapointing lack of diversity, its really not bad when you compare it to other classes.
I don’t go 30 into arcana :] If you think my build isn’t viable I’d gladly accept a 5v5 challenge. There is plenty of diversity, but most people are looking for these “cookie cutter” builds when they dont really exist. I literally change my build every match depending on the professions/combos I’m playing against.
I run Sigil of Energy. With Vigor, it’s dodging everywhere!
same here.
with the right traits you can keep dodging and dodging and dodging and dodging…
Hackkz/Riggamaroll
I’ve stayed at this party entirely too long
I’ve stayed at this party entirely too long
I don’t think anyone is arguing that Scepter and Staff are not viable, I mean look at the topic name…
The point is that every single Ele build has the same foundation; 20 points in Water and Arcana. Some argue you need to go 30 in one/both, but realistically every build uses 20 points in Water and Arcana. That’s the problem people have with Ele build diversity.
I suppose it’s nice currently being able to just swap my amulet and weapon and instantly swap between tank, tank support, and damage, but I’d like to explore other traitlines, too. Many of them being bugged or just supremely underpowered makes this subpar in comparison.
I find Scepter/Dagger the best. Just fits my play style. @OP, I don’t however plan or build around not dying. I plan my builds to mitigate the number of times it happens. Death occurs. I just try and work it out so others are dying to me rather than the opposite. It usually works out that way and I don’t roll anything in Arcana. Not that I don’t find it useful, I find it doesn’t suit my play style. The beauty of this game to me is the flexibility it offers my imagination. Try shelving your Elementalist for a few weeks and coming back to it fresh without any preconceived notions and just play by feel. ROll something that works well and traits that compliment your skills and play by action/reaction to other players and avoid situations that you can’t handle. We all have times in pvp where we get ourselves in over our heads. I try and take a break when I am pushing it as far as what I can take on. Over aggressive play and over aggressive traiting are both issues, but adjusting attack style is a big part of it. IDK that I agree that there is one way to skin a cat like you suggest.
Leader of The Guernsey Milking Coalition [MiLk] Sanctum of Rall
There are a number of viable elementalist builds, most using staff or scepter mainhand.
The best for tournaments is, i argue, staff tank support.
Regardless of other details, all of the viable ele builds go 30 arcana. Most go 20 or 30 water as well.
While this is a dissapointing lack of diversity, its really not bad when you compare it to other classes.
Holly kitten! First person that actually knows what they are talking about. And here I thought that we are bound for ever to people who say that only viable thing is D/D.
I’d like to see a quote where anyone even remotely implies that D/D is the only viable choice for elementalist. I’m just using it as an example as it’s my personal preference. The whole premise of the thread is that regardless of weapon choice or roll being preformed that elementalist have very little variation in build (or if they do it’s to their own detriment). The person you quote seems to agree with that. Staff or Scepter/Dagger may very well be the obvious superior choice to D/D but it has little bearing on how you otherwise build your character.