Guild Wars 2

Arheundel.6451:

Since August 2012 the scepter has received 0 dmg buff and all of sudden the scepter is OP because of a mere 4s less on the use of a minor trait dealing 1k dmg?

A double arcane ele has got 0 stun breakers and the CD on these skills is 16-20s on arcane blast and 24-30s on arcane wave, they each one deal around 1.5k dmg on medium toughness targets ( 1.4k -1.5k).

Finally someone with brains. Though I agree that all these instant-skills are kinda broken (not only on ele), there is nothing OP about the ele “burst”. A fresh-air build brings you a mere ~2-4k more damage (including scepter-2) every 5 seconds. That’s less damage a thief can do with one autohit-rotation. And in exchange for that we sacrifice our last bit of defence (cantrips, points in water and evasive arcana).

Arheundel.6451:

[b]
Sure instant skills are terrible design..but the game is plenty of them and no ele can kill you by uusing the few available to him, whichever profession you play I’m sure there is something unfun about it ( perma stealth ? CC spamm?, clones spamm? )but learning to adapt I believe is more constructive than asking for nerfs on everything you don’t like isn’kitten

Still it is terrible design.

Like it’s terrible design instantly teleporting away with no cost involved (inf strike) Perma CCs, AI spam and i would argue even perma stealth, altough we know it’s not effective for this game type.

As i said, if the ele is suffering sustained damage issues, then buff it, like they did with the war. If not bring other professions down.

But air/arcane burst allows no counterplay, you can do it even while dodging, the only way to evade it is BY RANDOM DODGING or by foretelling ( lolwut).

Be realistic.

Eles are not in a great spot currently, yet if they nerf warriors and condi spam in general, they’ll be top class again and everybody will complain about instant burst.

As soon as they start running with S/F, they’ll go insta shotting any class with all immunities possible ( in EU eles already started running it when i was still playing, i guess all eles are already S/F and i’m wondering what will happen when aNet will buff focus like they said they woul).

Fresh air builds need to go, along with all the other cheese in this game.

We were in a much better place months ago, at least the only spammy class was the bunker ele.

The same thing was said about Warriors back when they were considered bottom tier, look at them now dominating after they were buffed.

People need to start releasing balancing for a different meta means “adding new effects” to underused abilities for Anet. They don’t tweak the numbers.

Mrbig.8019:

Arheundel.6451:

[b]
Sure instant skills are terrible design..but the game is plenty of them and no ele can kill you by uusing the few available to him, whichever profession you play I’m sure there is something unfun about it ( perma stealth ? CC spamm?, clones spamm? )but learning to adapt I believe is more constructive than asking for nerfs on everything you don’t like isn’kitten

Still it is terrible design.

Like it’s terrible design instantly teleporting away with no cost involved (inf strike) Perma CCs, AI spam and i would argue even perma stealth, altough we know it’s not effective for this game type.

As i said, if the ele is suffering sustained damage issues, then buff it, like they did with the war. If not bring other professions down.

But air/arcane burst allows no counterplay, you can do it even while dodging, the only way to evade it is BY RANDOM DODGING or by foretelling ( lolwut).

Be realistic.

Eles are not in a great spot currently, yet if they nerf warriors and condi spam in general, they’ll be top class again and everybody will complain about instant burst.

As soon as they start running with S/F, they’ll go insta shotting any class with all immunities possible ( in EU eles already started running it when i was still playing, i guess all eles are already S/F and i’m wondering what will happen when aNet will buff focus like they said they woul).

Fresh air builds need to go, along with all the other cheese in this game.

We were in a much better place months ago, at least the only spammy class was the bunker ele.

This is the main problem of th Ele and that’s why I denounced the GW2 ele as a failed design concept, the arrogance and stubborness of the devs is mindblowing.
They first say :" GW2 is a team based game" and they then made the ele " The ele can do a little of everything..but nothing better than the others – @ Karl ".

I mean omfg in a team based game , every profession got a specific role so why should you take a profession that does nothing better than the others?
Here a small summary of Anet unprofessionality:

-September 2012-
Ele can bunker , arguably better than a guardian? – Nerf them, we can’t have the ele perform the bunker role better than guardian
-Jan – Apr 2013
Ele can roam, arguably better than thief? – Nerf them, we can’t have the ele perform the roamer role better than thief
-Oct – ?2013
Ele can burst, arguably better than mesmer?………You see the trend now ?

And that’s why the GW2 ele is a failed design concept, no allowed to perform any role better than others…at leats up to now where apparently ele has been declared the new " best" support class ..and this until the time some other profession doesn’t start to complain on how ele have replaced them..sad

Mrbig.8019:

Eles are not in a great spot currently, yet if they nerf warriors and condi spam in general, they’ll be top class again and everybody will complain about instant burst.

We’ll see soon because I don’t think eles will get major changes besides staff and conjures. DEVs even said that in their opinion “ele is fine”.

Mrbig.8019:

As soon as they start running with S/F, they’ll go insta shotting any class with all immunities possible ( in EU eles already started running it when i was still playing, i guess all eles are already S/F and i’m wondering what will happen when aNet will buff focus like they said they woul).

I don’t think it’s a matter of weapon-choice what makes eles struggle atm. (Though in my mind fokus is still a terrible offhand compared to dagger – if it didn’t have the 900 range and therefore matches scepter better)

Arheundel.6451:

Mrbig.8019:

Arheundel.6451:

[b]
Sure instant skills are terrible design..but the game is plenty of them and no ele can kill you by uusing the few available to him, whichever profession you play I’m sure there is something unfun about it ( perma stealth ? CC spamm?, clones spamm? )but learning to adapt I believe is more constructive than asking for nerfs on everything you don’t like isn’kitten

Still it is terrible design.

Like it’s terrible design instantly teleporting away with no cost involved (inf strike) Perma CCs, AI spam and i would argue even perma stealth, altough we know it’s not effective for this game type.

As i said, if the ele is suffering sustained damage issues, then buff it, like they did with the war. If not bring other professions down.

But air/arcane burst allows no counterplay, you can do it even while dodging, the only way to evade it is BY RANDOM DODGING or by foretelling ( lolwut).

Be realistic.

Eles are not in a great spot currently, yet if they nerf warriors and condi spam in general, they’ll be top class again and everybody will complain about instant burst.

As soon as they start running with S/F, they’ll go insta shotting any class with all immunities possible ( in EU eles already started running it when i was still playing, i guess all eles are already S/F and i’m wondering what will happen when aNet will buff focus like they said they woul).

Fresh air builds need to go, along with all the other cheese in this game.

We were in a much better place months ago, at least the only spammy class was the bunker ele.

This is the main problem of th Ele and that’s why I denounced the GW2 ele as a failed design concept, the arrogance and stubborness of the devs is mindblowing.
They first say :" GW2 is a team based game" and they then made the ele " The ele can do a little of everything..but nothing better than the others – @ Karl ".

I mean omfg in a team based game , every profession got a specific role so why should you take a profession that does nothing better than the others?
Here a small summary of Anet unprofessionality:

-September 2012-
Ele can bunker , arguably better than a guardian? – Nerf them, we can’t have the ele perform the bunker role better than guardian
-Jan – Apr 2013
Ele can roam, arguably better than thief? – Nerf them, we can’t have the ele perform the roamer role better than thief
-Oct – ?2013
Ele can burst, arguably better than mesmer?………You see the trend now ?

And that’s why the GW2 ele is a failed design concept, no allowed to perform any role better than others…at leats up to now where apparently ele has been declared the new " best" support class ..and this until the time some other profession doesn’t start to complain on how ele have replaced them..sad

Engi can do a bit of everything too, yet it is still strong, alive and kickin’.

Why ? because it has a specific role, has options to support him ( tons of CCs) and versatility

Mesmer has strong burst, still its role has been always different than thief ones, albeit teams usually used to choose both of them

Ele never really replaced guard, guards cannot be replaced.

The point is just to decide what role the ele should fill.

Currently the ele has not the mobility to be a roamer, neither the bunkerability to be the bunker, reason why it as become just another generic team fight profession, mostly going deeper and deeper into damage, arriving to S/F glass cannon builds, that has pathetic team support ( aside FREAKING SWIRLING WINDS) but good overall survivability.

Imho Dagger MH is a good staple, if you change air2 and fire 2 with something better and give more mobility to the set, D MH can be the damage set.

Scepter should be the “Bunker-condi” set.

Staff can be the “support-crazy damage-high risk” set.

But they seriously need to overhaul stuff, the ele is in the exact situation of D/D thieves: doing both condi-direct damage in same set, but no one of them is done decently.

aNet needs to take decisions and start moving their kitten, instead of simply tweaking numbers creating monsters like current war, necro and spirit ranger.

@gorni

Eles are still strong, the point is that all classes kittens on them due to overbuffing.

Inf strike has been there for thieves for ages, yet we never had a functional Sword set: now that S/D is functional, we see the horror.

Wars, necro and spirit rangers are ridicolous.

All this stuff needs to be nerfed HARD, just like Helseth said.

We’ve already reached a ridicolous power creep level, the game is in the worst state EVER.

I agree 100% with the OP’s assessment. Because of the dodge mechanic those classes that do not require a perfectly timed combo >>> than other classes.

A Necro just needs to dodge part of your high DPS combo then run strafe around in circles till you die. I am not sure how that equals a fair balance of risk and reward.

Thief mechanics are a total joke as the auto attack does a truckload more than most other classes skills. So if he misses a skill, no worries, his auto attack or other low CD skills will get you. And if he runs out of energy. No worries. He will just stealth up till it regens. Something seems absurd here.

Warriors have 30k health and an outrageously powerful heal signet. They can ignore your auto attack chain.

Mrbig.8019:

But air/arcane burst allows no counterplay, you can do it even while dodging, the only way to evade it is BY RANDOM DODGING or by foretelling ( lolwut)

Funny, that’s the exact same counter that Backstab/any attack from stealth has.

Again: Fresh Air buffed the ele’s sustained damage by 400dps at max (2k every 5s). Technically, Fresh Air only made damage between the actual burst combos less useless. But it gave eles a reason to try glass canon builds with dual arcanes again – something we saw the last time in the beta/at release.

pmnt.4067:

Mrbig.8019:

But air/arcane burst allows no counterplay, you can do it even while dodging, the only way to evade it is BY RANDOM DODGING or by foretelling ( lolwut)

Funny, that’s the exact same counter that Backstab/any attack from stealth has.

Again: Fresh Air buffed the ele’s sustained damage by 400dps at max (2k every 5s). Technically, Fresh Air only made damage between the actual burst combos less useless. But it gave eles a reason to try glass canon builds with dual arcanes again – something we saw the last time in the beta/at release.

Don’t start this bullkitten.

You can counter backstabs, blocks, Marks to reveal thief position, invuln.

As soon as you see a thief going into stealth, you know you can counter him by simply doing this simple steps.

Shadow refuge stealthing is another story, that is another thing that should be nerfed hard.

Again, the original point of the post was that damage can be roughly separated into two groups:

(1) “Passive” damage: This is damage that you’re usually guaranteed to get off, either because it is spammable or super easy to land or whatever. This includes autoattacks, instabursts, phantasm attacks, necro scepter and staff 2+3, etc.

(2) “Burst” damage: This is the damage that is harder to pull off because it is either telegraphed (dragon’s tooth), a skillshot with a longish CD (fire dash, engy’s flamethrower 2 double-hit, engy nades), or requires some special setup (shatter requires multiple clones, fire grab requires burning, backstab requires stealth+positioning, etc.)

All I’m suggesting is that a larger proportion of a player’s damage come from the skills in category #2. For example, having about 30-40% of your damage come from passive damage, and the remaining 60-70% come from the burst skills.

The fresh air ele’s burst still fits roughly in the above formula. As others have said, the airburst component, while being easy “passive” damage, actually only makes up about a third of the ele’s actual damage. The rest comes from the ele landing his burst skills.

Mrbig.8019:

You can counter backstabs, blocks, Marks to reveal thief position, invuln.

The last time I’ve checked, Marks are only available to one profession. Blocks and Invulnerability may be a counter to ele burst (or any burst for that matter), but not to a stealth attack, because a failed stealth attack does not reveal the thief. When I pop arcane shield for a stealthed thief, I see that: BlockBlockBlockBACKSTAB! What saves me from that damage? Correct, a random/predicted dodge.

ResJudicator.7916:

snip

I fully agree with the concept, but I think it would not only require number tweaks, but also skill redesigns, because most weapon sets currently lack a skill shot.

pmnt.4067:

Mrbig.8019:

You can counter backstabs, blocks, Marks to reveal thief position, invuln.

The last time I’ve checked, Marks are only available to one profession. Blocks and Invulnerability may be a counter to ele burst (or any burst for that matter), but not to a stealth attack, because a failed stealth attack does not reveal the thief. When I pop arcane shield for a stealthed thief, I see that: BlockBlockBlockBACKSTAB! What saves me from that damage? Correct, a random/predicted dodge.

Yeah because we all know thieves stay in stealth for years,if not decades.

Again, the only skill capable to stealth the thief for so much is Shadow refuge.

In that case, spam AoEs and you’ll have a dead thief.

If he goes into stealth by skills or combos, it will last 3 secs, so if you just dodge and pop arcane shield you’re safe.

If you see anothe red circle ( Black powder for the combo) spam AoE there or just go in it to have the thief hit you with HS, revealing him, and spam AoE.

This is seriously a L2P issue, backstab thieves have not been a threat for months.

I strongly agree with the OP. Big damage should be the result of long-CD skill chains rather than relying on spammable attacks. This was the case in GW1 and that’s what made it so exciting both to play and watch. (In fact it was much more so the case as you mostly needed more than one team member to blow their cooldowns to down someone, but I realize that GW1 was a team game and GW2 is balanced more around individual fights so that part is not comparable.)
That’s why as a necro player I really think Dhuumfire has to go, and I disagree with ANet’s attempts to balance it by nerfing Terror damage by 17% and decreasing Scepter 2’s bleed damage. Even in its nerfed form Dhuumfire is pretty good damage, and is most reliably triggered by spamming scepter’s autoattack, meaning all a necro needs to do is kite and spam, rather than forcing them to blow their long Fear cooldowns for the Terror damage.
The fact that it forces everyone into the same build makes me hate it even more.

I agree with the OP on the problem, but I think it is better and more comprehensively solved via mechanics changes rather than just balance changes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Offense-vs-punishment-risk-vs-reward/2864741

Whilst I agree that Ele burst is probably one of the better balanced burst builds out there – its reliance on long cooldowns for initiation through CC and use of utilities to compete for slots otherwise reserved for condition management and stunbreak – I don’t believe that the core concept of burst Ele is what the game should use as a benchmark for so called “balanced” burst builds.

Fresh Air Ele is predicated around the use of instant cast or proc-on-attune effects to deliver its damage. In addition, the damage that is delivered via Fresh Air is largely undodgeable – there are no projectiles for the Lightning Strike proc to dodge, and it comes out without telegraphing.

This is not to say that Fresh Air is OP, rather, the way that it delivers the damage offers little chance to counterplay. Instead, players fighting the spec need to dodge predictively (difficult) ; or just spam dodges as soon as they stunbreak the Earthquake (easy).

It once again plays into the “metagame” that GW2 is played around of having spammy damage, spammy dodges, and spamming cooldowns to come out on top of a Mexican standoff – and kill the other guy before he kills you. There’s no baiting out cooldowns, key dodges of key skillshots, or phases of initiation, burst, followup and disengage. It becomes a matter of executing your input combination (or using a macro, if you’re cheap) in as short a timeframe as possible and hoping that the other guy falls over.

@MrBig:
Your response to eles “spamming” AOE is facetious at best and does not reflect an understanding of why Eles die so easily to Thieves. Elementalists cannot “spam AOE” unlike a Necro or Engineer, because their only AOE autoattack is D/x Lightning Whip. Everything else is on longer cooldowns, doesn’t deal enough pressure, or too telegraphed for Smart thieves to let hit like Dragon’s Tooth. Arcane Shield is also of little use because of its 75 second cooldown and 3 second duration. When popped, the thief can simply disengage, wait out a mere 3 seconds, and come back; having had some initiative recharged in that time.

Thieves playing with Stealth and/or Refuge do not only have these tools for breaking contact, disengaging, then re-engaging either. Shadow steps through Infiltrator’s Signet, or Infiltrator’s arrow are also excellent tools to step in and out of fights.

Compare and contrast this with the Burst ele where once Ele commits, it’s stuck there. Even if the Ele holds the RtL in reserve for escape, you know exactly where they go (kinda hard to miss that bright ball of lightning). In addition, there’s no Z-axis component to play around because Ele escapes don’t have that – aside from Lightning Flash, which will often be burned to engage not disengage .

Previously Elementalists had the tools to stay engaged thanks to the admittedly overpowered Signet of Restoration, the overwhelming defensive power of Cantrips, and boon-based DPS and survivability. Now that Boon Hate is very prevalent, Signet of Restoration not only had its bug fixed but its healing nerfed, Cantrip stunbreakers shifted, the flaws of the Ele staying engaged are now very very obvious now that the tool to disengage (RtL) has been so strongly changed.

RtL still retains the bug where if blocked it goes on full cooldown of 40 seconds, by the way. Even though Arenanet promised that it would be on a short CD if blocked – as long as it “hit” it would be the short CD – this is not the case.

I believe that one of the solutions here is to maybe look at making RtL unblockable (easy); or fixing the bug (harder). The full cooldown could maybe be looked at – 30-35 seconds if no target is struck would be highly appreciated by PvE or WvW; and in PvP, some of Elementalist’s escapability returns.

In addition, Elementalist’s Focus really needs a rework to turn it into a tool that can be used to stay engaged. I was honestly hoping that the changes to make Elementalists less able to escape would have come hand in hand with changes to Elementalists being able to stay engaged with x/Focus, but sadly this is not the case.

Without as strong CC of x/Dagger (Comet/Gale vs Updraft/Earthquake), or its spike damage (Magnetic Wave vs Ring of Fire/Fire Grab/RtL/Churning Earth), x/Focus needs a skillset that differentiates it from x/Dagger and offer stronger sustained DPS/CC/Chase and bunker potential than x/Dagger.

I think the OP comments are well thougt out and I agree with his reasonings.

I have played d/d elementalist for months and am very comfortable with the profession’s capabiltites.

Often there is a sequence of keys to land the bursts and to ensure combos are sequenced correctly for maximum effect, but the problem is that by the time you have executed entire sequence which will involve switching attunements, potentially much damage to yourself would’ve been absorbed or worse still rendered you dead.

So I did a little experiment: rolled a thief, entered some random trait values, tested the character with NCPs for about 2 hours, then entered some tournaments.

These are my findings: targeted some d/d elementalists, mesmers and warriors. I absolutely destroyed elementalists and mesmers with ease; warriors were a little more tricky, but got the hang of them in no time. I managed to do this with generally double strike, wild strike, lotus strike and backstab; heartseeker

What I intend to do next is to gather some emperical evidence to back up my claims, but my early findings are that the learning curve to play the thief is shallow, compared to d/d elementalists, which suggests that something is clearly wrong.

This doesn’t mean I am now devoted to a thief, I’m not. Dagger/dagger elementalist is the one for me for all sorts of reasons, but it is clear either other classes need to be brought into line with my profession or it should be buffed.

MonMalthias.4763:

Whilst I agree that Ele burst is probably one of the better balanced burst builds out there – its reliance on long cooldowns for initiation through CC and use of utilities to compete for slots otherwise reserved for condition management and stunbreak – I don’t believe that the core concept of burst Ele is what the game should use as a benchmark for so called “balanced” burst builds.

Fresh Air Ele is predicated around the use of instant cast or proc-on-attune effects to deliver its damage. In addition, the damage that is delivered via Fresh Air is largely undodgeable – there are no projectiles for the Lightning Strike proc to dodge, and it comes out without telegraphing.

This is not to say that Fresh Air is OP, rather, the way that it delivers the damage offers little chance to counterplay. Instead, players fighting the spec need to dodge predictively (difficult) ; or just spam dodges as soon as they stunbreak the Earthquake (easy).

It once again plays into the “metagame” that GW2 is played around of having spammy damage, spammy dodges, and spamming cooldowns to come out on top of a Mexican standoff – and kill the other guy before he kills you. There’s no baiting out cooldowns, key dodges of key skillshots, or phases of initiation, burst, followup and disengage. It becomes a matter of executing your input combination (or using a macro, if you’re cheap) in as short a timeframe as possible and hoping that the other guy falls over.

@MrBig:
Your response to eles “spamming” AOE is facetious at best and does not reflect an understanding of why Eles die so easily to Thieves. Elementalists cannot “spam AOE” unlike a Necro or Engineer, because their only AOE autoattack is D/x Lightning Whip. Everything else is on longer cooldowns, doesn’t deal enough pressure, or too telegraphed for Smart thieves to let hit like Dragon’s Tooth. Arcane Shield is also of little use because of its 75 second cooldown and 3 second duration. When popped, the thief can simply disengage, wait out a mere 3 seconds, and come back; having had some initiative recharged in that time.

Thieves playing with Stealth and/or Refuge do not only have these tools for breaking contact, disengaging, then re-engaging either. Shadow steps through Infiltrator’s Signet, or Infiltrator’s arrow are also excellent tools to step in and out of fights.

Compare and contrast this with the Burst ele where once Ele commits, it’s stuck there. Even if the Ele holds the RtL in reserve for escape, you know exactly where they go (kinda hard to miss that bright ball of lightning). In addition, there’s no Z-axis component to play around because Ele escapes don’t have that – aside from Lightning Flash, which will often be burned to engage not disengage .

Previously Elementalists had the tools to stay engaged thanks to the admittedly overpowered Signet of Restoration, the overwhelming defensive power of Cantrips, and boon-based DPS and survivability. Now that Boon Hate is very prevalent, Signet of Restoration not only had its bug fixed but its healing nerfed, Cantrip stunbreakers shifted, the flaws of the Ele staying engaged are now very very obvious now that the tool to disengage (RtL) has been so strongly changed.

RtL still retains the bug where if blocked it goes on full cooldown of 40 seconds, by the way. Even though Arenanet promised that it would be on a short CD if blocked – as long as it “hit” it would be the short CD – this is not the case.

I believe that one of the solutions here is to maybe look at making RtL unblockable (easy); or fixing the bug (harder). The full cooldown could maybe be looked at – 30-35 seconds if no target is struck would be highly appreciated by PvE or WvW; and in PvP, some of Elementalist’s escapability returns.

In addition, Elementalist’s Focus really needs a rework to turn it into a tool that can be used to stay engaged. I was honestly hoping that the changes to make Elementalists less able to escape would have come hand in hand with changes to Elementalists being able to stay engaged with x/Focus, but sadly this is not the case.

Without as strong CC of x/Dagger (Comet/Gale vs Updraft/Earthquake), or its spike damage (Magnetic Wave vs Ring of Fire/Fire Grab/RtL/Churning Earth), x/Focus needs a skillset that differentiates it from x/Dagger and offer stronger sustained DPS/CC/Chase and bunker potential than x/Dagger.

Very well out thought response to something that I have been experiencing for sometime, a truly dedicated elementalist since release.

I am somehwat disillussioned with the game right now. I mentioned in one of earlier posts that I rolled a thief for the first time, just to gain an insight into the profession’s strengths and weaknesses and was shocked at what I was able to achieve in hours with minimum effort, slashing and shredding elementalists of all disciplines with ease, leaving them for dead in my wake.