Guild Wars 2

There is one build on the elementalist that is currently meta, and good enough for tournament plays. (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_D/F_Aura_Share) As a elementalist main who plays an offensive type Tempest, let me give my analysis on why this build appeared, and why it is bad in the long term, especially when considering the vitality of the other weapon sets. I can identify three causes of behind that shift;

1. The new Diamond Skin.
2. The synergy between Focus and Earth Magic.
3. Tempest Grandmasters

About Diamond Skin

The old analysis on Diamond Skin, and before the release of HoT was the existence of a certain perfect health pool, thoughness, and healing power to maintain the 90% threshold. The best scenario was close to 14500 health. This amount of health was easier to maintain with a mix of healing power and thoughness due to the limited healing scaling. Essentially, that was it for trait.
Then came Tempest with Elemental Bastion, a very potent source of healing + a source of Frost Aura, and finally, Hardy Conduit which essentially gives an additional 7% damage reduction. This caused the Diamond Skin to be much easily maintained, and was nerfed as a result.
The new diamond skin, is another thing completely. The threshold of 75% is much easier to play with. It gives 3349 health to play with (when the 13395 health pool is achieved with Cleric + Soldier Runes). Of course, the condition resistance is way less radical than the previous iteration of the trait, but it is very beneficial to the same old Thoughness + Healing Power + Low Health combo. This is why Diamond Skin is still quite good, and is still used. Though, it is no longer useful on builds that used Diamond Skin without water (with the exception of Focus, part 2).

The synergy between Focus and Earth Magic.

There is, without a doubt, only one weapon on the elementalist kitten nal that is good: the focus. Everyone was caught in surprise to see quality of life buffs given to focus on last patch (Fire Aura cooldown reduced by half; Gale cooldown reduction and unblockable). With the elementalist current state, and the over-performance of the focus will ultimately play against the class’ build diversity. Unless changes are given, every balance decisions regarding the traits and utilities will need to have the focus in mind. Focus currently offers the quickest and most reliable from of condition clear of the whole class. Additionally, it grants an invulnerability skill and offers the longest projectile protection from any other weapons.

Earth Magic’s traits location are also very favorable to the Focus. On the adept tier (1. Auto armor of Earth, 2. Bleed duration, 3. Protection on Aura), on the master tier (1. Thoughness conversion to condition, 2. Stability when swapping, 3. 33% cooldown reduction to earth + 33% condition duration reduction to movement). So, Elemental Shielding, protection on aura + Geomancer’s Training, cooldown reduction, are always picked because the cooldown of the Focus are extremely valuable, and so is the protection on aura. Both of these traits are build defining. Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s Training need to be both at the same tier, Master Tier. Without this change, Focus will always be dominant compared to the other weapons.

Elemental Bastion and Offensive Traits on Tempest

Tempest does not offer an offensive grandmaster trait. You have a warhorn trait, which I heard is decent, and you have Elemental Bastion. The third one, Lucid Singularity, is more of a defensive trait, except when considering that anti-movement conditions can block the overload’s damage. Another thing to consider is that Elemental Bastion can be used on an offensive-oriented Tempest build to replace the class’ requirement for sustain like Evasive Arcana. So technically, an offensive grandmaster trait for Tempest cannot be “Deal extra damage…”

To conclude, elementalist is fine. But, this is only because of the over-tuned Focus, and on a healer only role. The rest is struggling, and it is not pretty to watch.

Well, at least there is one real bunker in this meta.

Maybe is too strong, i dunno, I started to face this build sometimes today and I get a really good impression, but I had no chance to watch (for now) how it works on a equilibrated teamfight at pro league level.

I’ll keep on eye on it.

Cleric d/f for tournament play worth ?

http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/youre_serious_futurama.gif

The reason diamond skin is still used is because the other two earth grandmaster choices are even worse for a tempest. It is not because diamond skin is good.

People use earth so that they can get elemental shielding and strength of stone. Even if diamond skin was removed from the game, you’d still be forced to take the earth specialization if you want to have any sort of survivability.

P.S. I so wish the protection on overloard earth was not nerfed. Then people would not be forced into earth specialization if they want to maintain prot on themselves.

Barnesy.5839:

P.S. I so wish the protection on overloard earth was not nerfed. Then people would not be forced into earth specialization if they want to maintain prot on themselves.

Back in my day, Eles used Elemental Attunement to maintain Prot on themselves. Then again, we didn’t have all this high-powered stuff being thrown around like candy.

Honestly if it ends up just being support/healer for ele I’ll have to switch chars or not play pvp this season. I despise just being support

Malchior.5732:

Barnesy.5839:

P.S. I so wish the protection on overloard earth was not nerfed. Then people would not be forced into earth specialization if they want to maintain prot on themselves.

Back in my day, Eles used Elemental Attunement to maintain Prot on themselves. Then again, we didn’t have all this high-powered stuff being thrown around like candy.

Elemental Attunement used to work fine, but now with all the boon removal/corruption, it is way too unreliable. Since ele’s no longer have toughnes+healing+vitality, the moment you lose protection your HP just disappears.

While earth is decent, I still think that arcana offers more as a spec within the team. Earth line has decent defense in the form of some extra prot + condi cleanse + the GM minor, but arcana offers more group healing and condi cleanse aoe (the primary reason you run tempest is to heal-bot and cleanse-bot), good amounts of prot aoe, swiftness to move between points, and fury to put on a bit of damage.

Of course, I also think crusader’s is a superior choice over cleric b/c you lose just a little bit of healing power to get quite a bit of damage potential if you use your fury properly. With crusaders you actually provide decent on-point pressure while still healing quite well, and actually have higher toughness than clerics making you less reliant on prot.

Arcane is not good enough at providing protection. It has poor up time. A thief steal or necro boon corrupt will easily interrupt your overload earth, which causes you to lose your biggest source of protection. Once that happens you die very quickly.

Barnesy.5839:

Arcane is not good enough at providing protection. It has poor up time. A thief steal or necro boon corrupt will easily interrupt your overload earth, which causes you to lose your biggest source of protection. Once that happens you die very quickly.

Why on earth would you EVER overload earth? It literally does nothing since the prot duration got reduced. The only overload you should use is air if you can cover it to not be interrupted, and fire if it happens to be charged when someone goes down. If you are running aurashare (and thus not providing as much team-cleanse) you CAN overload earth if there are a lot of projectiles flying, but there are sever penalties to doing so.

Please don’t overload earth, especially as a focus user (although that applies in general). It kills your prot uptime, and locks you out of earth attunement, which has your most important defensive skills. All the while, if you DO overload earth, you get….a few bleeds, a blast (5s after the cast, so you finish no fields), and an immob that immediately cleansed. Not worth kitten cast, even without the penalty of sitting on your hands for 5s in earth and being locked out for 20s.

So the exact same build as last season is the new meta build??

BlackBeard.2873:

Barnesy.5839:

Arcane is not good enough at providing protection. It has poor up time. A thief steal or necro boon corrupt will easily interrupt your overload earth, which causes you to lose your biggest source of protection. Once that happens you die very quickly.

Why on earth would you EVER overload earth? It literally does nothing since the prot duration got reduced. The only overload you should use is air if you can cover it to not be interrupted, and fire if it happens to be charged when someone goes down. If you are running aurashare (and thus not providing as much team-cleanse) you CAN overload earth if there are a lot of projectiles flying, but there are sever penalties to doing so.

Please don’t overload earth, especially as a focus user (although that applies in general). It kills your prot uptime, and locks you out of earth attunement, which has your most important defensive skills. All the while, if you DO overload earth, you get….a few bleeds, a blast (5s after the cast, so you finish no fields), and an immob that immediately cleansed. Not worth kitten cast, even without the penalty of sitting on your hands for 5s in earth and being locked out for 20s.

I’m probably just talking kitten, but I think the Ele players forgot how to play core Ele.
Some acting like they don’t have condi cleanse, no prot, they gotta overload, etc.

The overload on earth is actually quite useful. The final immobilize is a very strong combo initiator. The final blast immobilizes for 4 seconds. You immediately follow that up with magnetic grasp and aftershock. That gives you 8 seconds of immobilize. You can then combo that into fire or air. The damage from them being stuck in the overloaded earth field + air or fire skills will kill.

Malchior.5732:

BlackBeard.2873:

Barnesy.5839:

Arcane is not good enough at providing protection. It has poor up time. A thief steal or necro boon corrupt will easily interrupt your overload earth, which causes you to lose your biggest source of protection. Once that happens you die very quickly.

Why on earth would you EVER overload earth? It literally does nothing since the prot duration got reduced. The only overload you should use is air if you can cover it to not be interrupted, and fire if it happens to be charged when someone goes down. If you are running aurashare (and thus not providing as much team-cleanse) you CAN overload earth if there are a lot of projectiles flying, but there are sever penalties to doing so.

Please don’t overload earth, especially as a focus user (although that applies in general). It kills your prot uptime, and locks you out of earth attunement, which has your most important defensive skills. All the while, if you DO overload earth, you get….a few bleeds, a blast (5s after the cast, so you finish no fields), and an immob that immediately cleansed. Not worth kitten cast, even without the penalty of sitting on your hands for 5s in earth and being locked out for 20s.

I’m probably just talking kitten, but I think the Ele players forgot how to play core Ele.
Some acting like they don’t have condi cleanse, no prot, they gotta overload, etc.

About forgetting you may be right. Tempest is very different from core elementalist. Tempest is smoother, and you must think ahead of time to plan overloads. Core ele is more quick attunement swapping. I would personnally not swap Tempest (I prefer it), but it’s sad that the old style does not work anymore.

Old ele does not work. Celestial is gone; Settler is gone. Well, it would probably work a little bit if Reaper or all other classes that now does better than what D/D used to do were gone.

Barnesy.5839:

The overload on earth is actually quite useful. The final immobilize is a very strong combo initiator. The final blast immobilizes for 4 seconds. You immediately follow that up with magnetic grasp and aftershock. That gives you 8 seconds of immobilize. You can then combo that into fire or air. The damage from them being stuck in the overloaded earth field + air or fire skills will kill.

Yeah. It’s the 20 seconds downtime of Earth that worries the d/f tempests.

Axialbloom.8109:

So the exact same build as last season is the new meta build??

It’s revolutionnary like that.

Elementalist has many spells, and he/she needs to combine them from survivability to damage, from disengage to crowd control.

He needs time to survive, time to damage, time to wait atunements recharge, time to disengage properly, time to wait overload before activating it. So many spells, so much time required to cast them all. With elementalist, there is no 123 tactic to kill an opponent, no one shot macro, no 7.5K damage in a single spell. And here is the problem.

Celestial builds gave elementalists time to survive until that moment when they tried to kill the opponent with might. Now there is no celestial.

All those 29 spells are awesome to have, but they can not be focused only on damage, to play like a thief and burst the enemy fast in 123; they can not be focused on healing and support to play like a guardian with traps for CC and support.

Elementalists now have 29 spells (20 basic, 5 special, 4 overloads) but all of them are useless with so many condition stacking, so much CC and so much burst from enemy, all those casted in 123 macros.

Elementalist right now is a concept issue, a big mistake, proven because last season Elementalist was the least played profession, and now in ESL is the least chosen profession. Numbers and statistics do not lie.

Let’s not forget this is the game. Sometimes your main profession is on top, sometimes is on bottom. This is the worst time to play Elementalist. It’s better to wait for better times.

Axialbloom.8109:

So the exact same build as last season is the new meta build??

It’s more that though. Like we’ve always had one viable in PvP; there has been variants of it, but it’s always followed the same template of Water, Arcane/Tempest, Earth/Fire.

Variants were supported by Celestial Amulet, because the stat prefixes played to all of our abilities and allowed some degree of choice in focusing on either offensive or defensive.

The removal of that amulet kind of kills that and makes it shine just how broken the class has been for so long, not only from broken weapons and traits, but rather how our entire pool of skills and weapons works in conjunction with our low hp and low armor.

Like whatever relevance the differing armor and hp pools might have had by the orgininal Anet developers seems to be have lost to time as nothing about class identity and skill seems to have any meaningful correlation to these advantages and disadvantages.

Low armor and hp becomes an arbitrary penalty to elementalist, because none of our skills or traits provide compensating value in comparison to other classes who don’t suffer that as a penalty.

So as a result, you get boxed into being a healer role now, because it’s the only way you can be viable and competitive. You have to build uber defensively just to survive and focusing on support and healing abilities isn’t penalized by the choice to build defensively in the same way offensive abilities are.

I just said kitten it, man. I’m tired of it. I was on the brink of quitting the game completely after 3 years of being elementalist only, but daredevil has peaked my interest and is keeping me around.

Why would anyone with their right mind take that website for granted? It’s literally written by like 5 people, all the “meta” builds there are pure nonsense most of the time and they add the real good builds very late.

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

Burn.5401:

Why would anyone with their right mind take that website for granted? It’s literally written by like 5 people, all the “meta” builds there are pure nonsense most of the time and they add the real good builds very late.

I simply linked the build here because it is place where you can easily see what I am talking about. I am not discussing the subject because I saw it on the website; you got the order wrong. I know for a fact that some teams are practicing such tempest on their roster, like Best Team North Africa, and such.

jebro.6370:

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

I am not fighting against the idea of healer elementalist. I am mainly arguing that Focus is too strong compared to the other weapon set of the elementalist; that Focus combined with Earth Magic is too good compared to the else. I offer a solution, which is to put Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s training at the same tier, since the weapon set is unfairly good with it.

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Alekt.5803:

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Unfortunately this isn’t a unique to the Elementalist.
Almost every class is suffering from the same thing because of the power creep.

Alekt.5803:

jebro.6370:

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

I am not fighting against the idea of healer elementalist. I am mainly arguing that Focus is too strong compared to the other weapon set of the elementalist; that Focus combined with Earth Magic is too good compared to the else. I offer a solution, which is to put Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s training at the same tier, since the weapon set is unfairly good with it.

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Such non-sense!

We’re talking about a pure defensive set and you argue that its defense too strong respect to the rest? well…surprise
The focus does basically zero dmg and you expect people to be punished further for using it? You already cut your dmg by half and you want to make everything even worst…completely absurd

Supreme.3164:

Alekt.5803:

jebro.6370:

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

I am not fighting against the idea of healer elementalist. I am mainly arguing that Focus is too strong compared to the other weapon set of the elementalist; that Focus combined with Earth Magic is too good compared to the else. I offer a solution, which is to put Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s training at the same tier, since the weapon set is unfairly good with it.

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Such non-sense!

We’re talking about a pure defensive set and you argue that its defense too strong respect to the rest? well…surprise
The focus does basically zero dmg and you expect people to be punished further for using it? You already cut your dmg by half and you want to make everything even worst…completely absurd

Why do you think that Overload Earth was bug fixed ( Maximum protection duration reduced by 52%, going up to 70% when leaving the aoe; 75% max protection duration reduction to allies) without compensation? Because Focus has access to both Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s Training. The access to protection was far too generous. Meanwhile, a damage Air Water Tempest barely has any protection uptime now.

Any attempt at buffs on traits affecting Water, Tempest, Air or Earth have to be thought with the existence of Focus in mind, and how this weapon set will once again abuse it.

All the nerfs we saw on the class on last patch were probably caused because of Elemental Shielding + Geomancer’s training combo.

Malchior.5732:

Alekt.5803:

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Unfortunately this isn’t a unique to the Elementalist.
Almost every class is suffering from the same thing because of the power creep.

I think it is worse for Elementalist, especially when considering how different one weapon is to the other.

Protection? Geomancer’s training?…if not for stone heart, people would not bother to go earth line as you’d get more by going air(dmg) or arcana(support/sustain/faster attunement-overload

Again your theory is farfetched and full of holes, since when any trait buff to water/fire/air would benefit focus?

Earth is all that keeps focus away from the trashcan, like for real, focus wa considered the worst weapon set in GW2 when d/d arcana was meta

Honestly your whole argument holds no grounds, just asking to nerf focus for “reasons” because you expect somehow anet will come and magically buff the rest, your marauder conjure earth staff…like..what are you even thinking?

I realize that you like staff and I used to play it also..but the weapon set is simply bad because the concept has not been updated since 2011 , maybe you can hope that staff will be updated 7 years from now ( I strongly doubt GW2 will still be running anyway), meanwhile…no amount of nerfs to other weapon sets will magically make the staff good to play

Supreme.3164:

Protection? Geomancer’s training?…if not for stone heart, people would not bother to go earth line as you’d get more by going air(dmg) or arcana(support/sustain/faster attunement-overload

Again your theory is farfetched and full of holes, since when any trait buff to water/fire/air would benefit focus?

Earth is all that keeps focus away from the trashcan, like for real, focus wa considered the worst weapon set in GW2 when d/d arcana was meta

Honestly your whole argument holds no grounds, just asking to nerf focus for “reasons” because you expect somehow anet will come and magically buff the rest, your marauder conjure earth staff…like..what are you even thinking?

I realize that you like staff and I used to play it also..but the weapon set is simply bad because the concept has not been updated since 2011 , maybe you can hope that staff will be updated 7 years from now ( I strongly doubt GW2 will still be running anyway), meanwhile…no amount of nerfs to other weapon sets will magically make the staff good to play

For instance, would you see any changes to Earthen Blast anytime soon? We both know that Sunspot was somewhat at the same level as Earthen Blast before june 23 patch. Yet, only Sunspot was adjusted. Do you really think that Earthen Blast currently has room for buffs knowing how good Earth is at the moment because of 1 single weapon set.

So youre basically complaining that ele has a spot in the meta, only this spot is restricted to one build like most others. I also want dps ele to be a thing but this isnt the way.

Who knows? Probably is hard to balance an ele, wearing light armor, with so many spells, to adjust in regards to other 9 professions and their abilities.

Alekt.5803:

jebro.6370:

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

I am not fighting against the idea of healer elementalist. I am mainly arguing that Focus is too strong compared to the other weapon set of the elementalist; that Focus combined with Earth Magic is too good compared to the else. I offer a solution, which is to put Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s training at the same tier, since the weapon set is unfairly good with it.

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Yo…

Do you know how Anet work?

They buffed one build over a class.

Than they put a balanced patches that change all that. Then they buff another build of a class.

Actually, Focus make Ele a great bunker. All META need sustains, dps and bunker. Why blasting Anet to giving something viable to Ele? You should ask them to look for Fire and Air line to give ele a sustain bruiser roles or dps one that would be balanced compare to reaper / scrapper / DH / Herald.

Looking at Earth, Water and Tempest… everybody knows you will get aura that give protection / vigor / regen and aura utility. This ROCK on. It’s great to see pew pew rapid fire bouncing back on them because I used my Magnetic Aura on the team. This is like bunker guard using the wall of reflection.

It’s great to rez your team mate with focus 5. The point will get decap (i hate that new (versus original) mechanic btw, of decap while invuln) but the fights will go on.

People need to ask for better, not ask to nerf this or that. It’s working, let them work on things that don’t work. If you want another off-hand than focus, ask for a OH dagger ride the lightning revert? Ask for lowering CD on warhorn?

Dal

Jourdelune.7456:

Alekt.5803:

jebro.6370:

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

I am not fighting against the idea of healer elementalist. I am mainly arguing that Focus is too strong compared to the other weapon set of the elementalist; that Focus combined with Earth Magic is too good compared to the else. I offer a solution, which is to put Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s training at the same tier, since the weapon set is unfairly good with it.

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Yo…

Do you know how Anet work?

They buffed one build over a class.

Than they put a balanced patches that change all that. Then they buff another build of a class.

Actually, Focus make Ele a great bunker. All META need sustains, dps and bunker. Why blasting Anet to giving something viable to Ele? You should ask them to look for Fire and Air line to give ele a sustain bruiser roles or dps one that would be balanced compare to reaper / scrapper / DH / Herald.

Looking at Earth, Water and Tempest… everybody knows you will get aura that give protection / vigor / regen and aura utility. This ROCK on. It’s great to see pew pew rapid fire bouncing back on them because I used my Magnetic Aura on the team. This is like bunker guard using the wall of reflection.

It’s great to rez your team mate with focus 5. The point will get decap (i hate that new (versus original) mechanic btw, of decap while invuln) but the fights will go on.

People need to ask for better, not ask to nerf this or that. It’s working, let them work on things that don’t work. If you want another off-hand than focus, ask for a OH dagger ride the lightning revert? Ask for lowering CD on warhorn?

Dal

Actually it’s far easier to nerf than buff because nerfing requires no extensive testing and knowledge, just lower numbers around, increase CD, remove boons etc etc
That’s why it’s far easier to receive devastating nerfs from anet rather than substantial and balanced buffs ( see ele scepter to get an idea about anet inability to properly balance things)

At most they can overbuff things like :" oh well let’s give that profession a spammable attack that deal 10k dmg every kitten and with autolock, with no necessity to even face your opponent"

I don’t expect anet to ever buff something to a competent level , they have got neither the knowledge or experience to do that

Alekt.5803:

Supreme.3164:

Alekt.5803:

jebro.6370:

Heaven forbid there’s a dedicated healer or support?

What was worse, was the cele meta of D/D. Yea sure bunker support ele is a more defined role, but the ele cant kill much, it can only support. Best thing is, this can bring out different situations.

Forcing an ele into a 1v1 where it cant rotate out, thus leaving it out of team fights might be a tactic we see in the next META, difficult with no portal but do able. This was similar to how TCG used to deal with Tage for example back in Bunker Guard meta (just an example).

Bunker Guard META wasn’t horrible to watch or play against a lot of the time its a similar ish role the ele now picks up with clerics and Soldier rune, although Ele has more self preservation regarding burst and power/condi with the Focus Earth abilities and such.

As for Aura sharing, with necro you will likely see more people going for the condi remove than the sharing of auras in all honesty.

I am not fighting against the idea of healer elementalist. I am mainly arguing that Focus is too strong compared to the other weapon set of the elementalist; that Focus combined with Earth Magic is too good compared to the else. I offer a solution, which is to put Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s training at the same tier, since the weapon set is unfairly good with it.

I don’t want elementalist to be balanced exclusively with the idea that Focus exists; “that they have access to this massive 3 condi clear ability, extreme projectile hate, and an on-command invulnerability”. This short description does not represent the reality of Staff or Warhorn…

Such non-sense!

We’re talking about a pure defensive set and you argue that its defense too strong respect to the rest? well…surprise
The focus does basically zero dmg and you expect people to be punished further for using it? You already cut your dmg by half and you want to make everything even worst…completely absurd

Why do you think that Overload Earth was bug fixed ( Maximum protection duration reduced by 52%, going up to 70% when leaving the aoe; 75% max protection duration reduction to allies) without compensation? Because Focus has access to both Elemental Shielding and Geomancer’s Training. The access to protection was far too generous. Meanwhile, a damage Air Water Tempest barely has any protection uptime now.

Any attempt at buffs on traits affecting Water, Tempest, Air or Earth have to be thought with the existence of Focus in mind, and how this weapon set will once again abuse it.

All the nerfs we saw on the class on last patch were probably caused because of Elemental Shielding + Geomancer’s training combo.

I wouldn’t take anything the balance team does as any indicator of what’s strong. We’ve been shown many and many times they often have no clue what they’re doing.

Supreme.3164:

… snip…
Actually it’s far easier to nerf than buff because nerfing requires no extensive testing and knowledge, just lower numbers around, increase CD, remove boons etc etc
That’s why it’s far easier to receive devastating nerfs from anet rather than substantial and balanced buffs ( see ele scepter to get an idea about anet inability to properly balance things)

At most they can overbuff things like :" oh well let’s give that profession a spammable attack that deal 10k dmg every kitten and with autolock, with no necessity to even face your opponent"

I don’t expect anet to ever buff something to a competent level , they have got neither the knowledge or experience to do that

Yeah ele support got nerfed hard last patch.

1- Removal of Celestial —→ Can’t be a bruiser sustain damaging and support class at the same time.
2- Aura nerf —→ Perma aura is harder to achieve, now you need to get smart to play with your aura.
3- Diamond skin nerf —→ Good support need to be able to sustain versus condies and power… this trait was really good. Now, it’s still good but less than the last meta.

So… Support got nerfed a lot and will still be viable because of how conquest work. A cleric healing build that AOE cleanse a lot is need on all comp since released.

Actually, to get a good bruiser or dps from ELE, you should ask for a buff of it or a nerf of reaper/scrapper/dh/herald. Not a nerf on the only working viable build of a class. (we will see next meta incoming when pro league start again) But, it’s not a secret knowledge more than 5 top team is playing with Cleric Aurashare right now because it’s the best support build for the slot on the COMP.

A good solution would be to normalize HP across the board, since amulet are FIXED stats that forced us into specific role without much customization choice. (stats from trait lines was great, jewel was great… i want the same stats system than PVE !!!!)

Dal

Jourdelune.7456:

Supreme.3164:

… snip…
Actually it’s far easier to nerf than buff because nerfing requires no extensive testing and knowledge, just lower numbers around, increase CD, remove boons etc etc
That’s why it’s far easier to receive devastating nerfs from anet rather than substantial and balanced buffs ( see ele scepter to get an idea about anet inability to properly balance things)

At most they can overbuff things like :" oh well let’s give that profession a spammable attack that deal 10k dmg every kitten and with autolock, with no necessity to even face your opponent"

I don’t expect anet to ever buff something to a competent level , they have got neither the knowledge or experience to do that

Yeah ele support got nerfed hard last patch.

1- Removal of Celestial —-> Can’t be a bruiser sustain damaging and support class at the same time.
2- Aura nerf —-> Perma aura is harder to achieve, now you need to get smart to play with your aura.
3- Diamond skin nerf —-> Good support need to be able to sustain versus condies and power… this trait was really good. Now, it’s still good but less than the last meta.

So… Support got nerfed a lot and will still be viable because of how conquest work. A cleric healing build that AOE cleanse a lot is need on all comp since released.

Actually, to get a good bruiser or dps from ELE, you should ask for a buff of it or a nerf of reaper/scrapper/dh/herald. Not a nerf on the only working viable build of a class. (we will see next meta incoming when pro league start again) But, it’s not a secret knowledge more than 5 top team is playing with Cleric Aurashare right now because it’s the best support build for the slot on the COMP.

A good solution would be to normalize HP across the board, since amulet are FIXED stats that forced us into specific role without much customization choice. (stats from trait lines was great, jewel was great… i want the same stats system than PVE !!!!)

Dal

Earth Overload nerf. It was a bug fix, but there was probably 3 bugs stacked together, so things looked ‘intended’.

To all those for Cleric Auramancer… go ahead and have fun with it. I will not.

I strongly hope to meet you guys with Cleric Auramancer and demolish you, while you are trolling 5-6 seconds waiting for an overload.

Note: Do not tell necros Regeneration can be converted into Poison. I want to kill you without their help.

Alin.2468:

….while you are trolling 5-6 seconds waiting for an overload…

Why would you use any overload other than air for the most part? Overloads are terribly designed and almost never worth casting.

Ele is still an extremely powerful class when managed correctly. Just don’t expect to be able to kitten-run whenever you hp gets low with the new meta.

If i were A-net I would be looking at arcane skills in order to fix some of the alternate gameplay style issues.

What I would fix is:

- Arcane shield CD reduced from 75 to 40 seconds. Arcane shield converts up to 3 conditions into boons
- Arcane blast removes up to 3 boons from the targets
- Arcane wave knocks down foes for 1.5 seconds
- Arcane power adds 1 second of slow to your attacks for the next 5 attacks.

arcane skills is only one thing. While the nerfs are ok so much is left to tweak that ele gets forced into a full support role with clerics. I wish that someone gets the guts to go trough alle the traits and skills tweaking them. Its doable by numbers. Of course careful not to overshoot. But it can be done in steps if the fear is to great. Slight CD reductions and number buffs here and there and if its not enough then a second time where needed.

Ele has some of the best traits in the game. Many damage modifiers and free procs and stat buffs. Furthermore, its weapon CD reduction traits are 33% compared to everyone elses 20% bar the engi toolkit.

The reason a burst spec does not work is that all of the utilities we have been using for the past 3 years are based on the assumption that ele would compensate low HP with all round amulets.

There is damage mitigation but no damage avoidance. The only real damage avoidance in the utilities is the arcane shield but its CD is simply too large.

Chokolata.1870:

If i were A-net I would be looking at arcane skills in order to fix some of the alternate gameplay style issues.

What I would fix is:

- Arcane shield CD reduced from 75 to 40 seconds. Arcane shield converts up to 3 conditions into boons
- Arcane blast removes up to 3 boons from the targets
- Arcane wave knocks down foes for 1.5 seconds
- Arcane power adds 1 second of slow to your attacks for the next 5 attacks.

That’s way too strong. Though, I’d like the Arcane Shield cooldown reduction.

Arcane shield is a great sklill. Used it before HOT. Its definitly the long CD not being used annymore.

Arcane Shield is great. Conjure Shield is awesome on DPS build.

The shield give you the sustain you need when you are focus. You got two shield…

The shield with lightning ROD is great burst. I know fresh air with scepter is great too, but we need something more than this for sustain.

I think that cantrips is still the strongest sustain we can get but the regen on it is into the water line and this is the culprit of dps none water build.

Most people play tempest with freshair. But, Air, Water and Arcane with Paladin Or Marauder seems more burst for better sustain than using Tempest.

For the guy that say he would counter my bunker support ele build, well I don’t care about poisons, my cleanses per minute is the best of the game since released. More, we will chain CC you before you can use AA scepter third attack on me. Don’t forget I can transfer my own condies to you as well.

Dal

Jourdelune.7456:

Arcane Shield is great. Conjure Shield is awesome on DPS build.

The shield give you the sustain you need when you are focus. You got two shield…

The shield with lightning ROD is great burst. I know fresh air with scepter is great too, but we need something more than this for sustain.

I think that cantrips is still the strongest sustain we can get but the regen on it is into the water line and this is the culprit of dps none water build.

Most people play tempest with freshair. But, Air, Water and Arcane with Paladin Or Marauder seems more burst for better sustain than using Tempest.

For the guy that say he would counter my bunker support ele build, well I don’t care about poisons, my cleanses per minute is the best of the game since released. More, we will chain CC you before you can use AA scepter third attack on me. Don’t forget I can transfer my own condies to you as well.

Dal

I would ponder my word. Conjure Earth Shield and Arcane Shield are two things I use all the time. Those are not great or awesome. It’s not because “shield” is in the name of the skill that it means “having two shields”. We’re talking about a 1 block every 8 seconds when equipped + Fortify. Earth Shield is not awesome; it is just decent, up to good. By that I mean, the best usage of the utility makes it better than your usual utilities, but it is rarely the case, so you really have to play it right to make it worth it. You probably noticed it yourself: the shield would be better without vitality because every heal you while wielding it is 10% less effective health to your true max health.

Also, the shield does not give sustain; it gives mitigation.