Guild Wars 2

the worst part of this whole balance patch are the power creeps that carry bad players by giving them broken stuff and passives. one of those culprits is the elementalist’s fire line giving the class access to a passive cleanse every 32s that deals 3k+ damage and is instant while providing 3 stacks of might, vigour and regeneration when traited with water. furthermore the line provides a fire shield that triggers blinding ashes instantly on hit.

i myself have been playing elementalist as my second profession ever created with close to 3000 PvP games on it, having seen everything from the old d/d ele, the new d/d ele and the d/d ele that almost dropped out of the meta up to this burn bot ele that is considered meta now. the problem with it is the amount of passives paired with the tankiness and the amount of damage it can put out. d/d ele used to be a tanky bruiser that was able to support allies, perfect in a teamfight but also able to hold a side node.

the build always used to be one of those that were easier to pick up, so the actual skill in it was how to save and support allies, providing healing and soft/hard cc.

nowadays it’s an almost unbeatable 1v1 burn bot that lost its true role. the skill it takes to play such a d/d elementalist is incredibly low and it truly saddens me to see so many people running around with it, thinking they’re good while actually getting carried by unbalanced skills and traits.

now before arenanet does something stupid and ruins the whole class i’m gonna list my proposed fixes here:

drake’s breath:
burning duration of each tick reduced by 1 second

ring of fire:
make this skill more consistent, sometimes it bugs out and applies 6-9 burn stacks instantly. the skill by itself is fine as you won’t take a single stack of burning if you just fight inside the ring or dodge through it.

cleansing fire:
burning stacks reduced from 3 stacks for 4 seconds to 1 stack for 8 seconds.
instant burns that deal 3k+ damage are bad for the game, especially if they’re offered as passive traits.

burning fire (trait):
either reducing the might stacks from 3 to 2 or reducing the might duration by 50%.

blinding ashes (trait):
this skill now needs 3 stacks of burning to trigger, internal cooldown removed.

these changes should help fixing d/d ele. having said this, d/d ele is not the only broken thing in the game right now, so are all instant burns that deal “burst damage” and PU.

oh and buff ele scepter

Read the forums. Your sugestions should be done in a thread already existing for that purpose. Please do not create anothet endless thread about ele nerfs.

Yeah there are a lot of ele topics, but it can not be enough of them. Maybe anet will see the problem now!

1 serious suggestion from a longtime ele player in a thread full of people that don’t even know how to play ele, sorry but i rather create my own thread.

If you shadowstep/teleport out of fire ring it works like dumb ring on guard hammer, it still apply 3 stack of burning (guard hammer will knoc you if you shadowstep out), If you want to balance out ring just give it 1sec icd between stacking burning and now IT WONT BUG out… I can put any money on fact that Anet wont balance anything for the sake of PvP, they never cared why should they care now… We need more CONDI builds in pve so lets make condi Kill instantly in pvp…

From some very rudimentary testing I don’t believe burning fire is a 32 s cond cooldown.
Seemed to be in to the mid to high 40s. Has anyone tested it more accurately?

if it is traited with soothing disruption it is on a 32s cooldown.

getting burn from shadowstepping through ring of fire is intended behaviour you could say because of the way it is programmed. shadow step moves you out of the ring, it is not really a teleport but you do actually cross the way through it, that’s why it deals burning. now if this is justified or not, idk.

I should have elaborated more, my bad.

I tested it on the thief mob in Heart of the mists. I took soothing disruption and burning fire as traits, but no other condi clears. I would let the thief put on conditions and when the cleansing fire procced i would pop armor of earth for a timer.

The thief mob puts up 3 conditions fairly regularly, so I would watch my timer and wait for burning fire to proc again. Burning fire seems to have a cool down in the mid 40’s.

I realize this isn’t a very accurate test. I should have got someone else to help me and tested with and without soothing disruption. It was more of just a curiosity for my WvW staff build and that was enough for my purposes.

i have to disagree on blinding ashes: this trait needs to go
eles have plenty of survival tools and passive blinding is last thing they needed
would rather see something more creative that requires more player intraction

Cynz.9437:

i have to disagree on blinding ashes: this trait needs to go
eles have plenty of survival tools and passive blinding is last thing they needed
would rather see something more creative that requires more player intraction

the trait wouldn’t be bad if the activation of it needed a little more input. with the auto fire aura on attune this trait procs too easily, that’s why i suggested an increase in burning stacks to trigger it with the compensation of removing the cooldown. applying 3 stacks of burn for 1 blind is a fair tradeoff with the nerfs to cleansing fire and drake’s breath.

Appreciate OPs honestly about how ridiculously low risk-high reward the fire line is. Last time I played heavy ele was a couple years ago but got back to playing it heavily again a few months back.

The burns, blinds and burning speed dps all on low cd plus might has made me a worse player. I was so spoiled by the ele d/d fire/water/arcane build I felt other classes were underpowered. It really dumbed me down.

But I beat my ele addiction by playing less of it while re-optimizing my other classes.

The problem with the nerf you mentioned you will condemn people more to play Cele D/D Ele more with Fire/Water/Arcana.

Why there is auto cleansing in fire line, while before specialization change, Fire line was only accessible to glass cannons. As a glass cannon, if you don’t take cantrips or water, you have 0 cleanse, auto cleansing fire is there to make playing glass cannon possible and having some cleanses. So if you nerf it, you will nerf the glass cannon making them more condemned to F/W/A.

Same is with blinding ashes, that trait was only created to give some defense to glass cannons but now it is accessible for bunkers. You nerf it, you nerf the glass cannons.

The problem is, a bunker class should not have access to this sort of traits but with specialization they can, somehow ANet didn’t see this coming. May be they should include in their Alpha test top tier PVP players so they can see what they will abuse before a class goes to live system.

I am not against the nerfs you said for a bunker class but definitely not for glass cannons.

My proposal would be there must be a way of reverting this nerfs for glass cannon builds. So what is the sign of being glass cannon for Ele, you have to take fire and air together, put some trait in air that will revert this nerfs if both air and fire taken in the same time.

why should you get more defense on a glass cannon? glass cannon is risk vs reward.. you can do extreme damage and in turn you should be able to be taken down faster then tanky specs… blind should never be a passive it is too strong for that

ring of fire is not fine! if rof is fine then put necro wells on a 10 second cd please standing outside the ring gives the ele the point, standing inside the ring and not moving or you get burn stacks is as good as going nuke me please, here i will shut my eyes as the ele happily runs around you out of harms way. its too much for a 10 second cd. not to mention it has 0 icd for application of burns >.<

First of all, compared to other classes, the damage of glass cannon Ele is a joke and if you think glass cannons should not have a defense how are you explaining Mesmers? Stealth, blind, aegis, protection, cleanse, common…..just don’t tell non sense because you want Ele’s to be nerfed.

And to make the offense worst the HP of Ele will let him melts in a second against any type of condi.

if it is a joke then why would you ever play it even with blind on burn? just remove it and it wont make any difference anyway if that is the case.

how does blind on burn stop conditions melting the ele? all it does is randomly block skills to kitten over your opponent wit 0 input from you and many many sources at your disposal to proc it that are not tied to utility but on your weapons with low cd’s and even just for swapping attunements “weapon swapping” . its a terrible trait and whoever thought it up should be ashamed of themselves and play on the receiving end of the junk.

Well some player does not want to play FOTM and nobody, definitely not you, has to say people what to play and not to play.

Some like the challenge of doing good in an underperforming spec/class.

Cynz.9437:

i have to disagree on blinding ashes: this trait needs to go
eles have plenty of survival tools and passive blinding is last thing they needed
would rather see something more creative that requires more player intraction

Actually I as an ele player know that blinding ashes is the main reason eles are so OP right now, we already had lot’s or reactive defensive skills (great healing, damage mitigation etc…) now add to that equation an spammable way to prevent damage (blindness) and you have a defense that is completely over the top.

Would at least need a bigger cool down, but I can admit that perhaps it needed to be removed altogether. I also feel kinda bad that berzerker eles lose one of his few defenses (perhaps anet should create skills that change taking other branches selected into account)

for instance if you select Fire/air/arcana blinding ashes will continue as is
if you select Fire/water/arcana blinding ashes will increase cooldown from 5 seconds to 15 seconds

This would allow anet to fine tune particular builds without impacting others, this would also enable to major boosts to less used builds making for more build variety

fresh air dps ele is played without fire, there is literally no reason to take fire over earth right now. a 40s cleanse with a bit of damage vs a 16s 3 condi cleanse and an invul on 33s, not even for a second i would consider picking fire, not with all the mesmers that can easily kill you if you don’t run def.

the reason why dps ele is underperforming is because air line was nerfed in the patch damage wise while the other classes mostly got buffs for their dps and picking fire won’t really make it better.

Jekkt.6045:

fresh air dps ele is played without fire, there is literally no reason to take fire over earth right now. a 40s cleanse with a bit of damage vs a 16s 3 condi cleanse and an invul on 33s, not even for a second i would consider picking fire, not with all the mesmers that can easily kill you if you don’t run def.

the reason why dps ele is underperforming is because air line was nerfed in the patch damage wise while the other classes mostly got buffs for their dps and picking fire won’t really make it better.

Nice reply, wasn’t really thinking about actual berzerker ele builds, but you are right.
In that case I really suggest anet to nerf blinding ashes, as it is one of the main reasons why D/D ele is so OP right now.

For Scepter/Focus Fresh Air you are right but what about D/F Fresh Air, that works quite decent with Fire/Air.

You get auto cleanse and you have blinds to pull you out of tough places.

Don’t get me wrong I am not using Blinding Ashes in my D/D build, I don’t care less what happens to it, if you speak for the majority of zerker builds and tell us it will not cause no problems when it is nerfed then be my guest.

But remember auto cleansing fire and blinding ashes are only defense on fire line which a zerker desperately needs.

my suggestions won’t destroy that

cleansing fire will still cleanse the stuff but won’t deal burn burst damage, after all it is supposed to be a defensive skill

and blinding ashes might be harder to apply then but the internal cooldown is removed so if you’re using it in a smart way you can decide when you will blind the opponent. it will be a nerf, yes, but i guess there is no way around this and increasing the internal cooldown to 10 is also not really a good solution… right now blinding ashes blind is more of a random blind so with 3 stacks for 1 blind (without icd) it would actually allow you to decide when you apply the blind.

no icd on blind is just no. that is basically an immunity to everything even auto attacks when you pump out your burns and burn on hit shield and and and and and etc….

the amount of time it takes to apply 3 burns with my suggested nerfs to other burning skills should be around the same as the internal cooldown is now but enables counterplay, so if you cleanse burning at 2 stacks you won’t get a blind.

should be fine

Jekkt.6045:

my suggestions won’t destroy that

cleansing fire will still cleanse the stuff but won’t deal burn burst damage, after all it is supposed to be a defensive skill

and blinding ashes might be harder to apply then but the internal cooldown is removed so if you’re using it in a smart way you can decide when you will blind the opponent. it will be a nerf, yes, but i guess there is no way around this and increasing the internal cooldown to 10 is also not really a good solution… right now blinding ashes blind is more of a random blind so with 3 stacks for 1 blind (without icd) it would actually allow you to decide when you apply the blind.

My proposal to nerf the auto cleans was to reduce to only one condi cleanse, bringing in line with Guardaan Smite on heal. D/D is already swimming in condi cleanse it does not need auto cleanse.