Guild Wars 2

i mean really anet you had to make it so ele has no become completely unplayable. its not even the fact you removed the cele amulet (never really particularly liked the amulet and glad its gone) its the fact that not only is everything now buffed but we have the weakest Armour rating in the game. with the current selection of amulets available i either have to choose between healing power or toughness and no matter what i choose if i want to do at least some damage i cant choose any amulet that offers me enough protection to keep me alive. we need either a buff or at least some sort of decent way to stay alive through a amulet even combined with some sort of toughness sigil i am defenseless against other classes. i play ele about 90% of my game time even since launch so don’t really have any interest in playing any other class because its op or easier to survive on. this needs fixing i love pvp but im getting bored of being killed every 5 seconds please fix this a net thanks

Anet has a thread for people to post about the patch
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/January-26th-Update-Your-feedback

Keadron.9570:

Anet has a thread for people to post about the patch
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/January-26th-Update-Your-feedback

Lets be honest, thats just a placebo, so that all ours “complaints” can go in one place they can ignore while making us feel like we had a chance at voicing our opinions, it is basic standard procedure. We do it at the place we work too all the time. Unless you have money (and thus actual influence) and are a direct client who has some personal connection of any sort to any one in administration, we simply are encouraged to throw any of the “suggestions” and “feedback” down the drain, heck, our little “forum” website which is fairly active is commonly know in the office as the “black pits of hell” and even management tells us not to visit it unless we are into getting headaches. So yeah….

@topic: while I do agree DS was broken (made a couple of threads about it and was hoping we would find a better middle ground), and that celestial needed to be deleted, I think Anet did not follow up with the class and do some proper rebalancing. The class has very few defensive skills (that arent on a 60+ CD, and even then they all have huge trade off for them)and rely on boons for survival. Now we are facing constant boon convertion on top of little to no defensive and offensive capabilities. The scepter “buff” felt like an insult, really. At this point one starts to wonder if this is being done on purpose, as if some sort of vendetta towards us. I would like to believe not, and rather that the balance team is unexperience (after 3 years and a half to get it right…)and simply dont know how to determine what really is the core issues of the class.
Anyways, I just disappointed, I expected more from them, but given their history of expectation vs reality, I should’ve known better than assuming the changes in the preview werent pretty much all the intended ones. Simply disappointing.

tempest is at bottom tier with berserker i guess. But one of another big reason why ele complain so much is also becuz of their too much trust/dependency on cheese cele build for a too much long time : most of eles i duel in these days they are completely unskilled but only claim ele sucks due to they too much relied cele for along time, unskilled play which anyway worked at their cele golden era. Of course ele need to be buffed but they also need to get out of cele trauma. Most of them doesn’t even know how to dodge evis and ES, not like thieves dodging it very well with their skilled instinct play.

Before that balance update elementalists were like noblemen that were wearing warm clothing during harsh winter and had everything at their disposal at once.
Then Mr. Balance came and took your stuff.
You are viable, at least you have nice traits (not like guard), you just have to find a new way and adapt.

Nobleman and Mr Balance really? Wow yup think what ya want

online.1278:

tempest is at bottom tier with berserker i guess. But one of another big reason why ele complain so much is also becuz of their too much trust/dependency on cheese cele build for a too much long time : most of eles i duel in these days they are completely unskilled but only claim ele sucks due to they too much relied cele for along time, unskilled play which anyway worked at their cele golden era. Of course ele need to be buffed but they also need to get out of cele trauma. Most of them doesn’t even know how to dodge evis and ES, not like thieves dodging it very well with their skilled instinct play.

Eles only gravitated to Cele because nothing else was meta-viable.

I dont agree. We can adapt. Sure we can’t bunker anymore, but we can still support & kill. Our best defense is now offense. We still have some good survivability traits. Don’t give up.

MyPuppy.8970:

I dont agree. We can adapt. Sure we can’t bunker anymore, but we can still support & kill. Our best defense is now offense. We still have some good survivability traits. Don’t give up.

I meant we never had any META builds that didn’t include Celestial ammy. At least, not that I remember. We did have plenty of builds that were viable, but not meta. FA S/x is an example.

I hope you’re right though. I would love for FA builds to be meta.

Mesmers got hit as a class overall the hardest out of all the classes to be honest.

MyPuppy.8970:

I dont agree. We can adapt. Sure we can’t bunker anymore, but we can still support & kill. Our best defense is now offense. We still have some good survivability traits. Don’t give up.

Let hope, man. I have been trying back with damage staff build. Luckily my skills and knowledge in the class helps me a lot, but I can tell that baseline, Im inherently weaker than them, and if I were to face someone with my skill level on the same classes Im facing, then elementalist would simply lose that one, straight up.

I foresee a very grim future for eles, and I hope Im proven wrong tbh, because we already went through this for almost half of the time the game has been out and I would hate to go through it again.

I wish Anet realized that when people are happy with the balance, they care more about the mode. LoL didnt reach success by being left alone for months without constant patches every 2 weeks. They did what any respectable esport would’ve done; balance their skritt out! I still believe in the potential of the game, hopefully it will be better to watch now, but for us player who wont switch classes like underwear, it is a sad state to be in.

There is a lot of money in succeeding in esport, LoL made 1.6 billions dollars of revenue only in microtranscation last year, not counting sponsorship, tickets to games, etc etc. If Anet decided to invest in a proper balance team, i dont see why they wouldnt make a break through and be the first MMO with a loyal esport base.

Right now? very far from it.

I observe that Elementalists are dependant on their offensive trait lines to commit into a damaging role. This works for Staff and Scepter I believe. For staff, which I know perfectly well, the damage option available is Lightning Rod. Don’t expect to deal damage with Lava Font, Eruption or Ice Spike and auto-attacks since players move out of these.

The difficulty to deal upfront damage, at least with staff, always forced elementalist into a supportive role. Supportive roles on staff did not have this issue because the kit is good at that: water fields, AoE crowd-control abilities. The supportive abilities always concealed the major flaws in that weapon set.

There are a few quality of life and improvements to do for staff. Some cooldowns are too long for the power of the abilities. Some skills feel empty and have high cooldowns (Frozen Ground, Windborne Speed, Gust, Magnetic Aura).

Here is a few solutions that may be implimented.

1. Lava Font: Immediate first tick of damage instead of a 1 second delay.
2. Windborne Speed: Make it cleanse Slow; remove the cast time; reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.
3. Gust: Reduce the cooldown; Improve velocity and width of the skill; increase the duration of the crowd control. Allow targets pushed toward Unsteady Ground to be knocked down upon contact of the line as it does for Static Field.
4. Lightning Surge: Reduce the cooldown to 5 seconds from 10 seconds to better match the cooldown with Fresh Air. Cast time feels rewarding as it is.
5. Ice Spike: Is it too much to ask for a Blast Finisher?
6. Frozen Ground: Increase duration to 6 seconds, up from 5 seconds to allow more time for Eruption to blast on the field.
7. Healing Rain: Reduce cast time to 3/4 seconds down from 1.5 seconds. Reduce cooldown to 40 seconds from 45 seconds.
8. Magnetic Aura: Reduce cooldown to 25 seconds from 30. Send one condition back to foes in a 300 radius upon casting.
9. Shockwave: Reduction cooldown to 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds. Greatly reduce the aftercast to allow continuous casting after casting Shockwave. Improve the power ratio of the ability. Change the bleeding stacks to 3 from 1 while reducing the duration to 8 seconds, down from 20.
10. Unsteady Ground: Allow targets pushed toward Unsteady Ground to be knocked down upon contact of the line.

Another big issue with the Elementalist is that the old premise of “having many weapons skill that are doing less than other classes weapon skill” is not unique anymore. Just look at Revenants who never runs out of cooldowns when it cycles through abilities. This could be adjusted by giving a few more utilities to spells.

Alekt.5803:

I observe that Elementalists are dependant on their offensive trait lines to commit into a damaging role. This works for Staff and Scepter I believe. For staff, which I know perfectly well, the damage option available is Lightning Rod. Don’t expect to deal damage with Lava Font, Eruption or Ice Spike and auto-attacks since players move out of these.

The difficulty to deal upfront damage, at least with staff, always forced elementalist into a supportive role. Supportive roles on staff did not have this issue because the kit is good at that: water fields, AoE crowd-control abilities. The supportive abilities always concealed the major flaws in that weapon set.

There are a few quality of life and improvements to do for staff. Some cooldowns are too long for the power of the abilities. Some skills feel empty and have high cooldowns (Frozen Ground, Windborne Speed, Gust, Magnetic Aura).

Here is a few solutions that may be implimented.

1. Lava Font: Immediate first tick of damage instead of a 1 second delay.
2. Windborne Speed: Make it cleanse Slow; remove the cast time; reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.
3. Gust: Reduce the cooldown; Improve velocity and width of the skill; increase the duration of the crowd control. Allow targets pushed toward Unsteady Ground to be knocked down upon contact of the line as it does for Static Field.
4. Lightning Surge: Reduce the cooldown to 5 seconds from 10 seconds to better match the cooldown with Fresh Air. Cast time feels rewarding as it is.
5. Ice Spike: Is it too much to ask for a Blast Finisher?
6. Frozen Ground: Increase duration to 6 seconds, up from 5 seconds to allow more time for Eruption to blast on the field.
7. Healing Rain: Reduce cast time to 3/4 seconds down from 1.5 seconds. Reduce cooldown to 40 seconds from 45 seconds.
8. Magnetic Aura: Reduce cooldown to 25 seconds from 30. Send one condition back to foes in a 300 radius upon casting.
9. Shockwave: Reduction cooldown to 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds. Greatly reduce the aftercast to allow continuous casting after casting Shockwave. Improve the power ratio of the ability. Change the bleeding stacks to 3 from 1 while reducing the duration to 8 seconds, down from 20.
10. Unsteady Ground: Allow targets pushed toward Unsteady Ground to be knocked down upon contact of the line.

Another big issue with the Elementalist is that the old premise of “having many weapons skill that are doing less than other classes weapon skill” is not unique anymore. Just look at Revenants who never runs out of cooldowns when it cycles through abilities. This could be adjusted by giving a few more utilities to spells.

These are actually great suggestions.

I would add though:

> Water 2 , lower casting time or have it drop down faster
>Air 2, casting time is fine, just need to have a “finisher” feel to it, like reaper form 5, and reduce CD to 8 instead of 5 as suggested by you.
> Fire 2 needs a bigger radius or to have less after cast.
> Earth 2 should have an option to be “detonated” after 1 second (like mesmer curtain), and if not detonated, it will detonate as per usual.

I am fine with Lava Font having the small AoE.

I have never thought of having this “Executioner” feel to Lightning Surge and I think that I like it. Could it grant additionnal conditions depending on how low the target is? Under 75%, 5 vulnerability in the area; under 50% weakness for 4 seconds, and 5 vulnerability in the area; under 25%, 10 vulnerability, weakness for 4 seconds in the area. Downstate are considerated under 25%.

Yah I stole a couple of your ideas and decided to post them on the ele forum.

Now, where a dev will even look at that forum thats a different story, but a man can hope.

I actually find the ele’s are still one of the few classes that can 1v1 hold a point against me. They and guardians are my toughest fights post patch. I actually don’t have much problem at all against thieves and necros are a 50/50 but the guradians can burst me so hard I die and eles can simply stall forever. I play engi. I was actually considering taking up the ele. Are you sure there aren’t some bloody effective bunker builds out there? I mean they can pretty much stalemate me when playing against someone good I find.

Staff:
fire:
-lava font first thick instantly or after 0,2s (with casting time for lava font its gives total 0,4s to react).
-flame burst maybe i’m incrorrect but I find troubles using it at target behind me even if I use back camera. Somehow when I go forum I can’t recall anything:).
-burning retreat – add second use: Flame Eater – dismantle fire wall that burning retreat left for 2 burning bolts that will fly torward you. Imo the weakest point of evade is predictable location of landing ’ where its ends’. With that mechanic it would give more meaning/reasoning for reposition for you and enemy and that ofc would help cover that weakness.
water:
-its about ice spike I would consider to merge it with Geyser or Frozen Ground
Ice spike lands and create Geyser or Frozen Ground.
-Geyser is a skill that heals you highly, but even so standing to get it could be secured, two options: pulse slow or decrease to radious to 180 or even 120 and make it launch back enemies that try to pass through it. Maybe making enemies float could be considered.
air;
-change to make lighting surge executioner skill as alekt and fortus brings could be change to consider it.
-gust double velocity, and decrease cd from 30 to 20,
-static field increase cd from 40 to 50, add second use: Electro Eater – dismantle static field for 5 lightning bolts that will move torward you.
earth;
-magnetic aura additionaly if you target enemy that is far more that 900 you will taunt him for 1s but then cooldwon is 40/45s. If that effect is not triggered magnetic aura cd is 20/25s. But to be honest condition transfer that alekt suggested would be great.
-shockwave- add second use – rift pause – you can stop shockwave from advancing forward, after 5s its will automaticaly go further. Shockwave don’t go on cd until its finished. Worth to consider would be third use – wave return – to start move further.
That change is to have more control game play that won’t be so blunt and simple in what they are meant to do. I could use shockwave and imediately rift pause when I that enemy is going to easily reposition and hold it as trumph card to set in motion when he will come close, eventualy its will automaticaly after 5s move forward, so he will need to consider it. Its obvious and tricky at once.

scepter;
fire;
-pheonix move a bit faster, give retaliation if cleaved downed states enemy/ies.
water:
-shatterstone decrease radious to 90 from 180 and make it destroy projectiles.
air:
-blinding flash increase cd to 30s from 10s and make it teleport to enemy you target and blind him
earth:
-stone shard – 1/4s, 20% faster velocity at least. Only one *
-rock barrier – create rock barrier (fence) 180 radious 1100 range 1s cast time 60 cd at target and on target use, that kd every one who try to pass through it. Second use Hurl destroy that barrier to knockback up to 2 targets around. Target that you use rock barrier on is unaffected by hurl.
-dust devil – add dmg modifier 20% against knocked down, back, and launched foes.

focus:
-flamewall – could see second use – flame eater – also dismantle it for 2 burning projectiles that fly torward you.
-fire aura – grant torment at location.
earth:
-magnetic wave -its give reflection for 3s, that part should be exchange for magnetic aura, becouse it will be boost increase cooldown from 25 to 30. Rest of magnetic wave mechanic is perfect so don’t make other changes.