Guild Wars 2

Talking Role
the current role of the elementalist is to support teammembers in skirmishes or teamfights by giving them boons, cleansing conditions, healing them and ccing enemies.

yesterday was shown that the trait elemental attunement will be moved to the grandmaster tier, resulting in the forced choice between it and evasive arcana.

what does this mean for the elementalist’s role and its place in the current meta?

first of all this change will result in 1 less cleanse for the team because you either lose the regeneration on water attunement or the water dodge roll, both reomivng one condition.

furthermore you will either lose your aoe boons or your water heal, both very important in a team fight and will thus cripple the ele’s role.

Concurrence
there are several classes that take on the role of a team supporter, the two strongest (not including ele) beeing shoutbow and altruistic healing shout guard.
both of these specs (correct me if i’m wrong) have been buffed yesterday.

guardian is currently less viable because of the fact that this build can’t accomplish much on its own compared to ele or warrior.

warrior on the other hand is highly demanded and almost every team is running at least one.

Conseuquences
what will this mean for the elementalist?

the elementalist is now able to pick the full earth line, giving it access to rock solid and stone heart, very strong traits; at least in 1v1 situations.

the changes to elementalist take away his effectiveness in teamfights but increase his strength in a 1v1 fight.
the damage output of an elementalist, compared to an engineer for example, is not that high and fights will generally take too long to bring them to an end before reinforcement arrives due to rotations.

what does the elementalist have over, for example, a shoutbow?

assuming we take evasive arcana over elemental attunement, the elementalist will not be able to give his team protection anymore. with rock solid on the other hand we will be able to give our team 1 stack of stability (2s) every 10s which is quite strong.
stability is generally used to stomp downed enemies. with meditation guards in the meta there is already access to stability and makes this less important even if it’s on a shorter cooldown than the virtue.

the elementalist offers great mobility and a fiery greatsword, let’s not forget this. the question is, is it necessary? is it better than a banner? (again, not attacking warriors, but warriors are in the same role and the ele’s concurrence).
there are also ele’s good soft and hard ccs that we shouldn’t overlook.

Conclusion
Overall the elementalist gets pushed out more and more of the meta, not because the build will be weak but because there is no place for the tanky 1v1 build that celestial d/d is going towards to.

other elementalist builds have not really been buffed either, as the other semi viable build, s/f fresh air, has lost a portion of its damage while gaining more active defense in return. this is nice in a way but then again other berserk predators like the thief have also been buffed in a, in my opinion, disturbing way.

so if the devs read this:
please take another look at the ele changes, i don’t mind if you change d/d to the point where it’s not viable as a support role anymore but if you do that then buff other builds so that they will become viable on a high level. if you can’t to that then keep elemental attunement as a master trait, and not a grandmaster.

I don’t see the problem, the ele was always supposed to be jack of all trades and master of none, you can’t expect ele to be superior to a specialized build when ele can fill decently any role at any given time.

With ele you can 1vs1, support and hold point..all with the same build,the shout warrior mostly has no stunbreakers and does not excel in 1vs1 like an ele can.

A fare trade off

pushing ele into the tank role is not the right thing to do, and shoutbow is stronger than an ele in a 1v1, especially with the changes.

what the ele will become is an unkillable sidepoint holder in a meta that is going towards 4 dps and 1 support.

There won’t be tanky role only, there will be also a DPS role and others.
Still all these roles will not be able to do a better job than specialized profession, that how it is, it will all depends on the team composition, and overall the ele will be able to switch from DPS role to a more supportive role on the fly, it’s logical that it won’t be the best DPS: reason why air ele will have less dmg but more survivability

Being tanky doesn’t mean you will be giving support to your allies, which is crucial for dd ele. Why would you take a point holder over shoutbow, which can do the same AND support allies?

Also, fresh air getting more survability and less dps is not the way to go. It will die to thieves and mesmers anyway.

Supreme.3164:

I don’t see the problem, the ele was always supposed to be jack of all trades and master of none, you can’t expect ele to be superior to a specialized build when ele can fill decently any role at any given time.

With ele you can 1vs1, support and hold point..all with the same build,the shout warrior mostly has no stunbreakers and does not excel in 1vs1 like an ele can.

A fare trade off

Ele fresh air is an incredibly specialized role. It’s taking a huge hit, both in absolute terms and relative to other roaming burst classes.

The ele “bruiser” role is getting an overall passive survivability buff.

So the problem is that what’s actually going to happen is the opposite of what you’re saying.

Taking away boons or heals/blasts from eles hurts their team-support capability and self-survival, forcing them further into tanky builds (hello earth line), which is also selfish. This means ele is now just a 1v1 tank.

But wait, if you liked the playstyle of sharing boons, supporting with some damage, giving heals etc, that STYLE is now embodied in engineer. Not only will you have a water-field (healing turret), and whatever other fields are on mortar (probably ice, another water, fire, and poison if I had to guess), you also have that blast on dodge, more weapon blasts, RANGE, higher mobility with super-swiftness, and all the other things current cele engies have on their kits (including OPAF block, way more cc, and zerker-levels of damage on a non-zerk).

My advice: reroll or enjoy 1v1’s.

imo the game should be about adapting but when the game is about rerolling then idk..
seems like we’re going to a less hard state of pre d/d celestial….

First, remember that numbers on many traits and abilities will be changing. With the HoT trait changes, you can only go off the general idea.

That said, I think the change to put Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement into the same slot was a very good decision. If they had not done this, Arcana would be an extremely powerful line, which would completely overshadow all others, and each of those traits would overshadow their competing traits as they do currently.

If that leads to problems for elementalists, other traits or trait lines can be tuned to make up for it. But don’t expect to get another all-encompassing trait.

You’ll often hear players mention that Elementalists are rather squishy with low armour, low hp pool and relies heavily on positioning in PvE. However when it comes to sPvP, ironically get flipped around and Elementalist somehow turned into a point holder. In addition to their ability to hold points, they also able to provide range of group support and damage over time, rendering the pure support classes less prominent (eg Bunker Guardian).

Though Elementalist got many short ends when it comes to the trait changes, it keeps away from the “Master of All” back towards “Jack of All”. One would have to choose between offensive/defensive Evasive or the supportive Attuning. With this change, I can see shifting towards the staff in PvP might be more favourable over d/d.

After thinking it for a bit i see a straight nerf for ele.
Thing is that even without the power creep from all the other classes(seriously its insane what some got) there iss also the burning rebalancing!!!!
Right now you put a ring of fire and if you are lucky you are burning the enemy for 5 or even 10 sec for 400-600 depending on might stacks with your standard build.
Well good luck if you think ring of fire will give anything but 1 stack of burning for same duration only now for half or 1/3 the damage.
Do the same with drakes breath and all other skills and see how fun it gets
My point is that burning is a very important part of eles output damage.
Burning is very strong in 1vs1s but doesnt scale that well in bigger fights.
Burning gets the ability to scale →burning lose the ability to be good in 1vs1s or else it scales too good in tfs
→ Ele loses a part of his total burning damage so he doesnt scale insanely well in tfs.
Sure that is for all classes but eles burning is also mostly AOE which means that they are kind of forced to limit the stacks abilities give.
Engies ip for an example can give 3 stacks of burning cause its 1 target.
Ring of fire cant etc..

TLDR : I believe burning rebalancing will be heavily against elementalist which will affect the 1vs1 capabilities of the class which paired with less support or rather too focused support (either auras/prot or cleansing and heal) will make the class weak overall.

tis a shame… evasive dodge is needed for d/f build but arcane attunement is also important since d/f has like no mobility… making us choose between the two is truly a shame

Just a thought here, but they stated that the revealed changes are works in progress so the the functionality not the numbers show is what they are presenting so Elemental Attunement is more that likely looking at being improved based on the new placement over the current one.

Jekkt.6045:

warrior on the other hand is highly demanded and almost every team is running at least one.
the devs told us yesterday that mending will now also become a shout, making it heal for 5751 + 2055 on a 16s cooldown while removing 4 conditions and will therefore outclass healing signet which is on a 392 hp/s.

WRONG! :P

this change will bring your team additional 2055 heal and a condi cleanse.
i don’t want to complain about warriors here but list the results of yesterday’s proposed changes.

As far as i understood it:

Healing Surge will become a shout (24 sec cooldown when traited and no extra 3 conditions removed)

and Mending will become a physical skill

so it wont be that overpowered even though it is a buff to warrior yes
but to be honest these 2 healing skills were basically never used over Healing Signet by a warrior in PvP so i think a buff for these 2 was justified

my bad then.
so healing surge will be the shout heal which heals for 10k + 2k, resulting in 513hp/s but is not that easy to use and pretty bad out of combat.

mending would have definitely been better^^

i deleted that part now out of my first post because i’m not sure if warriors will actually take that heal now.

At this rate daggers will completely be taken out of the meta and everyone will swap to Fresh Air or Tempest Defense for all the wrong reasons.

It’s clear ArenaNet had NO idea how to balance the Elementalist.

By far the biggest issue is the amount of protection and cleansing we get. Elemental Shielding and Elemental Attunement allow way to much protection, combined with Cleansing Water you got yourself a class that can keep itself clean of conditions AND can take 33% less damage at most instances of fight.

ArenaNet said themselves, you can be great at multiple things, the problem is when the class becomes good at everything.

_

In my opinion, Cleansing Water just needs to go. Which would suck as it pretty much allows me to 1v1 anything but lets face it, better to get rid of Cleansing Water than moving Elemental Attunement and Elemental Shielding to worthless tiers.

Fine. We are a bit easier to be blown up with conditions. Better that than being blown up by everything.

Do not get rid of the elementalist support, ArenaNet, this proposed changes just confounds me :\

_

Oh, and FREAKING FIX CHILL ALREADY GOD kitten .

Nova Stiker.8396:

At this rate daggers will completely be taken out of the meta and everyone will swap to Fresh Air or Tempest Defense for all the wrong reasons.

It’s clear ArenaNet had NO idea how to balance the Elementalist.

By far the biggest issue is the amount of protection and cleansing we get. Elemental Shielding and Elemental Attunement allow way to much protection, combined with Cleansing Water you got yourself a class that can keep itself clean of conditions AND can take 33% less damage at most instances of fight.

ArenaNet said themselves, you can be great at multiple things, the problem is when the class becomes good at everything.

_

In my opinion, Cleansing Water just needs to go. Which would suck as it pretty much allows me to 1v1 anything but lets face it, better to get rid of Cleansing Water than moving Elemental Attunement and Elemental Shielding to worthless tiers.

Fine. We are a bit easier to be blown up with conditions. Better that than being blown up by everything.

Do not get rid of the elementalist support, ArenaNet, this proposed changes just confounds me :\

_

Oh, and FREAKING FIX CHILL ALREADY GOD kitten .

do you actually know how much armor a celestial d/d has? it’s 2300, so obviously we’re gonna have a good protection uptime. i would rather take a warrior’s health and armor and remove elemental shielding

d/d can do many things but it excels at burst mobility and a mixed support (heal, boons, cleanse) but it’s a bad damage dealer, especially after the nerf, so it’s not “good at everything” but rather “ok at everything” as it’s not the best in any of it.

cleansing water actually lets eles stand up to warriors and engis with their many conditions they can apply. you say you don’t want them to remove cleansing water but you know.. cleansing water is support. you remove conditions from allies… not only from yourself…

well, Ele can still support extremely well with staff and even if shoutbow and guardian might as well be strong in these areas, that doesn’t mean that a team can’t run multiple supporters/semi-tanks.

I do think that very tanky builds/sidenode-holder Ele’s might come back and I don’t necessarily feel one way or the other about it, cuz it’s unclear if he’ll be able to tank most 2-dps combo’s like fulltanks were able to when tankguard mid and sidenode fulltank ele were the meta.

I also feel though that stuff like the S/F-Fresh Air (most likely air/earth/water or air/water/arcane) could be very viable and this is definitely a very strong teamfight-build: high ranged sustained DPS with great support from swirling winds, CC, some AoE, some heals/condi-remove etc. could be very useful and not a lot of classes offer quite the same things (most full dps is more bursty than sustained, has to go into melee for bursts and offers another kind of teamsupport).

Main problems for the Fresh-Air was being really squishy and having very little condi-remove (I’d still consider it very viable in competetive PvP) and these aspects should be much less of a problem with the introduction of specializations (full-water with condiremove and full earth for shorter defensive CD’s and more tankyness in general or arcane for evasive arcana, elemental contingency etc.)

I can definitely see Ele’s still being played in teamfights as support/semi-tank or DPS/support, but also as fulltank nodeholders/invaders. SO IMHO, the Ele will still have a few very viable builds and roles he can play.

staff ele isn’t played now and it won’t really be played afterwards.

ofc you can take multiple supports but why would you take something that is not the best availlable build?

i agree with the defensive for fresh air, just nerfing the damage on air was unnecessary.

The meta will change inside/out…I don’t think further discussion would be useful at this time

the discussions aren’t really about the meta itself but rather why the changes to ele are the wrong approach.

Let’s put your points into perspective:

-Ele lose EA at master level, so now the profession lose its place in the meta

My point perspective:

-Ele gains aquatic benevolence
-Ele gains geomancer defense
-Ele gains shorter attunement recharge
-Ele gains 3 GM traits
-Ele can now apply aoe stability, protection( take EA and lose evasive), increase his base team healing by 25%, clear 1 condi from team…all the while being far harder to kill than a shoutbow who is susceptible to burst

-note- Still waiting for powerful aura

…and this is only one of the future builds, remember that:

-burning now stacks in intensity( aura share tanky ember ele – flamewall)
-tempest defense moved to master, attunement CD reduced to 10s base ( lightning rod tanky dps/burst – try current version with d/d and zerker with 30 in earth=1400 toughness, currently not viable because you can’t spec 30 water so…)
- …staff builds ( still in deep theorycraft )

Finally there is..Tempest specialization, the chances that our specialization will be a highly viable burst role….are extremely high as I doubt ele need a support or bunker specialization and we’ve been promised that specializations will allow a profession to play a different role than the norm.

Jekkt.6045:

staff ele isn’t played now and it won’t really be played afterwards.

ofc you can take multiple supports but why would you take something that is not the best availlable build?

i agree with the defensive for fresh air, just nerfing the damage on air was unnecessary.

I see tons of Staff Eles in the competetive scene in the ESL-Cups, both in EU and NA…. It looked really really good for stronghold as well, so I predict a bright future for the build. (the samy-tank/support build with celestial I mean)

And yes, if the build is better in every aspect that important to the game, then yes, go for the same twice, but that’s never the case. But even though some guardian, warrior and staff-ele builds could all fall under the suport/semi-tank category, they all offer something individual.

just because people run staff eles in esl doesn’t mean that it’s viable… there where all kind of things in esl, like static discharge engis for example..

idk why you think staff ele is good fro stronghold, there are no points in stronghold, all open field, and generally staff eles suck in open field.

playing d/d also offers more reliable cc, so if you want a side point bunker just keep playing d/d and not staff.

Jekkt.6045:

just because people run staff eles in esl doesn’t mean that it’s viable… there where all kind of things in esl, like static discharge engis for example..

idk why you think staff ele is good fro stronghold, there are no points in stronghold, all open field, and generally staff eles suck in open field.

playing d/d also offers more reliable cc, so if you want a side point bunker just keep playing d/d and not staff.

Staff viability I guess it’s a matter of opinion, personally I think the weapon does a better job dealing with on point attackers as you can do dmg from distance..but anyway soon you’ll be able to play one-shot staff 6/6/6/0/0 with enough sustain to run away and reposition, using elemental shielding+conjure+tempest defense, you’ll have access to 3(4) auras to apply protection( use FGS and get fire aura), then add blinding ashes( now blind on crit with burn precision merged) and stone heart…..yeah I can see the pain staff will bring

Supreme.3164:

Jekkt.6045:

just because people run staff eles in esl doesn’t mean that it’s viable… there where all kind of things in esl, like static discharge engis for example..

idk why you think staff ele is good fro stronghold, there are no points in stronghold, all open field, and generally staff eles suck in open field.

playing d/d also offers more reliable cc, so if you want a side point bunker just keep playing d/d and not staff.

Staff viability I guess it’s a matter of opinion, personally I think the weapon does a better job dealing with on point attackers as you can do dmg from distance..but anyway soon you’ll be able to play one-shot staff 6/6/6/0/0 with enough sustain to run away and reposition, using elemental shielding+conjure+tempest defense, you’ll have access to 3(4) auras to apply protection( use FGS and get fire aura), then add blinding ashes( now blind on crit with burn precision merged) and stone heart…..yeah I can see the pain staff will bring

You are possibly the only one who thinks staff is or will be viable in pvp. I have to question whether you secretly hate the class.

Elementalist is one of those classes that have been pretty much meta for the vast majority of the game’s life. The fact that many high level teams feel its necessary to run two of them should be a gigantic red flag to most reasonable people. I have no problem if the class ends up being slightly underpowered for a period of time.

you mean at the start of the game and for the last 6 months, the rest of the time ele was dead in pvp…

BlackBeard.2873:

Taking away boons or heals/blasts from eles hurts their team-support capability and self-survival, forcing them further into tanky builds (hello earth line), which is also selfish. This means ele is now just a 1v1 tank.

But wait, if you liked the playstyle of sharing boons, supporting with some damage, giving heals etc, that STYLE is now embodied in engineer. Not only will you have a water-field (healing turret), and whatever other fields are on mortar (probably ice, another water, fire, and poison if I had to guess), you also have that blast on dodge, more weapon blasts, RANGE, higher mobility with super-swiftness, and all the other things current cele engies have on their kits (including OPAF block, way more cc, and zerker-levels of damage on a non-zerk).

My advice: reroll or enjoy 1v1’s.

Support ele will be embodied as auramancer, 4s frost aura and 3s prot on 10s cooldown, (both AoE)? Crazy strong. Not to mention all the other fields like fire for might and burning.

so you’re giving up the best grandmaster trait in water for a worse version of elemental attunement.. makes sense..

You’re getting Aquatic Benevolence as a minor.

I don’t think you’ll suffer much in terms of supporting via healing, even getting a buff, 25% one.

For a trade of little bit less condition cleansing and choice between burst heal and protection.

And because I think that people will go for Fire quite often, even in PvP, you might pick up that cantrip trait, too.

atm it’s:

evasive arcana dodge heal + elemental attunement boons = support

after the update it will be

evasive arcana dodge heal +25% heal = support
or
elemental attunement boons +25% heal = support

see the problem? 25% of 1,5k dodge heal is 375. i’d rather keep how it is now because 25% outgoing heal is not gonna make or break me but evasive vs attunement will.

Jekkt.6045:

just because people run staff eles in esl doesn’t mean that it’s viable… there where all kind of things in esl, like static discharge engis for example..

idk why you think staff ele is good fro stronghold, there are no points in stronghold, all open field, and generally staff eles suck in open field.

playing d/d also offers more reliable cc, so if you want a side point bunker just keep playing d/d and not staff.

Really?

I’ve actually began to watch most of the ESL-Cups a few weeks ago (or at least look at the builds) and Staff-Ele is very near the top-5 builds that are consistently and successfully run by top teams. Like SALT for example, who reached the semi-finals in just the last ESL-Cup.

We almost always see:

- Shoutwar
- DD-Cele-Ele
- Panic-Strike
- Cele-Rifle Engi

We almost always see one of them or more per team, but on the second tier of builds that are used (in terms of how often they are used by top-teams), Staff-Ele is definitely amongst them:

- Medi-Guard
- Staff-Ele
- Shatter Mesmer

then the pretty rare builds, that are IMHo still very viable:

- S/D-Thief
- Terror/Power-Necro
- Fresh-Air (mostly in NA)
- Power Ranger (mostly used by one team on Foefire, forgot which team it was, but they do it pretty consistently)
- Hambow (also more or less just 1 team I can remember from the top of my head, but they run it pretty consistently)

I can’t remember seeing any static discharge Engi btw. and I’ve litereally checked out the builds of every team in all the ESL-Cups from the last few weeks. I only talk about the top-8 and maybe sometimes the top-16 builds.