Guild Wars 2

I’m actually frustrated too. On a scale of 1-10, dev involvement on this forum went from a 0 to an 8, then post patch back to 0.

NOT to mention, they ‘took’ some of our suggestions.. Like making diamond skin 85% instead of 90%. They spoke as if it were a done deal. That didn’t happen.

A bunch of things didn’t happen. But you know what? I’m almost certain elementalist is at rock bottom, and they wouldn’t dare to nerf it more.

If they do, I quit the game. No biggie.

Edit: I had forgotten that they did listen when deciding to not move Renewing Stamina, so my post is not correct.

ANet’s got themselves stuck a little bit here. I strongly believe that it is true that making changes is difficult to balance and takes a lot of time to test properly, and I would be perfectly willing to forgive ANet’s seeming duplicity in putting up the thread on that account. Would, that is, if not for the sizable amount of evidence that ANet doesn’t actually test changes very thoroughly in many cases. The number of things that come through broken (be it runes, consumables, food, or playable content) strains the faith that them not listening to the forums is in fact for practical reasons, rather than for more cynical ones.

It is sad to see, there was a lot of goodwill when they first put up the thread and it definitely could have been a positive step, rather than the negative one it ended up as.

This is not OK by any means. I know this is their game and they can do whatever they choose but not listening to your player base and just plain ignoring us as they have been doing while you see Dev’s posting under new account and issue related threads is a good way to lose your entire player base. It is not good for the game or the community. The same thing happened with Fractured, changes were promised but not delivered. I would say fine whatever its near the holidays but this is nothing new for ANet and no excuse we deserve to be answered!

i think some people have it in their minds that the developers read these forums, hop in the bat mobile and drive home, start clicking away on a desktop and boom.. starbucks and patchnotes the next morning

This isn’t really true. Did they fix everything we wanted? No, but they did listen to some of our ideas.

1) Didn’t move renewing stamina
2) Redesigned soothing wave
3) Made windborne dagger work OOC
4) Moved blasting staff to adept
5) Allowed FGS to cast while moving
6) Buffed earth 5 point
7) Reduced CD on tempest defense
8) Moved conjurer to adept

i saw the streaming,it was a shame and a waste of time.

Josh Davis.6015:

Friendly neighborhood Grouch here (oxymoron?). Starting in early January I’ll be working more closely with the Skills and Balance team and with you all as well. While our Skills/Balance designers do read the forums quite often, they don’t have as much time to post and drive discussion – and that’s what I’ll be stepping in to help with.

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

No one is going to hurt you, but we are a bit gun shy of ANet in regards to Elementalist balance. Every single time ANet has tried to ‘help’ the class it seems they have either done a net nothing, or made it worse. That is unless you are actually actively trying to make it worse like what has been done to the healing, rtl, and bunker specs. Then they are really good at it.

Well I feel as though we sacrafice too much survivability to match a warriors dps. I’d like to see reduced cooldowns on utilities such as arcane shield and skills like fire grab. Reduce animatio time of the staff skills.

Josh Davis.6015:

Friendly neighborhood Grouch here (oxymoron?). Starting in early January I’ll be working more closely with the Skills and Balance team and with you all as well. While our Skills/Balance designers do read the forums quite often, they don’t have as much time to post and drive discussion – and that’s what I’ll be stepping in to help with.

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

Good, you can start by asking yourselves, how is it possible that the LOWEST armour class has the LOWEST health, and also, how does the HIGHEST armour class, have the HIGHEST health and greatest or 2nd greatest mobility. Look at warriors, tone them down, then start with everyone else.

Josh Davis.6015:

Friendly neighborhood Grouch here (oxymoron?). Starting in early January I’ll be working more closely with the Skills and Balance team and with you all as well. While our Skills/Balance designers do read the forums quite often, they don’t have as much time to post and drive discussion – and that’s what I’ll be stepping in to help with.

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

Enjoy the break Josh, we’ll not begrudge you some R&R time. Come back refreshed and ready to work because quite frankly 2014 is going to be an incredibly important year for Guild Wars 2 to remain successful.

And no we won’t hurt you, the Grinch has done his thing with us way too often, no point in hurting the Grouch now too. You’ll find even a little bit of sugar goes a long way to soothing us.

Josh Davis.6015:

(Please don’t hurt me.)

Come on, Grouch, it’s common knowledge that even if us players aren’t trying to be hurtful, even if we’re only having a pragmatic discussion of something, there is an incredibly high chance that some Moderator will interpret what we post in a way it wasn’t meant to be interpreted, leading to deleted posts & threads, frivolous bans, and the doling out of Infraction Points. Just use the Dungeon sub-forum as an example; it has gotten to the point where Moderators delete anything they personally disagree with, and hand out arbitrary bans on a daily basis.

In regard to us players as users of this forum, let’s make a deal; we won’t hurt you, if you don’t hurt us. Fewer bans and deleted posts, and you may restore our confidence in Anet, which is at an all-time low at the moment. There are a couple great new games coming out next year (Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar, and the new EverQuest, to name a few), and if Anet wants us to stay with Guild Wars 2, you’ll have to use more carrot and less stick.

In regard to us players as Elementalists, let’s make another deal; stop nerfing us, and we might keep playing our Ele’s. Otherwise, our first step will be to play a different profession, and our second will be to play a different game.

Just so everyone knows where I’m coming from, I have never been banned. I have never personally been mistreated by Anet or it’s Moderators; however, I’ve seen many people who gave honest, well-written opinions about Anet’s performance have their posts/threads deleted and their forum privileges revoked. I’ve also seen the Elementalist class be nerfed time and again. In both cases, Anet just needs to back off a bit; soften the heavy-handed approach to the forums, and stop proactively nerfing this profession.

Grouch understand while I’m happy to see any post, that I will believe it when I see it.

I’d prefer nothing changed period if the outcome will be a nerf. Please encourage them to consider negative repercussions on any changes if we forecast them

Enjoy your time off. It is most certainly going to be important for all classes to get things straightened out in the future.

As it is, even condition classes laugh when they see eles with diamond skin. The skill doesn’t work as intended, as it’s letting first hit condis tick for damage in SPvP. As for in WvW, why would anybody ever take it, when eles are frequently the most focused class. We have zero stealth, few hit deterrents like blocks, invuln or retaliation, and our auras could use revamping.

Both our skills and attunements need cooldown reductions period, and for HEAVENS SAKES, a ‘buff’ in a trait line does NOT constitute a nerf elsewhere, as we don’t have infinite trait points to use them all!!!

/end rant.

Josh Davis.6015:

Friendly neighborhood Grouch here (oxymoron?). Starting in early January I’ll be working more closely with the Skills and Balance team and with you all as well. While our Skills/Balance designers do read the forums quite often, they don’t have as much time to post and drive discussion – and that’s what I’ll be stepping in to help with.

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

Concerns, yes.
Timeframe for the concerns to be addressed – Possibly Months+

Don’t worry, Grouch, we’ll only leave teeth marks

The way I see it, the biggest concern really, is that Arcana is so good compared to the other lines that it makes no sense not to take it. What we need is synergy between Arcana and the other lines, not just Water.

I fear it. Balance changes put in to appease whiners are usually buffs to autoattackers/facerollers while nerfing cooldowns and ability combos that require skill.

Please take into consideration my vote to nerf autoattacks while reducing cooldowns and buffing cooldown powers.

Elfis.9102:

I fear it. Balance changes put in to appease whiners are usually buffs to autoattackers/facerollers while nerfing cooldowns and ability combos that require skill.

Please take into consideration my vote to nerf autoattacks while reducing cooldowns and buffing cooldown powers.

I agree, especially with the second bit. Won’t affect eles because any ele actually using autoattacks and expecting to get a result is essentially getting on his knees, tying himself up, and asking to get his head removed violently.

imo the elementalist for be competitive with other classes should have:

attunement cd rance beetwen 10 to 7
elemental attunement inside the classes mechanics not a traits
evasive arcana on 15 of arcana
base hp 16k

this change will make able to make more aggressive build w/o be too squishi, just like other classes… i dont think other classes need nerf, but ele need a buff for have same chance of others

Glaucs.1546:

This isn’t really true. Did they fix everything we wanted? No, but they did listen to some of our ideas.

1) Didn’t move renewing stamina
2) Redesigned soothing wave
3) Made windborne dagger work OOC
4) Moved blasting staff to adept
5) Allowed FGS to cast while moving
6) Buffed earth 5 point
7) Reduced CD on tempest defense
8) Moved conjurer to adept

Using this to review changes made/not made
1) OK on this, we need it it adept. They listened to us.
2) As “replacement trait” in the adept Water line for “Cleansing Wave” this is not enough. Remember they moved CW because it was an AoE cleanse on demand, but left us weaker alone.
3) This should never have been in combat only before. Still too many better choices in Arcana
4) Buffs staff further, still other weapons are hardly addressed (Focus anyone?)
5) There was no reason for it to root you in the first place
6) This closes the armour/health gap to other professions only slightly
7) Good
8) It is still only viable to run regular Conjures in PvE

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch? The update notes had been out like 6 weeks in advance? A big majority of veteran Elementalist players summed up their concerns and they went through with about 80% of their planned balance update without changes.
Now, two weeks later we see that most of the predictions the community has made came true: Diamond Skin is a “one trick pony” and not OP at all, Eles have not switched out of Water/Arcane and build diversity did not happen. Our foes in competitive environment have not been weakened a lot to make us better compared to them. Swapping cool down got better for people not invested in Arcana, but for those who put points in it, nothing has changed to ease some of our “double cooldown dilemmas”.

One of our major problems was base attunement cooldowns outside of arcana. That was fixed in the last patch. Good. It was a first step in the right direction.

Two other major problems remain for us. Base survivability and auto-attacks. The former is obvious. The later is tricky, because I think auto-attacks should be nerfed across the game. However, it’s not like arc lightning, lightning whip and fireball are breaking the ele, right? Making our other auto-attacks at a similar power level to those three would be great.

steal 2500+ hp from warriors and give them to ele.
renewing stamina at the place of zephyr’s speed.
elemental attunement should be installed in the class and shoudn’t be a trait.
rework lingering elements into something more useful or change it with evasive arcana.
revert rtl nerf or nerf warrior mobility.
diamond skin rework like,conditions cannot be applied above the 80% of hp or when you have got stability you are immune to conditions.
make lightning flash again a stunbreaker.
armor of earth 90 sec cd,why? decrease some cooldowns.
arcane shield 75 sec cd,why? decrease the cooldown or put a “reflect projectiles” or block 5 attacks.
make conjurer like engi kits?
signet of air blind for foes and aoe stability 3-4sec for allies?
one with air 3-4 secs of superspeed?
blasting staff 60 radius increase + tough,vitality and healing power increase.
and so on.

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of our major problems was base attunement cooldowns outside of arcana. That was fixed in the last patch. Good. It was a first step in the right direction.

Two other major problems remain for us. Base survivability and auto-attacks. The former is obvious. The later is tricky, because I think auto-attacks should be nerfed across the game. However, it’s not like arc lightning, lightning whip and fireball are breaking the ele, right? Making our other auto-attacks at a similar power level to those three would be great.

Not only those! Scepter auto-attack for fire and earth attunement is absolutely useless, especially in PvP. The time it takes to even cast one auto-attack in fire and earth attunement with scepter locks you in place for far too long compared to the damage they deal. Especially considering how squishy an ele is. Spending 1 second to channel an auto attack which deals 600 dmg is nowhere enough to counter the pressure you get in return in that time window.

Elementalists lack pressure in the damage department. We have plenty of burst, but simply no pressure to punish people for chain auto-attacking us. This issue can be alleviated by increasing the damage of the majority of our auto attacks with dagger/scepter/staff, or simply making the class more sturdy so we can stay toe-to-toe with our opponents for prolonged battles.

If you choose to play with dagger or scepter mainhand in spvp, you invariably end up in melee against theives, warriors, because your burst damage DEMANDS that you get up-close and personal. And your auto-attacks are simply not powerful enough to trade against your melee counterparts, save for lightning whip. And other melee classes are not even the worst problem. If you want to do reasonable damage with ele in this meta, you better go berserker amulet. If you go berserker amulet, a necro can outright kill you in a fear-chain. Lose-lose.

To sum it up: The problem for an elementalist is that you need to get within melee range to do reasonable damage, and when you combine this with its poor sustainability and capability to apply counterpressure, you become cannon fodder. This is what pvp players call a free stomp. Sure enough, you can move in, do your burst and mist-form, lightning flash or ride the lightning out of there. BUT THAT’S IT. Then you cannot commit for another 40 seconds. And since we have no proper damage output (save lightning whip) besides our burst abilities (burning speed, phoenix, arcane spells, lightning strike) we can’t do anything for our team until escape abilities are back up.

Bring a shatter-specced mesmer with greatsword instead. You can do proper burst at 1000+ range, decent pressure with greatsword auto-atk, and force your opponent to overextend to you instead. Follow up with stealth, chaos storm, chaos armor and distortion to avoid getting killed.

Rereading my original post i feel it was way too sarcastic i would rephrase it if i could. . For love of the game i assure you, but im still a very happy customer : I played gw2 for over a year for about 50 euros and nowhere near done yet! Value for money A+.

Merry christmas anet.

xxxx F.

When people start telling you that they are not going to hurt you… that is when you need to start worrying. It’s like when the doctor and his orderlies come to give you your “medicine”.

I do NOT want base HP buffs, autoattack buffs, or other passive play class buffs, because they will require nerfs in other areas to balance. I would much prefer base HP, etc. to be reduced even farther, as long as other skills are buffed to keep the class playable.

Do you expect them to just give you free HP while keeping all other skills equal? No, other abilities can be more powerful when base HP, armor, etc. is low.

Please be careful what you wish for folks, because if you actually get what you want, you may not like it as much as you think.

Josh Davis.6015:

Friendly neighborhood Grouch here (oxymoron?). Starting in early January I’ll be working more closely with the Skills and Balance team and with you all as well. While our Skills/Balance designers do read the forums quite often, they don’t have as much time to post and drive discussion – and that’s what I’ll be stepping in to help with.

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

I think more visibility and discussion focusing will definitely help the tone of the Elementalist forum. I for one can vouch that my tone turned bitter from the feeling of being ignored.

Enjoy the holiday.

Some new Traits were actually a good step. But it was not that step which the players expected.

Actually, I don’t see a reason to play my Elementalist at all compared to my Mesmer or one of my Warriors (Yes, I leveled two). I don’t really know what this class is for if it is not able to spike damage, to use his conditions decently beside blinding, or to control decently.

After one year I have the impression that ArenaNet justifies “No damage bursting” or condition overload by argueing with the Elementalist’s 4 Elementstances. If the Elementalist is intended to twist Elements then those skills should harmonize with each other while the chosen role should also be able to play.

Traits are good things which support the player’s playstyle. The only viable weaponsets of the Elementalist are Dagger and Scepter while the Staff is only good for PvE and WvW-zerging purpose. All other classes are able to play their own way with a defensive weapon. Warrior’s shield and Mesmer’s Staff are the best example. Both harmonize with other weaponsets easily. Why isn’t it possible as an Elementalist?
The Staff of the Elementalist, obviously a supportive weapon. A really, really slow one.
Playing as an Elementalist with a scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger + Evasive Arcana is still better and faster. The Staff is way too slow for it’s current skills. I doubt that I have to start discussing the Focus of the Elementalist here too.

If the Elementalist is not intended to twist Elements during the combat then those trait changes were way too weak too – While Fresh Air was a good step.

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of our major problems was base attunement cooldowns outside of arcana. That was fixed in the last patch. Good. It was a first step in the right direction.

Two other major problems remain for us. Base survivability and auto-attacks. The former is obvious. The later is tricky, because I think auto-attacks should be nerfed across the game. However, it’s not like arc lightning, lightning whip and fireball are breaking the ele, right? Making our other auto-attacks at a similar power level to those three would be great.

Agree actually I would say ele auto attacks are reasonable they just need to be a bit more effective or a reason to use them. Dragon’s claw should be projectile finisher chance, vapor blade projectile finisher chance, earth range extended to 600.

Dragon’s Claw reduce down to 2 projectiles divide damage of all 3 claws into 2 lessen cone arc.

Also scepter’s auto attack in fire.

I think most auto-attacks we have could ge fixed by “simple” number or mechanic tweaks. For example, dagger’s water AA needs to be bug-fixed when used near a wall, and the vulnerability duration could be extended. Would that make it too strong? No way.

However, Flamestrike just doesn’t makes sense. It’s a condition damage AA in a burst weapon. It probably deserves a complete revamp. But a simpler change would probably to make it give self-might, and to give a slightly lower casting time. For a might-stacking weapon that wants to built up for a burst, it would fit in.

I would die to see better auto attacks!!

-Staff: faster, more reliable.

-Dagger: they are close range attacks, add more effects, like first use/second use/third use(example: http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130526103738/powerlisting/images/e/eb/Aang_firebending.gif), all closecombat weapons have except those, why?
this makes them not even worth to use them right now, except maybe lighting a few times.

Scepter: total overhaul imo except again maybe lighting(?)

oZii.2864:

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of our major problems was base attunement cooldowns outside of arcana. That was fixed in the last patch. Good. It was a first step in the right direction.

Two other major problems remain for us. Base survivability and auto-attacks. The former is obvious. The later is tricky, because I think auto-attacks should be nerfed across the game. However, it’s not like arc lightning, lightning whip and fireball are breaking the ele, right? Making our other auto-attacks at a similar power level to those three would be great.

Agree actually I would say ele auto attacks are reasonable they just need to be a bit more effective or a reason to use them. Dragon’s claw should be projectile finisher chance, vapor blade projectile finisher chance, earth range extended to 600.

Dragon’s Claw reduce down to 2 projectiles divide damage of all 3 claws into 2 lessen cone arc.

Also scepter’s auto attack in fire.

I agree with all of this.

I think dragons claw could be changed to something a little better tho overall.

This is what I see as a suggestion to help all elementalist.

• Protection on Aura inherent this would be active defense and reward timing your aura uses. Leave the base duration of elemental shielding just make protection on aura inherent all the time. Obviously a replacement trait would have to be put in to replace elemental shielding.

• Reduce cooldown on Arcane shield, Armor of earth.
• Arcane Shield 60 second base (traited 48)
• Armor of Earth 60 second base (traited 48)

• Dagger Mainhand
• Rock barrier or something similar. My suggestion is when you magnetic leap rocks come out of the ground as you leap toward your opponent remove hurl from dagger main hand version. This doesn’t give the player much control over when they can get the barrier but it does make using leap better. Right now it is better just to immobilize with grasp and not leap at all since ele is to squishy. Obvious counter play to this is enemy dodging the magnetic grasp. Leave unblockable part on the grasp

• Conversion into Vitality Trait
• A trait in earth or fire that converts 7% of x into Vitality. I would like to see something like this at master tier Fire and move burning fire trait down to adept. Now I am 20 points into fire for condition removal and vitality and both GM fire traits start to look interesting depending on the weapon set I am using.

• Signet Passives are fine Change signet actives
• Earth stability/stun break on active remove immobilize
• Signet of Water active all healing effectiveness increased by 20% for 30 seconds
• Signet of Fire I think is fine I can’t really think of a better active that fits with ele and fire.

• With a signet of earth change dragon’s tooth would need to be looked at since earth is really just used for that one ability which means dragon’s tooth should be looked at.

• Arcane precision
• Can we please get a good 25 point trait in arcana. People take 30 arcana anyway I understand that but that is to random and doesn’t really impact anything. Upping the proc chance would be something.

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

maybe the issue that i never see any ele in tpvp teams ? and in solo queue they even ask the elementalist to reroll mes/war/guard/somthing else except ele ?
i have over 1800hours on my ele and he´s doing okay in pve and wvw, but tpvp…he´s plain useless, if i want to play tpvp i have to reroll mesmer or war and thats sad

ps: i´m on the verge of droping ele as main and change to mesmer , because he is usefull in all parts of gw2, unlike the ele

I’d be happy with:
1. Conjured Weapons mechanic redo. I would much rather have my conjured weapon replace the element attunement that it is tied too rather than replace all my weapon abilites. (IE: Frost Bow replaces my 5 Water Attunement weapon abilities for the duration rather than replacing all 20 of my weapon abilities.) The current version is too intrusive to the elementalist gameplay.
2. Improvements to our active defenses (Lighting Flash, Arcane Shield, Armor of Earth)
3. Improvements to some of our horrible weapon abilities (Shatterstone, Flamewall, ect)
4. Lingering Elements works with +% damage traits such as Piercing Shards.
5. Signet of Restoration needs to scale way better with healing power.
6. Elemental Attunement should become a baseline ability of all elementalists.

Hello, alot of wierd and nice looking suggestion and I’d like to add one!

About conjure weapons, what about making it so that when you summon a weapon it’s not bound to lets say "frost"bow but instead is “Conjure Bow” and the weapon conjured will work with the attunements aswell. This would require alot of work ofcourse since you would have to implement 15 new abilities per conjure weapon but it would be kitten sweet!

Also the abilities in each attunement needs to synergize better, for example updraft + dragons tooth should be a 100% chance of landing if the target aint using a stunbreaker same goes for earthquake.

Our weapon skills in general needs some cd reduction so you have atleast one good attack per attunement ready to use when swapping to it. I’m fine with our autoattacks being below standard compared to melee classes but in return we need strong reliable cd skills.

But all in all I think dec 10th was a good patch for the elementalist atleast I’m using the new fire trait and I did give diamond skin a try until I realized it was useless ^^

Please do not improve autoattacks. Improve cooldown powers, and weaken autoattacks even further to compensate if needed.

I really enjoy playing D/F. However, the cooldowns on focus feel ludicrously out of proportion to the benefits of the skills. This has been a longstanding issue, and I would really like to see it addressed.

Several skills are especially problematic: Flamewall, which has a too-narrow area and underwhelming damage; Fire Shield, which stacks Might slowly and is counterproductive to surviving or sustaining in a fight; Freezing Gust, which applies only 3 second of Chill on a 25-second cooldown (compare this to Winter’s Bite, Chillblains, or Spinal Shivers, all of which have lower cooldowns and additional effects); and Gale, which has a 50-second cooldown for a 2s KD (compare this to Backbreaker, Tremor, Line of Warding, and Ring of Warding, all of which have lower cooldowns and additional effects).

For the most part, other professions can kill an ele with little to no skill. They just auto attack spam/facesmash. We have such low health/toughness/armor that getting stunned usually means you are bursted down within 2 seconds.

Alot of our skills such as churning earth and dragons tooth are the most broadcasted attacks out of all the professions. 3 1/4 second channel time for churning earth?? We either have to cancel it to not get bursted down, or everyone gets out of range. Thus requiring us to use lightning flash to even have a chance of landing it. We should either be able to move while channeling it, or be invuln while it is channeling.

Why do we have this low of health pool? we dont have the spike damage to even down someone because we have to sacrifice it for tankier builds/gear and we still are an easy target after the sacrifice.

A thief can spam his #2 skill or auto attack, not even worry about aiming, and do a lot of damage, has medium armor, and if things go bad they stealth and run away. An ele has to burn all of his utilities, use his attunements with great skill, times his attacks and aim them properly, and not make any mistakes to even have a chance at a draw, and after that he is even more vulnerable while everything is on cooldown.

Compared to other professions, we have no disengage abilities unless you consider rtl or mistform which just gets imobilized anyway.
we lack stunbreakers.

I dont even understand why ele has ever been nerfed in the first place, its never been op.

With ele you either have a 10-15 minute fight trying to stay alive, or you are downed instantly. Do you guys even play an ele to test it?

As a final remark, the patch notes are inaccurate, hammer warrior, necro, and thief did not get nerfed regardless of what the patch notes indicated. And why is it alright that a warrior having the highest armor/health in the game have soo much mobility and do tons of damage? they dont even have to worry about getting hit, they can just stand there and type to their friends and laugh, same with retaliation guardians, etc….

You think a higher HP pool will fix the 1 button thiefs and warriors that 1-2-3 shot you?
Also if Ele gets a higher HP,Guardian should too.As if we didn’t have enough problems.Higher armor now,that would be great.Higher Attack power that would be also great.
What needs fixing in my opinion is other classes.Small things can change for the elementalist but complete overhauls?Never gonna happen.
We chose the difficult class guys.The only change i can think of that needs reverting is RTL it was never overpowered and with the current nerfs on the class it will work as intended.Will give as at least some more survivability.

You guys are asking for things that you don’t really want. Let’s pretend that they did for some reason give elementalists 5000 HP, 400 armor, and 20% autoattack damage next patch. It would either come with huge nerfs to other powers, or those nerfs would follow shortly in the next patch. That’s how balance works.

If you really wanted high HP, armor, and autoattacks, you would be playing a warrior, because that’s what warriors do, and it isn’t what elementalists do, never has been, never should be (maybe in beta, all op damage, but not since release).

The lower the HP pool, the lower the armor, the worse the autoattacks, the better the cooldown powers can be. That’s balance, and the active power end of the balance spectrum is the end I want on the ele; not the HP and autoattack end.

Elfis.9102:

You guys are asking for things that you don’t really want. Let’s pretend that they did for some reason give elementalists 5000 HP, 400 armor, and 20% autoattack damage next patch. It would either come with huge nerfs to other powers, or those nerfs would follow shortly in the next patch. That’s how balance works.

If you really wanted high HP, armor, and autoattacks, you would be playing a warrior, because that’s what warriors do, and it isn’t what elementalists do, never has been, never should be (maybe in beta, all op damage, but not since release).

The lower the HP pool, the lower the armor, the worse the autoattacks, the better the cooldown powers can be. That’s balance, and the active power end of the balance spectrum is the end I want on the ele; not the HP and autoattack end.

I think most people, at least I am one of them, feel that the tradeoff you stated isn’t balanced right now. We should either have a stronger base damage/hp/armor pool right now because of our long cool downs, or we should have shorter cool downs because of our poor damage/hp/armor pool. I agree with your tradeoff scenario, I just think we’ve drawn the short straw in every category as of now.

No, don’t give us base stat increases. That won’t fix our gameplay problems. Ever try 1v1 as a staff ele? Have a dev try it against someone who knows how to strafe or zigzag sideways. It’s quite fun (not) having all your auto attacks miss unless you’re within 600 yrds away and air auto is just pitiful. Even with full zerker and 30/30/0/0/10 I can MAYBE do SOME damage if my opponent knows how to dodge and read my attacks (which are so so easy) but guess what, I drop so fast it’s not even funny.

There is no middle ground with staff to do decent damage with decent survivability – you either spec zerker to giggle at 4-6k meteor crits and die instantly (don’t even point at zerker thieves, mesmers, warrior, etc – they can survive much better in zerker with built-in class mechanics) or spec defensive/supportive on you guessed it, 0/0/10/30/30. So is staff intended to be strictly a support weapon or a zerg melter in WvW that needs to be babysat and safeguarded by others without a nil of self-sustainability?

The traits are the problem. Horrid auto-attacks across the board warrants more powerful skills. Yes we have 16 skills to play with, but with lessened effects and twice the cooldown as other classes. So why are our traits so marginal when we spend roughly 1/4 of the time in each one? We can’t specialize in any element for pvp (not like we should anyway with lackluster traits). Hell, one of the best traits, Fresh Air, requires us to switch OUT of air. We need MUCH more buffs to traits to get us out of Arcane.

When we get our CDI discussion I will be happy to create an itemized list of how our skills and traits breakdown compared to other classes.

for a short list is thus:

our practical maximum survivability (HP and Armor) is where the warrior starts off base, therefore I think we either need:

• most innate survivability so we do not need to always spec it
• or (and more of what I want) is our base DPS should be the practical maximum of warriors (Preferably in active skills, but I would take much improved auto attacks as well).

One of our core class features is putting down combo fields for other classes (or using them ourselves). However there is no way of improving the effect of those combos.

• maybe we could get rid of attunement cool down (set it to some flat number, preferably 1 second like engineer kits, but 9 or 10 seconds would work well) and use that % to increase the effect of comboing off those fields (longer might duration).

From my perspective it appears that the elementalist weapon skills were designed in Alpha when skills used energy and traits did not exist (please correct me if I am wrong). When those mechanics were changed did anyone do a rebalancing check? It seems to me that if in Guild Wars 1 if you removed energy costs the skills would need some serious rebalancing, as the elementalist was designed assuming unlimited energy management, but other classes like the warrior or assassin were designed to be very limited by energy.

I would be perfectly fine with our base stats/health pool remaining as is, if they would just fix some of our attack skill mechanics/cooldowns and make it worth getting out of arcana. I would love to run with persisting flames for example, but the truth is, I end up with maybe 12k health, very low survivability and can be 1 shot by multiple professions.

Give our attacks a better chance of hitting.
change dragons tooth and churning earth’s mechanics. Make it less readable, 3 1/4 second channel churning earth like I said leaves vulnerable for being killed easily before it finishes. Give it invulnerability while it channels at the very least or lower its channel time by half.
Lightning flash needs stunbreak again.
Ride the lightning reinstated before nerf.

I’m sure there are many other things that could be done to help the class.
As we are now, things are not balanced at all.

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

Please! For the love of God don’t make the same mistakes with the Dhuumfire patch!

Do not buff Diamond Skin, it is underpowered and only serves as a hard counter, remove it completely, it is a bad trait and the designers should be ashamed.

Do not buff Arcane Precision, yes it is weak and useless but Elementalist spamming conditions with regular attacks is not the answer, remove it completely.

Do not increase raw power the in traits in Fire, Air and Earth, no one likes those trait lines not because they are weak but rather useless.

Do resign from your job as a game designer if you give Elementalists more base health, we don’t need more raw survivability we need more options to survive that is not Cantips.

Reduce the number of condition removal in all classes then reduce the number of conditions spam able.

Gorani.7205:

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch?

I’m backing this. If there are a lot of valid concerns, they should’ve been addressed with the December update. Knowing that there are valid concerns and then releasing a big patch that doesn’t address those concerns is like saying there are valid concerns of the balance team’s competence. I know it sounds rude, but honestly, nobody should release something they know to be flawed.

Jeydra.4386:

Gorani.7205:

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch?

I’m backing this. If there are a lot of valid concerns, they should’ve been addressed with the December update. Knowing that there are valid concerns and then releasing a big patch that doesn’t address those concerns is like saying there are valid concerns of the balance team’s competence. I know it sounds rude, but honestly, nobody should release something they know to be flawed.

I get the impression that Anet is afraid to make big changes, so they iterate tiny bit by tiny bit. Then they don’t come back to it often enough and those tiny tidbits become insults that highlight how many other, bigger things are being ignored.

Balance patches like Dec 10th should happen once a month. The changes made are tiny, and at most result in a build shifting 10 points or a utility being swapped out. Anet needs to be willing to take on the big problems. If they’re afraid of backlash, then they should start an open test server so they can see the results in advance.

Rhyse.8179:

Jeydra.4386:

Gorani.7205:

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch?

I’m backing this. If there are a lot of valid concerns, they should’ve been addressed with the December update. Knowing that there are valid concerns and then releasing a big patch that doesn’t address those concerns is like saying there are valid concerns of the balance team’s competence. I know it sounds rude, but honestly, nobody should release something they know to be flawed.

I get the impression that Anet is afraid to make big changes, so they iterate tiny bit by tiny bit. Then they don’t come back to it often enough and those tiny tidbits become insults that highlight how many other, bigger things are being ignored.

Balance patches like Dec 10th should happen once a month. The changes made are tiny, and at most result in a build shifting 10 points or a utility being swapped out. Anet needs to be willing to take on the big problems. If they’re afraid of backlash, then they should start an open test server so they can see the results in advance.

Well said, I totally agree with this.