Guild Wars 2

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.

It is really something that started early in the game and backlash is on the community.

Ele was nerfed because the community said ele was to strong. Warrior was buffed because the community said warrior was to weak in sPvP. So ele was nerfed to much warrior was buffed to much.

Now the community is saying ele is to weak and warriors are to strong. So now the choice is to make drastic changes or tiny changes bit by bit. If the changes are to much you end up with scenario’s like now that necro is to strong, warrior is to strong, engi is to strong.

I want them to buff ele but I don’t want it to be to much that we end up back at nerf ele.

I think right now they just need to keep the changes they made and revert the old nerfs. The changes have helped staff users, scepter users, focus still needs love though. D/D is ok in WvW but in the dumps in PvP and in sPvP Scepter or staff is getting play before Dagger will. Revert the old nerfs back RTL at 20-25 seconds. Done everyone is happy just give focus a bit more love in fire attunement. Continue to work on fire attunement.

Signet of Water is a total shame, it should be as the other guy said – increase healing by about 10% for 30sec -, Diamond Skin is such a bs, it fails too much to make a difference, remove this trait and put a protection every 10sec or something, anything is better than “90% threshold”. lol

Maybe we shouldn’t ask for every weapon set to be good for everything.

You want staff to be a dueling weapon?And still retain its mass destruction?
Staff is currently very strong.Only thing that can change is Air and Earth autoattack speed which is very slow atm.Also earth2 could be a lot faster.Decrease its damage maybe.

Scepter is our strongest burst weapon.Very strong.Only fire auto-attack is rubish.Needs to be a lot faster.Dragon tooth can be a bit faster as well but not much,it would make it OP.

D/D still is the best weapon set in the game for me,it has a lot mobility burst and sustain,what it needs is good traits backing it up in contrast to the 2 weapons above.

Focus.I don’t know i only use it in fractals

From my personal experience from wvw and spvp Ele lacks sustain.Keep our HP low pool low autoattacks and armor.If we can live through the first bursts we can win pretty much anything.Maybe a solution would be to fix healing power scaling.Then we might be able to have our own panic buttons like all other classes when they kitten up.And by panic buttons i mean water attunement :P

I am happy to see Grouch chime in, but I am satisfied with most of the changes in 10th December’s patch. Although there are many things that can be tweaked , I can finally deal with other classes with better chances of victory and this alone made my day.

Ah Diamond Skin is bugged if you haven’t noticed, reported it many times already. WHEN it works, it does wonders, but 90% fails against AoE.

Rhyse.8179:

I get the impression that Anet is afraid to make big changes, so they iterate tiny bit by tiny bit.

Dhuumfire patch.

Josh Davis.6015:

(Please don’t hurt me.)

Josh, while we can promise not to hurt you, the genuine problem is the months of neglect and disregard that has probably turned many people off and possibly even hostile.

It certainly didn’t help either when every single concern laid in front of the spvp devs that elementalist changes for Dec 10th are still not up to scratch were basically brushed aside with the devs saying elementalists are doing great internally.

To really pile on the troubles, even elementalists are divided among ourselves because elementalists have so many issues, that each of these areas which elementalists play in(ie. pve, wvw zerg, wvw solo roaming, spvp solo queue, tpvp) all present different issues. It is just so broken in so many ways that nobody has a clue to how 1 bandaid can patch it up for so many different aspects.

I don’t envy you. You come on and posted, hopefully on a conciliatory tone. Everyone’s expectations will be raised and you will need to deliver a lot to pacify us all now.

Josh Davis.6015:

(Please don’t hurt me.)

I’m glad you appreciate that we are frustrated, but traditionally the flow of suffering has been from ANet, towards Elementalist Players. When we express our accumulated displeasure impolitely, your team of moderators will not be stingy with punishment. You have all of the authority in this relationship, and frankly this request feels like you’re begging a dog not to bark at you the next time you kick it.

Also, is there some kind of PvE Community Coordinator? Because I don’t give two craps about PvP, and never will, but my class is still broken.

Melchior.2135:

Josh Davis.6015:

(Please don’t hurt me.)

I’m glad you appreciate that we are frustrated, but traditionally the flow of suffering has been from ANet, towards Elementalist Players. When we express our accumulated displeasure impolitely, your team of moderators will not be stingy with punishment. You have all of the authority in this relationship, and frankly this request feels like you’re begging a dog not to bark at you the next time you kick it.

Also, is there some kind of PvE Community Coordinator? Because I don’t give two craps about PvP, and never will, but my class is still broken.

I believe The is a PvE Community Coordinator. But unfortunately for you all class balance is revolved around PVP, so are you might not care for PvP you should still realize that the PvP Community Coordinator responding means much more than the PvE Community Coordinator responding. The only person higher than him responding would be and actually person from the Skill and Balance Team.

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.)

Josh,
u guys don’t want increase Elem health and don’t want give them more mobility, so what to do for more sustain? I think you should increase protection uptime, more traits that grants protection, less cooldown time for armor of earth.

You guys should think about what role Elem should fill and how tweak the profession to achieve this. What do you guys expect Elem to do? How you think Elem gameplay must be? We need know this, please!

Merry christmas

Josh Davis.6015:

Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

Moving Soothing Mist or Elemental Attunement to the Master tiers didn’t help the elementalist. And the new healing skill? Why make something so complicated to use for a class already bothered with more complex combos than every other classes?

If you really wan’t to help the ele and promote build diversity:
1- Reduce the ele skill lag, 1 sec lag for an auto attack on staff is too much. Increase the projectile speed. Change the Staff-Water first attack (auto attack) which nobody uses.
2- Eruption should be fast enough to blast a field skill used before it instead of having to use Eruption before casting the field.
3- Make the Earthen Blast Trait be a blast finisher, this will make the Earth trait line interesting
4- Air: Super Speed Trait has to do something noticeable (5 seconds or out of combat)
5- Make our Elite summons faster, more powerful and last more than 60 seconds
6- Elemental attunement Trait should give 3 stacks of might when attuning to fire instead of 1.
7- Make the fire trait line have some defensive utility…
Grand Master Fire trait: Meteor Showers are now smoke fields
8- Add an Offensive Water grandmaster Trait: Ice Spike now freeze your opponent on critical hits

The reason why I think we’re such crappy roamers and is so difficult to set up our burst is because we’re inherently stuck to all our 20 skills, some of which still have defensive uses. Imagine a d/d having the burst close to a thief or requires less effort, but still have all the escape tools and heals. Or a staff user like myself going full zerker and annihilating groups of targets more easily but still have staff’s range of cc, heals, and escape skills.

Our defensive skills are limiting us, which is why we need some serious skill/trait/cd redesigns to break out that ‘master at none’ mold. But if that’s the intended design, for ele’s to not be able to specialize in ANYTHING, then that might be the reason ele’s are up in arms and aren’t wanted in serious tpvp where specializing is needed.

Biomanz.9302:

The reason why I think we’re such crappy roamers and is so difficult to set up our burst is because we’re inherently stuck to all our 20 skills, some of which still have defensive uses. Imagine a d/d having the burst close to a thief or requires less effort, but still have all the escape tools and heals. Or a staff user like myself going full zerker and annihilating groups of targets more easily but still have staff’s range of cc, heals, and escape skills.

Our defensive skills are limiting us, which is why we need some serious skill/trait/cd redesigns to break out that ‘master at none’ mold. But if that’s the intended design, for ele’s to not be able to specialize in ANYTHING, then that might be the reason ele’s are up in arms and aren’t wanted in serious tpvp where specializing is needed.

We are NOT crappy roamers. In fact, I would say we are just behind mesmers as the best roamers in the game.

We aren’t great thanks to big nerfs in SPvP, but you can still be successful there, but WvW is another beast, so that’s very wrong.

Mbelch.9028:

Biomanz.9302:

The reason why I think we’re such crappy roamers and is so difficult to set up our burst is because we’re inherently stuck to all our 20 skills, some of which still have defensive uses. Imagine a d/d having the burst close to a thief or requires less effort, but still have all the escape tools and heals. Or a staff user like myself going full zerker and annihilating groups of targets more easily but still have staff’s range of cc, heals, and escape skills.

Our defensive skills are limiting us, which is why we need some serious skill/trait/cd redesigns to break out that ‘master at none’ mold. But if that’s the intended design, for ele’s to not be able to specialize in ANYTHING, then that might be the reason ele’s are up in arms and aren’t wanted in serious tpvp where specializing is needed.

We are NOT crappy roamers. In fact, I would say we are just behind mesmers as the best roamers in the game.

We aren’t great thanks to big nerfs in SPvP, but you can still be successful there, but WvW is another beast, so that’s very wrong.

Maybe I got the wrong idea from some other posts saying thieves and mesmers make better roamers than ele in tpvp, but the rest of my points still stand.

Rhyse.8179:

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.

This is the troubling thing. This sounds like people who don’t know what the problem is so they do little bit of each and check back and see what happens.

It’s basically just a nicer way of saying I don’t know what I’m doing, so I throw kitten at the wall and see what sticks. That’s not at all reassuring…

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.)

Ok, so first post for me in a long time.

But I have to ask, I do any developers actually play this class? I appreciate you appearing to calm the masses but there seems to be a bigger problem here.

I’ve heard of developers from almost every class except ele since I started this game, now things might have changed, but for the most part devs post actively in most of the other class forums. We get a pity post by the community manager.

I’m not saying this is your fault, Any response is better than none, but I’m (and I’m sure alot of others) kinda wondering where the elementalist class is going. Seeing posts here and there are great and all but at least some sort of discussion here would be greatly appreciated.

Elementalist is and probably will always be my favorite class in GW2, although I feel as though most classes have an idea where theirs are heading and some sort of familiarity with their developers I regularly check on here and see a ghost town in comparison with developer/mod posts.

Sorry if I rambled a little to long, it IS Christmas eve and that comes with a drink or so, but I felt it needed to be said, and or asked essentially.

TLDR= I’m asking if any developers actually play Ele, community coordinators posts are wonderful but some active discussion with the people making changes to our class would be nice.

I would of been surprised if ante did any major changes so quick. I’ve learned to expect at least a 1-2 month waiting period for a change. Anet will probably add some of our ideas at a later date once they see how the current version works out. Give them 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.)

Hi. Please pay extra care to the ranger forums as well, when re-balancing starts again.

This was hyped up to be the “big” balance patch, and many are disappointed at the overwhelming lack of relevant changes.

Elementalists are the only class for which the mechanic is a limit, not a boon. It requires more planning and more button-pressing than any other class’s mechanic. Its primary effect is to add an additional cooldown to weapon skills.

Attunement does have good points, and many enjoy the unique playstyle. But think through the various classes and their mechanics. None are more complicated, and all of the others are about making the best use of a positive resource or ability. For ele’s, it’s primarily about making sure you don’t screw yourself.

Solution: Make Elemental Attunement the 5-pt trait in Arcane Power, and further reduce the base cooldown for switching attunements. Eles will still have to do more planning and press more buttons than any other class, but they’ll get a bit more reward for doing so, and be punished a bit less if the situation surprises them.

Ride the lightning reverted to 20 second cool down. Thanks.

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.)

looks at account title
Great, another round of pvp oriented balance changes that will be placed in all 3 game modes.

I remember alot of thieves looking at their patch notes and their response was this.

Then anet responded maybe once and when Dec 10th hit the only real change that was made was to patch note’s wording.

d/d for the most part is fine

condition spam by other classes like mesmer/necros is insane though , torment and confusion have to be 2 of the dumbest condition additions to the game. stun spam by warriors is another issue. i would add thieves and rangers but for the most part the d/d playstyle counters both of those classes pretty hard and any good d/d ele will wreck both (traps are a bit of a pain but thats a ranger style that actually requires a brain on the ranger’s part) and even thieves running p/d perplexity

toning down conditions will ultimately fix alot of the issues the ele currently faces, you don’t even really need to do much to the class itself

of course, this is purely from a 1on1 scenario

Bios.1398:

d/d for the most part is fine

condition spam by other classes like mesmer/necros is insane though , torment and confusion have to be 2 of the dumbest condition additions to the game. stun spam by warriors is another issue. i would add thieves and rangers but for the most part the d/d playstyle counters both of those classes pretty hard and any good d/d ele will wreck both (traps are a bit of a pain but thats a ranger style that actually requires a brain on the ranger’s part) and even thieves running p/d perplexity

toning down conditions will ultimately fix alot of the issues the ele currently faces, you don’t even really need to do much to the class itself

of course, this is purely from a 1on1 scenario

The class as a whole is on basically on the verge of being good overall. The utilities need to be looked at again to help provide some more survivability.

In PvE which I am no expert seems to be fine from what I can tell from the PvE guru’s posts.

It really is tPvP/sPvP which in turn affect WvW because they don’t really balance for WvW. If they did we would be nerfed even more if we had to deal with sPvP nerfs that Ele received.

Fire trait line is the go to in PvE in all the videos I have seen. I actually do run Staff 20/30/0/0/20 in WvW when we go out group roaming and need staff I actually like that build for staff alot. No elemental attunement and run arcane reduction cds with shield and blast to keep arcane lightning trait up 100%. Also I like 30/20/0/0/20 for group roaming staff.

The problem with fire line being viabile in a PvP setting for other weapon sets besides staff is that you can’t get them without giving up important traits that are needed because you are then fighting much closer to the action. So some more defensive help needs to be given somewhere to the elementalist.

Elemental attunement should just be inherent and get it over with. Trait for the ability to hand the boons out with something else tied to it. Like a additional 20% reduction on attunement recharge rate move to grandmaster slide elemental surge down to master.

Similar to thief slight of hand where you get a bonus to steal recharge rate if you take that trait. This gives eles a good alternative grandmaster trait along side evasive arcana but you can’t have both.

I can only run bunker now, thanks guys. Can’t use Fresh Air D/D anymore.

Just reduce Gale cooldown to 40 from 50 (Focus air #5)

I’ll be happy then.

Bios.1398:

d/d for the most part is fine
…
of course, this is purely from a 1on1 scenario

In a 1v1 arena, sure D/D is probably fine, except for the fact that there’s really only 1 good spec: 0/10/0/30/30 with cantrips.

Reverting the RTL and swiftness nerfs should be looked at now though – D/D Ele is a crappy solo roamer solely because they are now so slow and can be outrun by everything.

IMO it’s ridiculous that the highest-HP and highest-armour class is also the fastest, while the lowest HP and lowest-armour class is the 3rd slowest.

I’m speaking about Spvp, Ele is a really good support character (With S/D tons of damage combo related) but that’s not sufficient. I played a lot of match, in most of these i had a lot of points at the end of the game, but i’m having the impression that 2 warriors with warhammers pressing 5 buttons in team are infinitely more effective than having 2 eles.
Eles have low base hp, low base armor, and good but not enough damage to kill other classes in 1 vs 1. If you want to kill, you have to spent all of your points in offensive traits and armor, and you are a paper sheet. If you want to survive and tank a little bit more, and mantain bases, you will kill nothing. Thief will kill better and faster than you, warrior can kill and tank, ranger make good damage without coughing blood. I love ele’s design, but in my opinion somthing have to be changed.

Belial.1605:

I love ele’s design, but in my opinion somthing have to be changed.

When hey they moved (nerfed) Elemental attunement and Soothing mist to master tier after our thousand of post (and many of us asking specifically that they do not go ahead with that idea) I lost all confidence that the elementalist issues would get fixed.

They destroyed my build (10/15/0/15/30 – need 20 points in water now for soothing mist) and then tell us it’s for the sake of build variety? It’s been a month now and I’m still trying to find a good build. And the 2 latest traits; Diamond skin, Super speed and the latest heal skill *arcane heal) are all useless in WvW.

I’m agree with you. I can’t pick my El in SPvP anymore, and I can’t find any viable build since 10th Dec.
Even playing tank isn’t enough; they expected us to play less with Water Magic and Arcane Power, but in fact that’s quite the opposite; if we want to survive, we need to play with those traits.
We could have so many build, but with Elemental Attunement being moved, we’re wasting so many points to reach it, and missing so many interesting traits that we’re useless.
Our strongest traits are too far and this is the reason we’re too weak in front of classes like Warrior or Guardian, who reach some powerful traits in adept or master (I think about the Warrior, “Distracting Strikes” VII in Master, by exemple).

Anyway, I won’t cry because I want my El being OP, but I can’t understand why Anet is destroying a class in particular. I’m clearly disappointed, the 10th Dec’s patch was supposed to be important for balancing, but I’m still looking for it; and I don’t expect anything good from the coming patch.

Xillllix.3485:

Belial.1605:

I love ele’s design, but in my opinion somthing have to be changed.

When hey they moved (nerfed) Elemental attunement and Soothing mist to master tier after our thousand of post (and many of us asking specifically that they do not go ahead with that idea) I lost all confidence that the elementalist issues would get fixed.

They destroyed my build (10/15/0/15/30 – need 20 points in water now for soothing mist) and then tell us it’s for the sake of build variety? It’s been a month now and I’m still trying to find a good build. And the 2 latest traits; Diamond skin, Super speed and the latest heal skill *arcane heal) are all useless in WvW.

I used exactly the same build that you posted! With S/D

the only good thing about the changes was that i can now run 3 cantrips on a staff Ele and still have a blast finisher in the heal slot.

the earth 30 trait however, is garbage.

Anierna.6918:

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.

I totally agree with this.

More carrot, less stick.
More buff, less nerf.
More action, less talk.

I am out of this game for almost a year, occasionally checking in, looking for an excuse to love my elementalist. But every time I left with disappointment.

My bf asked me to join him in another MMO and at first I was very reluctant, too lazy to start from lv 1 again lol. Now I am glad that I did and I am really loving it.

I choose to spend my money on a game that I enjoy rather than waiting here, having false hope.

I agree with most that has been said. This is my first post, but I’m a long-time ele player since launch. I really like mechanics, but in general we just don’t have the damage without amazing gear which limits it to WvW and no casual players. Even then when you compare our zerker damage to a thief, it comes up pretty lackluster. My thief in yellows has more damage and more ability to get out of a fight than an ele.

I know we were supposed to be a hybrid class, but I do think every class needs something special. If it’s not damage or survivability…what is it?

I’m really not sure what exact changes would help our class, funny that someone mentioned nerfing every other class, but that sounds safer than buffing classes. My general thoughts are as follows:

1. Make our clas(s) less cooldown dependant. Right now we “blow our load” and then revert to our crappy auto-attacks which are not good enough. I think this could be done by increasing the cooldown to swap attunements (and a global cooldown so you can’t switch through every attunement so fast), BUT with this must come every skill on the bar being good. This would make each attunement a tactical decision of switching, rather than having to rotate through 3 attunements just to do some decent damage. Fire for AOE pressure, lightning for burst single target, water for healing/snaring, earth for control/conditions. It should be simple…you could argue this would take some of the fun out of ele, but I’d rather have a more consistent class in each attunement than one that has to use the 1-2 actually good abilities from every attunement in about 5s to be effective.
2. Regardless of #1, give us and all classes a way to see cooldowns for weapons/attunements/toolbelts that aren’t active.
3. Make other trees effective. How to do this? Make each tree synergize with a weapon set of choice. Right now the good skills are all over the map, but for the most part our low survivability and low damage means the only way we can be decent at both is to crank damage into our gear. This forces us with the latest patch to go 30/30 water/arcane on pretty much any build to stay alive. Even still we need to mix in some toughness and vitality (or at least I do as a casual player) to have any chance. I’ve been trying every build, but this is the only one that is now even half way decent. Diamond skin looked nice, but ultimately just a troll or dueling spec.

Please give us something ANET. If you commit to doing something about our class, actually do something and don’t just throw us promises. Why don’t we have a test server or realm similar to the mists where we can port our main characters to try out the latest patch before it goes live? It seems like this would be trivial to implement and is a great practice to get feedback from the community. I’m sure all of us ele’s would love to be on there testing experimental builds and giving feedback.

Josh Davis.6015:

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.)

Wait, they let you guys leave the office??? And I suppose you’re going to tell me they pay you, too.

Lol. Jk. Fight the good fight.

its time to admit the RTL nerf mistake maybe….
revert to 20 sec plain.

Many professions have better disengages…but contrary to ele they:

-have defense mechanics
-have better HP and or armor
-doesn t desperatly need a RELIABLE gap closer…and rtl at 40 CD is not.

Ele first issue resides in skills, not in traits….

Let’s revert some of the unnecessary nerfs. That’ll be a start towards “helping” the Elementalist class. I don’t even need to post which ones because you already know, unless you’ve really not been listening for months on end.

MarzAttakz.9608:

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.

Yep, this is spot on.

My biggest complaint is that they constantly micro-tune traits and such when there are obvious skill imbalance issues that need to be addressed first. For example-

What justification is there for the autoattacks (especially on Staff) to be so weak?
Why does Air feel like a filler attunement (especially on Staff) instead of being potent enough to hold its own?
Why does Water need to sacrifice so much damage that it isn’t playable solo just because it heals well? Weaker? Sure. Completely ineffective? No. I don’t get it.
Why are there so many sources of movement speed bonuses that they tend to render each other obsolete and become useless?
What possible justification was there for the RTL nerf when Air is already kind of a weak attunement and Eles desperately need to have escape tools?

Einlanzer.1627:

MarzAttakz.9608:

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.

Yep, this is spot on.

My biggest complaint is that they constantly micro-tune traits and such when there are obvious skill imbalance issues that need to be addressed first. For example-

What justification is there for the autoattacks (especially on Staff) to be so weak?
Why does Air feel like a filler attunement (especially on Staff) instead of being potent enough to hold its own?
Why does Water need to sacrifice so much damage that it isn’t playable solo just because it heals well? Weaker? Sure. Completely ineffective? No. I don’t get it.
Why are there so many sources of movement speed bonuses that they tend to render each other obsolete and become useless?
What possible justification was there for the RTL nerf when Air is already kind of a weak attunement and Eles desperately need to have escape tools?

Frankly, I want ALL autoattacks to be weak, not just ele. It’s sort of stupid that some classes can hit upwards of 2k damage without even having to blow cooldowns.

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.

Just Ele forum or all the class sub-forums? Because the same thing that happened to the Ele CDI thread happened to the Ranger CDI. We have over 2000 suggestions between the Dec 10th Balance patch thread and the CDI and zero made either patch.

Because the pets will never get fixed I have rolled an Ele and an Engi which is now why I’m in the Ele forum. Pretty surprised to see this Dev post regardless.

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.

What I actually meant was, there are two possibilities that I wouldn’t fault the balance team for in the immediate aftermath of the December 10 update.

1) The balance team thinks there is no problem.
2) There is a problem, but the balance team is not aware of it.

The specifics of the state of balance aren’t important. If either of these is true, then the balance team would’ve done as good a responsible job. On the other hand, if as Josh Davis’ post implies, the balance team knew there was a problem but still didn’t fix it, then that is a completely different matter and is very revealing about their motivation and sense of duty. Certainly if I any of my employees did something like this I would be very dissatisfied and demand an explanation. I don’t fault people for doing a bad job if they’ve done the best they can, but if they aren’t giving their job their all, that’s grounds for a performance review.

not to reiterate my earlier post from this thread or anything
but whether they are ‘aware’ of issues or not they still have limitations
ArenaNet is very ‘agenda’ driven and it’s hard to tell whether their shortcomings have fallen under construction or strategy.. as customers the best you can do is try keeping a rational line of communication open =\