Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.
Arcane/Water and the current Meta
Despite the anger in your posts, as seen in another thread, I agree to an extent. Maybe they should offer more possibilities for some weapons such as scepter (not really asking to remake it, just open new build comps, or make it possible for new gear synergy).
Looking forward to a condi. tempest, hope they don’t spoil it.
If you use Metabattle as a reference and look at all the builds and their variants across >>PvE<<, PvP and WvW, you end up with the following patterns…
That’s it. The Arcane/Water+Cantrip core is mandatory in PvP and it’s the PvP build hasn’t really changed since release. PvE builds always maxed out fire and took the damage modifiers from the other trait lines (which are currently in Air and Water)
I can’t wait until ANet releases the game promoted in the manifesto.
Until that, I’ll play GW2.
Until that, I’ll play GW2.
Well if any of your post concerning other classes was true, I guess we should all move to another game, but since none of it is, we shan’t.
I have five builds that work just fine on my guard, three condi and two power and I use zeal more than any other trait line actually.
Don’t play my warrior much, but I have a tanky power build and a glass cannon build, as well as a condition build, but the warrior condition builds just aren’t very fun in my opinion.
Engineer, three builds, never use firearms for anything.
I’ve lost count of how many builds on my Necro, second most played character after my elementalist, which is slowly becoming my least played. Not to mention my best soloing builds, slow but pretty much an unstoppable force.
Mesmer, you’re kidding, right? After that redesign, they have one ridiculously powerful build that needs to be reigned in, but other than that probably the great amount of viable build paths its had since launch.
Ranger, five builds, two condition, three power, work for everything. Admitedly have a pet (more commonly known as a ‘walking downed state’) still sucks, but your builds do not have to (nor ever should) be overly reliant on your pet staying alive.
Thief, admittedly a little broken, but mainly because of class mechanics, similar to us. How many build options can you have, when you have no supportive abilities, and no reason to build defensive stats? One, glass cannon, and that’s it. The difference is, thieves at least have a couple ways of building glass cannon, not many, but at least some, we have one way of building jack-of-all-trades sustainomatic swap-it-all robomancer.
Are all of my builds competitively viable? No, but they all work, they get me through every dungeon and all the open world content exactly the way I expect them to, and even that sad and pathetic minimum of functionality isn’t true of the majority of elementalist content
It isn’t about the trait the trait trees, your claim is a deflection from the real issue made in total ignorance of that fact. You can have the exact same trait selections and two completely different playstyles from your armor, weapon, and utility choices. Several of my builds differ greatly from each other for only one or two choices in utilities, armor, or even traits.
The problem is about actual play, your active use of the class in content, how one set use of skills in rote memorized rotation is the only playstyle the majority of your build choices support. And if you try to defy that, your builds flat out do not function, your traits do not proc, building high defense doesn’t make you feel tougher, build high damage doesn’t make you feel stronger, having a theme towards use of certain abilities just feels like enforcing a handicap upon yourself.
(edited by Conncept.7638)
Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.
(edited by MadRabbit.3179)
Well if any of your post concerning other classes was true, I guess we should all move to another game, but since none of it is, we shan’t.
I have five builds that work just fine on my guard, three condi and two power and I use zeal more than any other trait line actually.
Don’t play my warrior much, but I have a tanky power build and a glass cannon build, as well as a condition build, but the warrior condition builds just aren’t very fun in my opinion.
Engineer, three builds, never use firearms for anything.
I’ve lost count of how many builds, not to mention my best soloing builds, slow but pretty much an unstoppable force.
Mesmer, you’re kidding, right? After that redesign, they have one ridiculously powerful build but the probably the greate amount of viable build paths that any class has ever had.
Ranger, five builds, two condition, three power, work for everything. Admitedly have a pet (more commonly known as a ‘walking downed state’) still stuck, but your builds do not have to (nor ever should) be overly reliant on your pet staying alive.
Thief, admittedly a little broken, but mainly because of class mechanics, similar to us. How many build options can you have, when you have no supportive abilities, and no reason to build defense? One, glass cannon, and that’s it. The difference is, thieves at least have a couple ways of building glass cannon, we have one way of building jack-of-all-trades sustainomatic swap-it-all robomancer.
Are all of my builds competitively viable? No, but they all work, and even that sad and pathetic minimum of functionality isn’t true of the majority of elementalist content.
While I am thrilled that you have come up with your own builds, the comparison done above was done within the context of what is listed on Metabattle, since it’s pretty much the only non-bias source of what the current meta is I have available. Within that context, all of it is true. You are more than welcome to disagree with what is available on Metabattle, but that’s not my concern.
Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.
Well if any of your post concerning other classes was true, I guess we should all move to another game, but since none of it is, we shan’t.
I have five builds that work just fine on my guard, three condi and two power and I use zeal more than any other trait line actually.
Don’t play my warrior much, but I have a tanky power build and a glass cannon build, as well as a condition build, but the warrior condition builds just aren’t very fun in my opinion.
Engineer, three builds, never use firearms for anything.
I’ve lost count of how many builds, not to mention my best soloing builds, slow but pretty much an unstoppable force.
Mesmer, you’re kidding, right? After that redesign, they have one ridiculously powerful build but the probably the greate amount of viable build paths that any class has ever had.
Ranger, five builds, two condition, three power, work for everything. Admitedly have a pet (more commonly known as a ‘walking downed state’) still stuck, but your builds do not have to (nor ever should) be overly reliant on your pet staying alive.
Thief, admittedly a little broken, but mainly because of class mechanics, similar to us. How many build options can you have, when you have no supportive abilities, and no reason to build defense? One, glass cannon, and that’s it. The difference is, thieves at least have a couple ways of building glass cannon, we have one way of building jack-of-all-trades sustainomatic swap-it-all robomancer.
Are all of my builds competitively viable? No, but they all work, and even that sad and pathetic minimum of functionality isn’t true of the majority of elementalist content.
While I am thrilled that you have come up with your own builds, the comparison done above was done within the context of what is listed on Metabattle, since it’s pretty much the only non-bias source of what the current meta is I have available. Within that context, all of it is true. You are more than welcome to disagree with what is available on Metabattle, but that’s not my concern.
The difference is, your claim the class isn’t broken because of what metabattle says is as much evidence that the elementalist isn’t broken as Alice in Wonderland is evidence of fifth dimensional theory. Because, apparently, you don’t know what broken means, let me educate you.
These builds mentioned above, work, they function, they actually do what they are supposed to do when used in game, and that alone makes them usable, regardless of how they contribute to a win. Winning, as your parents probably told you at some point during you childhood, isn’t, everything. Broken, as you put it, means unusable, unable to fulfill its intended functionality, a state which very little content from any other class can be classified under. Broken, in this context, would mean that they either do not meet their purpose among the class’ repertoire of skills, or that they do not fulfill their function against the content they are meant to be pitted against.
Lets look at how the attunement system, basically our class in a nutshell, and how it works with the remainder of the class content.
- 30 conjure skills and a conjure trait that literally work against the class mechanic
- 12 autoattack skills rendered worthless
- 15 traits that only work from not swapping
- Channeled skills are better for cancelling than actually using to their full potential
- A new class mechanic that works based on not swapping
- Glass cannon-like defense levels regardless of build without a select group of five or so traits.
Yeah, we’re broken, anyone who says otherwise, is either blind, or a developer trying to sell us the class and upcoming specializations.
(edited by Conncept.7638)
If you use Metabattle as a reference and look at all the builds and their variants across >>PvE<<, PvP and WvW, you end up with the following patterns…
That’s it. The Arcane/Water+Cantrip core is mandatory in PvP and it’s the PvP build hasn’t really changed since release. PvE builds always maxed out fire and took the damage modifiers from the other trait lines (which are currently in Air and Water)
This. If you restrict the discussion to just pvp/wvw the brokenness becomes a bit more obvious.
downed state is bad for PVP
not all builds have to run with water and arcane.
at least on fresh air ( yes i know that’s not really something to be considered) it is possible to run other stuff.
when the specialisation update hit i tested a couple of combinations
air water arcane for example but in the end earth air arcane has proven to be the best. not only do you get enough condi cleanses on short cooldowns but you also don’t need water anymore for the hitpoints. the survivability in earth is even better despite people always thinking water is a must have. overall the build is obviously in a dire state because of powercreep and clunkyness of our skills but it shows that non water arcane can work.
Ex player of PeanutButterJellyTime, Heavenly Annoying and Visceral Gaming.
Thats what i did test a lot. F/E + X. Got the best feeling with arcane, and currently run water. I look forward to use tempest as third choice. It seems to fit my playstyle an preferences. Currently it feels already close. there are two things that hit me there. Its lack of mobility and shouts not being instant, this sadly pushes cantrips up front again and as a result might dump tempest :-(.
just made a WvW shout build thats agressive.
(edited by Wolfric.9380)
The difference is, your claim the class isn’t broken because of what metabattle says is as much evidence that the elementalist isn’t broken as Alice in Wonderland is evidence of fifth dimensional theory. Because, apparently, you don’t know what broken means, let me educate you.
These builds mentioned above, work, they function, they actually do what they are supposed to do when used in game, and that alone makes them usable, regardless of how they contribute to a win. Winning, as your parents probably told you at some point during you childhood, isn’t, everything. Broken, as you put it, means unusable, unable to fulfill its intended functionality, a state which very little content from any other class can be classified under. Broken, in this context, would mean that they either do not meet their purpose among the class’ repertoire of skills, or that they do not fulfill their function against the content they are meant to be pitted against.
Lets look at how the attunement system, basically our class in a nutshell, and how it works with the remainder of the class content.
- 30 conjure skills and a conjure trait that literally work against the class mechanic
- 12 autoattack skills rendered worthless
- 15 traits that only work from not swapping
- Channeled skills are better for cancelling than actually using to their full potential
- A new class mechanic that works based on not swapping
- Glass cannon-like defense levels regardless of build without a select group of five or so traits.Yeah, we’re broken, anyone who says otherwise, is either blind, or a developer trying to sell us the class and upcoming specializations.
Oh, the salt hehe…
Still a myopic viewpoint even if we break it down to useless skills and traits. I am not going to invest the time to try and create an objective list of useful skills and traits for every single class, but with my experiences with other classes, the same issue exists across the board to a greater or lesser extent. You have a whole lot of useless stuff and a certain percentage which becomes the meta.
The point I am really getting at is this is the natural state of RPG games that give you a huge variety of options. A certain percentage of them become the meta, the cream of the crop and the rest don’t even get used.
Could we make the argument that the elementalist gets screwed a little more than some other classes when it comes to variance? Yeah, if we really broke it down to that kind of level, it would be the case.
But at end of the day, it’s still a rather benign issue. Giving more variance to a class that is strongly represented in all the aspects of the game is pretty low priority when you have classes that aren’t represented in the meta at all.
Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.
(edited by MadRabbit.3179)
If you use Metabattle as a reference and look at all the builds and their variants across >>PvE<<, PvP and WvW, you end up with the following patterns…
That’s it. The Arcane/Water+Cantrip core is mandatory in PvP and it’s the PvP build hasn’t really changed since release. PvE builds always maxed out fire and took the damage modifiers from the other trait lines (which are currently in Air and Water)
This. If you restrict the discussion to just pvp/wvw the brokenness becomes a bit more obvious.
Somewhat, but if you do the same with other classes, the meta is usually one or two builds with very slight variance. I mean, most of my guardians and warriors in my WvW guild all run the exact same frontline build.
We have one very specific type of PvP with certain objectives and Earth/Water/Arcane staff and Fire/Water/Arcane d/d provide the best value for accomplishing those objectives.
WvW…not so much. Roaming, yeah, but zerging running both Arcane/Water really become a clutch for your own survivability. The benefits of these trait lines are largely in a radius around the elementalist which doesn’t benefit your melee train very much. And as you become more comfortable with positioning and situational awareness, Fire/Air/Water and Fir/Air/Arcane become viable.
Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.
We lack survivability outside of water/arcane trait lines, that’s the issue. For PvE you can run whatever you want and adjust accordingly to what you need. However, if you even want a chance at survival in PvP or WvW Roaming, you’ll need to run Water/Arcane lines because without them we get killed very easily.
So its not that the class is “broken” but our survival heavily relies on one of the two trait lines or both, which is why our class is “imbalanced” and very limited to what we can run in PvP and Roaming.
EDIT: Earth does help with buffering damage via stone heart and diamond skin but our health and armor are already so low that it doesn’t compete with water trait line (tons of regen and healing) and arcane trait line(arcane shield, evasive arcana, renewing stamina), which is why we are kind of pigeonholed into running at least one of the trait lines, or both to stay alive in roaming.
(edited by Mizu.4508)
Traits are only one half of the coin, the other one is the fact that our utility skills are so narrowed down to Cantrips, because they have been favoured with the best synergy (Burning Fire, Soothing Disruption), instant activation and stun break abilities. Arcane skills, Glyphs and to a lesser extent signets are just no that good.
All metabattle competitive builds run Cantrips on slots 7-9.
I agree that e.g the Guardian has pretty much meditation utility bars these days, but Eles seem to be stuck in the Cantrip line for PvP since launch.
PS: Anet Devs even made the skill synergy on Cantrips better by adding the 20% recharge to Soothing Disruption when they switched to the 3 trait line system in early summer.
Member of The Guildwars Online Guild [GWO]
Still keeps a volume of Kurzick poems ;)
Still keeps a volume of Kurzick poems ;)
(edited by Gorani.7205)
To an extent, all professions will trend towards a small number of preferred builds when analyzing them for maximum power. That’s just what happens in this sort of game, particularly in PvP and speedrunning PvE: the community will try everything out, crunch the numbers, and determine what works best on the current balance patch. Metabattle does a good job of pulling these best builds together.
However, just because every profession will have a single “best” build for a given set of content doesn’t mean that all professions have an equivalent degree of build diversity. Build diversity is a spectrum, not a binary distinction. Let’s pretend that each build’s viability could be given a strict numerical designation between 1 and 100, with 1-level builds falling flat on their faces and 100s breezing through content. Profession Alpha and Profession Beta may both have a popular build at level 100, but Profession Alpha also has builds at 99, 98, 95, 90, 88, 84, 72, 60, 54, 53, 50, 49, 41, and 30, whereas Profession Beta’s alternate builds are 75, 50, 22, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. A build at 90 probably won’t win any speed records but it’s still going to be perfectly fun and functional, and if it’s what speaks to you and your preferences, then you’re not shooting yourself in the foot to use it. A build at 10, however, is just going to be painfully behind.
That’s the problem Elementalists face, not that our best build is as specific as everyone else’s (because you’re right that everyone has a specific grouping of best builds) but that we face a much sharper drop-off when straying from that best build than other professions. You pick a random assortment of Guardian traits, weapons, and even stats types and you can still happily grind your way through PvE, even through most dungeons; you won’t do it as quickly or as easily as a stronger Guardian build, of course, but you can still skirt by. Try that on an Elementalist and you’ll see a much bigger difficulty spike.
I main Ele and Necro, though I have an alt of each profession at level 80.
How to Condi Reaper on a budget
Everything I say is only in reference to PvE and WvW.
How to Condi Reaper on a budget
Everything I say is only in reference to PvE and WvW.
(edited by Blaine Tog.8304)
I think its less water arcane meta and more of a sustane meta you do spike dmg and have ways to avoid dmg such as stealth or you simply out live the other person. What ele needs is to have more healing and or dmg avoiding in earth fire and air (tempest kind of has this all though earth too but more of a dmg -).
Main : Jski Imaginary ELE (Necromancer)
Guild : OBEY (The Legacy) I call it Obay , TLC (WvW) , UNIV (other)
Server : FA
Guild : OBEY (The Legacy) I call it Obay , TLC (WvW) , UNIV (other)
Server : FA
To an extent, all professions will trend towards a small number of preferred builds when analyzing them for maximum power. That’s just what happens in this sort of game, particularly in PvP and speedrunning PvE: the community will try everything out, crunch the numbers, and determine what works best on the current balance patch. Metabattle does a good job of pulling these best builds together.
However, just because every profession will have a single “best” build for a given set of content doesn’t mean that all professions have an equivalent degree of build diversity. Build viability is a spectrum, not a binary distinction. Let’s pretend that viability were a strict numerical number between 1 and 100, with 1-level builds falling flat on their faces and 100s breezing through content. Profession Alpha and Profession Beta may both have a popular build at level 100, but Profession Alpha also has builds at 99, 98, 95, 90, 88, 84, 72, 60, 54, 53, 50, 49, 41, and 30, whereas Profession Beta’s alternate builds are 75, 50, 22, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. A build at 90 probably won’t win any speed records but it’s still going to be perfectly fun and functional, and if it’s what speaks to you and your preferences, then you’re not shooting yourself in the foot to use it. A build at 10, however, is just going to be painfully behind.
That’s the problem Elementalists face, not that our best build is as specific as everyone else’s (because you’re right that everyone has a specific grouping of best builds) but that we face a much sharper drop-off when straying from that best build than other professions. You pick a random assortment of Guardian traits, weapons, and even armor types and you can still happily grind your way through PvE, even through most dungeons; you won’t do it as quickly or as easily as a stronger Guardian build, but you can still make it. Try that on an Elementalist and you’ll see a much bigger difficulty spike.
This. A thousand times this. In PvP where sustain is so much more valuable, we lose a lot of our freedom in build creation. Sure, some other builds can do well, but at the end of the day, the best build USUALLY (as in not always) does it much better and easier.