Guild Wars 2

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

Air is in a good spot,but the problem with taking air is you leave yourself vulnerable to power builds if you don’t get earth you have no access to protection aside from overloads.If you don’t pick water then you leave yourself vulnerable to condition builds, because you have very little condition removal and you have very little team support.

Even though air is fine, it needs some kind of built in self defense or dps ele will never be viable.

Smooth Marc.8743:

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

I believe we need that weakness in Air because Arcane Precision is on Arcane line and to be honest Arcane Precision itself needs a rework. I find it trash because only precision builds can actually make use of it. It procs 33% chance ON crit. They should change it to proc on HIT and lower the proc chance to balance it.

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

DeceiverX.8361:

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

I thought boon related problems only existed in large scale WvW boon stacking which mainly consists of Mesmer and Revs?

I don’t see your point. Ele boons has been toned down already, particularly protection uptime. If you nerf boons, it will hurt Eles more than any other classes as they have other viable builds. You’re pretty much doing the same mistake ANET has been doing for years – Nerf a viable build to make other builds “viable” which has failed over and over again.

Smooth Marc.8743:

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

Air is in a good spot,but the problem with taking air is you leave yourself vulnerable to power builds if you don’t get earth you have no access to protection aside from overloads.If you don’t pick water then you leave yourself vulnerable to condition builds, because you have very little condition removal and you have very little team support.

Even though air is fine, it needs some kind of built in self defense or dps ele will never be viable.

One with Air is very strong and under utilized.

DeceiverX.8361:

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

Eles need those abilities and boons because every other class in the game has way more baseline effective health/armor/built in defense than ele. I’m not going to get into the specifics of class baselines survivability, because it’s already been argued to death.

Eles don’t have diversity in competitive builds because anet took away or changed all the amulets dps eles used.Introducing amulets tailored to dps ele would help more than buffing traits to be honest. DPS Ele needs some of every stat to be viable. That’s why celestial ele was so good in spvp. Now elementalist has to play with vitality and healing power but no toughness, or toughness and vitality but no healing power, or toughness and healing power but 11k health.

Simply put there aren’t any good dps amulets for elementalist.

@kyon
Record a few games of you playing DPS ele with glyph of elemental power.Glyph of elemental power can more or less keep high up time on weakness, but I guarantee AOE weakness won’t make a difference in helping you stay alive.

Weakness looks promising on paper, but once you start having to deal with everyone running tons of condition removal,resistance and AOE being spammed on a point weakness becomes really bad in practice.

Right now the only way for DPS elementalist apply protection is by overloading attuments which is not always feasible.Even if you are overloading as much as possible the uptime on protection is still fairly low, which is why i’m arguing for another way to apply protection. 40% damage reduction is way way better than a 50% chance for attacks to do half damage.

FrownyClown.8402:

Smooth Marc.8743:

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

Air is in a good spot,but the problem with taking air is you leave yourself vulnerable to power builds if you don’t get earth you have no access to protection aside from overloads.If you don’t pick water then you leave yourself vulnerable to condition builds, because you have very little condition removal and you have very little team support.

Even though air is fine, it needs some kind of built in self defense or dps ele will never be viable.

One with Air is very strong and under utilized.

One with Air is strong but its not enough to make DPS ele viable.

FrownyClown.8402:

Smooth Marc.8743:

Guizao.4167:

FrownyClown.8402:

Guizao.4167:

@Kyon
Maybe Persisting Flames doesn’t need to be changed, but those minor traits are really terrible. I love the idea about Burning Rage, considering how it is difficult for DPS eles to deal consistent dmg while managing to survive (I’m not considering fresh air with s/f). I just wish all of our skills to have a cooldown reduction and some others get offensive buffs. PvE is brainless, everything works on PvE. It doesn’t concern me. WvW is just another extension of it so I really don’t care.

The way I see it, we will only be able to deal consistent damage if we can improve our overall survivability with traits. I don’t think buffing traits for improved defense in underused trait lines would promote bunker builds, because there is a trade off of losing condition removal or protection on auras.

Perhaps adding survavibility options to dmg traitlines would be great?

Yes,if the air trait line had access to protection dps ele would be in better shape.

What if weak spot was changed to give 3-4 seconds of protection on crit with a 10 second ICD instead of vulnerability on crit .I don’t think this would be unreasonable because bunker eles would not benefit at all from going air.

Air trait line is in a good spot and protection doesn’t work thematically with the trait line. If anything, I would rather weak spot apply weakness for 1 second every time you crit while in air (3s icd).

You also have to think about trait synergies with weak spot as it is now. Piercing shards for example has potential to work really well with air builds if water damage was made more relevent.

If we take everything thematically, then Tempest should be a DPS spec, and not a Support spec. ‘Harmonious Conduit’ should be a grandmaster trait with a longer buff duration so it could compete with ‘Elemental Bastion’ while having ‘Invigorating Torrents’ available for us, thus we who like to run DPS eles in PvP could trait ‘Invigorating Torrents’ without loosing the only DPS trait in Tempest traitline while maintaing defensive capabilities, that is, not obligating us to use Water Magic for condi cleansing.

Kyon.9735:

DeceiverX.8361:

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

I thought boon related problems only existed in large scale WvW boon stacking which mainly consists of Mesmer and Revs?

I don’t see your point. Ele boons has been toned down already, particularly protection uptime. If you nerf boons, it will hurt Eles more than any other classes as they have other viable builds. You’re pretty much doing the same mistake ANET has been doing for years – Nerf a viable build to make other builds “viable” which has failed over and over again.

That’s what I’m arguing, though. Eles need more baseline potential or trait investment payoff. Right now, the ele gains very little from investing in trait lines like fire/air because it’s overly-dependent on boons to carry its stats. With boons being the metric to balance the elementalist, any effect which nerfs boons nerfs the ele. Celestial ele was OP because boons got the ele to have highest-tier of all stats because it gains a bit of every stat from its boons. Boons themselves provide huge bonuses which allow for holes to be filled. There’s a reason why thieves are considered squishier than elementalists despite having superior mobility and more armor; the ele by protection alone (something the thief doesn’t have access to) has an effective 50% more health all things considered.

If you nerf boons across the board, and bump up scaling potential via trait investment, builds no longer can do well at everything. This enables a re-balance of the elementalist to not depend on all stats/attunements and can specialize, while having some degree of utility from its other attunements, just like every other class.

As far as nerfing a viable build, celestial ele was grossly OP before the removal of the defensive amulets, and every single high-tier player who played during that time is going to tell you that. The profession dynamic was totally overpowered because of a combination of gaining a little bit of everything with mathematically better numbers off the celestial amulet on top of a broken profession dynamic which stacks a little bit of everything via boons resulted in a profession with uncontested best stats in almost everything on top of swappable utility for almost all situations.

Pure defensive amulets had to get removed because sPvP itself is also mathematically broken. The change from crit damage to ferocity nerfed berserker-stat oriented builds innately by close to a 20% damage loss with no compensation, and even prior to this, bunker stats were mathematically superior when analyzing damage dealt : damage taken. In a format that emphasizes holding points, prioritizing defensive stats in this way was/is a no-brainer. If you don’t die, you don’t lose. We saw similar trends with bunker mesmer in early HoT.

The problem is ele is designed to be a jack-of-all-trades class dependent on getting a lot of different stats up and accounting for the difference with boons. This dynamic is impossible to balance without making the ele explicitly overpowered or underpowered mathematically, or hard-countered or a juggernaut in respects to the meta.

Until eles get definitive attunement selection as defining their build and see big bonuses to individual attunements from traits while seeing less general bonuses and boon acquisition, the class is mathematically not possible to balance properly. It’s not that I want to nerf every meta build (although forceful meta shifts are widely considered by professionals in the competitive gaming industry as being critical to maintain interesting gameplay, even if the game is currently mathematically balanced). The fact of the matter is the profession dynamic is broken as a result of boons being designed as being too strong and too critical to the profession.

DeceiverX.8361:

Kyon.9735:

DeceiverX.8361:

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

I thought boon related problems only existed in large scale WvW boon stacking which mainly consists of Mesmer and Revs?

I don’t see your point. Ele boons has been toned down already, particularly protection uptime. If you nerf boons, it will hurt Eles more than any other classes as they have other viable builds. You’re pretty much doing the same mistake ANET has been doing for years – Nerf a viable build to make other builds “viable” which has failed over and over again.

That’s what I’m arguing, though. Eles need more baseline potential or trait investment payoff. Right now, the ele gains very little from investing in trait lines like fire/air because it’s overly-dependent on boons to carry its stats. With boons being the metric to balance the elementalist, any effect which nerfs boons nerfs the ele. Celestial ele was OP because boons got the ele to have highest-tier of all stats because it gains a bit of every stat from its boons. Boons themselves provide huge bonuses which allow for holes to be filled. There’s a reason why thieves are considered squishier than elementalists despite having superior mobility and more armor; the ele by protection alone (something the thief doesn’t have access to) has an effective 50% more health all things considered.

If you nerf boons across the board, and bump up scaling potential via trait investment, builds no longer can do well at everything. This enables a re-balance of the elementalist to not depend on all stats/attunements and can specialize, while having some degree of utility from its other attunements, just like every other class.

As far as nerfing a viable build, celestial ele was grossly OP before the removal of the defensive amulets, and every single high-tier player who played during that time is going to tell you that. The profession dynamic was totally overpowered because of a combination of gaining a little bit of everything with mathematically better numbers off the celestial amulet on top of a broken profession dynamic which stacks a little bit of everything via boons resulted in a profession with uncontested best stats in almost everything on top of swappable utility for almost all situations.

Pure defensive amulets had to get removed because sPvP itself is also mathematically broken. The change from crit damage to ferocity nerfed berserker-stat oriented builds innately by close to a 20% damage loss with no compensation, and even prior to this, bunker stats were mathematically superior when analyzing damage dealt : damage taken. In a format that emphasizes holding points, prioritizing defensive stats in this way was/is a no-brainer. If you don’t die, you don’t lose. We saw similar trends with bunker mesmer in early HoT.

The problem is ele is designed to be a jack-of-all-trades class dependent on getting a lot of different stats up and accounting for the difference with boons. This dynamic is impossible to balance without making the ele explicitly overpowered or underpowered mathematically, or hard-countered or a juggernaut in respects to the meta.

Until eles get definitive attunement selection as defining their build and see big bonuses to individual attunements from traits while seeing less general bonuses and boon acquisition, the class is mathematically not possible to balance properly. It’s not that I want to nerf every meta build (although forceful meta shifts are widely considered by professionals in the competitive gaming industry as being critical to maintain interesting gameplay, even if the game is currently mathematically balanced). The fact of the matter is the profession dynamic is broken as a result of boons being designed as being too strong and too critical to the profession.

Removing the imperative “jack-of-all-trades” concept would bring the elementalist back to GW1, where you traited for one or two elements. I don’t mean that ArenaNet should rip out our attunements, but making our attunements’ traits more rewarding according to our choices. If you wanna play “jack-of-all-trades”, then go celestial (oops, they removed that), but make sure one nerfs those defensive boons and capabilities so we don’t have that meta ele ever again(celestial one).

I never appreciated celestial elementalist. Personally it was way too overpowered. But meta shifts and now we have condi berserks at the top alongside other classes like druid, condi chrono and etc etc etc. This is another fail design from ArenaNet: elite specializations should give professions something they didn’t do, something new, but everything we see are just the same things, but in a over 9000 manner. What were the truly original concept of elite specs that really added something new to its respective profession? Tempest did?

Guizao.4167:

This is another fail design from ArenaNet: elite specializations should give professions something they didn’t do, something new, but everything we see are just the same things, but in a over 9000 manner. What were the truly original concept of elite specs that really added something new to its respective profession? Tempest did?

This is why I firmly believe that the Reaper is the only truly well-done elite spec. It definitely changed necro, and core necro and reaper are both usable/preferable in various scenarios.

The rest? Unfortunately they did very little. And that’s why I even made the suggestion for a thief one in such detail (see signature) as in the off chance a dev sees it, it’ll maybe help impact the state of the game in a positive light.

Unfortunately the design of ele is supposed to be jack-of-all-trades, according to some of the early profession videos released by ANet. I’m all for eles having a swiss army knife kit with the option to adapt to a battle, but that’s the thing; they should be options. Strict rotation play is the result of fields/finishers creating boons, which have been diagnosed as being the dependency making the ele so binary in its performance.

If ele got only a small bit baseline but got a lot of mileage out of their trait choices which could operate independently of boons and strict rotations, the class would be easier to balance as a whole, and boons could also subsequently be re-looked into for the whole game for game-wide balance, rather than being coupled to the elementalist’s viability in general.

DeceiverX.8361:

Guizao.4167:

This is another fail design from ArenaNet: elite specializations should give professions something they didn’t do, something new, but everything we see are just the same things, but in a over 9000 manner. What were the truly original concept of elite specs that really added something new to its respective profession? Tempest did?

This is why I firmly believe that the Reaper is the only truly well-done elite spec. It definitely changed necro, and core necro and reaper are both usable/preferable in various scenarios.

The rest? Unfortunately they did very little. And that’s why I even made the suggestion for a thief one in such detail (see signature) as in the off chance a dev sees it, it’ll maybe help impact the state of the game in a positive light.

Unfortunately the design of ele is supposed to be jack-of-all-trades, according to some of the early profession videos released by ANet. I’m all for eles having a swiss army knife kit with the option to adapt to a battle, but that’s the thing; they should be options. Strict rotation play is the result of fields/finishers creating boons, which have been diagnosed as being the dependency making the ele so binary in its performance.

If ele got only a small bit baseline but got a lot of mileage out of their trait choices which could operate independently of boons and strict rotations, the class would be easier to balance as a whole, and boons could also subsequently be re-looked into for the whole game for game-wide balance, rather than being coupled to the elementalist’s viability in general.

I don’t think the reaper added something new to necromancers. But chronomancer did. The only thing wrong (that I see) with chronomancer is that it should’ve been a supportive spec, but it has extremely good capabilites of dealing high dps and also sustaining conditions. Chronomancer, imo, is the most solid and original spec concept.

lucadiro.4519:

Another whole season playing healbot yay so fun!))

Never played heal bot in pvp and never will. I don’t like this ele meta everyone is clinging on to. People need to learn how to customize their own builds and get used to rotations, maybe then we’ll get out of this dead meta.

Kyon.9735:

Burning Precision – will completely make Condi Ele viable. I like it even though I hate the condi spam meta. At least will have a viable condi build which won’t require sitting in Fire attunement forever. However, I think burning is one of the strongest conditions out there after confusion and torment (pvp perspective). I think a lot of people will complain.

Condi ele has and always will be viable. I put out a build already that doesn’t require you to sit in one attunement.

Here:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodnUMA9Ng9XCOOAcYiFTAjoCEAaAFngSQIwtsmWjrA-TJRHABA8AAC4EAUx+D3XGAA

You need to utilize Evasive Arcana in Fire Attunement, catch opponents with immobilize (preferably Signet of Earth) and use Flame Wall for more burning. Also, don’t forget when you use the heal skill in Water it also removes a condition.

Signet of Earth > Flame Wall > Evasive Arcana (Fire) + Feel the Burn + Cleansing Fire > Drake’s Breath… there’s 10+ stacks of burning right there. Switch attunements shortly after that you’ve got poison and 3 stacks of bleeding added onto the 5 from the Signet, making that 8 stacks of bleeding. Easy condi ele burst rotation.

Here’s a link demonstrating this rotation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er-2j9qLa_k

There is another rotation you can do which to me is a lot safer:
Magnetic Grasp > Earth Overload on them while using Feel the Burn + Cleansing Fire > Swap to Fire Attunement and Evasive Arcana (dodge) > Signet of Earth > Flame Wall > Drake’s Breath > Burning Speed.

That’s another way to still get high burning and bleed stacks. The reason why it’s safer is because you can quickly use Obsidian Flesh if you’re in trouble or use Magnetic Wave if you have conditions on you, and you also have stability. I also like to quickly interrupt them before they can use their heals, especially necromancers.

Please don’t say condi ele is not viable. I use it in wvw and pvp.

Hi Dahir. :-). Condi ele is fun to play and it rips others appart by surprise.
In pvp when facing enemy condi builds i do run sage like you. Just that i always run soldier rune with shouts in PvP because its just to good and wins you the teamfights.
And i run scepter/focus. The ability to use range combined with OL und cleansing flame close is a good tactical advantage.
Meta? No definitly not but i can play it and win with it. Just played wvw with a freind´s nero riping apart 2:3 and 4 … Well in those outnumbered fights obsidian flesh savestomp is a winner …
But i run it difrent. No water in WvW. I get killed by mesmers due to that but the rest is very good to handle.

Condi ele is not viable in very high level skilled fights versus certain professions.. Any class with more than 3 condi removals can counter it. Also offhand dagger was the superior condi spread was very famous prior June 23 2015 and prior nerf of dagger fire 2,3,4,5. I mean why couldn’t they wait till after HOT released before nerfing that.

I know that condi ele can´t kill bunker ele well … In high level play where you always face another ele in a teamfight it looses much potential … In WvW i don´t play pure condi, because it´s damage is often to onesided and low.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdn0XC9XiVYCOOA8RglNAb4BEAugFpxN4Nw9u2XPsA-TVCZABuoE0T9AAo8gz9H07BA4qaF+oqSHnAADUiFAABYn1ZAc0je0je0j2OP6OP6OPapAsbXF-w

Only the condi mesmers are a nemesis for this one. Unfortunately they are very common :-/. I am thinking to use cele rings too but the round numers are so nice :-).
It´s an allround build without water that plays well for me. And it still has good regen uptime without water or torrets. Seems arcane gets forgotten after hot … And the CO bug on OL when swaping sucks …

Waisenpai.6028:

Condi ele is not viable in very high level skilled fights versus certain professions.. Any class with more than 3 condi removals can counter it. Also offhand dagger was the superior condi spread was very famous prior June 23 2015 and prior nerf of dagger fire 2,3,4,5. I mean why couldn’t they wait till after HOT released before nerfing that.

Of course it’s viable. Define what is “very high level skilled fights” because if it can take me to Diamond in pvp and then the tier before Legendary (solo queue), I would definitely say it’s high level. I guess it’s all down to user capability.

I agree off-hand dagger was pretty good around that time. The amount of burning stacks it could dish out was nasty, but at the moment D/F is the better weapon set since Ring of Fire got nerfed.

Dahir.4158:

Waisenpai.6028:

Condi ele is not viable in very high level skilled fights versus certain professions.. Any class with more than 3 condi removals can counter it. Also offhand dagger was the superior condi spread was very famous prior June 23 2015 and prior nerf of dagger fire 2,3,4,5. I mean why couldn’t they wait till after HOT released before nerfing that.

Of course it’s viable. Define what is “very high level skilled fights” because if it can take me to Diamond in pvp and then the tier before Legendary (solo queue), I would definitely say it’s high level. I guess it’s all down to user capability.

I agree off-hand dagger was pretty good around that time. The amount of burning stacks it could dish out was nasty, but at the moment D/F is the better weapon set since Ring of Fire got nerfed.

I don’t think condi ele is great considering the lack of conditions it can really dish out outside of fire. For PvP, it may be decent, but still not great really. If you’re running dagger focus, you have your burning from fire and then what? You have some bleeding from earth 1 which is slow cast and not much to be desired. Your conditions can so easily be cleared since essentially all you’re stacking on people is burns and they all have about the same cooldown together as a persons condition clear would.

A hybrid build like celestial would do a lot better than a straight up “condi ele” could. Granted, celestial isn’t in PvP anymore – but I am a WvW player primarily and main roaming on a dagger/warhorn elementalist. I run either full celestial if I’m feeling lazy or Marauder armor Zerk/Cav trinkets and cele weapons if I’m feeling on my game.

Fun video if me doing three 1v1’s back to back on my ele and winning all in a camp I was trying to take lol..
http://asphyxia.tv/three-back-to-back-1v1-wins-on-elementalist/

Anyone who thinks ele is weak these days needs to either fight me or learn how to play it. It is the strongest roaming class in WvW if played right. Plenty of CC, damage, condition clears, and pretty much perm swiftness from overloads, protection, regen and vigor in combat.

XTR.9604:

I don’t think condi ele is great considering the lack of conditions it can really dish out outside of fire. For PvP, it may be decent, but still not great really. If you’re running dagger focus, you have your burning from fire and then what? You have some bleeding from earth 1 which is slow cast and not much to be desired. Your conditions can so easily be cleared since essentially all you’re stacking on people is burns and they all have about the same cooldown together as a persons condition clear would.

A hybrid build like celestial would do a lot better than a straight up “condi ele” could. Granted, celestial isn’t in PvP anymore – but I am a WvW player primarily and main roaming on a dagger/warhorn elementalist. I run either full celestial if I’m feeling lazy or Marauder armor Zerk/Cav trinkets and cele weapons if I’m feeling on my game.

Fun video if me doing three 1v1’s back to back on my ele and winning all in a camp I was trying to take lol..
http://asphyxia.tv/three-back-to-back-1v1-wins-on-elementalist/

Anyone who thinks ele is weak these days needs to either fight me or learn how to play it. It is the strongest roaming class in WvW if played right. Plenty of CC, damage, condition clears, and pretty much perm swiftness from overloads, protection, regen and vigor in combat.

Really? “bleeding from earth 1 which is slow cast and not much to be desired” is that what you really think? Are you forgetting the 5 stacks you can get from Signet of Earth, and the 3 you can get from Sigil of Geomancy? You’ve also got Earth Overload which helps you stack over 10+ and let’s not talk about the immobilizes you can do. 4 seconds from the Signet of Earth, 2.75 seconds from Magnetic Grasp, and 5.25 seconds from Earth Overload.

Easy access to chill and poison on weapon swap. If you wanna be really cool, use some racial elites like Summon Sylvari Hound or Reaper of Grenth for more poison, bleed and chills.

Don’t think I’m a pvp player. I’m also a wvw player like you and I know what I’m talking about. Been using this sh— for 2 years since I first made it back then after being inspired by FrownyClown, ArmageddonAsh and Mercenary Higgins.

Yeah sure you’ve got Diamond Skin, Invigorating Torrents and what not, but I doubt you can keep cleansing conditions when they’re being applied on you all the time. Eles have great CC as well. I don’t really care about celestial ele or whatever the hell people want to play now… That sh— is boring.

Guizao.4167:

DeceiverX.8361:

Guizao.4167:

This is another fail design from ArenaNet: elite specializations should give professions something they didn’t do, something new, but everything we see are just the same things, but in a over 9000 manner. What were the truly original concept of elite specs that really added something new to its respective profession? Tempest did?

This is why I firmly believe that the Reaper is the only truly well-done elite spec. It definitely changed necro, and core necro and reaper are both usable/preferable in various scenarios.

The rest? Unfortunately they did very little. And that’s why I even made the suggestion for a thief one in such detail (see signature) as in the off chance a dev sees it, it’ll maybe help impact the state of the game in a positive light.

Unfortunately the design of ele is supposed to be jack-of-all-trades, according to some of the early profession videos released by ANet. I’m all for eles having a swiss army knife kit with the option to adapt to a battle, but that’s the thing; they should be options. Strict rotation play is the result of fields/finishers creating boons, which have been diagnosed as being the dependency making the ele so binary in its performance.

If ele got only a small bit baseline but got a lot of mileage out of their trait choices which could operate independently of boons and strict rotations, the class would be easier to balance as a whole, and boons could also subsequently be re-looked into for the whole game for game-wide balance, rather than being coupled to the elementalist’s viability in general.

I don’t think the reaper added something new to necromancers. But chronomancer did. The only thing wrong (that I see) with chronomancer is that it should’ve been a supportive spec, but it has extremely good capabilites of dealing high dps and also sustaining conditions. Chronomancer, imo, is the most solid and original spec concept.

Reaper changed almost everything about necro. Strictly speaking, the necro is just about the only core spec that has remaining viability on the basis that reaper isn’t better; it’s just so wildly different that it enables both specs to have their niches and not overlap. The necro is very slow and very clunky with a fair degree of fragility from lack of stability access, making it a strict backliner, while the reaper plays like a warrior and has the capacity to drive the front line and dive deep into its enemies.

Everything you’ve mentioned about the chronomancer in this post is not true. Chrono has the lowest DPS in the game and has the best support in the game. The damage output in the form of burst is buffed via CS, but in all honesty, this doesn’t change how the chrono is played as opposed to core mesmer, since CS has such a short duration. Most mesmer mains will tell you that Chrono CS encourages spamming abilities and doesn’t at all change how the profession really handles combat in any sense. The shield changes a lot, but even then it’s fairly similar to OH sword, except that for the most part it’s seen as being better.

Wow, im new to visiting these elementalist forums, and looking into an ele before I made it everyone swears its versatile and has allot of build diversity, yet people are saying otherwise here, I havent experienced this myself yet if its really true. But I dont get why so many in game and other forums claim this if there are so many issues.

Ryou.2398:

Wow, im new to visiting these elementalist forums, and looking into an ele before I made it everyone swears its versatile and has allot of build diversity, yet people are saying otherwise here, I havent experienced this myself yet if its really true. But I dont get why so many in game and other forums claim this if there are so many issues.

In retrospect, the elementalist has a place in all game modes and has uses for almost all of its weapons. I have been playing ele for over 3 years so I would like to say I have a deep understanding of the class as far as pvp and wvw go. That being said, there is only 1 build viable in pvp and thats most likely where all the flaming comes from. Just a lack of diversity in the same game modes. This is a problem with every class. Everyone that doesn’t play ele will say we are op and versatile, but everyone who mains the class will say we are being limited by our lack of good traits and utilities. Its more likely frustration of anet not touching our utilities since launch and pretty much ruining the game to make as much cash as possible.

FrownyClown.8402:

Ryou.2398:

Wow, im new to visiting these elementalist forums, and looking into an ele before I made it everyone swears its versatile and has allot of build diversity, yet people are saying otherwise here, I havent experienced this myself yet if its really true. But I dont get why so many in game and other forums claim this if there are so many issues.

In retrospect, the elementalist has a place in all game modes and has uses for almost all of its weapons. I have been playing ele for over 3 years so I would like to say I have a deep understanding of the class as far as pvp and wvw go. That being said, there is only 1 build viable in pvp and thats most likely where all the flaming comes from. Just a lack of diversity in the same game modes. This is a problem with every class. Everyone that doesn’t play ele will say we are op and versatile, but everyone who mains the class will say we are being limited by our lack of good traits and utilities. Its more likely frustration of anet not touching our utilities since launch and pretty much ruining the game to make as much cash as possible.

So what your saying only in pvp the builds are limited?

Pretty much, yeah.

Dahir.4158:

Pretty much, yeah.

I see, yea people tend to never say its pvp in the forums and act like its the only mode in the game.

Ryou.2398:

Dahir.4158:

Pretty much, yeah.

I see, yea people tend to never say its pvp in the forums and act like its the only mode in the game.

In wvw you could do whatever you want by switching the stats around. In pvp it’s either you bunker up and become a heal bot, go zerk and get 1 shot, or you use the new amulets like Sage/Carrion/Mercenary (before it was removed) to play a condi/power hybrid spec. You can’t even use any of the other amulets that don’t have vitality because our HP pool is disgustingly low (11-13k hp).

DeceiverX.8361:

Guizao.4167:

DeceiverX.8361:

Guizao.4167:

This is another fail design from ArenaNet: elite specializations should give professions something they didn’t do, something new, but everything we see are just the same things, but in a over 9000 manner. What were the truly original concept of elite specs that really added something new to its respective profession? Tempest did?

This is why I firmly believe that the Reaper is the only truly well-done elite spec. It definitely changed necro, and core necro and reaper are both usable/preferable in various scenarios.

The rest? Unfortunately they did very little. And that’s why I even made the suggestion for a thief one in such detail (see signature) as in the off chance a dev sees it, it’ll maybe help impact the state of the game in a positive light.

Unfortunately the design of ele is supposed to be jack-of-all-trades, according to some of the early profession videos released by ANet. I’m all for eles having a swiss army knife kit with the option to adapt to a battle, but that’s the thing; they should be options. Strict rotation play is the result of fields/finishers creating boons, which have been diagnosed as being the dependency making the ele so binary in its performance.

If ele got only a small bit baseline but got a lot of mileage out of their trait choices which could operate independently of boons and strict rotations, the class would be easier to balance as a whole, and boons could also subsequently be re-looked into for the whole game for game-wide balance, rather than being coupled to the elementalist’s viability in general.

I don’t think the reaper added something new to necromancers. But chronomancer did. The only thing wrong (that I see) with chronomancer is that it should’ve been a supportive spec, but it has extremely good capabilites of dealing high dps and also sustaining conditions. Chronomancer, imo, is the most solid and original spec concept.

Reaper changed almost everything about necro. Strictly speaking, the necro is just about the only core spec that has remaining viability on the basis that reaper isn’t better; it’s just so wildly different that it enables both specs to have their niches and not overlap. The necro is very slow and very clunky with a fair degree of fragility from lack of stability access, making it a strict backliner, while the reaper plays like a warrior and has the capacity to drive the front line and dive deep into its enemies.

Everything you’ve mentioned about the chronomancer in this post is not true. Chrono has the lowest DPS in the game and has the best support in the game. The damage output in the form of burst is buffed via CS, but in all honesty, this doesn’t change how the chrono is played as opposed to core mesmer, since CS has such a short duration. Most mesmer mains will tell you that Chrono CS encourages spamming abilities and doesn’t at all change how the profession really handles combat in any sense. The shield changes a lot, but even then it’s fairly similar to OH sword, except that for the most part it’s seen as being better.

I’m sorry but everything is about spamming skills, as long as they’re not in CD. What really changed to necromancers? They always could cleave foes in melee range, it’s just daggers that are bad for cleaving. Then devs gave them greatswords which is pretty slow but deals high damage. They also gave them extremely good power and condi traits on reaper traitline. They lowered the cd on some corruption skills and added corruption boon via an autoattack…so GG! Just spam them.
On the other hand, chronomancers bring a lot to the table in all game modes besides being the greatest supportive spec in the whole game.

Ryou.2398:

Dahir.4158:

Pretty much, yeah.

I see, yea people tend to never say its pvp in the forums and act like its the only mode in the game.

Because it’s the only game mode that elementalists are forced to stick with a healing build and it’s the only game mode that has never seen a single proper DPS build for elementalist.

Guizao.4167:

Ryou.2398:

Dahir.4158:

Pretty much, yeah.

I see, yea people tend to never say its pvp in the forums and act like its the only mode in the game.

Because it’s the only game mode that elementalists are forced to stick with a healing build and it’s the only game mode that has never seen a single proper DPS build for elementalist.

I used to use the Mercenary amulet before it was removed which had some toughness/power/vitality/condi dmg, but now I have to stick with Sage which has healing power instead of toughness. I could stick with Carrion if I wanted to, but then I’d have no toughness or healing power.

Whatever we do we’re always gonna need either healing power or toughness. Until A-Net realises how crap the health/toughness pool of elementalists really are we’re gonna have to stick with amulets that have healing power or vitality in them.

Keep bringing out new amulets. You wont see any elementalist use them if they want to live.

I use staff and d/d depending if I’m with a team or not
And I easily kill any other ele (solo)prob because I’ve played pvp ele since half a week after gw2 came out so I can predict usually what they’ll do since almost all do the same rotation and actions, just like greatsword mesmers, they invisible then #4 and wonder why they just lost- and I’m not bragging but anyone who knows rotation can see it in others and know what to expect