Guild Wars 2

“Is it fun?” ANet asks players playing an ele.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I haven’t been complaining about the endless stream of nerfs as of late for the elementalists, at least not so far. But the only answer I can give now is: “It was fun, but not anymore.”

I am mostly playing PvE, rarely WvW and even more rarely PvP. I wouldn’t say I’m a very good PvE player either, I guess.

I used to have a lot of fun on my ele, and one of the major reasons I did was its now nerfed mobility. Those nerfs removed a lot of the identify that the previous play-style has given to the class… Not sure if that play-style was intended or not, but it was there since launch and got taken away.

So I was thinking to turn the table and ask ANet: was it worth nerfing the fun for all PvE ele players because a few PvP players were not having fun? Is the goal of everyone to have the least amount of fun?

I kind of tried to understand the argument behind all these nerfes and general lack of buffs, while all other classes are getting much better updates. I understand the reasons must be in pvp balance numbers… but I simply don’t care about it.

And then… I rolled a Guardian and everything turned easy mode with 2 key presses instead of the 20 key presses per second the ele required to do some damage while constantly needing to heal.

And then I’ve been following my Warrior friend and see him roll through everything, when I might be doing as little damage that I don’t even get credited for participating into an event I was at with him in a party.

And then I realized that it took me many minutes more to kill a single PvE target compared to other classes that finish things off with the autoattack while standing still or even being afk.

And quickly you learn playing support is a waste of time that gives no credit for anything in PvE and won’t even mention dungeons and fractals.

So where should I be looking for fun in playing an ele? And why is the strategy to constantly nerf the little fun eles have and not even isolate the nerfs to where they matter or needed (PvP)?

And now I am too invested in my ele, and was trying to get the 250 SP and etc (for a legendary). So I cannot simply change to another class or character unless I get back all my skins and start allover again for all skill points I need and etc. So the only option is to keep playing the unfun ele.

And then I quit and go away for a while. And then I want to try again and come back and get the sad smile again and quit again.

So no… I am not having fun, stopped having fun a while ago simply because I am trapped in a class that is just the equivalent of hard mode for even less rewards than other classes. And that’s not what I’ve been told at class selection screen. And ANet never cared about PvE balance at all since they launched. So I guess we’re not given many options here and the future doesn’t look better either…

What’s their strategy? Cause I don’t see it.

TL;DR: I disagree with their nerf it all / update strategy but I’m stuck on my ele and not having fun with it anymore.

The most fun thing we had was RTL and that is gone now. That was actually one of the reasons I rolled ele at start instead of engineer because I value mobility above all (because mobility = less down time more action more fun). Now my engineer is more mobile than my ele

I’ve been playing MMO games since Ultima Online back in 1997 and I can tell you now that if your enjoyment of the game is hinged on the Developers of your game reverting a change they made in almost every case imaginable be prepared to be disappointed.

You essentially got three choices:

1. Adapt/Deal with the change.
2. Reroll another class
3. Quit the game

Sitting around on the forums and continuously complaining accomplishes absolutely nothing (not saying you’re doing that but certainly some people around here definitely do). It’s not even cathartic because once you realize how much time you wasted being miserable on the forums about something was really time you could have spent having fun elsewhere it just brings you down even further.

That, really, is how I look at things. I’m here to have fun. When my Necro wasn’t fun at release I made something else and kept going till I found something I did enjoy. When I’m bored of the standard power spec on my Elementalist I shake it up and try different things like a Condition build. When I’m not having fun period I go play something else instead. Not like any of this is going anywhere and my toons will still be here after countless balance updates 6 months down the line.

All that said, Developers rarely make uninformed decisions. Everything you and everyone else does in game is logged and tracked. Most modern day developers can pull up user data and see hard facts about what kind of abilities are being used, builds are being used and classes are being used. Some crazy person on the forums could go around claiming it’s impossible to 1v1 people in WvW now but all they gotta do is run a report and see for themselves. This is why you see “useless” abilities get updates, because they want to change them to drive usage. They can then see if the ability gets used more than it already does and see if additional updates need to be made. The same thing happens when you see say an ability like Ride the Lightning have 300% the usage of any other ability for an Elementalist it might be time to review it.

Developers rarely share these insights because this is kinda like the secret sauce of their game. More over, they aren’t usually looking from their users for counter points to their decisions. If they did want feedback, they would ask for it. Even then, feedback is useless when you can see what people actually do in game by tracking usage and see what people actually do rather than what they say on some forum.

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’

I realize that the mobility got hit but you have to understand that it was TOO MUCH prior to the nerf. Elementalist still has easy access to swiftness in both pve and pvp, as well as the RTL.

In regards to the damage, I’m utterly shocked that you think elementalist falls behind in terms of finishing off single targets in PVE. I’m not sure you realize that elementalist probably has one of the highest bursts in terms of damage. The best part? The PVE mob doesn’t have a stun breaker to dodge these combos.

You complain about the shaving down and the lack of buffs. That is the whole point of nerfing a class down. It stood out too much, in terms of mobility and strength. It was simply too strong, so it was made weaker. Why should they throw in more buffs to counter the nerf, if their intention was to make the class balanced?

To be honest, I see this thread as throwing a tantrum over having your loved class nerfed, rather than having an insightful feedback in regards to the balance of the whole class system.

@Jae.
This thread basically sums up that the ele used to be fun when it was an Avatar. Now its “slow” is the only word that comes to mind. There was a time I could play any other class and get this felling. Now I get it from the Ele itself. With the shorter RTL cd d/d was bearable. Before it had 3 skills that missed 90% of the time, now one of those skills goes on 40 sec cd (due to 90% miss chance, even below 1200 range). Fire grab, always misses unless you can predict where your target will be in the next second or 2, Air 2, same as previous, RTL misses 90% of the time (usually more) and goes 600-900 movement (used to go 900-1200 movement). I’m not sure if the devs are aware of how the lag affects certain skills, but anything that has a “you must hit clause to get 50% less cd” needs to go, unless the skill is easy to hit (even under the effects of lag).

cheshirefox.7026:

Oh, Jae. Your post basically sums up to ‘i have no comprehension of ArenaNet’s continual gutting of the elementalists architecture while providing absolutely no infrastructure for fun and interesting character builds"

This, to an extent^
Our defences aren’t active (clones, stealth, extra life bar) they are passive heals that got toned down a lot, a fair while ago now. But we didn’t receive a damage buff to compensate. Our mobility got reduced and thus our fun … no compensation. Half our skills bug out, no compensation. Our only other offhand not useful except in some dungeons and some fractals … not made more viable. BW1 Ele, that was an elementalist. What we have now is something that can heal, move and fight but not well. Its like playing Brawl, choosing Mario (the all rounder) and having half his damage removed.

What I dislike about the ele is having (key word having) to change attunements all the time. There is nothing in the trait lines that push you toward being a master of Fire and Air or Earth and Air or any of the other combos. There is your fast at changing attunements and your slow at changing attunements but can do some other stuff instead.

Going down the slow at changing attunements path and you get little in return (fresh air is a good start in this direction), but now we are pushed into 30 air +x or 30 Arcane +x. I can’t go 30 Fire and 30 Water and be good at AoE damage and healing, for that I would need a staff and I would need 20 in Arcane. I can’t go Fire and Air and get super damage because the slightest breeze would blow me over and I don’t gain all that much for putting the points into fire, I could just go into arcane and gain a lot more (faster change, vigor, extra heal / blind / blast finisher)

Now for some suggestions.
25 [element] Trait:
Do current and as long as you have 30 Points in [this element] your [this element] Attunment recharges 60% faster (does not stack with other attunement speed).

That means if I go 30 fire and 30 air, then fire and air recharge at 9 seconds, the others recharge at 15 and I don’t have to go into arcane.

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’

I realize that the mobility got hit but you have to understand that it was TOO MUCH prior to the nerf. Elementalist still has easy access to swiftness in both pve and pvp, as well as the RTL.

My point is, mobility equals less downtime equals more fun.
And seeing as other classes have skills comparable to RTL (some even better) on ~12 seconds cooldowns, they should have nerfed us in other ways to keep RTL on a reasonably low cooldown.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’

I realize that the mobility got hit but you have to understand that it was TOO MUCH prior to the nerf. Elementalist still has easy access to swiftness in both pve and pvp, as well as the RTL.

My point is, mobility equals less downtime equals more fun.
And seeing as other classes have skills comparable to RTL (some even better) on ~12 seconds cooldowns, they should have nerfed us in other ways to keep RTL on a reasonably low cooldown.

Fun for you, not fun for others.

And why are you making comparison to other classes? some classes will always have more mobility than others. Why do you feel that elementalists should have the best or close to the best mobility? Elementalists already pull out tons of cc, as well as healing and damage.

Jae.5138:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’

I realize that the mobility got hit but you have to understand that it was TOO MUCH prior to the nerf. Elementalist still has easy access to swiftness in both pve and pvp, as well as the RTL.

My point is, mobility equals less downtime equals more fun.
And seeing as other classes have skills comparable to RTL (some even better) on ~12 seconds cooldowns, they should have nerfed us in other ways to keep RTL on a reasonably low cooldown.

Fun for you, not fun for others.

And why are you making comparison to other classes? some classes will always have more mobility than others. Why do you feel that elementalists should have the best or close to the best mobility? Elementalists already pull out tons of cc, as well as healing and damage.

“tons” of cc… we have less than most other classes on longer cooldowns than most other classes.

Also, are you really arguing that downtime is fun?

TGSlasher.1458:

@Jae.
This thread basically sums up that the ele used to be fun when it was an Avatar. Now its “slow” is the only word that comes to mind. There was a time I could play any other class and get this felling. Now I get it from the Ele itself. With the shorter RTL cd d/d was bearable. Before it had 3 skills that missed 90% of the time, now one of those skills goes on 40 sec cd (due to 90% miss chance, even below 1200 range). Fire grab, always misses unless you can predict where your target will be in the next second or 2, Air 2, same as previous, RTL misses 90% of the time (usually more) and goes 600-900 movement (used to go 900-1200 movement). I’m not sure if the devs are aware of how the lag affects certain skills, but anything that has a “you must hit clause to get 50% less cd” needs to go, unless the skill is easy to hit (even under the effects of lag).

This, to an extent^
Our defences aren’t active (clones, stealth, extra life bar) they are passive heals that got toned down a lot, a fair while ago now. But we didn’t receive a damage buff to compensate. Our mobility got reduced and thus our fun … no compensation. Half our skills bug out, no compensation. Our only other offhand not useful except in some dungeons and some fractals … not made more viable. BW1 Ele, that was an elementalist. What we have now is something that can heal, move and fight but not well. Its like playing Brawl, choosing Mario (the all rounder) and having half his damage removed.

What I dislike about the ele is having (key word having) to change attunements all the time. There is nothing in the trait lines that push you toward being a master of Fire and Air or Earth and Air or any of the other combos. There is your fast at changing attunements and your slow at changing attunements but can do some other stuff instead.

Going down the slow at changing attunements path and you get little in return (fresh air is a good start in this direction), but now we are pushed into 30 air +x or 30 Arcane +x. I can’t go 30 Fire and 30 Water and be good at AoE damage and healing, for that I would need a staff and I would need 20 in Arcane. I can’t go Fire and Air and get super damage because the slightest breeze would blow me over and I don’t gain all that much for putting the points into fire, I could just go into arcane and gain a lot more (faster change, vigor, extra heal / blind / blast finisher)

Now for some suggestions.
25 [element] Trait:
Do current and as long as you have 30 Points in [this element] your [this element] Attunment recharges 60% faster (does not stack with other attunement speed).

That means if I go 30 fire and 30 air, then fire and air recharge at 9 seconds, the others recharge at 15 and I don’t have to go into arcane.

both fire grab and RTL aren’t hard to land if you know what you are doing. Did you know that you can start fire grab up at any range, in any direction, as long as you’ll be close enough and facing the right direction at the end of the channel? If you can’t hit it, that’s entirely your fault (unless you have like 300 ms in which case, do you really expect them to alter the skill range to cater to people who lag like that?)

the issue was that the mobility on elementalist was simply TOO much. They could disengage TOO easily. They could come in, do whatever they want to do, and the RTL would simply put way too much distance in between you and the elementalist to do anything. It’s a good thing that it was nerfed. You don’t like it? Anyone who wasn’t an elementalist sighed in relief.

You mentioned that you don’t like having to change all the alignments. Think. You only have 5 skills changing per element. do you think elementalist could be the sophisticated, all around class that it is only by having one element active? And if it could, can you imagine how broken it would be? You may not like the variety but most people do. Again, it is not something ANet can cater to. You’re definitely able to go into 30 air and be able to switch into air ALL the time (every time you crit, air attunement CD is reset) but yes, you would be a glass cannon.

And why shouldn’t you be? You should be sacrificing your tankiness for a mad damage like that. Have you done PVP with 30 into air? The damage is absolute madness. Mobility and tankiness being added in would make it overpowered.

My point is:

Many of these changes were done for good reasons and so far really, it has been an overall change for the good. Instead of having a mindset like ‘oh I just want more’ or ‘I want it done my way’ maybe it’d be good to really think about why these changes were applied. Playing the victim will only ruin your own gaming experience.

Jae.5138:

the issue was that the mobility on elementalist was simply TOO much. They could disengage TOO easily. They could come in, do whatever they want to do, and the RTL would simply put way too much distance in between you and the elementalist to do anything. It’s a good thing that it was nerfed. You don’t like it? Anyone who wasn’t an elementalist sighed in relief.

Sounds like warriors, thieves, mesmers or engineers to me…

Delius.1968:

I am mostly playing PvE, rarely WvW and even more rarely PvP. I wouldn’t say I’m a very good PvE player either, I guess.

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’
.

Jae please read careful before even replying that sort of things.
Unless you think that D/D ele ever be OP in PvE or WWW.

Then i would direct you to anet sotg prior RTL nerf saying “ele is adamantly uneffective in pve but bleeds in WWW and is somehow too good in PvP”

Yet i wonder….if a player can t discern between PvP, WWW and PvE how its supposed to discuss balance?

Answer to OP:
There are interesting new posts by jhonatan sharp saying how they have trouble balancing all 3 game modes.

Then he is discussing abysmal warrior buffs…..
In few words they only balance PvP….PvE and www are expendable.

We are still to see a PvE balancing path and we will never see any possibly until PvE will be almost dead.
If a profession is facerolling dungeons, they simply change the dungeon…..or remove rewards.

LordByron.8369:

Delius.1968:

I am mostly playing PvE, rarely WvW and even more rarely PvP. I wouldn’t say I’m a very good PvE player either, I guess.

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’
.

Jae please read careful before even replying that sort of things.
Unless you think that D/D ele ever be OP in PvE or WWW.

Then i would direct you to anet sotg prior RTL nerf saying “ele is adamantly uneffective in pve but bleeds in WWW and is somehow too good in PvP”

Yet i wonder….if a player can t discern between PvP, WWW and PvE how its supposed to discuss balance?

Answer to OP:
There are interesting new posts by jhonatan sharp saying how they have trouble balancing all 3 game modes.

Then he is discussing abysmal warrior buffs…..
In few words they only balance PvP….PvE and www are expendable.

We are still to see a PvE balancing path and we will never see any possibly until PvE will be almost dead.
If a profession is facerolling dungeons, they simply change the dungeon…..or remove rewards.

And warriors are great in PVE. What exactly is your point? Yes – there are class differences in who’s good at those three main areas ( wvw, spvp, pve) but those differences will most likely exist forever. I don’t see how the change to RTL really harshly affects the pve experience.

If you don t see how RTL affects PvE maybe you should play more pve.

1st) open PvE…….as said many times its really fun to have mobility skills.
One o the main issues why people hates mesmer in open PvE

2nd) gap closer….being unreliable even in PvE it just hurts your dps and ability to change range. (qute an advanced stuff but yet it exists)

its just the most unfun thing they could do to PvE eles.

Now if as you say there are difference in PvE PvP nd www for effectiveness then tell me why you complained about ELE being OP in PvP.

Its the worst excuse for lack of balance i ever heard.

EVERY game mode SHOULD BE balanced.
If its not that devs are failing.

LordByron pointed out exactly what I meant – given I play PvE mostly.

At the end of the day, I think there was a lot of usage and a lot of cry about mobility nerfs because that became part of the signature of the class. There are people that picked this class just for that and most that picked it for other reasons got very used to it and identified with it the elementatlist when they were playing.

But disregarding RTL in particular or other exact nerfs. I am sad to see two things:
* developers don’t care about PvE, and/or think PvE balance is a joke
* balancing acts don’t care about how fun a playstyle is – just the numbers (makes sense for PvP, some sense for WvW, not that much for PvE). Do mobs care about my “OP RTL”? I would argue they would care much more about the OP DPS of a warrior.

Where numbers are extremely important, I agree – numbers should rule. In PvE though: how about “having fun” ruling the balancing decisions? Was Ele ever OP in PvE? Quite the opposite. So why did the fun got taken away for some numbers in PvP while all the problems are left still there and untouched?

And the breaking point for me was when I started realizing that:
* just because I am an ele – I am less effective to my group than if I were another class
→ others don’t necessarily like me, or want me in their group, they might just accept me with an inner sigh, and even when I give it my best (which is way more involved than other classes) my contribution is not anywhere close to remarkable for the rest of the group.
* they nerfed a couple of things where I was talking a lot of fun from by playing an Ele, and now I don’t like it that much myself.
--—————
So other people don’t like me in particular in their group, and my fun with the class was kitten so I see no reason to further develop / play my main. And came to the forum to say that ANet shouldn’t nerf “my fun”.

It may be too innocent / stupid – I don’t know, but I just am not sure they put everything they need to in their balancing / nerfing equations. And I think that’s why most people complain on this forum as well. Not because the numbers don’t make sense, they most likely do and the nerfs were most likely needed in PvP… but they took away part of the signature of the class and everyone gets a weird feeling that they’re not playing the same character they used to.

My stupidity is still hoping they might just make Eles fun again, and reading every update notes hoping and hoping… but update notes for Ele as of late are usually short and it becomes more and more clear they don’t care about it. They only care about the numbers in PvP.

I don’t know, take what I’m saying for what it’s worth – pbly nothing Thanks for listening, though I am pretty sure nothing will change so as someone suggested above, I know I should just adapt or move over.

I used to laugh when people referred to Ele as “The most mobile class in the game.” They weren’t really talking about Ele. They were talking about RTL. RTL was so good that it became silly to run anything other than /D, especially in PvP.

When one skill on one weaponset defines the core playstyle of the entire class, and everything else is terrible in comparison, then that skill needs adjusting. My problem isn’t that RTL was nerfed. My problem is that adjusting everything else has taken so long.

Jae.5138:

both fire grab and RTL aren’t hard to land if you know what you are doing. Did you know that you can start fire grab up at any range, in any direction, as long as you’ll be close enough and facing the right direction at the end of the channel? If you can’t hit it, that’s entirely your fault (unless you have like 300 ms in which case, do you really expect them to alter the skill range to cater to people who lag like that?)

the issue was that the mobility on elementalist was simply TOO much. They could disengage TOO easily. They could come in, do whatever they want to do, and the RTL would simply put way too much distance in between you and the elementalist to do anything. It’s a good thing that it was nerfed. You don’t like it? Anyone who wasn’t an elementalist sighed in relief.

You mentioned that you don’t like having to change all the alignments. Think. You only have 5 skills changing per element. do you think elementalist could be the sophisticated, all around class that it is only by having one element active? And if it could, can you imagine how broken it would be? You may not like the variety but most people do. Again, it is not something ANet can cater to. You’re definitely able to go into 30 air and be able to switch into air ALL the time (every time you crit, air attunement CD is reset) but yes, you would be a glass cannon.

And why shouldn’t you be? You should be sacrificing your tankiness for a mad damage like that. Have you done PVP with 30 into air? The damage is absolute madness. Mobility and tankiness being added in would make it overpowered.

My point is:

Many of these changes were done for good reasons and so far really, it has been an overall change for the good. Instead of having a mindset like ‘oh I just want more’ or ‘I want it done my way’ maybe it’d be good to really think about why these changes were applied. Playing the victim will only ruin your own gaming experience.

I do have 300 MS, closer to 450 or 500 ms because, said from a very dev of this very game when asked if there would be Oceanic Servers something along the lines of: “We have talked with many Oceanic players and the feed back is that the lag is a not an issue”. (note, not actually what they said, but that was a year ago, so forgive me for forgetting exactly. Maybe I should have made it my signature). Though, our country is pretty backwards when it comes to doing anything on the internets and setting up a server here probably would have cost more then NCSoft syphoned for its new game.

I really don’t care about disengaging, when I go into a fight, I’m in it until I’m outnumbered 3 to 1, then I’m dead, if I can hold your point for a few seconds longer, that a lot more points more my team has over yours (not to mention we now know where your team is). Using RTL and having a 40 second CD almost all the time is just ridiculous.

Also, I play with S/F (and have since before the RTL nerfs) which has 0 movement skills (not even kidding, it doesn’t even have swiftness on the weapon lol) and have been able to defeat D/D bunker eles up till they nerfed my 100% protection, fury, swiftness and fire shield duration (burning hurts, doesn’t matter how many cleanses you’ve got, you hit me and its another short stack, not to mention the poison).

I didn’t say I didn’t like the variety. I said I didn’t like the lack of variety (you know, being able to have a powerful fire and air attunements and having water and earth as not so powerful attunements).

I have gone 30 in air, with 30 in fire in PvP. Sure you do a fair amount of damage, but you also fall over in the slightest breeze, and most of your spike damage comes from DT / Pheonix then popping air. The damage from Fresh Air is only madness while its broken (bugged). The Dragons Tooth / Phoenix damage followed by a Fresh Air change is madness (though you could do this without Fresh Air), good luck landing DT though.

I know the changes were for a good reason, otherwise they wouldn’t have been changed, obviously I don’t use a /d so “I want it done my way” doesn’t even apply to me. To benefit the ele community, RTL needs 1 CD. The amount of time the skill misses, due to rubber band, lag or a small rock in your road is just stupid. Why is this stupid? Because you are using it to engage and get punished anyway. If you are using it the way the devs want you to, then you get punished for with a 40 sec cd, then something is wrong with the skill / changes to said skill. 1200 range with a 25 or 30 second cd all around would have been fine. 1500 with a 20 sec cd was broken. Obviously you think 1200

Ever seen someone run past you when you used RTL and all they had was swiftness? (move 1200, walk 3 steps, rubber band back past the guy who was behind you, have your friends laugh as you were trying to show off by beating them in a race :/)