Guild Wars 2

So no doubt this will receive hate from some of the D/D ele crowd, but D/D was if anything fine, and in most cases a LOT more than fine, and now it’s been buffed even more.

Reading through the ele forums, there are enough people stating that they feel forced into D/D because it is overpowered and is the ‘only’ good trait setup at the moment.

So instead of making these fresh D/D ele’s learn how to play better (because admit it, a good D/D ele is an awesome force to be reckoned with), you buff the already overpowered setup. How does this make things better, for ele’s, and for profession balance in general?

Shocking Aura no longer dispellable (although it can no longer benefit from boon duration to balance it)

Signet of Air now provides 25% movement speed. D/D ele’s already have the highest mobility of any profession if they so choose (arguably tied with thief). Granted, this buff will affect all elementalists, but since keeping your distance from a D/D ele is important if you want to survive, this will make this a lot more difficult.

Stone Splinters now has ‘increased range from 300 to 600 units’, it’s description is “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target” … since when is 600 units melee range? Another good sized and unnecessary buff for D/D.

Magnetic Grasp is now a leap finisher, and therefore gives 6 seconds more of fury, swiftness, and burning damage — ontop of the 12 seconds of fury and swiftness you get from Shocking Aura (air3) and 6 seconds from Frost Aura (water4).

And Pyromancer’s Puissance. Not normally taken in a D/D trait setup, but it’s been buffed to allow for even easier might stacking.

Look at the changes for other classes.

most of them got:

passive signet speed of 25% from 10% (swiftness is 33%, this means D/D ele is now only 8% faster than most professions equipping these signets… that’s comparatively slow enough for other professions to continue applying pressure for several more seconds to a D/D desperately trying to flee or kite and heal)

combo finishers added (between 1 and 5 depending on the profession).

+dmg (major +dmg actually)

This means D/D has had a substantial indirect nerf to healing and kiting in pvp.

I’ll be awaiting the feedback from pioneers of this build to see what their experience is on the ground. Perhaps other professions will simply not equip the signets?

plasmacutter.2709:

Look at the changes for other classes.

most of them got:

passive signet speed of 25% from 10% (swiftness is 33%, this means D/D ele is now only 8% faster than most professions equipping these signets… that’s comparatively slow enough for other professions to continue applying pressure for several more seconds to a D/D desperately trying to flee or kite and heal)

combo finishers added (between 1 and 5 depending on the profession).

+dmg (major +dmg actually)

This means D/D has had a substantial indirect nerf to healing and kiting in pvp.

I’ll be awaiting the feedback from pioneers of this build to see what their experience is on the ground. Perhaps other professions will simply not equip the signets?

Buffing the ranger profession (and a few other slight buffs) isn’t a nerf to D/D elementalists.

And did you notice that most of the finishers added (and the lion’s share of the so called ‘buffs’), are underwater abilities?

Einherjar.6709:

So no doubt this will receive hate from some of the D/D ele crowd, but D/D was if anything fine, and in most cases a LOT more than fine, and now it’s been buffed even more.

Reading through the ele forums, there are enough people stating that they feel forced into D/D because it is overpowered and is the ‘only’ good trait setup at the moment.

So instead of making these fresh D/D ele’s learn how to play better (because admit it, a good D/D ele is an awesome force to be reckoned with), you buff the already overpowered setup. How does this make things better, for ele’s, and for profession balance in general?

Shocking Aura no longer dispellable (although it can no longer benefit from boon duration to balance it)

Signet of Air now provides 25% movement speed. D/D ele’s already have the highest mobility of any profession if they so choose (arguably tied with thief). Granted, this buff will affect all elementalists, but since keeping your distance from a D/D ele is important if you want to survive, this will make this a lot more difficult.

Stone Splinters now has ‘increased range from 300 to 600 units’, it’s description is “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target” … since when is 600 units melee range? Another good sized and unnecessary buff for D/D.

Magnetic Grasp is now a leap finisher, and therefore gives 6 seconds more of fury, swiftness, and burning damage — ontop of the 12 seconds of fury and swiftness you get from Shocking Aura (air3) and 6 seconds from Frost Aura (water4).

And Pyromancer’s Puissance. Not normally taken in a D/D trait setup, but it’s been buffed to allow for even easier might stacking.

1st I play ele with all weapon but lately I’m plaing only as a staff ele due to heavy group play where I run as a full time support… now that I clarified my position in reagrd to D/D ele…

shoking aura was a bug fix… and if u think that it HELPED auramncer or D7D in general u’r wrong… there are really a few abilities that dispell boon… and ele stuck boon with easy so it wasn’t that common at all to have your shocking aura purged away… while it was pretty common to run with lot of boon duration… and support aruamancer where amazing giving up to 8 second of shoking aura to their party members… now I’m not colling it a nerf because it is a bug fix… but surely it0’s not a buff ^^

signet of air… if ele in evrey incarnation have realy few problem with movement speed… D/D is the one that have the least problem with it… being able to have perma swiftness with easy… and if u don’t know, movement buff don’t stack… so if u already have swiftness every other movement speed buff is wasted… ^^

stone splinter… the only advantage that D/D take form this increased range is for water attunement all the other skil have 300/400 range… and u don’t want to be at your range limit risking to have your target do a step back and so misisng your skill… so u will always be within 300 unless u’r kiting in water attunement spamming vapor blade.. that is the lowest dmg skill in the D/D asset ^^’

magnetic grasp… not being a leap finisher was a bug introduced with the last patch… it was so before it and now it’s back to being one… during the time from the last patch till now it also triggered combo as if it was working but only the visual and notification effect took place… no buff and no combo effect really happened… or to be more accurate they triggered 10% of the time…

pyromancer pursuit… this is probably the only buff that D/D (as well as all other ele dps build) recivied from this patch… and while it’s true that is a good buff it also was’nt selected because the actual D/D build need high point in other trait… so to take it now D/D will have to forsake other really usefull trait that boosted their survival…

All in all… not much of a buff… pyro is the only one in your list that really is a buff for D/D and as explained is more of an alternative option that a direct buff…

magnetic grasp was always a leap finisher, i dont understand what the difference between before and now.

MasterDeere.3417:

magnetic grasp was always a leap finisher, i dont understand what the difference between before and now.

it was bugged since last patch… and also not listed as a finisher in the tooltip… now the effect is back

Einherjar.6709:

So no doubt this will receive hate from some of the D/D ele crowd, but D/D was if anything fine, and in most cases a LOT more than fine, and now it’s been buffed even more.

Reading through the ele forums, there are enough people stating that they feel forced into D/D because it is overpowered and is the ‘only’ good trait setup at the moment.

So instead of making these fresh D/D ele’s learn how to play better (because admit it, a good D/D ele is an awesome force to be reckoned with), you buff the already overpowered setup. How does this make things better, for ele’s, and for profession balance in general?

Shocking Aura no longer dispellable (although it can no longer benefit from boon duration to balance it)

Signet of Air now provides 25% movement speed. D/D ele’s already have the highest mobility of any profession if they so choose (arguably tied with thief). Granted, this buff will affect all elementalists, but since keeping your distance from a D/D ele is important if you want to survive, this will make this a lot more difficult.

Stone Splinters now has ‘increased range from 300 to 600 units’, it’s description is “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target” … since when is 600 units melee range? Another good sized and unnecessary buff for D/D.

Magnetic Grasp is now a leap finisher, and therefore gives 6 seconds more of fury, swiftness, and burning damage — ontop of the 12 seconds of fury and swiftness you get from Shocking Aura (air3) and 6 seconds from Frost Aura (water4).

And Pyromancer’s Puissance. Not normally taken in a D/D trait setup, but it’s been buffed to allow for even easier might stacking.

Have patience, I love staff and I’d like to see some buffs on it, but for now I don’t mind at all to play d/d , furthermore the buff to signet of water will make many scepter/focus builds viable in my opinion, just wait and see

Disagree about the movement buff effecting D/D more than it does other elementalist options. D/D is * extremely* mobile in combat without a signet making me run ever so slightly faster. Between stun-locks and several “lunge” abilities I have a very easy time staying on something I want to kill. If I want to run away they work equally well.

If anything it evens the playing field ever so slightly for weapon options that don’t have a lot of mobility and methods of catching up to me. Only very slightly, however.

woah woah woah easy there tiger…

1. Shocking Aura – This a bug fix, it is the only Aura that was able to be dispelled. It is now in line with all Auras.

2. Stone Splinters – The vast majority of dagger main hand and off hand skills are 300 range effectively (except water 1 and fire 1/2 although in both cases if you are using it at max range it is ineffective). So not really a buff to D/D more a buff to S/D is in the majority of cases you are in or around the 600 range.

3. Signet of Air – As many have stated this is more of a global buff as it brings it in line with all speed signets once again less of a buff to d/d that is a perma swiftness setup and more a buff to S/D what had less swiftness.

4. Magnetic Grasp – Was always a leap finisher and was bugged last patch so that when the Fire Aura triggered through a field it was not effected by zephyers boon or elemental shielding. This is now fixed.

5. Pyromancer’s Puissance – Obviously you don’t play the class if you think a D/D is going 30 fire in PvP.

Stop crying and learn to play.

I don’t feel forced into D/D because its overpowered. I’m only forced into D/D because the other weapon sets are so pathetic and because my favorite pve play style doesn’t exists. After that d/d was the most fun. That being said, this isn’t much of a change to d/d. All ele wep sets can get perma swiftness, knocking out 3. Stone splinters buff is more applicable to scepter imo, although there are still better choices unless you’re speccing heavily into earth. 4 was a fix, 1 was also a fix and it was implemented before this update. 5 is the buff that works best on d/d because of its fast attacks, but not in pvp.
Really the most hate this will get is that it didn’t nerf d/d, which I’m pretty thankful for. Although I’m afraid that means the FoTM eles will stick around a bit longer.

My ele doesn’t use most of the things you listed =/ Going 30 fire seems like suicide as D/D. I run a 3 cantrip build, so no signet of air. Stone splinters seems weaker than Bountiful power still, i’d just rather go deeper into Water than 20 earth. And the shocking aura change I don’t think will do much, it’s so hard to dispell it anyway. Magnetic Grasp is nice, but that’s a bug fix not a buff.

It really seemed like they were trying to improve upon other builds, not D/D. Perhaps I’m just building my D/D in a strange manner, but she works quite well.

@Einherjar.6709 : You do not play D/D Ele do you?

- Shocking Aura : This is a nerf. (well bug fix really) Your standard D/D build has 30 in arcana: 30% boon duration. Add bonuses from runes, and we actually lost 3-4 seconds of duration of the aura. Instead now it can’t be dispelled. But most D/D build are based on boons, so you always had tons of boons on top of it so it would not have been dispelled anyway.

- Signet of Air. Is there any D/D ele using this signet? We already have so much mobility, this would be a waste of Utility skill really. (And I believe most D/D builds are based on cantrips, not signets)

- Stone Splinters: it increase the range of the effect, not the range of our skills, and we don’t have much skills with a range > 300 in D/D. (And I don’t use this anyway, but maybe some D/D do)

- Magnetic Grasp: it always have been a leap finisher… util last patch were they bugged it, so not actually an improvment, just came back to the original not bugged skill.

- Pyromancer Puissance: lol? which D/D build uses 30 points in fire? Hell which build uses even 1 point in fire?

So not much of a buff no.

Sorry, but D/D does need some work. Keep in mind there’s much more to this game than sPvP, and frankly, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired over sPvP causing balance issues in the rest of the game. No, skills are not there only for sPvP, and honestly for such a small fraction of the game world it really should be lower in the balance priority. Like, #5. After WvW, PvE, jumping puzzles and gathering nodes. Or maybe logging in skills should be above it, too.

Anyhow, D/D isn’t rosy. It’s a ton of fun, but keep in mind that you have to get close. Getting close is inherently problematic in WvW and – much more so – in PvE. In other words, yes, it needs love.

Einherjar.6709:

So no doubt this will receive hate from some of the D/D ele crowd, but D/D was if anything fine, and in most cases a LOT more than fine, and now it’s been buffed even more.

Reading through the ele forums, there are enough people stating that they feel forced into D/D because it is overpowered and is the ‘only’ good trait setup at the moment.

So instead of making these fresh D/D ele’s learn how to play better (because admit it, a good D/D ele is an awesome force to be reckoned with), you buff the already overpowered setup. How does this make things better, for ele’s, and for profession balance in general?

Shocking Aura no longer dispellable (although it can no longer benefit from boon duration to balance it)

Signet of Air now provides 25% movement speed. D/D ele’s already have the highest mobility of any profession if they so choose (arguably tied with thief). Granted, this buff will affect all elementalists, but since keeping your distance from a D/D ele is important if you want to survive, this will make this a lot more difficult.

Stone Splinters now has ‘increased range from 300 to 600 units’, it’s description is “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target” … since when is 600 units melee range? Another good sized and unnecessary buff for D/D.

Magnetic Grasp is now a leap finisher, and therefore gives 6 seconds more of fury, swiftness, and burning damage — ontop of the 12 seconds of fury and swiftness you get from Shocking Aura (air3) and 6 seconds from Frost Aura (water4).

And Pyromancer’s Puissance. Not normally taken in a D/D trait setup, but it’s been buffed to allow for even easier might stacking.

Are you serious?

No d/d ele ever used signet of air. It’s for staff users (or X/F). Why would you waste a slot for useless passive when you already have perma swiftness.

Stone Splinters isn’t a buff for d/d eles because they are in <300 range most of the time. It’s a buff for other types of eles.

Magnetic graps was always a leap finisher, it lacks tooltip only. And it gives 10/5s of buffs not 12/6. You can’t include +boon duration.

Pyromancer’s Puissance is a buff for fireballs autoattack zealots.

Excuse me? All of these changes are CLASS wide. Not to mention some are bug fixes. What high are you on?

just get off the ele boards and troll somewhere else just because you don’t know how to fight a d/d ele.

as I said many times already in other similar threads, it is not that anyone is “forced” into D/D, it’s just that they are playing S/F or Staff wrong in the twisted assumption that all the weapons serve the same purpose.
D/D is just the most obvious (heavy damage output): everyone acknowledged it and rushed to use that kind of build, whilst S/F and Staff’s purpose is more subtle and requires a different mindset.
We have yet to discover and unlock the true potential of this class, it’s not by chance that Jonathan Sharp said:

We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.

the recent buff to D/D is overall very small compared to the mastership required to take full advantage of it and I am sure in due time many players will understand the role of the others weapons and the value of D/D tradeoff which lead to these buffs.

Sorry, but what exactly is the purpose of scepter then? I understand staff is great for support, and focus is very defensive, but I don’t see much on scepter besides some conditions.

Scepter Imho is a bit useless for anything other than pve. Dragon’s tooth and water2 take way too long to proc. Earth 1 is amazing, but other than that staff is better for distance aoe and dagger just owns it in terms of damage.

Scepter is heavy hitter but it’s too slow atm. Even cc doesn’t help.

The thing is, d/d hits much heavier lol I think it needs some love on water and fire 2 in terms of hit delay (and activation speed for shatterstone).

Einherjar.6709:

Magnetic Grasp is now a leap finisher, and therefore gives 6 seconds more of fury, swiftness, and burning damage — ontop of the 12 seconds of fury and swiftness you get from Shocking Aura (air3) and 6 seconds from Frost Aura (water4).

It was a leap finisher before the patch. It just didn’t say it in the tooltip.

EDIT: Vid posted September 23 showing the combo working. See 4:11

As has been said here, nothing really but bug fixes that affect D/D setup, the buffs help other specs more.

You come across as having an agenda to get d/d nerfed, since logic isnt there. Bringing up Stone splinters really gives you away since not much in dd is 600 range.

I can only imagine the feces-storm the mesmer community will conjure up when they fix signet of illusions if shocking aura is this much of an issue. Earth 3 was intended to be a leap finisher and it functioned as such from the start; a previous update glitched it however.

This is what gets to me. I cant beat a D/D ele on ranger or warrior. Its not that tricky. There are 0 surprises. The only classes that I could even fathom now might be a tad challenging based on class alone are Mesmer and thief and that’s just due to stealth alone. D/D ele is predictable and easy to counter. I was fighting a thief and she stood up on a ridge and ranged me I didn’t die but she said this “Ohh I think i discovered DD eles range problem.” I am sorry but most players are kind of idiots and don’t realize its stupid easy to range a D/D ele. The don’t realize immobilize is the kiss of death. They just don’t get it.

Einherjar.6709:

Shocking Aura no longer dispellable (although it can no longer benefit from boon duration to balance it)

Bug fix.

Einherjar.6709:

Signet of Air now provides 25% movement speed. D/D ele’s already have the highest mobility of any profession if they so choose (arguably tied with thief). Granted, this buff will affect all elementalists, but since keeping your distance from a D/D ele is important if you want to survive, this will make this a lot more difficult.

You lose a lot of credibility right here with this one. What d/d ele’s used signet of air? There is no reason for them to take it at all. They can already keep up swiftness up without it. Equipping this on a D/D ele bar would be a dream come true as it gimps them even more (removes a cantrip from the bar)

Einherjar.6709:

Stone Splinters now has ‘increased range from 300 to 600 units’, it’s description is “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target” … since when is 600 units melee range? Another good sized and unnecessary buff for D/D.

This one surprised me. Not much to say here.

Einherjar.6709:

Magnetic Grasp is now a leap finisher, and therefore gives 6 seconds more of fury, swiftness, and burning damage — ontop of the 12 seconds of fury and swiftness you get from Shocking Aura (air3) and 6 seconds from Frost Aura (water4).

I’m 95% sure it was a leap finisher before, but just bugged and not reliable at all.

Einherjar.6709:

And Pyromancer’s Puissance. Not normally taken in a D/D trait setup, but it’s been buffed to allow for even easier might stacking.

LOL. If the previous one about Signet of Air didn’t lose your credibility, this one definitely did. It’s a 30 point grandmaster trait in a line that d/d ele’s typically skip. If they take this, they are going to be a lot easier to kill. The issue with eles right now is Fire and Air are such kitten traits compared to water, arcane, and some points in Earth. If you want other builds to become viable, you have to buff the other trait lines…

signet of air was pointless before however its the only signet that has no cast time. so now it can potentially be used in a high fire trait line and auras without feeling like a wasted slot.

5 points in air gave the same thing before it was buffed and if you were speccing for auras you surely had 10 points in air.

its a sensible change and it opens up the possibility of something other than the typical 30 water 30 arcane builds.
over all fire might be useful now.

Are there any D/D eles that use signet of air?

He mad? Oh he mad.