Guild Wars 2

If you nerf might stacks you nerf everyone who uses Might. There are a lot of group comps and other classes that also stack might so this is kinda a poor idea. Might also already has a counter with Boon Stripping. Not bringing boon stripping if you know boons are that common and powerful is kinda on you and a decision you make. It’d be like running no condition removal, and then complaining about conditions.

Celestial Amulet also has a lot of other builds, and nerfing it will just hurt those builds as well. A classic high end case is the Celestial Engie builds you see out there that are quite popular.

This really only leaves the class to go after. Elementalist as a class has nothing that’s singularly overpowering. They can nerf a heal or two, but that doesn’t really change much but make it more harder to do the same thing but the experienced players still going to pull it off. They can remove some boon generation, but then they’re directly going after the parts we get in compensation for the low HP and low Armor and people will stop playing it again until others have been nerfed down again or we’re brought back up.

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

Reduce stats on celestial amulet, it gives 30% more stats than berserker’s amulet and 37% more stats than triple-stats amulets like soldier’s or cleric’s. It’s a massive disproportion.

Kodiak.3281:

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

I really dislike that kind of solution because it would destroy Signet builds, D/F builds, D/D builds, S/F builds, and S/D builds that are running signets as the core survivability mechanic with elemental shielding for the sake of nerfing the D/D cele build.

Lawful.5314:

I really dislike that kind of solution because it would destroy Signet builds, D/F builds, D/D builds, S/F builds, and S/D builds that are running signets as the core survivability mechanic with elemental shielding for the sake of nerfing the D/D cele build.

First of all, it’s an example solution. Any variety of changes can be made. However since healing has pretty much been gutted and overnerfed many times over the only alternative route they feasibly have to explore is going after our boon generation. Wouldn’t be hard for them to reduce our total number of sources of boons while increasing the duration of other sources of boons since combined together that means we get the same amount of boon coverage only with fewer sources making us even more suceptible to boon strip. Boon Strip just isn’t effective if you clear Regen off only to have an Ele reapply it again one second later.

Second of all, any kind of nerf or solution would hurt. Duh. Eles are a huge tangled mess and honestly this is the only kind of solution that doesn’t have far game impacting issues for not only our class but every other class as well. As others have pointed out, it’s only an issue with the Ele. That means the only kind of solution is going to be Ele based.

Kodiak.3281:

First of all, it’s an example solution. Any variety of changes can be made. However since healing has pretty much been gutted and overnerfed many times over the only alternative route they feasibly have to explore is going after our boon generation. Wouldn’t be hard for them to reduce our total number of sources of boons while increasing the duration of other sources of boons since combined together that means we get the same amount of boon coverage only with fewer sources making us even more suceptible to boon strip. Boon Strip just isn’t effective if you clear Regen off only to have an Ele reapply it again one second later.

Second of all, any kind of nerf or solution would hurt. Duh. Eles are a huge tangled mess and honestly this is the only kind of solution that doesn’t have far game impacting issues for not only our class but every other class as well. As others have pointed out, it’s only an issue with the Ele. That means the only kind of solution is going to be Ele based.

Funny thing is, there is no problem with the ele class at the moment, i would even go as far as saying that we need some work here and there , buffing the class, not nerfing it even further.

I by no means am an expert on all of the professions, but having played from beta I can only really gather one thing:

The issue with the elementalist balancing is the line between garbage and godhood is very thin and so the changes tend to hokey-pokey elementalist in elementalist out.

Bran.7425:

I by no means am an expert on all of the professions, but having played from beta I can only really gather one thing:

The issue with the elementalist balancing is the line between garbage and godhood is very thin and so the changes tend to hokey-pokey elementalist in elementalist out.

That’s because ele is only really good as bunker, you nerf the bunker option and you can delete the class

Supreme.3164:

Bran.7425:

I by no means am an expert on all of the professions, but having played from beta I can only really gather one thing:

The issue with the elementalist balancing is the line between garbage and godhood is very thin and so the changes tend to hokey-pokey elementalist in elementalist out.

That’s because ele is only really good as bunker, you nerf the bunker option and you can delete the class

Well that’s only because Anet insists on making water & arcane traits OP while making sure than all other trait lines are worthless

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Supreme.3164:

Bran.7425:

I by no means am an expert on all of the professions, but having played from beta I can only really gather one thing:

The issue with the elementalist balancing is the line between garbage and godhood is very thin and so the changes tend to hokey-pokey elementalist in elementalist out.

That’s because ele is only really good as bunker, you nerf the bunker option and you can delete the class

Well that’s only because Anet insists on making water & arcane traits OP while making sure than all other trait lines are worthless

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

I have to agree, the innate survivability of elementalist is just bad. That’s why every viable build puts point into water and arcane to boost that up. Maybe elemental attunement is slightly OP but only the earth component (the water one only when synergise with cleansing water).

Before cleansing ire was introduced, warriors had the same issue, regardless of their hp/armour – they were eaten by condis. Once this trait was added, every single viable build uses it.

Since anet doesn’t want to increase the base survivability of ele, it will be nerfed once again to the trash tier level unless maybe the specialisation would help in this matter.

Kodiak.3281:

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

Nerfing self-survival in a starved class isn’t really the answer, imo. They need to make self-survival traits easier to get, but reduce the capability to support other players as easily. If you nerf d/d ele so its no longer a great duelist, the class becomes basically unviable (see: pre 4/15 situation). Decoupling the self-survival and support capabilities makes eles less inherently stack-able, so they aren’t “great in 1v1’s and very good in teamfights” in all the same build.

My proposal:
-All eles get boons from ele attunement at 1/2 current duration, baseline
-Elemental attunement is split between 2 traits: one that doubles the baseline duration (to current duration) at adept-level and one that makes them aoe (at master-level)
-Renewing stamina is moved to the air line at adept. CD is increased to 10s icd.
-The 1-point air minor now gives 50% endurance regen while attuned to air. (This is an actually useful minor in air, and makes the vigor nerf not hurt as much for burst builds).

rotten.9753:

Since anet doesn’t want to increase the base survivability of ele, it will be nerfed once again to the trash tier level unless maybe the specialisation would help in this matter.

I HIGHLY doubt the new specialization will be pvp-viable. I believe specializations will give you new skills and a trait-line but lock you out of your professions-specific trait-line. For ele in pvp, who is balanced around all having some of the incredibly OP traits in arcana, not having access to that trait line (and thus renewing stamina and elemental attunement) is simply unviable. The only way this can work is if they change the class so its not balanced around 100% of pvp-viable specs going so deep into arcana.

BlackBeard.2873:

-Renewing stamina is moved to the air line at adept. CD is increased to 10s icd.

Mesmer’s and guardian’s vigour trait is still minor trait.

I HIGHLY doubt the new specialization will be pvp-viable. I believe specializations will give you new skills and a trait-line but lock you out of your professions-specific trait-line. For ele in pvp, who is balanced around all having some of the incredibly OP traits in arcana, not having access to that trait line (and thus renewing stamina and elemental attunement) is simply unviable. The only way this can work is if they change the class so its not balanced around 100% of pvp-viable specs going so deep into arcana.

I’m not sure that locking the last trait line was confirmed. But I’m highly sceptical about the viability of the new specialisation.

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

The class does not get its survivability from passive attributes. That’s given.
This is also the case for thieves and mesmers. Thieves have invisibility and big damage; mesmers have decoys, controls, and big damage. I would say that the survivability of these classes is more in-built than ours (auras, control, heals).

Now we boost our sustain to high levels by traiting heavility in water and arcane. These traits are honestly OP compared to most other classes. Not all of them, but some, like Healing Ripple, Soothing Mist, Arcane Fury, Elemental Attunement, and Evasive Arcana. These traits are OP, but this is not a problem because we need OP traits to compensate for the overall weakness of our skills.

Fire, earth and air traits are more in line with the traits of other classes. Therefore they really pale in comparison to water and arcane.

For example, we can trait in air (S/F) to gain damage comparable to that of thieves, but that leaves all our survivability to in-built tools, which are lackluster.

Fire, air and earth need to give us survivability tools that are as OP easy to use as water & arcane. Blinding Ashes is a step in the right direction, bu the devs insist on crippling it with an overall instead of a per-target ICD, thereby making it not OP unreliable and therefore useless. I am giving this example because the devs need to understand that it takes already enough attention to use all our skills right, so we do not need to spend more attention on using our traits right. A trait like Blinding Ashes is just incongruous. If you look further you will find no other trait outside of water & arcane that give us meaningful survivability tools (seriously move Burning Fire to adept!). Some of them would be desirable, but they always lack the synergy that water & arcane provide.

The alternative is to give us damaging potential in fire & air (& earth). By damaging I mean more damaging than thieves, in order to compensate for our poor in-built defensive tools.

And finally, if you just look at traits outside of water & arcane you really start to think that the devs did not want us to put points there: Flame Barrier, Sunspot, Conjurer, all Alacrity traits, One with Fire, Zephyr’s Speed, Zephyr’s Focus, Soothing Winds, Earthen Blast, Obsidian Focus, are all complete jokes.

Is Furious Grip OP?

rotten.9753:

Is Furious Grip OP?

Nope.

In theory 9s of fury with a trigger mechanic that has a 10s cd is quite good for a master trait (although weapon swapping is mechanically inferior to attunement swapping). But in practice this trait gives 5s of fury apparently?

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

The class does not get its survivability from passive attributes. That’s given.
This is also the case for thieves and mesmers. Thieves have invisibility and big damage; mesmers have decoys, controls, and big damage. I would say that the survivability of these classes is more in-built than ours (auras, control, heals).

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Nope.

In theory 9s of fury with a trigger mechanic that has a 10s cd is quite good for a master trait (although weapon swapping is mechanically inferior to attunement swapping). But in practice this trait gives 5s of fury apparently?

It’s also not affected by chill.

Lawful.5314:

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Please don’t include lingering elements.

rotten.9753:

Lawful.5314:

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Please don’t include lingering elements.

Have to, it includes some buffs that carry over with the trait, like soothing mist, stone flesh, ect.

Lawful.5314:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

The class does not get its survivability from passive attributes. That’s given.
This is also the case for thieves and mesmers. Thieves have invisibility and big damage; mesmers have decoys, controls, and big damage. I would say that the survivability of these classes is more in-built than ours (auras, control, heals).

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Allow me to make it more clear:
In-built defensive tools =weapon skills that heal, auras, skills that control etc
Traits = not in-built

BlackBeard.2873:

Kodiak.3281:

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

Nerfing self-survival in a starved class isn’t really the answer, imo. They need to make self-survival traits easier to get, but reduce the capability to support other players as easily. If you nerf d/d ele so its no longer a great duelist, the class becomes basically unviable (see: pre 4/15 situation). Decoupling the self-survival and support capabilities makes eles less inherently stack-able, so they aren’t “great in 1v1’s and very good in teamfights” in all the same build.

But that’s just it, you really aren’t nerfing self survival because the total durations in which the boons last remain the same in total. In some ways this condenses game play since certain sources of boons would be higher and more useful without as many button presses. All it does is leave the class more vulnerable to boon strip which is uncommon at best. This gives Arena Net a stance they can reasonably take, “We made Elementalist more vulnerable to boon strip, to counter them use boon strip.” without gutting the Elementalist class’ survivability since the same amount of survivability still exists only in longer duration, less quantity of boons.

Again this is ONLY if they actually are going to do something. I still don’t think they should. As I said earlier in this thread, none of us Elementalists are realistically going to suggest they do anything because we all universally agree that Elementalist is already weak enough with no HP or Armor. Nerfing might is bad. Nerfing Cele amulet is bad. Nerfing Elementalist is bad. We’re all the choir and we’re all preaching to each other. HOWEVER if they are really stuck on doing something, making us more vulnerable to boon strip is probably the least damaging way to do it.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

The class does not get its survivability from passive attributes. That’s given.
This is also the case for thieves and mesmers. Thieves have invisibility and big damage; mesmers have decoys, controls, and big damage. I would say that the survivability of these classes is more in-built than ours (auras, control, heals).

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Allow me to make it more clear:
In-built defensive tools =weapon skills that heal, auras, skills that control etc
Traits = not in-built

Oh okay sorry then, i probably missunderstood or didn’t read your post carefully to get the essence.

Kodiak.3281:

BlackBeard.2873:

Kodiak.3281:

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

Nerfing self-survival in a starved class isn’t really the answer, imo. They need to make self-survival traits easier to get, but reduce the capability to support other players as easily. If you nerf d/d ele so its no longer a great duelist, the class becomes basically unviable (see: pre 4/15 situation). Decoupling the self-survival and support capabilities makes eles less inherently stack-able, so they aren’t “great in 1v1’s and very good in teamfights” in all the same build.

But that’s just it, you really aren’t nerfing self survival because the total durations in which the boons last remain the same in total. In some ways this condenses game play since certain sources of boons would be higher and more useful without as many button presses. All it does is leave the class more vulnerable to boon strip which is uncommon at best. This gives Arena Net a stance they can reasonably take, “We made Elementalist more vulnerable to boon strip, to counter them use boon strip.” without gutting the Elementalist class’ survivability since the same amount of survivability still exists only in longer duration, less quantity of boons.

Again this is ONLY if they actually are going to do something. I still don’t think they should. As I said earlier in this thread, none of us Elementalists are realistically going to suggest they do anything because we all universally agree that Elementalist is already weak enough with no HP or Armor. Nerfing might is bad. Nerfing Cele amulet is bad. Nerfing Elementalist is bad. We’re all the choir and we’re all preaching to each other. HOWEVER if they are really stuck on doing something, making us more vulnerable to boon strip is probably the least damaging way to do it.

So basically what you mean is, remove some boons from things like shielding elements, but increase duration on other sources for that boon like swapping to earth or something? I mean i could work with that, if that means that boon stripping is just going to be more permament but some suggestions in this thread just really rustle my jimmies. Coming from people that have literally no idea what they are talking about

Because if some changes suggested in this thread get taken seriously, it will potentially ruin the class in general and make it the 2013 year counterpart, which would mean that i would lose the ability to play the class i enjoy most in this game competitively, and we all know that playing a weak class, is never fun, with all the frustration and grieving that comes with it.

So if some of these changes do come in fruition, i will probably either end up either playing another class, or quitting GW2 entirely again for half a year-year, because that is how long it usually takes Anet to wake up and rebalance the classes, while letting players suffer for that entire period because of some willy-nilly porrly thought-out suggestions.

Lawful.5314:

So if some of these changes do come in fruition, i will probably either end up either playing another class, or quitting GW2 entirely again for half a year-year, because that is how long it usually takes Anet to wake up and rebalance the classes, while letting players suffer for that entire period because of some willy-nilly porrly thought-out suggestions.

I’m one class away from full level 80s and got the Revenant instant 80 plan ready to go as well like most people. Never know what could happen specialization wise. Another class could end up with some kinda specialization and that could look more appealing.

Also remember that each class is going to be getting a balance pass coming up with HOT as well for the default class. They could (and most likely will) do most of the re-balancing then. This could mean we’d end up with newer boons like Resistance in place of some of our existing boons like Protection and such. Lots of possibilities.

I don’t think it needs to be nerfed at all. It’s not like everyone on sPvP team plays a D/D elementalist. Everyone at the world tournament had one on their team, but they were all a mix of dunker and dps builds from different classes.

It’s just the nature of the conquest maps. It’s all about maintaining control over a point which is what D/D bunkers excel at. They have great mobility which is crucial for moving around between the 3 points and they can brawl pretty well which is important since you will be left defending your point for some amount of time before your support can arrive.

This is why they get chosen over staff bunkers, because staff doesn’t have quite the same mobility and they don’t work as well 1v1, since staff has a strong imbalance of fields to combo finishers and their aoe attacks are easier to dodge. Now, take a different PvP scenario like a WvW zerg where there is a large number of people grouped together and little 1v1 fighting and nearly everyone rolls staff, either using a dps build or a bunker build using the same trait setup as d/d.

I imagine with the addition of stronghold maps, a whole different set of builds will become the new meta based on the need for people to fill different roles in order to win.

I just want to point that ele has no stronger spec, ele = celestial,if every class was restricted to 1 build ele would get celestial thus why it should work best for them. They might buff boon removal with HoT…

Sagat.3285:

They might buff boon removal with HoT…

The boon strip and boon hate pain-train is most definately coming. Revenant seems to be built as a counter-class to eles (especially with Malyx form) in that they can constantly pulse loads of condis (so ele cleanses aren’t as strong) and strip boons at a very high rate (~2 every 5s, meaning strip boons after earth swap will be a winning strat).

In that light, any and all balancing discussions are probably moot unless you are talking about problems core to the class (reliance on arcana/water to get any survival capability, which kills any and all build diversity).