Guild Wars 2

Everyone knows that for the most part eles are completely unviable right now. I think a lot of this has to do with our weapon cooldowns. I know some of you are thinking, but that’s why we have twenty skills. However all the other classes have burst, mobility, and cc skills far below our current cooldowns. I think reducing these could bring back the ele as well as making newer builds possible

I share the sentiment but traits are also part of the problem.

Other popular builds on different professions always feature cd reduction.

1. Healway guardian – reduces gs cd’s

2. HGH engineer – reduces rifles/pistols cd’s

3. D/x thief – reduces dagger cd’s

4. Condi necromancer – reduces staff cd’s

5. Roaming ranger – reduces gs/longbow/shortbow cd’s

6. Shatter mesmer – reduces staff/sword/pistol cd’s

7. 100b warrior – reduces gs cd’s

And on and on and on…. Now look at elementalists.

1. Auramancer ele – nothing

2. Bunker ele – nothing

3. Condimentalist – nothing

4. Staff ele – NOTHING

It’s because we have to spec into not one, not two, but FOUR traits, one for each attunement (all of which are MASTER traits, except for water as it is an adept trait) if we want cdr across the board.

For added insult to injury, we have skills that have twice as much cd compared to other professions and we can’t even use the cdr traits to mitigate that.

What annoys me the most though is the cooldown of churning earth and fire grab. It’s ridiculous.

Rskin.4901:

What annoys me the most though is the cooldown of churning earth and fire grab. It’s ridiculous.

What annoys me the most is that the cool down on Fire Shield (focus if you didn’t know) is the same as the cool down on Frosty Aura. I don’t know if you know this or not but the frosty aura is pow(10,1 million); times better then the fire shield. 10% damage reduction, applies chill when a foe attacks vs 3x 1 sec burn and 3x might.

Rskin.4901:

What annoys me the most though is the cooldown of churning earth and fire grab. It’s ridiculous.

Churning is only a 30 second CD for a huge kaboom aoe skill. If they reduced the cast time by a second or something we would have a skill that wasn’t quite so useless in fast-paced combat.

TGSlasher.1458:

What annoys me the most is that the cool down on Fire Shield (focus if you didn’t know) is the same as the cool down on Frosty Aura. I don’t know if you know this or not but the frosty aura is pow(10,1 million); times better then the fire shield. 10% damage reduction, applies chill when a foe attacks vs 3x 1 sec burn and 3x might.

What annoys me is that they put Fire Shield on focus without giving it some secondary effect that’s exclusive to the elementalist. You can get the aura twice before your focus skill recharges just by using Magnetic Grasp through your Burning Speed field.

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

Azunai.5974:

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

“Your dagger skills recharge 10% faster across all attunements.”

Leaves room for the element specific ones to be reduced to 10-15% and have additional effects added.

Azunai.5974:

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

Nice thought, but what tree would it go into? Arcane … forces us down there further.
Fire? Not many use it.
Air? Good for GC but not bunker.
Water? Good for bunker but not GC
Earth? Similar to fire

TGSlasher.1458:

Nice thought, but what tree would it go into? Arcane … forces us down there further.
Fire? Not many use it.
Air? Good for GC but not bunker.
Water? Good for bunker but not GC
Earth? Similar to fire

Keep a global CD trait in Arcana, but split a full recharge bonus between Arcana and respective elements. Remove Evasive Arcana and split into minor or master traits across the attunements for different dodges. Set element CD to 9.5/10 seconds and change investment bonus for Arcana investment.

This is of course assuming that kind of trait existed in the Arcana line. I’m not sure if I want that though, because it would still pressure people too much into speccing high in Arcana with the other good traits that are available there.

Instead of a trait that targets a weapo set’s cd, just have one trait in the arcana tree that reduces cd for ALL weapon sets. (excluding conjures).

The above post already explains the rest of my thoughts.

I counter skill cool-downs by using a conjured weapon or two. Instant 5 new weapon skills to use, during which time your attunements are still cooling down anyway.

Don’t like the current conjured weapon skills? Drop it – instant access to 5 new skills. Most cases you can even get the conjured weapon skills back again just by picking up the 2nd spawn.

All our alacrity traits are complete rubbish.

Zelyhn.8069:

All our alacrity traits are complete rubbish.

Air is easily the best one, but that’s only because air provides the CC we desperately need, meaning the skill pretty much applies to Shocking Aura, Updraft, Gale, and Static field. Everything else (not including RtL which got its recharge nerfed to oblivion because nobody could “catch up” to us) doesn’t need it.

Leuca.5732:

Zelyhn.8069:

All our alacrity traits are complete rubbish.

Air is easily the best one, but that’s only because air provides the CC we desperately need, meaning the skill pretty much applies to Shocking Aura, Updraft, Gale, and Static field. Everything else (not including RtL which got its recharge nerfed to oblivion because nobody could “catch up” to us) doesn’t need it.

Yeah while now warriors with greatswords and main hand sword and mesmers with blink and others, thiefs nfiltrator’s Arrow can run like anyting because they have short cooldowns, I find it an hypocrisy nerfeing the elementalist for reason of being too powerfull when other classes can have the same jump away tactics with shorter recharge, hell this brings back “Smiter’s Boon” to mind, got nerfed into a real oblivion in pvp all due to ONE build. And now gw1 wont even have its must needed classes update. Breaks my heart seeing the games broked down like this.

I personally think most CD’s are in a good place in terms of design. Big effects with big cooldowns promotes skilled play over spamming. Fire shield needs to be fixed however, as does focus 4 in water (its just a chill, no aoe or anything). Also, RtL needs to be reverted by a LOT.

What we really need are better auto-attacks to go along with our high-cooldown skill-shots so that we can use them at the right time (make sure firegrab won’t be dodged, using CE only when you can LoS and Lightning flash). Alacrity skills also need to do more, perhaps 33% reduction of attunement with a 20% increase in recharge rate of that attunement.

BlackBeard.2873:

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I personally think most CD’s are in a good place in terms of design. Big effects with big cooldowns promotes skilled play over spamming. Fire shield needs to be fixed however, as does focus 4 in water (its just a chill, no aoe or anything). Also, RtL needs to be reverted by a LOT.

What we really need are better auto-attacks to go along with our high-cooldown skill-shots so that we can use them at the right time (make sure firegrab won’t be dodged, using CE only when you can LoS and Lightning flash). Alacrity skills also need to do more, perhaps 33% reduction of attunement with a 20% increase in recharge rate of that attunement.

Plenty of professions have big effects with relatively low cooldowns that haven’t been adjusted as the skills have gotten stronger. The elementalist is fairly alone in this regard.

Difference with CE cast time & the so called great damage akittens hit, is that anyone can interrupt that &/or every other class can out do that damage in much less time.

The CDs for the Ele are “balanced” to “encourage” you to constantly swap attunements and use skills in other elements. If you really examine all 20 skills you have with a weapon loadout, you will see the majority of them are mirrors of each other. You could easily bring the skills of the class in line with the skills of other classes, eliminate all the needless filler, end up with just 5 skills, and still be as effective as you are with your current 20.

I think our CD are unnecessarily long so they should be reduce for no reason other than they are too long.

Get rid of the “alacrity” traits and combining them with other grandmaster traits. So if you are willing to go that far into a trait you should be rewarded with skill cd reduction for that attunement. This should come with the global CD reduction because our skills have usually long CD.

All our cantrip skills should have a minimum CD of 40-45 BEFORE 20% cantrip reduction. Our aura skills should block damage AND be on a maximum of 20 second timer + they should be spread out and amount different weapons and remake the kittenty skills on the focus.

Also Bring back fire storm from guild wars 1 and reintroduce exhausion if they are afraid of high damage spam. Just copy some guild wars 1 elementalist skills and slap on the focus and call it a day.

TGSlasher.1458:

Azunai.5974:

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

Nice thought, but what tree would it go into? Arcane … forces us down there further.
Fire? Not many use it.
Air? Good for GC but not bunker.
Water? Good for bunker but not GC
Earth? Similar to fire

You can’t eat your cake and have it. Either you put the CD reduction trait in arcana (and pidgeonhole eles further), or put it in a specialized tree. Most other professions have their CD reduction in trees not suited for all build, if you really want to go their way you have to suffer the drawbacks too. Plus, it would be the occasion to make people take more of those unused line (like fire).

JanNier Kryn Yaren.7968:

Yeah while now warriors with greatswords and main hand sword and mesmers with blink and others, thiefs nfiltrator’s Arrow can run like anyting because they have short cooldowns, I find it an hypocrisy nerfeing the elementalist for reason of being too powerfull when other classes can have the same jump away tactics with shorter recharge, hell this brings back “Smiter’s Boon” to mind, got nerfed into a real oblivion in pvp all due to ONE build. And now gw1 wont even have its must needed classes update. Breaks my heart seeing the games broked down like this.

Don’t get too hasty. Mesmers have virtually no swiftness and no passive speed boost. Blink is good, sure, but even with it elementalist travel more quickly. Way more.

Leuca.5732:

Plenty of professions have big effects with relatively low cooldowns that haven’t been adjusted as the skills have gotten stronger. The elementalist is fairly alone in this regard.

Say hello to the mesmer, and its streak of 10 months of constant nerfs. Elem isn’t alone
And don’t forget ele still have some sick skills too. Magnetic pulse (earth focus #4) clean conditions, blast finisher, reflect projectiles and deal aoe damages on a 30s CD, traitable at 24. Sick. But the problem with ele isn’t as much individual skills as synergies (focus is quite meh as a whole, despite magnetic pulse and swirling winds).
With 20 weapon skills, some are totally underwhelming, and some are very good. Before tweaking the traits, I would advocate making all weapons skills worthwhile, then balance around them.

Elidath.5679:

TGSlasher.1458:

Azunai.5974:

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

Nice thought, but what tree would it go into? Arcane … forces us down there further.
Fire? Not many use it.
Air? Good for GC but not bunker.
Water? Good for bunker but not GC
Earth? Similar to fire

You can’t eat your cake and have it. Either you put the CD reduction trait in arcana (and pidgeonhole eles further), or put it in a specialized tree. Most other professions have their CD reduction in trees not suited for all build, if you really want to go their way you have to suffer the drawbacks too. Plus, it would be the occasion to make people take more of those unused line (like fire).

JanNier Kryn Yaren.7968:

Yeah while now warriors with greatswords and main hand sword and mesmers with blink and others, thiefs nfiltrator’s Arrow can run like anyting because they have short cooldowns, I find it an hypocrisy nerfeing the elementalist for reason of being too powerfull when other classes can have the same jump away tactics with shorter recharge, hell this brings back “Smiter’s Boon” to mind, got nerfed into a real oblivion in pvp all due to ONE build. And now gw1 wont even have its must needed classes update. Breaks my heart seeing the games broked down like this.

Don’t get too hasty. Mesmers have virtually no swiftness and no passive speed boost. Blink is good, sure, but even with it elementalist travel more quickly. Way more.

Leuca.5732:

Plenty of professions have big effects with relatively low cooldowns that haven’t been adjusted as the skills have gotten stronger. The elementalist is fairly alone in this regard.

Say hello to the mesmer, and its streak of 10 months of constant nerfs. Elem isn’t alone
And don’t forget ele still have some sick skills too. Magnetic pulse (earth focus #4) clean conditions, blast finisher, reflect projectiles and deal aoe damages on a 30s CD, traitable at 24. Sick. But the problem with ele isn’t as much individual skills as synergies (focus is quite meh as a whole, despite magnetic pulse and swirling winds).
With 20 weapon skills, some are totally underwhelming, and some are very good. Before tweaking the traits, I would advocate making all weapons skills worthwhile, then balance around them.

Except that mesmer WAS OP. A nerf is not really a nerf IF the class being nerf was OP. Nerfing an OP class simply amounts to making it equal to everyone else. The mesmer for the first time ever is a victim of not being part of the CURRENT meta, a meta that will change after the PAX tournament, that is it.

The situation the elementalist has is far more dire. And just for the record the elementalist have receive far more nerfs than any class in this game. WE got nerf after the first beta and we have been continously nerf since then. The only buff we have receive was being given a mediocre trait called “fresh air” WHICH only works for 1 weapon set or at least is only effective on 1 weapon set.

Air fresh is giving a homeless guy food and calling it a day. It was a nice thing, but it doesn’t solve his current homeless issues or cover the next day.

So give him some more food the next day too. If you gave him a life time’s supply of food all at once, it would be a waste since he would have no place to store it, and it would just end up spoiling.

Solkard.5136:

So give him some more food the next day too. If you gave him a life time’s supply of food all at once, it would be a waste since he would have no place to store it, and it would just end up spoiling.

Assuming I am walking in the same area, which in my example I wouldn’t be. Also what happens when I am not around to give him food the next day? I am not saying you shouldn’t give him food and I am saying it will be better to fix the reason he is homeless so I don’t have to constantly give him food or worry about it.

Leuca.5732:

Plenty of professions have big effects with relatively low cooldowns that haven’t been adjusted as the skills have gotten stronger. The elementalist is fairly alone in this regard.

I would argue that it is more “correct” with the elementalist, and other professions should be toned done as opposed to buffing us too much in that regard. The classes that don’t have proper cooldowns are the ones that just spam skills around (engie nades, necro staff, thief evade spam b/c init regen too high, ranger evade spam, phantasm spam, warrior stun-spam), which is mindless play. They should make their “important” skills either harder to land or hit for less.

One thing to note is that our “heavy-hitters” are penalized for being aoe, which I feel is an unfair penalty in a lot of cases. With staff, sure you can hit 5 targets from range in wvw. With churning earth, if you actually land on 5 targets, you are probably dead. It should be balanced around a max of 2-3 targets (in pvp situations).

Elidath.5679:

Say hello to the mesmer, and its streak of 10 months of constant nerfs. Elem isn’t alone
And don’t forget ele still have some sick skills too. Magnetic pulse (earth focus #4) clean conditions, blast finisher, reflect projectiles and deal aoe damages on a 30s CD, traitable at 24. Sick. But the problem with ele isn’t as much individual skills as synergies (focus is quite meh as a whole, despite magnetic pulse and swirling winds).
With 20 weapon skills, some are totally underwhelming, and some are very good. Before tweaking the traits, I would advocate making all weapons skills worthwhile, then balance around them.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was referring to skills that were buffed on other professions without any sort of CD adjustment. I guess we miss each other on this sub-forum a lot, because I’m a frequent poster in threads that discuss how to fix weapon sets for the ele, since I’m a firm believer that weapons in this game should be self-sufficient before traits are introduced.

Also, the funny thing is that mesmers in general are stronger than eles now. They have much more variety when it comes to choosing traits and weapons, greater access to conditions in a condi meta, as well as a greater number of ways to provide team utility. Their burst is pretty fast and effective without blowing 3 utilities and all survivability and staff is still an absurdly powerful defensive tool with a pseudo stun-break every 6-8 seconds.

I believe it ‘s not the CD-Times but the way our AoE does damage right now as well the size of our AoE fields when traited for it. I don’t expect a clothwearer to skimp around with high mobility skills bursting down everyone like they’re are a Thief while having Invulnerability and Protection on hand as well.

I have ever since release loved the Staff, coming back from a bigger Timeout on my Ele I see that Meteor Shower, our Main AoE for Staff, is really unreliable and slow now (Meteors need to “hit” now , are generally slower and hit less often then before). In terms of it we didn’t get any great Buffs to our other Staff skills (or did we?).

Ah yes and then the crazy Trait changes, only because there were some people abusing/overusing certain mechanics and builds to come out on top. Some people don’t get an Elementalist shouldn’t be like an Thief that bursts an unreal amount of Damage up close in addition to having Invulnerability and Protection skills at hand. It feels so sluggish now for many builds that weren’t unbalanced before, and limits me to less options. But oh well, maybe thats just my feelings compared to what it was before.

I believe the Trait changes were the worst part of it all it feels like in a Beta state now compared to before. I believe it ’s both the Whiners and the Class Abusers fault for that one to happen and hope we see some proper buffs for Staff users soon not buffing the other Weapon abilities aswell (as they are perfectly fine and buffing them would only ask for more overall nerfs incoming as well).

imaginary.6241:

I believe the Trait changes were the worst part of it all it feels like in a Beta state now compared to before. I believe it ’s both the Whiners and the Class Abusers fault for that one to happen and hope we see some proper buffs for Staff users soon not buffing the other Weapon abilities aswell (as they are perfectly fine and buffing them would only ask for more overall nerfs incoming as well).

Sorry bob, but your are blaming the wrong people. Ultimately, it is the developer’s job to make a decent class and in the case of the elementalist they kittened up royally. As long as it is in the game and not an exploit it’s fair game.

Anyone who bothers to complain for the class obviously loves it. Why would anyone bother protesting about something they don’t give a kitten about?

@silvermember.8941:

Errr wait? You played your Ele since 2005? Give me your Time Machine, man. It want it for other purposes then bragging about my skill raising with the amount of time lapsed …

Oh wait? You ’re talking about GW1? Good job, comparing an Apple to an Egg. No offense but your so unfriendly right now you deserved that comment.

Also that sentence makes me want to smack your virtual face (your Eles face, that is):

As long as it is in the game and not an exploit it’s fair game.

That sentence is part of reason this and many other game stumbles. And i just hope you fall to that truth even ONCE and get punished by AreaNet for it. So you’re saying all those people that Exploit-Farmed in Gendaran at Headstart, or the People abusing the Mystic Forge to generate a High amount of Precursors (which still dominate the high price of the market up to now, as they never were removed as they couldn’t be really distinguished) is entire valid and fair for everyone? KITTEN YOU I SAID!

Edit: Seems like you deleted your last post, bragging about how you played your Ele since 2005. Nvm. I won’t delete mine.

Calm down, children. This is a thread for discussion, not bickering.

He was talking about how he’s played an Ele since 2005, probably in reference to GW1.

It’s a mix of bad traits (only really desirable traits are in arcana and water), the need to go 20+ in arcana for attunement swapping to be anything but painful, the extreme cooldowns on all ele skills, and the animation/aftercast times.

As things stand right now, if you let any ele skill hit you (other than the lightning strike on attuning to air, and staff air 2) you’re bad, and should feel bad.

To “fix” the ele, you have to:

1) Bump up the base HP. Seriously – gaurdians get heavy armor to offset their low HP, + perma vigor and massive healing. (I say guardian is the only balanced class atm) Thieves also have the low HP – but they are so unbalanced they shouldn’t enter the calculation. The ability to reset any fight at whim means their HP is meaningless in the first place.

2) Lower the attunement cooldown before the arcana calculation. Again, this is probably 50-60% of why people trait 30 arcana – the other part being evasive arcana. The default cooldown is far too long. Untraited, it should be 10 seconds, and at max arcana, it should be 7. This would allow for a lot more build diversity on it’s own (even if alone this would just get us x/x/x/30/x builds)

3) Adjust the traits in fire/earth to as useful as the water/arcana trees. This would require making all the fire traits that only affect you while attuned to fire more universal, and probably breaking up the cantrip traits, so they’re not all in water.

4) Reduce the animation times, cast times, aftercast or cooldown on most of the ele weapon skills – preferably all 4. Like I said above, if you’re being hit by any ele skill other than the 2 inta-casts, you’re bad, and should feel bad.

5) Take a good look at the ele utilities, and buff as needed. Cantrips are good – too good, which is how we got where we are. Signets are pure meh – not actually bad, but certainly not good. Glyphs are terrabad, outside of the healing and (occasionally) glyph of storms in earth. The conjure weapons are lolwut bad – other than the ultra-niche lightning hammer. (FGS is good, but it’s also the only useful ele elite).

6) I’m sure I’m missing something – but in their current state, ele’s are one of the two weakest classes in the game (ranger and the uber-useless pet mehcanic say hi!") There is literally nothing an ele can do that can’t be done far better by another class, without the pitfalls of playing elementalist. Ranger has the same issue, for slightly different reasons. (craptastic pet mechanic, kitten damage to offset the pet, minimal group utility… yeah. That’s for a different thread though)

silvermember.8941:

Except that mesmer WAS OP. A nerf is not really a nerf IF the class being nerf was OP. Nerfing an OP class simply amounts to making it equal to everyone else. The mesmer for the first time ever is a victim of not being part of the CURRENT meta, a meta that will change after the PAX tournament, that is it.

Two things:
1) a nerf is a nerf. It might be deserved, but it doesn’t make it less of a nerf.
2) I was commenting on a point I misunderstood from Leuca, which he clarified later, so that became obsolete and can be ignored safely

silvermember.8941:

The situation the elementalist has is far more dire. And just for the record the elementalist have receive far more nerfs than any class in this game. WE got nerf after the first beta and we have been continously nerf since then. The only buff we have receive was being given a mediocre trait called “fresh air” WHICH only works for 1 weapon set or at least is only effective on 1 weapon set.

I wouldn’t say eles got “far more” nerf than mesmer, and ele too was called op in it’s time (not taking side here). But it doesn’t relate to the topic: whatever buff/nerf happened, the current state is a fact, and it’s what needs to be changed (because, yes, here I’m taking side: ele feels really UP in PvP).

Leuca.5732:

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

Indeed, and I wholeheartdely agree with you in this light

Leuca.5732:

Also, the funny thing is that mesmers in general are stronger than eles now. They have much more variety when it comes to choosing traits and weapons, greater access to conditions in a condi meta, as well as a greater number of ways to provide team utility. Their burst is pretty fast and effective without blowing 3 utilities and all survivability and staff is still an absurdly powerful defensive tool with a pseudo stun-break every 6-8 seconds.

I think you overestimate a bit some things. Mesmer access to condition is better to only the ele one, the “fast and efficient burst” require to blow a lot of things (mirror image (and lose this stunbreak btw), a dodge, the so-cool staff pseudo stunbreak, plus another clone-generating skill of your choice). You could say it doesn’t matter much, but misconceptions won’t help balance (I personnally think it’s what killed ele in the first place).
The problem with mesmer is mainly it’s condition defence, and it’s why it should go up in the chart when the meta calm down. Condition defence is about the only thing the ele get right in this meta, so I don’t really expect it to get better

TL;DR: Leuca mostly got me covered, ignore me :P

Elidath.5679:

silvermember.8941:

Except that mesmer WAS OP. A nerf is not really a nerf IF the class being nerf was OP. Nerfing an OP class simply amounts to making it equal to everyone else. The mesmer for the first time ever is a victim of not being part of the CURRENT meta, a meta that will change after the PAX tournament, that is it.

Two things:
1) a nerf is a nerf. It might be deserved, but it doesn’t make it less of a nerf.
2) I was commenting on a point I misunderstood from Leuca, which he clarified later, so that became obsolete and can be ignored safely

silvermember.8941:

The situation the elementalist has is far more dire. And just for the record the elementalist have receive far more nerfs than any class in this game. WE got nerf after the first beta and we have been continously nerf since then. The only buff we have receive was being given a mediocre trait called “fresh air” WHICH only works for 1 weapon set or at least is only effective on 1 weapon set.

I wouldn’t say eles got “far more” nerf than mesmer, and ele too was called op in it’s time (not taking side here). But it doesn’t relate to the topic: whatever buff/nerf happened, the current state is a fact, and it’s what needs to be changed (because, yes, here I’m taking side: ele feels really UP in PvP).

Leuca.5732:

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

Indeed, and I wholeheartdely agree with you in this light

Leuca.5732:

Also, the funny thing is that mesmers in general are stronger than eles now. They have much more variety when it comes to choosing traits and weapons, greater access to conditions in a condi meta, as well as a greater number of ways to provide team utility. Their burst is pretty fast and effective without blowing 3 utilities and all survivability and staff is still an absurdly powerful defensive tool with a pseudo stun-break every 6-8 seconds.

I think you overestimate a bit some things. Mesmer access to condition is better to only the ele one, the “fast and efficient burst” require to blow a lot of things (mirror image (and lose this stunbreak btw), a dodge, the so-cool staff pseudo stunbreak, plus another clone-generating skill of your choice). You could say it doesn’t matter much, but misconceptions won’t help balance (I personnally think it’s what killed ele in the first place).
The problem with mesmer is mainly it’s condition defence, and it’s why it should go up in the chart when the meta calm down. Condition defence is about the only thing the ele get right in this meta, so I don’t really expect it to get better

TL;DR: Leuca mostly got me covered, ignore me :P

you totally right a nerf is a nerf except that the mesmer actually need it and still need it. Any class where you rely on an AI to passively deal damage shows a significant flaw the the combat system.

When you are OP getting nerf just means you are trying to bring balance. When you are the elementalist getting nerf from OP to nothingness then that is different.

The mesmer has the benefit of changing once the meta changes after pax, elementalist there is no sign anything will change and the elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job. I mean why would they that would be admiting they royally kittened up.

imaginary.6241:

@silvermember.8941:

Errr wait? You played your Ele since 2005? Give me your Time Machine, man. It want it for other purposes then bragging about my skill raising with the amount of time lapsed …

Oh wait? You ’re talking about GW1? Good job, comparing an Apple to an Egg. No offense but your so unfriendly right now you deserved that comment.

Also that sentence makes me want to smack your virtual face (your Eles face, that is):

As long as it is in the game and not an exploit it’s fair game.

That sentence is part of reason this and many other game stumbles. And i just hope you fall to that truth even ONCE and get punished by AreaNet for it. So you’re saying all those people that Exploit-Farmed in Gendaran at Headstart, or the People abusing the Mystic Forge to generate a High amount of Precursors (which still dominate the high price of the market up to now, as they never were removed as they couldn’t be really distinguished) is entire valid and fair for everyone? KITTEN YOU I SAID!

Edit: Seems like you deleted your last post, bragging about how you played your Ele since 2005. Nvm. I won’t delete mine.

I did not delete my old post, It got deleted because the the person I quoted was deleted for some reason.

BTW I am not bragging I m simply stating facts, since the person I quoted stupidly assume I hated the elementalist.

Even in my original point I made it very clear that fundamentally the elementalist is different from gw1, but ultimately my point was I did not hate the class. If my post invoke an emotional respond then you clearly got issues, nothing anybody says online should ever invoke emotions.

I have been playing the game since beta 1, I don’t care about legendaries. I am in a way impressed at the brilliance of the players that figure it out. Also maybe next time Arenanet will put a lot of thought into their design, but i suspect they wont, but I digress. Anyways the precursor value is more less because they are extremely hard to get nothing more and nothing less. I never once exploited the gendaran event because it wasn’t worth my time nor have did I farm deadeye. In the context of the event during release I still manage to hit 80 within the week, I did not need that cheat to level fast.

Moving on the elementalist represents a fundamental flaw in the combat system or maybe the half baked nature of it, but this is beyond the scope of this discussion.

silvermember.8941:

you totally right a nerf is a nerf except that the mesmer actually need it and still need it. Any class where you rely on an AI to passively deal damage shows a significant flaw the the combat system.

When you are OP getting nerf just means you are trying to bring balance. When you are the elementalist getting nerf from OP to nothingness then that is different.

The mesmer has the benefit of changing once the meta changes after pax, elementalist there is no sign anything will change and the elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job. I mean why would they that would be admiting they royally kittened up.

Be careful with broad swipe opinions: a lot of players saw ele as totally OP and found the nerfs totally good. No class deserve that. Most mesmer skills/trait are far remove from OP. I agree that phantasm aren’t that interesting, but it doesn’t inherently makes them OP (plus, ranger pet, necro minions, etc… AI isn’t a problem except for the pet owner).

And when you say: " elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job" -> you’ll find the exact same thing being said in the mesmer forum. And ranger too, and probably a few other. Everyone think it has the short end of the stick. Don’t dismiss others just because you have your own problems

That being said, I’m not sure the ele need that much change. Viability is just a few damage/CD numbers tweak away.
Build diversity, on the other hand, is another thing entirely, and should really be worked on in depth. But that is true for most classes.

Elidath.5679:

silvermember.8941:

you totally right a nerf is a nerf except that the mesmer actually need it and still need it. Any class where you rely on an AI to passively deal damage shows a significant flaw the the combat system.

When you are OP getting nerf just means you are trying to bring balance. When you are the elementalist getting nerf from OP to nothingness then that is different.

The mesmer has the benefit of changing once the meta changes after pax, elementalist there is no sign anything will change and the elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job. I mean why would they that would be admiting they royally kittened up.

Be careful with broad swipe opinions: a lot of players saw ele as totally OP and found the nerfs totally good. No class deserve that. Most mesmer skills/trait are far remove from OP. I agree that phantasm aren’t that interesting, but it doesn’t inherently makes them OP (plus, ranger pet, necro minions, etc… AI isn’t a problem except for the pet owner).

And when you say: " elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job" -> you’ll find the exact same thing being said in the mesmer forum. And ranger too, and probably a few other. Everyone think it has the short end of the stick. Don’t dismiss others just because you have your own problems

That being said, I’m not sure the ele need that much change. Viability is just a few damage/CD numbers tweak away.
Build diversity, on the other hand, is another thing entirely, and should really be worked on in depth. But that is true for most classes.

Nerfing bunker was a good idea. My point is that playing bunker was the result of the fact that we were not viable with anything else. Bunker ele existed because all our other options were just plain bad. We couldn’t be glass cannon because we lack the cannon part, we couldn’t do great conditional damage because well we only have burn and earth and those are separated by a 15-30 seconds.

Rskin.4901:

Everyone knows that for the most part eles are completely unviable right now. I think a lot of this has to do with our weapon cooldowns. I know some of you are thinking, but that’s why we have twenty skills. However all the other classes have burst, mobility, and cc skills far below our current cooldowns. I think reducing these could bring back the ele as well as making newer builds possible

I disagree, I think undoing all the nerf’s would be the only decent starting point for rebuilding the elementalist class. After that other things could be considered.

Rskin.4901:

What annoys me the most though is the cooldown of churning earth and fire grab. It’s ridiculous.

Focus has a 2 second knockdown on a 50 second cooldown.

Nerfing the tanky ele would of been a good idea, except the over nerfed it & every other build (of which there were sod all at the time & still barely is).

The main problem was that the noobs didn`t want to immob`/stun etc us, they just wanted pewpew spells on their bars, then cried that ele could escape.
I had many a fight where not one player would stun me.

Oh & guess what.
Guardian tanks, regen warriors, tanky engie & even some ranger builds could manage fine against ele back then, but since the kittened whack-a-mole nerfs, ele has to struggle like hell to do 1/4 as good.

So why is it okay for some classes to be able to tank & not others?

Senjun.8149:

Rskin.4901:

What annoys me the most though is the cooldown of churning earth and fire grab. It’s ridiculous.

Focus has a 2 second knockdown on a 50 second cooldown.

Let’s compare two similar utility-type skills from offhands available to light-armor professions.

From the Elementalist: Gale – Knock down your foe with a charged wind blast. Knockdown 2 seconds, Recharge 50 seconds.

From the Mesmer: Magic Bullet – Hit up to three foes with a single shot. The first target is stunned, the second is dazed, and the third is blinded. Stun/Daze 2 seconds, recharge 25 seconds. Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile

I’ll leave thread viewers to make a judgment based on that.

They should just merge the Aclarity traits with the +10% damage while in X attunement traits. All the other proffesion’s weapon damage & effect + CD traits have been merged. I don’t see why it hasn’t for ele.

silvermember.8941:

Nerfing bunker was a good idea. My point is that playing bunker was the result of the fact that we were not viable with anything else. Bunker ele existed because all our other options were just plain bad. We couldn’t be glass cannon because we lack the cannon part, we couldn’t do great conditional damage because well we only have burn and earth and those are separated by a 15-30 seconds.

My point is, nerfing a certain spec was maybe a good idea. Not nerfing the class as a whole. A nerf need to be targetted to a problem.

zencow.3651:

They should just merge the Alacrity traits with the +10% damage while in X attunement traits. All the other profession’s weapon damage & effect + CD traits have been merged. I don’t see why it hasn’t for ele.

Ranger’s and Engineer CD reduc don’t have side effect. Warrior CD reduc have conditionnal boni. Half of the Guardian’s and Necro’s CD reduc traits don’t have side effect, and guard’s mace/necro’s scepter can’t get reduce CD at all. Just FYI
A flat +damage in water/earth isn’t that hot. Instead, we could either merge with other traits, or create new side effects. Or just reduce the base CD of skills that deserves it (like focus’ gale…).

Leuca.5732:

Let’s compare two similar utility-type skills from offhands available to light-armor professions.

I would be warry of such comparison. It can give some strange results.
Professions are a context, and comparing outside of it is risky.
The pistol is an offensive OH for the mesmer, with a stun to keep the ennemy in the fight (something it really lacks). Focus is a defensive OH for the ele, and ele doesn’t lack defensive tool. Plus, when gale is on CD, you can use other defensive move provided by the focus (obsidian flesh, magnetic pulse, freezing wind, whirling wind…).
Not saying gale is good, mind you, but there is often more than raw stats when comparing skills.

Elidath.5679:

Ranger’s and Engineer CD reduc don’t have side effect. Warrior CD reduc have conditionnal boni. Half of the Guardian’s and Necro’s CD reduc traits don’t have side effect, and guard’s mace/necro’s scepter can’t get reduce CD at all. Just FYI
A flat +damage in water/earth isn’t that hot. Instead, we could either merge with other traits, or create new side effects. Or just reduce the base CD of skills that deserves it (like focus’ gale…).

That’s cause there never those CDR trait/side effects. Necroes and guards only ever had their +33% condi duration and +10% damage traits as much as the ele only has +endurance while holding scepter trait on ele and +aoe radius on staff. The product of Mesmer and Warrior weapon traits you see today used to be separate traits.

The side effect trait were mostly useless hence the reason they got merged since there was no point to take them anyway, hence by that logic merging the aclarity and the mostly redundant +10% damage traits would be the best way to go. Having weapon-wide CDR on ele would be a tad too strong.

Elidath.5679:

I would be warry of such comparison. It can give some strange results.
Professions are a context, and comparing outside of it is risky.
The pistol is an offensive OH for the mesmer, with a stun to keep the ennemy in the fight (something it really lacks). Focus is a defensive OH for the ele, and ele doesn’t lack defensive tool. Plus, when gale is on CD, you can use other defensive move provided by the focus (obsidian flesh, magnetic pulse, freezing wind, whirling wind…).
Not saying gale is good, mind you, but there is often more than raw stats when comparing skills.

There’s nothing to be wary about; I’m not saying they need to have equal recharges, but the less a skill does, the more skills you need to use before/after it to get the same results as using another skill that does more. Gale’s synergy with damaging abilities is pretty good, but the synergy goes out of wack when you can’t use it a tad more freely. Its effect is a bit too useful (considering it is a form of hard cc, and not just a pure defensive ability) to waste it on defense when the recharge is so high; a mesmer has so many options when considering how to use Magic Bullet.

You eventually have to compare professions to even get close to managing balance.

The problem of elementalist is that to “balance” the access to 20 skills (that in reality are just 2 subpar versions of 10 skills that coupled are less than the usual 10 of other professions) gave ele so many downsides that is clearly a problematic profession.

Lets see the most lampant example:

Mesmer:
Greatsword Training
+50 power while wielding a greatsword. Reduces recharge of greatsword skills by 20%.
…

This is effectively a 20% reduction on half of your skills and they even have easier access because they don t have attunement CD.
on top of that we have nice bonus.

Elementalist version:
Pyromancer’s Alacrity

All your fire weapon skills recharge 20% faster.

D: affects 1/4 skills and no added bonus, also consider the attunement cd that hinders access to skills

Its full of stuff like that…..

Its designed to be the worst at everyting (armor/vit/damage etc etc etc) just because of the 20 skills

While instead the only downside should be attunement CDs that limit access to skills and a reactive game favoring a proactive strategy.

zencow.3651:

The side effect trait were mostly useless hence the reason they got merged since there was no point to take them anyway, hence by that logic merging the aclarity and the mostly redundant +10% damage traits would be the best way to go. Having weapon-wide CDR on ele would be a tad too strong.

I wasn’t talking about why it was so, I was correcting the misconception that “everyone else had something more”. It is plain false, and it doesn’t help the discussion.
I’m not against upping the alacrity, but I think it require more than “just merging with +10% dmg”. It is the easiest solution alright, but not really a good solution. Earth and water, particularly, would need something else to make them attractive. Why not, for earth, a +200 condi damage, like mesmer scepter? It would help the lacking condi builds.

Leuca.5732:

There’s nothing to be wary about

Yes there is. Not necessarily for you, but enough nerf have been asked “because skill XX does the same but better for another class” for it to be dangerous.
Lightning Flash (pre-nerf, when it did stunbreak) was on a longer CD than Blink for the same apparent utility, but mesmer has no swiftness, and Flash (traited) can get vigor, regeneration and remove a condition.

Leuca.5732:

You eventually have to compare professions to even get close to managing balance.

That’s exactly my point: one has to compare professions, not individual skills.

Elidath.5679:

Yes there is. Not necessarily for you, but enough nerf have been asked “because skill XX does the same but better for another class” for it to be dangerous.
Lightning Flash (pre-nerf, when it did stunbreak) was on a longer CD than Blink for the same apparent utility, but mesmer has no swiftness, and Flash (traited) can get vigor, regeneration and remove a condition.

That’s exactly my point: one has to compare professions, not individual skills.

I guess I should have clarified. I’m definitely not in favor of quick fixing via large nerfs/buffs. However, there is something to be gained by comparing individual skills as well as professions when you can look at the skill’s more global effect on play, as you demonstrated yourself with Lightning Flash and Blink.