December 10th Elementalist changes

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

I personally can’t wait for the Soothing Mist + Cleansing Water synergy. I think I will be enough for me to opt out of taking Cleansing Wave.

I’ve already stated my opinion on this matter, but I’m a bit unconvinced by this synergy. Soothing Wave will have a 10s cooldown. That will make Cleansing Water effectively have a 10s cooldown as well.

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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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We agree that there is room for improvement in many areas with the Elementalist. Hopefully one balance patch at a time we can get as many good changes in as possible to increase the effectiveness and overall enjoyment of playing the class in all game modes.

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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I personally can’t wait for the Soothing Mist + Cleansing Water synergy. I think I will be enough for me to opt out of taking Cleansing Wave.

I’ve already stated my opinion on this matter, but I’m a bit unconvinced by this synergy. Soothing Wave will have a 10s cooldown. That will make Cleansing Water effectively have a 10s cooldown as well.

Yeah well a 3 second cooldown condition cleanse (passive of sort) would be broken as ever

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

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Posted by: Dragonar.1342

Dragonar.1342

Ah common, let him be himself
A thing to argue: will this class be playable for noobs? Not everyone is super experienced.
It’s nice that the class can be mastered and be strong. But i remember when i was new to this game and i entered spvp with staff. And i didn’t want to return after that for 3 months lol :P

(edited by Dragonar.1342)

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Posted by: Evoneva Drakon.1754

Evoneva Drakon.1754

sorry i’ve only been half following the balance thread, what is changing between soothing mist and/or cleansing water for greater synergy?

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Posted by: MrLT.6028

MrLT.6028

Evasive arcana on fire-air-earth adept and attunement
Cd range 11-8 on attun swap
elemental attunement on 5 of arcana
renewed stamina on adept

Make those change and u will unlock every kind of builds, sadly to say but imo every one wanna those traits at any cost… it s a must have for any ele build… otherwise this topic is only gossip… u wanna make more viable build just do this modify

I’ve always personally felt as well that Elemental Attunement is a class defining trait. I’ve been arguing to make it baseline or to bring it back down to tier one but the decision we’ve made instead is to bring Renewing Stamina back down to adept instead. This will prevent the dps ele nerf and even though we might all perceive that EA is a “staple” trait we do luckily have options to trait up instead to make up for the loss if you wish to spend points elsewhere. [Elemental Shielding, Zephyr’s Boon, Soothing Mist, etc. etc.] and yes… I know its more than one trait to make up for one but at least they are there and accessible low in other trait lines.

Our hope is not to destroy builds but to make more. Right now the way it looks for Elementalists in PvP is that most builds will still be the same, maybe with a little less AOE condition removal, but there will be more accessible options when going higher in the Fire, Air, and Earth trees.

I personally can’t wait for the Soothing Mist + Cleansing Water synergy. I think I will be enough for me to opt out of taking Cleansing Wave.

Sorry but it is not really like you had a choice: moving renewing stamina to master would simply destroy the ele both in PvP and PvE.

And it is not like we are shining at the moment.

Saying it would destroy Ele is strictly theory crafted hyperbole but I can respect your emotional reaction to that change. A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.

Great! Now what about the vast majority of us who play strictly PvE or WvW and don’t give a kitten about sPvP. It always seems like these balance changes are made in the vacuum of sPvP without further regard to the other two game modes. At least this discussion is happening now but it still seems like alot of criticism, most of which has been good and valid, is still falling on deaf ears (I realize you all cannot respond to everything) since their criticism is not strictly related to sPvP.

There needs to be a compelling reason to go into the other trait lines apart from water and arcana. Fresh air was a good change. It gave a unique flavor to air and is a grandmaster trait actually worth taking (even tho it really only works well with scepter). Diamond skin is a change in the right direction but I doubt it’ll be good enough to warrant 30 in earth since ele only has 12000 hp. Immunity from conditions is really nice, but one auto attack from some classes will drop the ele below the 90% threshold.

Fire traits, for lack of a better term, suck. There is no trait in the fire line that would make me want to give up anything else for it. Don’t nerf the other lines into oblivion. Make us want to go into fire, give us a compelling reason to give up evasive arcana (yeah right) or 30 water (maybe). Burning fire is a move in the right direction, but still underwhelming. A 3 condi clear every 40s is just not that good, definitely not for 20 fire.

Maybe consider adding a % bonus of power is given as vitality in the fire line. Then deep into water won’t be as worth it to get that much needed extra vitality (which is the source of nearly every ele issue)

Caritas Æternum [BT]
80 Human Ele
#magswag

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

Yeah well a 3 second cooldown condition cleanse (passive of sort) would be broken as ever

You are right, but is a 10s (passive) condition cleanse, that is triggered not on condition but on critical, and thus with the risk of soothing wave triggering before a condition is even applied, worth the grandmaster investment?

If a thief and a necromancer attack you, should the thief (critically) hit you before the necro, this synergy will only effectively remove 1 condition in the first 19 seconds of battle. :P

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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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Soothing Mist is currently set up to grant a 3 second regeneration when you get critical hit

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

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Posted by: MrLT.6028

MrLT.6028

I personally can’t wait for the Soothing Mist + Cleansing Water synergy. I think I will be enough for me to opt out of taking Cleansing Wave.

I’ve already stated my opinion on this matter, but I’m a bit unconvinced by this synergy. Soothing Wave will have a 10s cooldown. That will make Cleansing Water effectively have a 10s cooldown as well.

Yeah well a 3 second cooldown condition cleanse (passive of sort) would be broken as ever

Broken when paired with 30 in water. Which again kind of forces us to go deep into water as opposed to elsewhere. Now if the new Soothing Wave was moved to Air (which is critical related) as a mater trait, that would be much better.

Caritas Æternum [BT]
80 Human Ele
#magswag

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

Broken when paired with 30 in water. Which again kind of forces us to go deep into water as opposed to elsewhere. Now if the new Soothing Wave was moved to Air (which is critical related) as a mater trait, that would be much better.

Soothing Wave is affected by your opponent’s critical hits, so it’s not related to air. :P I did misread the new effect too when I first read it, and used to think it could synergy with the air trait that converts precision to healing.

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Posted by: MrLT.6028

MrLT.6028

Broken when paired with 30 in water. Which again kind of forces us to go deep into water as opposed to elsewhere. Now if the new Soothing Wave was moved to Air (which is critical related) as a mater trait, that would be much better.

Soothing Wave is affected by your opponent’s critical hits, so it’s not related to air. :P I did misread the new effect too when I first read it, and used to think it could synergy with the air trait that converts precision to healing.

Oh, well. Not as good as I thought. Still better than what it was.

In that case, i would like to make a suggestion to change the trait and move it to air to work with your crits. Would be nice to get some healing in another line apart from water or arcana.

Caritas Æternum [BT]
80 Human Ele
#magswag

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Posted by: Greek.4396

Greek.4396

Tyler used to play Ele in Tpvp. We are in good hands ppl! : D

Server – Blackgate | Rev Main
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IGN- Greek Kenpachi | Champion Ritualist

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

In that case, i would like to make a suggestion to change the trait and move it to air to work with your crits. Would be nice to get some healing in another line apart from water or arcana.

Well, we already have Soothing Winds

Don’t get confused by the name, this one is an air trait.

Soothing Winds
Soothing Disruption
Soothing Wave
Cleansing Wave
Cleansing Water

Why are our trait’s names so same-y? :P It’s easy to get confused.

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Posted by: Evoneva Drakon.1754

Evoneva Drakon.1754

Soothing Mist is currently set up to grant a 3 second regeneration when you get critical hit

thanks for the update Tyler

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Posted by: Xernth.8561

Xernth.8561

Tyler used to play Ele in Tpvp. We are in good hands ppl! : D

Certainly doesn’t look that way, we’ve gotten a new grandmaster trait that will either be amazing in a broken and un-fun way or completely useless depending on the opponent and a bunch of changes that make us more reliant on water and arcana than we are now.

Any build that expects to take damage has to take 20+ in water to improve our abysmal base hit points and now we’ll have to take 20+ in arcana also for access to protection regularly. In addition, the 30 point water and arcana traits are still clearly better than every trait in fire, earth or air with the exception of Fresh Air, so once you’re obligated to put 40 into water/arcana, you might as well get the GM traits.

Ahh, build diversity!

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Posted by: Jaytee.9513

Jaytee.9513

Not to sound sarcastic, but I heard there was very few to no elementalists on the top teams during the last major spvp tournament……….which I take as a serious implication that elementalist is not performing well in comparison to other classes.

sPVP is even more balanced than WvW so add that to the equation and ele’s look like they are really in a bad spot at the moment.

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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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The point I’m trying to get across is that it is once again going to be very exciting to play Ele come this patch. It’s much more effective and there’s a lot more options for players. We will also continue to work hard for you guys in continuing this trend across all game mode. If it were easy or even possible to perfectly balance a game for everyone across 3 different game modes with the systems we have we would be doing so I can assure you.

Here are some quick ungrammatically correct thoughts:

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do.

Burning fire will allow you to invest offensively in fire and get some defense capability that you lose if you opt points out of water/arcane. This will likely be more useful to PvPer’s rather than PvE’rs, however, PvErs already find it innately easier to take points in fire since kiting mobs is more easily done as compared to kiting players in PvP.

I think you’ll find Diamond skin will give you more freedom than you think as well. We’ve considered bringing Diamond Skin to 85% but we worry it would be too much. It definitely gives you some freedom of mobility as well as much needed negation of condi dumps on inc. This trait will help lower the risk of swapping attunements too early as well. Surely this trait scales in effectiveness with your HP and ele does have the lowest health pool however, I wouldn’t say all ele’s have 12k health pools. Your typical support elementalist with 30 points in water in PvE have around 16-19k HP and some elementalists can get their hp up to 22k. This will let you take around a 1600-2200 hit before conditions are applied. Sure thats a common hit to take in PvE but it’ll most likely have its strenth in safeguarding you in the encounters that have immobilize spam. This trait will help you negate those immobilizes and give you the opportunity to use your cleanses and heals on teammates much easier. In PvP I’m fairly certain only cleric amulet elementalists are looking at 12k hp builds. The majority of builds that are played are actually 14k+ builds. Regardless, it’s a trait that is now way better than it used to be.

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

Certainly doesn’t look that way, we’ve gotten a new grandmaster trait that will either be amazing in a broken and un-fun way or completely useless depending on the opponent and a bunch of changes that make us more reliant on water and arcana than we are now.

Any build that expects to take damage has to take 20+ in water to improve our abysmal base hit points and now we’ll have to take 20+ in arcana also for access to protection regularly. In addition, the 30 point water and arcana traits are still clearly better than every trait in fire, earth or air with the exception of Fresh Air, so once you’re obligated to put 40 into water/arcana, you might as well get the GM traits.

Ahh, build diversity!

Persisting Flames is a good grandmaster trait, but unfortunately, it’s in our worst traitline. :P Even with better fire traits coming up (I want to try a might-stacking cantrip build that will require at least 20 in fire, so might as well pick persisting flames and the buffed #25 minor), fire’s #5 minor does nothing and #15 is mediocre, compared to water’s decent #5 and almost-class-defining #15. I’d also say this build is a good candidate to put the remaining points in 30 earth for DS.

I can also see the new Tempest Defense having potential in aura builds, but that trait is in a weird spot, because it wants us to pick as many (instant) burst skills too. But yeah, it’ll probably work at its best with 30 points in water for aura sharing. :P

Elementalists will surely still depend on water and arcana, if only because that’s where their much-needed defense is. Maybe a very extreme fresh air build can simply ignore these for Diamond Skin and/ or burning fire, though, but generally, new earth bunker builds that might arise will want and need points in water.

EDIT: And I’m very excited about the elementalist’s changes coming, no doubt.

(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)

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Posted by: Clark Skinner.4902

Clark Skinner.4902

1. what is this build you’re using
2. after 2000+ matches played with ele, I’d expect you to beat most people.
3. if ele is really powerful in pvp, why do we not see rooms full of eles?
4. personally I think the class should be balanced around the average player throughout the game, not making an expert in pvp equal to others.
5. I appreciate Renewing stamina going back down. My only frown is from the swap of my first 2 water traits meaning that I lose Soothing Disruption when I need fall damage in wvw.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

Pardon my fervor again Tyler, but I highly doubt you have people in your team doing PvE outside of world bosses.

This is a feeling that have grown in me for quite some time now. I have seen PvE dev streams and dev comments, it simply does not click.

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: rhodoc.2381

rhodoc.2381

Yeah well a 3 second cooldown condition cleanse (passive of sort) would be broken as ever

You are right, but is a 10s (passive) condition cleanse, that is triggered not on condition but on critical, and thus with the risk of soothing wave triggering before a condition is even applied, worth the grandmaster investment?

If a thief and a necromancer attack you, should the thief (critically) hit you before the necro, this synergy will only effectively remove 1 condition in the first 19 seconds of battle. :P

it IS or WILL be triggered on condition.

[VcY] Velocity – Gargamell

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Posted by: Xernth.8561

Xernth.8561

Diogo, how is your 30/0/30/0/0 build with 10 points left going to get much use out of Diamond Skin with 12k hps? You can go 10 water for some hp’s and Soothing’s new cleanse but you won’t have vigor then or vigor and good luck with that health pool.

For PvE, sure, but for any kind of PvP hopefully you can glass cannon everything down and use your two initial dodge rolls to get any mileage at all from DS.

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Posted by: BlackBeard.2873

BlackBeard.2873

About diamond skin:

PvP: Pure-condi users can’t output large bursts of damage consistently. Combine dodging + lots of regen and you should be able to stay above 90% when they can’t deal condi damage. This can also allow you to stick like glue to necros/engies/rangers if you want to play d/x or kite like a boss if you go s/x

PvE: Diamond skin will be SO amazing for all of the new content (that has so much immob spam), and makes mining in Orr so much nice (all those immobs are so annoying).

WvW: Roaming this can give you some great manueverability and is a great strength in a lot of encounters. Combined with Rock Solid (at master) and Stone Splinters, going 30 up earth is really attractive. It gives you great tools vs. CC spam, and condi spam. If you have good power to counter-burst, then burst specs can be in for some hurt too.

There is a lot to play around with now and I, for one, am very excited!

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Posted by: rhodoc.2381

rhodoc.2381

The point I’m trying to get across is that it is once again going to be very exciting to play Ele come this patch. It’s much more effective and there’s a lot more options for players. We will also continue to work hard for you guys in continuing this trend across all game mode. If it were easy or even possible to perfectly balance a game for everyone across 3 different game modes with the systems we have we would be doing so I can assure you.

Here are some quick ungrammatically correct thoughts:

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do.

Burning fire will allow you to invest offensively in fire and get some defense capability that you lose if you opt points out of water/arcane. This will likely be more useful to PvPer’s rather than PvE’rs, however, PvErs already find it innately easier to take points in fire since kiting mobs is more easily done as compared to kiting players in PvP.

I think you’ll find Diamond skin will give you more freedom than you think as well. We’ve considered bringing Diamond Skin to 85% but we worry it would be too much. It definitely gives you some freedom of mobility as well as much needed negation of condi dumps on inc. This trait will help lower the risk of swapping attunements too early as well. Surely this trait scales in effectiveness with your HP and ele does have the lowest health pool however, I wouldn’t say all ele’s have 12k health pools. Your typical support elementalist with 30 points in water in PvE have around 16-19k HP and some elementalists can get their hp up to 22k. This will let you take around a 1600-2200 hit before conditions are applied. Sure thats a common hit to take in PvE but it’ll most likely have its strenth in safeguarding you in the encounters that have immobilize spam. This trait will help you negate those immobilizes and give you the opportunity to use your cleanses and heals on teammates much easier. In PvP I’m fairly certain only cleric amulet elementalists are looking at 12k hp builds. The majority of builds that are played are actually 14k+ builds. Regardless, it’s a trait that is now way better than it used to be.

Any chance for Diamond Skin to work against retallation? I mean also prevent retal dmg when above treshold.

[VcY] Velocity – Gargamell

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

Diogo, how is your 30/0/30/0/0 build with 10 points left going to get much use out of Diamond Skin with 12k hps? You can go 10 water for some hp’s and Soothing’s new cleanse but you won’t have vigor then or vigor and good luck with that health pool.

For PvE, sure, but for any kind of PvP hopefully you can glass cannon everything down and use your two initial dodge rolls to get any mileage at all from DS.

I was thinking 20 fire, 30 earth, 20 water in a cantrip build, with cleric’s amulet. The 30 fire version wouldn’t use it (if I implied otherwise, I didn’t mean to :P).

I do think DS can work in a pure glass cannon build, but only for air burst scepter eles because they can kill in 2-3 seconds. Probably 30 air, 30 earth and 10 arcana for vigor. Yes, it wouldn’t have any meaningful healing, but DS would be there not for long-term condition protection, but to burst down condition builds in the first 2-3 seconds without getting bursted down back by their conditions, nor blinded, nor weakened, etc.

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Posted by: Taldren.7523

Taldren.7523

Saying it would destroy Ele is strictly theory crafted hyperbole but I can respect your emotional reaction to that change. A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.

Not to sound rude, god knows others seem to think I am always being rude ….

Internal test servers are not a good place to test the performance of classes. I am not saying this is unique to this game … It never has been.
I have been a lead and internal tester on many games and internal test servers always seem to create a sort of club atmosphere where everyone knows everyone and internal politics often dictate results rather than facts.

Players/Developers often become very rigid in their thoughts/thinking which results in tunnel vision that can create outcomes that can do the very opposite of what they believed it was going to. (Take Dark Age of Camelots: ToA expansion as an example )

There is an overwhelming desire to form consensus and to not rock the boat, which greatly limits valuable feedback that can highlight critical flaws in the overall logic of a change.

As for the subject matter of your quote …
It wouldn’t ‘kill’ the class from a mechanical point of view, but it would certainly would have ‘killed’ the class on an emotional level for many players. After what many consider a hypocritical change to RTL (in regards to Warriors/Rangers/Thieves movement with weapons) and the broken promises in the last patch in regards to Conjured weapon viability … moving an ability that is a 5 point minor on other classes to a 20 point major would be the straw that broke the camels back.

From my perspective it seems like ANet has a vision of the staff ele utility healer stuck in their heads and the tunnel vision is blinding them to all the issues outside of it.

80 Elementalist (RotV), 80 Mesmer (RotV)
80 Necromancer (IRNY), 80 Guardian (IRNY)
GW2: it’s like DAoC, but for the WoW crowd.

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Posted by: Melancholia.8123

Melancholia.8123

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. *We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do. *

Excellent. That’s really all I wanted to hear myself. It took quite a while for the problems to be apparent, and it makes sense that it will take a while to fix them.

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Posted by: Leuca.5732

Leuca.5732

Saying it would destroy Ele is strictly theory crafted hyperbole but I can respect your emotional reaction to that change. A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.

It won’t destroy Eles but it will severely hamper our performance. What possible solutions did you guys look at for Cleansing Water and Elemental Attunement before deciding to go on with the changes for them?

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Posted by: Nabuko Darayon.9645

Nabuko Darayon.9645

I’m opt not to make any specific criticism until tested out. I hope at least we will be able to get out of 30 Arcana and still make them useable.

~ King Arian and Isabella of [EG] ~

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Tyler, what about making elemental attunement 15 minor trait in arcana? Warriors have very strong trait right there in discipline line. That would also be in line with other 15 minor traits that trigger only on attunement swap.

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Posted by: Taldren.7523

Taldren.7523

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do.

Burning fire will allow you to invest offensively in fire and get some defense capability that you lose if you opt points out of water/arcane. This will likely be more useful to PvPer’s rather than PvE’rs, however, PvErs already find it innately easier to take points in fire since kiting mobs is more easily done as compared to kiting players in PvP.

Fire and Earth have been avoided mostly because they focus on conditions and due to the mechanics of the class … elementalist is a horrible condition class.

You can’t be “offensively” investing in “fire”, especially if you are taking defensive traits. Nothing in fire is going to make Scpeter1 any better, Scepter 2 actually hit anything, Focus 4 be remotely useful, or address the survivability issues of putting your lowest hitpoint/armor class with low mobility and no gimicks (stealth/clones) in melee range. I like to know who seriously believed that having procs such as fire aura and flame barrior in regards to needing to be hit as an elementalist was a good idea.

Our offensive line is Air as it is all about damage. The air attacks are far more reliable too.

80 Elementalist (RotV), 80 Mesmer (RotV)
80 Necromancer (IRNY), 80 Guardian (IRNY)
GW2: it’s like DAoC, but for the WoW crowd.

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Posted by: Leuca.5732

Leuca.5732

I’m opt not to make any specific criticism until tested out. I hope at least we will be able to get out of 30 Arcana and still make them useable.

Maxing Arcana gives you the same results as before, so they haven’t really fixed the problem with that yet. Apparently it’s just out of the question to rework a clearly faulty swapping concept. Eles are the only profession with a primary mechanic that actually restricts their weapon swapping if they don’t invest into it. Coupled with the fact that attunements are affected by Chill (and various PvE effects that cripple recharges), this is just a bad combination to start with as a profession base.

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Posted by: Gorani.7205

Gorani.7205

OK, this got way too long to read & follow for me.

Can somebody from the balance team (Tyler Chapman perhaps) post a revised version of the initial Dec 10th balance idea for the Elementalist?

I get the impression from Tyler Champman’s and Jon Peter’s posts (as far I I saw & read them) that out of the three critical changes to Master level traits (Cleansing Wave, Renewing Stamina & Elemental Atunement) only Elemental Attunement will be moved to Master tier – the other two will remain Adept traits (?).

Member of The Guildwars Online Guild [GWO]
Still keeps a volume of Kurzick poems ;)

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Posted by: Leuca.5732

Leuca.5732

OK, this got way too long to read & follow for me.

Can somebody from the balance team (Tyler Chapman perhaps) post a revised version of the initial Dec 10th balance idea for the Elementalist?

I get the impression from Tyler Champman’s and Jon Peter’s posts (as far I I saw & read them) that out of the three critical changes to Master level traits (Cleansing Wave, Renewing Stamina & Elemental Atunement) only Elemental Attunement will be moved to Master tier – the other two will remain Adept traits (?).

Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave are both getting moved to Master tier in an attempt to make eles move away from Water/Arcana.

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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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What possible solutions did you guys look at for Cleansing Water and Elemental Attunement before deciding to go on with the changes for them?

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

This patch is pretty insane, we are trying to improve poor traits, place traits where they deserve to be strength wise, and fix a broken meta. Some of these changes could be perceived as going against how we want players to find other lines to spec in as well as the general timing of these changes surely are somewhat risky per say; but we’ve worked ridiculously hard to make as much of an impact as possible. We have put in as many changes as we could given the time we have for development for that release to get everything done that needs to be done. We can’t please everyone but we certainly have striven to please as many people as possible.

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

(edited by Tyler Chapman.1832)

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Posted by: silvermember.8941

silvermember.8941

What possible solutions did you guys look at for Cleansing Water and Elemental Attunement before deciding to go on with the changes for them?

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

This patch is pretty insane, we are trying to improve poor traits, place traits where they deserve to be strength wise, and fix a broken meta. Some of these changes could be perceived as going against how we want players to find other lines to spec in as well as the general timing of these changes surely are somewhat risky per say; but we’ve worked ridiculously hard to make as much of an impact as possible. We have put in as many changes as we could given the time we have for development for that release to get everything done that needs to be done. We can’t please everyone but we certainly have striven to please as many people as possible.

[/quote]

Those are all nice thoughts really they are, but you cannot have more diversity with the elementalist imo, unless you do something about our abysmal HP. As long as our hp is too low you have to go into water if you want to anything other than PvE. We need to be free from water and the only sure way is to either give us more defensive abilities in other traits lines and or more HP.

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Posted by: TimeBomb.3427

TimeBomb.3427

Again, it would still be a very poor decision NOT to choose elemental attunement. It gives you 50-60%+ protection uptime. With one trait. This is +50% armor. (Not to mention the other three boons, which are nice as well.) Elementalists, having the lowest health and armor pools, need all that they can get, and this protection uptime is (literally) a HUGE boon. Thus there’s still a 20 point reliance on Arcana for all builds that want to be able to be not squishy. Something should really be done here to lower the reliance on this trait.

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Posted by: ThiBash.5634

ThiBash.5634

A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.

Would you mind sharing that spec please? It’d be interesting to know what the developers run (even if just for testing).

If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.

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Posted by: Gorani.7205

Gorani.7205

OK, this got way too long to read & follow for me.

Can somebody from the balance team (Tyler Chapman perhaps) post a revised version of the initial Dec 10th balance idea for the Elementalist?

I get the impression from Tyler Champman’s and Jon Peter’s posts (as far I I saw & read them) that out of the three critical changes to Master level traits (Cleansing Wave, Renewing Stamina & Elemental Atunement) only Elemental Attunement will be moved to Master tier – the other two will remain Adept traits (?).

Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave are both getting moved to Master tier in an attempt to make eles move away from Water/Arcana.

So this is off the hook ?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/page/3#post3138306

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Member of The Guildwars Online Guild [GWO]
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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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I’ve played with about everything but I think I found my calling with 0/30/10/30/0 dagger/dagger. The traits I take are Tempest Defense, Zephyrs Boon, Air Training, Elemental Shielding, Soothing Wave, Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water) with 6 divinity. It’s a bit high risk of a spec but if you can get down your aura timings as well as cantrip use for cleansing, it’s devastating. It’s a very high damage spec in sPvP.

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

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Posted by: Phoebe Ascension.8437

Phoebe Ascension.8437

Again, it would still be a very poor decision NOT to choose elemental attunement. It gives you 50-60%+ protection uptime. With one trait. This is +50% armor. (Not to mention the other three boons, which are nice as well.) Elementalists, having the lowest health and armor pools, need all that they can get, and this protection uptime is (literally) a HUGE boon. Thus there’s still a 20 point reliance on Arcana for all builds that want to be able to be not squishy. Something should really be done here to lower the reliance on this trait.

Says it all imo.

Ele’s can’t survive with evasive skills/protection uptime. Simple as that. And you are nerfing the best way to do, that, so you are nerfing the overal profession imo. It’s like making ‘blasting staff’, a grandmaster trait, cause it’s potentially very strong. Tunnel vision in my opinion.

Add on that the crappiest auto attack damage in the game, and ele is still bottom of pvp meta. Yeah sure you can go cleric build and spam aether renewal and have a feeling ‘wow i’m strong, i survive a lot’, but these builds are not much more then troll builds (all cleric + tanky build ones are).

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No excuse anymore for not giving ‘hide mounts’-option
No thanks to unidentified weapons.

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Posted by: oZii.2864

oZii.2864

Again, it would still be a very poor decision NOT to choose elemental attunement. It gives you 50-60%+ protection uptime. With one trait. This is +50% armor. (Not to mention the other three boons, which are nice as well.) Elementalists, having the lowest health and armor pools, need all that they can get, and this protection uptime is (literally) a HUGE boon. Thus there’s still a 20 point reliance on Arcana for all builds that want to be able to be not squishy. Something should really be done here to lower the reliance on this trait.

If protection is the argument there is still Elemental Shielding, Glyph of elemental harmony, Earths Embrace, Inscription, Armor of Earth. Still Rune options to get protection or spec boon duration and just go 10 points in for renewing stamina. You only get 1 extra second of protection anyway just going 20 points into Arcana. Protection is important but if it really was that important like you are saying people would always take elemental shielding also but if people have 10 in earth they usually take earths embrace or stone splinters. Or they just go 20 in Air.

Elemental attunement just makes sense if you have 10-30 points in arcana because it augments something you are going to be doing anyway with swapping attunements. If I was forced to choose between renewing stamina and elemental attunement Renewing stamina would always win. I am not forced to choose so I can take both.

[Good Fights]Sinndicate{Ele}Sinactic{Engineer}
Sinnastor{Warrior}Sinnacle{Mesmer}Sintacs
{Thief}

(edited by oZii.2864)

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Posted by: Leuca.5732

Leuca.5732

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

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Posted by: Belorn.2659

Belorn.2659

I’ve played with about everything but I think I found my calling with 0/30/10/30/0 dagger/dagger.

Please share your experience in1v1 running staff. I have yet to see a single such video on youtube, so this would be a nice first-time event. Seeing a staff elementalist beat non-elementalist in a fair sight would be a nice way to dispel all the myths about the weakness of elementalist balancing issues.

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Posted by: Calae.1738

Calae.1738

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

I don’t think they fully understand the problem they’re trying to fix.

They’re trying to promote build diversity on a class with the lowest possible base defenses in the game by making the 2 best defensive trait lines a “worse” investment than the other 3.

They’re also making changes to “traits” without taking into account that spending points in a trait line not only provides them with traits but also STATS. These STATS are just as important if not more than the traits themselves because it effects gear choice.

In my opinion, they’re showing quite a poor understanding of their own system.

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Posted by: ThiBash.5634

ThiBash.5634

I’ve played with about everything but I think I found my calling with 0/30/10/30/0 dagger/dagger. The traits I take are Tempest Defense, Zephyrs Boon, Air Training, Elemental Shielding, Soothing Wave, Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water) with 6 divinity. It’s a bit high risk of a spec but if you can get down your aura timings as well as cantrip use for cleansing, it’s devastating. It’s a very high damage spec in sPvP.

Sounds cool, thanks for sharing. I think I might give it a try.

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Posted by: Tyler Chapman.1832

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Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ

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Posted by: oZii.2864

oZii.2864

Let’s see if we can get it out of Tyler(Powerr)

RTL – buggy that it will not connect many times if you are on different elevations (this is a problem with other skills in the game also not just tied to RTL). So you get the 40 second cooldown. Can it be reduced a bit more to say 30 seconds if you miss as a compromise? Still keep the on hit cooldown. Aeromancer’s Alacrity would look a bit more attractive as you could then get a 24 sec cd if you miss but you give up a trait to get it.

40 seconds is pretty long for that skill. I know the pluses are that it isn’t effected by movement impairment still that is pretty long. If the current state of RTL’s cooldowns isn’t going to change that it get a bit of a damage increase. It’s pretty much a point blank skill or a escape currently.

[Good Fights]Sinndicate{Ele}Sinactic{Engineer}
Sinnastor{Warrior}Sinnacle{Mesmer}Sintacs
{Thief}

(edited by oZii.2864)

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Posted by: MrLT.6028

MrLT.6028

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

So in order in increase build diversity and make us move out of water and arcana you are moving adept traits to master so everyone will just go deeper into these trait lines to get those traits. Makes perfect sense.

Caritas Æternum [BT]
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Posted by: Jabberwock.9014

Jabberwock.9014

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

I would be much happier if you just changed it to a self cleanse. I am a primarily solo roamer and I rely on having an on demand cleanse for clearing blinds (when channeling churning earth) and immobilize. Soothing mist and cleansing water not only forces me all the way into the water line, but is extremely rng and lowers the skill ceiling by not allowing you to time cleanses. On the other hand I want to try diamond skin, but will be unable to with my build if I have to go 20 in water just for cleansing wave.

I would also like to hear something regarding RTL cooldown

All that said, I am extremely excited to see constant communication from devs in our subforums. Just knowing that you are taking in and considering all our feedback makes me feel a LOT better about where we are going.

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(edited by Jabberwock.9014)