Guild Wars 2

Zelyhn.8069:

Best tool for mobility: Lightning Hammer

You mean Fiery Whirl + One with Air.

in summary we will always feel in need to spec heavy in escape tools when facing 1on1 any decent player beside maybe rangers.

Updated Nov 5,2013
Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.
ELEMENTALIST
Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

General
These are the proposed balance changes for the Dec. 10th build. These changes are not final and are subject to change. We are posting them early so the community can discuss them with us. We wanted to be more transparent with the community about these changes to help expose problems that riskier changes might create.
Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

It’s From Dulfy.net

Am I the only one that ponders about Jon Peter’s main reason to move Cleansing Wave from Adept to Master because it is an AoE skill?

I claim that most of the Elementalists see it as an essential trait for PERSONAL survival and not group support. Why not reduce the AoE to 180 or 150 and see how “over powered” it still is as Adept trait?

I dislike the change to the availability of Elemental Attunement, as it’s the one trait that feels as if it upgrades our class mechanic from something slightly detrimental to something beneficial.

Why do I call it “slightly detrimental”? Because our traits that improve a specific attunement have only half as much uptime as traits that improve weapons for other classes ( four possible attunements vs two possible weapon sets). As the different attunements aren’t self-sufficient, switching isn’t optional.

This wouldn’t be much of an issue if we could switch attunements freely, but removal of cooldown probably isn’t going to happen.

Suggestion: how about changing some traits from “X benefit while in this attunement” to “X benefit while in this and your next attunement”?

Voila, attunement-specific traits with as much uptime as weapon-switch-specific traits.

Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

We do try kitten avoiding getting “critical hitted” and 6s regen to 3s regen with 10s cd (idk how is the cd at the moment) doesnt smell such like a great buff.

Instead, make all signet give regen or at least more signet, like juste water/heal?
Hell not as much heal as warrior shouts give, please (we dont have such an hp pool to fill anyway) but our signets/survivability could use some love atm.

“We also need RTL unnerfed. the range reduction was bad enough, the 40 sec cooldown is ridiculous. I’m FORCED to take firey greatsword just to have still less mobility that ranger and warrior do with just their weapon skills”

+1

You about mobility, i cant catch a ranger or a warrior or an engi at all and they all have way more heal/survavility than us by far like only way really if is i have alreayd a fiery greatsword so with that been said, maybe make it so that we can cast FGS while moving at least?

during the last WvW matchup I took a break from Ele and focused on leveling an alt. It may look a small amount of time, but coming back to Ele after a week without playing it immediately put in evidence the biggest flaw: self sustainability.
Unless you go bunker, thus renouncing to deal any kind of noticeable damage, you will immediately be out of HP. There must be a way to make us trait to go on the offensive while giving us some kind of self sustainability, and I am firmly convinced that this is the path to follow to make room for many more builds availability (and therefore for making the class extremely more appealing and fun for larger amount of players).

scerevisiae.1972:

So in summary, with the changes, Ele’s now need 20+ water and 20+arcane instead of 15+ water and 20+ arcane before the changes.

Awesome.

Yep, and in water Aquamancer’s Alacrity and Cleansing Water were moved to Master meaning you can’t have both unless you give up a grandmaster and now the best Adept water traits are either for Cantrips (heaven forbid we use any other utility skill) or Regen when you get crit; hurray!

Just brutal nerfs this patch, especially to any builds that used to try to splash water or arcana. The effects are the exact opposite of the stated design goals; it is really difficult to understand.

All they really need to do to up our survivability is reverse all the uncalled for nerfs they’ve made for since beta. Even if they did that, we’d still be the weakest class because we need significant buffs on top of being unnerfed just to be competitive with other classes. ele always had crap damage. it used to have decent survivability, but that was taken away because apparently doing no damage but not dying was deemed op. Yet warriors can deal craploads of damage and are way, way more survivable than eles ever were in their prime. yet that’s acceptable. Seriously Anet, just admit you were wrong and unnerf mistform so we can use skills while using it again, and unnerf RTL and that alone solves several problems with an ele’s extreme lack of sustainability.

I must admit, bringing RTL back down to a standard 20 sec (15 ? :P) would really help out alot. Also, remove the aoe dmg and triple its current dmg on a single target.

Nooooo don’t remove the aoe dmg, that the only effective way for us to jump into a grp of foes, tag then die there with no chance to kill/hide/survive/escape.
Maybe i m not trying hard enough.. Going to try to combo with lava tomb! brb

So their changes to promote build diversity and spend less points in Arcane and Water is to move the good traits over to master to make Elementalists spend more points in Arcane and Water?

Where do they find these people?

So it appears their whole intent is invalid with the changes, build diversity is not changing. Eles will put in atleast 20 into arcane like they already do and it seems the same in water. Doesn’t seem to be anything exciting in this patch for a class that is the weakest of all the classes in pvp at the moment.

We had a lot more build diversity before all the nerfs. But anet is too stubborn to admit they were wrong and made a mistake and revers those nerfs. Those changes they made were class crippling changes that destroyed the core of the ele. If they want to promote build diversity, before they change anything else, they need to fix what they broke. Theyre just digging the ele further and further into its grave and destroying even more builds. Eventually ele will only have 1 build left that actually works. They destroyed dozens of niche builds that weren’t that well known when they began their dartboard approach at balancing the class. With every patch at their pathetic attempts to balance the class, more and more lesser known builds are destroyed and we’re pigeonholed into using the same thing. If they would stop being so pigheaded and listen to the people who actually play the class, instead of making horrible changes no one asked for, we would have more build diversity. Heres a hint Anet, don’t listen to whining warriors and thieves who like to spam 1 button and win on how to balance the elementalists. Heres a radical idea, listen to the people who have actually bothered playing the class and understand how it works.

There are more changes that they havent discussed for all classes based on the feedback from these discussions. Not sure what those are though.

Powerr did say that he also feels that elemental attunement is something that could or should be class inherent. I thought about it a bit more and I think elemental attunement could move to 15 arcana but everytime I think of this change I think that is 1000 of unstrippable regen that I will lose and when they fix it if I have at least 5 in earth that would be +120 toughness for an additional 10 seconds I would lose this on top of elemental shielding.

Maybe perhaps move elemental attunement to 15 arcana and lingering elements to adept arcana or master with decent buffs to 5 air and 5 fire I would probably pick it up. I would essentially have the same 30 point traits in arcana but this would perhaps help those players that don’t want to go 20+ points into arcana.

Could the case be made for elemental attunement at 5 points arcana, arcana fury at 15 points and lingering elements as a trait? Then it makes elemental attunement almost feel like IC for mesmers but when IC was a 5 point trait for mesmers you did have alot more build variety.

oZii.2864:

Powerr did say that he also feels that elemental attunement is something that could or should be class inherent.

I think he’s right – it’s class-defining, and playing Ele feels broken without it.

One solution may be to make a single-target version of EA a baseline ability, and to add the AOE capability back as the arcane master level trait.

Then arcane would be actually optional.

What if the the 5 point traits gave boon duration.

• 15% might duration
• 15% Swiftness duration
• 15% protection duration
• 15% regen duration

Then Elemental Attunement as 15 point trait move Elemental Surge down to Master Tier because it isn’t GM worthy.

Make Lingering elements new Grandmaster trait with a little rework.

• Fire would be flame barrier merged with one with Fire.
• Air would be the old One with Air.
• Earth would be the buffed +120 toughness
• Water would be Soothing Mist w/ better scaling.

Replace One with Fire with a new trait something like Molten Rock for 7% of your power is converted to toughness.

Just threw this together might have a trait missing somewhere but I think it is solid. Lets face it elementalist is tied to boons and that’s ok and one of the things I like about the class.

This would ease up on the reliance of arcana and boon duration so you could spec some boon duration if you like but don’t have to sacrifice to many raw stats for it. You can already get 95% in PvE/WvW if you like. This makes a 3 Monk and 3 Water setup able to go 3 monk 3 something else rune set so you can get some kind of raw stats.

If a ele doesn’t spec boon duration they wouldn’t get alot of benefit from it but some. If this was implented 15 Arcana would be popular of course but people wouldn’t feel the need to go more into arcana than that. Has synergy with Glyph of Elemental Harmony.

The problem with some of the ideas here, including the one about EA being inherent to the class, is that an elementalist would rely too much on boons.

Ok, ok, they already do for several of their builds. But not for all of them. I would like to see more incentives for elementalists to spec in fire’s condition duration for extra defense, although IMO, the condition stats from traits should be swapped out. It’s earth that wants more condition duration for blinds, weakness, etc so it can offer more protection. It’s fire that wants more condition damage, not only because burning is their main damage source from conditions, but also because condition duration has weak synergy with 1s burning ticks.

I would like to see the following:
Fire Magic
+ Power
+ Condition Damage
Earth Magic
+ Toughness
+ Condition Duration

It just feels more natural this way. And it would make earth builds with weakness and cripple strong enough defensively to justify speccing for it instead of speccing for water magic.

Back to minor traits, I like how they don’t rely on boons, especially because that makes them stronger alongside boons. Water 5th is stronger the way it is, because you can have it and regen at the same time. That’s cool. If elemental attunement was inherent to elementalist’s minor traits, we would get regen instead.

What lingering elements and the minor traits need, is for the later ones to be stronger. That’s it. Especially fire and air, as water’s already decent and earth’s should get decent as well.

Like I’ve said before, I feel that the only reason people feel that EA should be inherent, is the sustained protection. Likewise, the same can be said for renewing stamina. And for Water 15th, and for evasive arcana’s water effect. What this means is, players feel that everything that gives enough survival to the elementalist to make them viable should be inherent to the class. Why? Because the existence of better survival effects determines how viable the elementalist class is.

This reveals one of the biggest issues to this profession, aside the arcana/ attunement cooldown rate. Our profession can’t be viable without really strong defensive traits. And if Anet feels that those traits are too strong for adept tier, and that they need to be toned down to be in par with what they believe to be right, then the base survival of the elementalist needs to be improved.

And, like I’ve also said in another post in this thread, our profession was officially designed to depend more on active defenses instead of passive defenses, but most of our active defenses rely too much on passive stats to be strong enough to keep us alive (healing skills that demand healing power, you-must-get-hit auras that demand high toughness or vitality, boons that demand some boon duration, especially for protection). Our defensive conditions (cripple, weakness, blind) are not enough to be an alternative at times, and our stat-neutral active defenses are too few: we have a few stuns, KDs, blocks, reflections, but like I’ve already said too, the mesmer has better stat-neutral active defenses than we do.

EDIT
To the point that, it almost feels like mesmers are the ones that deserve the low base Health, and elementalists the mid base Health. Most mesmers only care about offensive stats, because their base survival is beyond fine. At the opposite situation, elementalists only care about defensive stats, because our base survival is bellow what it should. The elementalist’s exception to that is a very gimmick instant-kill burst build, that should be nerfed someday in pvp anyway. By swapping each other’s health, elementalists would still rely on defensive stats to improve most of their active stat-biased defenses, but they would be potentially viable with more offensive stats. Meanwhile, mesmers would still have enough active defenses to survive with offensive stats, but their really strong duelist builds would come fairly at a higher risk, and there would exist greater desire to invest on defensive stats for them.

I feel that elementalist’s and mesmer’s should have had their health swapped since launch. It makes more sense both ways.

Agreed. Our low defense kinda forces us into relying on perma protection tbh.

They need to increase our HP or our defense, im tired of getting 15ks killshots in the middle of a fight with almost 2k toughness , they literally one hit you. or a thieve doing the same amount of damage and if he doesnt kill you he stealths to fully heal and repeat.

In 1vs1 they cant do that since you can always dodge (although they are nerfing the endurance buffs) but in the middle of a fight they always target eles for obvious reasons.

Going to make a list for my arguments, for a clearer presentation.

Change
Elementalist’s base Health,
10,805 -> 15,082
And
Mesmer’s base Health,
15,082 -> 10,805

Why:

• Eles have a hard time if not heavily specced in stronger passive defense;
• Mes have an easy time even while in berserker gear;

• Many of the eles active defenses are stat-biased. They rely on defensive stats to be strong enough. Examples: healing skills which rely on healing power, auras which require eles to get hit, boons.
• Most mes active defenses are stat-neutral. They excel at reflection, blocks, invulnerabilities, stuns, teleports, stealth etc. Some of them are already present in the core profession mechanic. Many of them are under low cooldowns, or are offered by very strong traits. In addition to all this, they have illusions.

• Eles were officially designed to rely less on passive defenses, and more on active defenses. However, the most neutral active defenses were given to mes, not to ele, alongside the higher health value too. It’s unfair that the “profession officially designed to rely on active defenses” has weaker or more restricting active defenses than another profession that also happens to get higher base health and equally strong burst/ damage potential.

• If Eles had higher health, builds with more offensive stats/ traits would become viable. However, players would still desire defensive stats because their active defenses depend a lot on them.
• If Mes had lower health, their offensive builds would come at a higher risk, but players would still have enough stat-neutral defenses to compensate for that. Meanwhile, defensive stats would be more desired, due to the risk of the low health.

Though level 80 I’m still a rookie to the profession. The attunement cool down reduction seems to be a plus.

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip

+100

15 char

I like the attunement cd reduction aswell, something I’d like to see though is a cd reduction on our weapon skills. The elementalist got some really strong weapon skills but some got crazy cds and some have crazy activation-time. For example the staff, why is there such a long activation time on all the power damaging skills and that goes for focus offhand aswell, a maximum of 25 – 30 sec cd should be for all offhand weapons and dagger-oh earth 5# should get a 1sec cast time.

-reason

1. the elementalist got really weak armor and health and long acivation times and cds is really hurting our incombat life time.

2. making our weapon skills stronger will help out with build diveristy since it would give us better tools to stay alive and be able to go into more offensive builds then just spending 70% of our trait points into water and arcana.

3. lower activation time for example dagger-oh earth 5# would make it a threatning ability while now in it’s sad state it’s a invitation to “come and kill me” same goes for scepter-mh water 2# it never hits!

look at this gem

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Elementalist_traits

The old elementalist traits

It looks like Elemental Attunement was actually the 5 point minors before.

Only thing I like there is One with Mists- Mist form at 33% health.

oZii.2864:

look at this gem

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Elementalist_traits

The old elementalist traits

It looks like Elemental Attunement was actually the 5 point minors before.

Only thing I like there is One with Mists- Mist form at 33% health.

There’s some very interesting stuff there.

Tempest Strength Air Magic Adept Major Deal 5% more damage while moving.

Anyone thinks this could be perfectly added to Windborne Dagger or to Zephyr’s Speed?

EDIT: On second thoughts, it could incentivate too much auto-running (and bad playing) while using skills, which would be annoying. Not sure.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Change
Elementalist’s base Health,
10,805 -> 15,082
And
Mesmer’s base Health,
15,082 -> 10,805

Why:

• Eles have a hard time if not heavily specced in stronger passive defense;
• Mes have an easy time even while in berserker gear

This.. Very much this.

On paper, elementalist is literally the weakest class.. In reality, it isn’t, but you have to work much harder and be far more skilled than any other class.

I have a build or two on my mesmer with which I can handle insane amounts of punishment and not even wince. Phantasms do so much for them.

Ele has to stand still and be hit while dealing our most damaging moves, mesmers can stealth while their most damaging moves move around and hit for them.

DiogoSilva.7089:

snipped

JonPeters.5630:

I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses.

Jon, please give this post a good read.

oZii.2864:

look at this gem

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Elementalist_traits

The old elementalist traits

It looks like Elemental Attunement was actually the 5 point minors before.

Only thing I like there is One with Mists- Mist form at 33% health.

Wtf Anet? Put these traits back in. They make a lot of our current ones look like crap. Why were these scrapped?

Some points I’ve been thinking about :

Attunement Recharge
Why should attunement recharge begins upon leaving the attunement ? Why not upon entering ? This would add a lot more flexibility, reducing our dependency on Arcane trait line and will be the same as other classes (weapon CD begins upon swapping, they have only 2 swaps but the recharge is slightly quicker).
This would be powerful, but I think it does not reduce the interest of Arcane line and Fresh Air trait, just a sort of QoL improvement.
EA and swap buffs will have the same uptime so no big deal here, but it’ll be a bit more forgiving towards swap timing which is a main concern for this profession.

Dragon tooth
The after-cast is terrible. I would love to see a slight decrease in damage, but an after-cast far quicker. Now, this skill must be use either to force a dodge, or on rooted/CCed players, which is pretty inconsistent with it’s short cd.

Cleansing Wave moving up.

How else am I gonna remove conditions at 0/30/0/10/30?

/sadface

kythor.7650:

Cleansing Wave moving up.

How else am I gonna remove conditions at 0/30/0/10/30?

/sadface

Ether Renewal? :P

oZii.2864:

look at this gem

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Elementalist_traits

The old elementalist traits

It looks like Elemental Attunement was actually the 5 point minors before.

Only thing I like there is One with Mists- Mist form at 33% health.

It looks like they scrapped some really fun traits for every profession.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Going to make a list for my arguments, for a clearer presentation.

Change
Elementalist’s base Health,
10,805 -> 15,082
And
Mesmer’s base Health,
15,082 -> 10,805

Why:

TL;DR (my version)mesmers have stealth/clones/reflects/passive mitigation even in full zerk vs eles struggling in a full bunker to survive(basically).

This x9,000!!!

Seriously, if they can raise the health pool of wars(it wa wars hp that got bumped up awhile back correct??) then they can and should do it for eles.

I’ve been jumping back and forth over the past few days between my 2 main builds, s/d FA and the standard tried and true d/d bunker. I love them both and they both have their places. But rolling as a d/d ele is just… Thrilling, the gameplay/strategy, it’s exillirating. Plus our survivability in the d/d 0/10/0/30/30 is unmatched vs any of our other builds. But even at that it’s so touchy and easy to screw up a rotation and kill yourself. It shouldn’t be like that. I understand that against good competition it’s going to be a close fight. But when I’m facing a thief or mesmers, and theyre in stealth kitten near the entire fight and appear for maybe 2 seconds at a time… It’s bullkitten.
/endrant

Hopefully the devs take a close look at this entire thread and all of the amazing posts everyone has made. This patch could make or break the ele so they need to be extremely careful.

I’m glad I’m not the only one frustrated by how much defense mesmers get even with heavy dps builds heh.

Adastra.9821:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snipped

JonPeters.5630:

I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses.

Jon, please give this post a good read.

Yeah that would be all well and good if you guys didn’t keep doing stupid things like constantly nerfing those tools you’re talking about that makes boosting our health and armor unnecessary. We wouldn’t need more health and armor if you hadn’t obliterated our mobility, healing, condition cleansing and just about everything else you could nerf that made us viable.

You cant keep nerfing us without giving us anything in return. Nerf our survivability, fine, then up our damage. its ridiculous that we’re not only the squishiest class, but also the least damaging of all. Tradiationally mages are the squishiest class, but also have the highest possible dps in exchange for being so fragile. I’d be fine with being squishy if we also inflicted the most possible damage. But that isn’t the case. Warriors can do more damage with 1 attack than we can do by pressing 57 buttons. That is unacceptable. If I have to be so weak I die from a light fart in my direction, I want to drop armies with all my attacks before I do get hit. Double or even quadruple the damage of all our skills, then and ONLY then will our abysmal survivability be acceptable.

Nikkinella.8254:

Adastra.9821:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snipped

JonPeters.5630:

I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses.

Jon, please give this post a good read.

Yeah that would be all well and good if you guys didn’t keep doing stupid things like constantly nerfing those tools you’re talking about that makes boosting our health and armor unnecessary. We wouldn’t need more health and armor if you hadn’t obliterated our mobility, healing, condition cleansing and just about everything else you could nerf that made us viable.

You cant keep nerfing us without giving us anything in return. Nerf our survivability, fine, then up our damage. its ridiculous that we’re not only the squishiest class, but also the least damaging of all. Tradiationally mages are the squishiest class, but also have the highest possible dps in exchange for being so fragile. I’d be fine with being squishy if we also inflicted the most possible damage. But that isn’t the case. Warriors can do more damage with 1 attack than we can do by pressing 57 buttons. That is unacceptable. If I have to be so weak I die from a light fart in my direction, I want to drop armies with all my attacks before I do get hit. Double or even quadruple the damage of all our skills, then and ONLY then will our abysmal survivability be acceptable.

Please tell me what 1 hit ability ou speak off? Since the nerf to stunt runes you have to be a really unlucky player to get the whole HB hit.

What about this Ele build?

This one also

yanoch.7051:

Please tell me what 1 hit ability ou speak off? Since the nerf to stunt runes you have to be a really unlucky player to get the whole HB hit.

What about this Ele build?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdBJw9cBuEo

This one also

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gAif9qE4WY

Yeah, those are nice burst builds, except the situation where you realize how long is the downtime between those bursts. And also how quick you have to be on the buttons to perform that.
And imagine what happens when the enemy is not a dumb training dummy and dodges…
Just sayin’….

Ignore yanoch it’s just a warrior trying to troll.

Carry on and leave the dumb dumb alone without food.

yanoch.7051:

Please tell me what 1 hit ability ou speak off? Since the nerf to stunt runes you have to be a really unlucky player to get the whole HB hit.

What about this Ele build?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdBJw9cBuEo

This one also

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gAif9qE4WY

Hooray, you found a couple of burst builds that can kill 1 person every 60s, assuming you either have fast fingers or a nicely programmed macro and the target is as intelligent as a non-dodging golem dummy

In WvW, we have 2 names for such builds. “Free lootbag” or “Deadweight”. Pick your poison.

Look at the 3 traits, they are ALL used for the 1 burst attack. Then look at the traits. Notice how little sustain and defense you have in such builds?

I noticed some strange things. First, CD reduction traits moved to master tier for eles, because “all this traits are master”. Then, to swap with unespected foe, crack shot (cd reduction for rifle warrior) is moved to adept.
I know that is difficult to fix the unespected foe issue, but lol!

Is anyone really using alacrity traits?

Zelyhn.8069:

Is anyone really using alacrity traits?

I know about two builds using them. Staff fire DPS for potential of 100% lava font uptime and support wannabe healer builds for their water field spells.

But those are investing 30 point in the respective traitlines anyway…

The other strange thing i noticed is about weapon swap and elemental attunments.
First of all, i have 2 main characters. A warrior and a ele, so I think I’m quite prepared to debate about differences
Btw, a lot of ppl continue to tell " but eles have 20 skills"…
kitten .
This is true, BUT:
1) No chain
2) Every CD reduction trait is less effective (more or less half effective of those of a warrior).
3) You have to swap, is not a plus, but mandatory.
4) You have always the same range! This is the biggest problem. IF you are weilding staff, you will suck in close range. D/D? You are suck in melee.
As a warrior, i can use bow as main and swap in S/something else. I can be a ranged and have perma swiftness, and switch in close range, with good gap closer.
5) Ok, elementalists can heal, take protection and so on. Things that you will not need if you had the HP and armor of a warrior. While ele is trying to avoid hits, healing and protect, warrior is giving dmg and passively reduce damage and regen HP.

It’s different in WvW. There i consider eles to be one of the strongest class in game (staff only, until new patch maybe). More funny, lot of aoe, awesome utilities. In this situation switching to different role is really powerful. Also, if you go knight or cleric you are really hard to kill.

Zelyhn.8069:

Is anyone really using alacrity traits?

I use Geomancer’s Alacrity for my D/F Ele, since I get more survivability out of those focus skills than I do from water attunement.

Zelyhn.8069:

Is anyone really using alacrity traits?

Been using Aeromancer’s Alacrity for almost a year now. It’s always been pretty relevant with skills like Shocking Aura, Updraft, etc.

I want to say that most of the people want to play ele as a range mage class. Not the same as thief. This game need to do a lot nerf on mele and give more power for ranges, especially casting time needed ranges. Also, need to nerf hide, it is really a bad idea hide cant be break after hit.

Giotto.2607:

I want to say that most of the people want to play ele as a range mage class. Not the same as thief. This game need to do a lot nerf on mele and give more power for ranges, especially casting time needed ranges. Also, need to nerf hide, it is really a bad idea hide cant be break after hit.

The stealth mechanic works differently in GW2 than in other MMOs, so applying one rule from other MMO and not the others is kinda nonsense m8.
In case you don’t know what I mean, it’s this:
-In other MMOs where you are revealed by being hit, you are hidden permanently, until hit/you attack/you decide so.

In GW2, you have a few secs of stealth by using an ability, therefore it’s compensated by not revealing yourself when hit.

Adastra.9821:

Jon, please give this post a good read.

Another interesting thing about my argument, is that I could use Jon’s post to justify the health swap suggestion instead of using his post to counter it. Let me explain:

Jon wants each profession to have fixed values and tools built around them, in order to define them (aka, to make them stand out from each other).

My post tries to explain how I feel that mesmer’s stat-neutral active defenses are more fitting (mechanically, not flavorfully) to the squishier elementalist, while the elementalist’s stat-biased active defenses are more fitting to the sturdier mesmer.

Now, here’s the big question: what would need to be done to fix the elementalist’s unviable base survival, in a way that would retain the profession’s uniqueness? And most of the answers can I think of, are followed with a problem that contradicts it.

1. Improve our existing active defenses?

• That’s a solution for staff’s very slow survival skills, and a few others. But how would that fix d/d builds, for example, which have currently some of our best defensive options, yet are still ineffective at surviving without strong trait/ stat support? A staff build’s survival is nearly non-existent, to the point that even heavily specced defensive builds still having a hard time justifying it. Making some of its defenses better will merely make staff builds at a base level of survival similar to the other already existing sets. Which we know it’s not enough. Still, something that definitely needs to be tweaked.

2. Add more stat-neutral defenses?

• But how, without making the elementalist too similar to the mesmer? Which stat-neutral active defenses can the elementalist have, that the mesmer doesn’t already? The only one I can think of, is mobility. Which Anet doesn’t wants us to excell at, as they have shown by toning down RTL. Still, if One with Air is a bit further buffed, that one has potential for an unique elementalist-flavored escape mechanism, but a single adept-tier trait won’t save the entire profession’s survival. Anet has two contradicting problems here: they can’t make the ele too close to other professions (mesmer), and they don’t want the profession to have better mobility than the thief.

3. Diversify the range of stat-biased active defenses?

• So, auras, healing skills, and a few others of our defensive mechanics rely too much on boons, healing power and defensive stats. They can’t be buffed any further (fire aura excluded), or else bunker eles will be too strong. But at their current situation, they are not strong enough to sustain a glass cannon elementalist neither. So another solution is to look for more active defenses that rely on different stats. Elementalists can be given more Weaknesses and Cripples (condition duration), Torment and Confusion (condition duration/ damage) and Retaliation (boon duration, yes, but also power). This way, elementalists can invest in other stats and still have enough defenses. But this leads to the same conflicting problems as the suggestion above: it makes eles too similar to already existing professions. Mostly to necromancer, but also to mesmer and, to a lesser extent, guardian. The only thing I can see improved out of this, is more access to chill, and perhaps receiving the torment condition. It would be worth considering, but again, not enough.

4. Make all traits offer strong defensive options?

• Here’s the problem right here: it wouldn’t make traitlines distinct enough from each other. “Oh, so, I’m going to spec in water for defense… wait, no, I’ll spec in fire instead, for defense!” Not very exciting, is it? And I’d take a guess that Jon wants trait lines to be as distinct from each other as professions. Making all of them with heavy defensive mechanics is just a big no to that, so unless Anet wants all our glass cannon builds to revolve around 3-second burst-or-die killshots, our base survival must be improved from somewhere else.

5. Would swapping mesmer’s and elementalist’s health make each of those classes less defined?

• Not really. Not, because there’s only a single profession with light armor and low health, and a single profession with light armor and mid health, in this game. Swapping them out would retain their uniqueness. We currently have a mid-health scholar profession with strong, neutral active defenses, and a low-health scholar profession with strong-if-specced-defensively-or-else-mediocre active defenses. Because elementalist’s active defenses are less reliable than the mesmer, they could get the higher health of the two to compensate, and both professions would still retain their uniqueness, as there would still exist a single schoalr profession with mid health, and a single one with low health.