Guild Wars 2

“Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.” = Bad idea leave at current tier

“Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.” = Good idea and could be swapped with “Renewing Stamina”

ThiBash.5634:

Dweia Tulenhenki.8127:

- for example Meteor Shower, could cause “Daze” or “Confusion”

That might be a little over the top. You can however get chill on your targets if you combine Meteor Shower with Glyph of Elemental Power (cast in Water Attunement).

Why would that be over the top? It makes sense if you think about it. A FRACKING ROCK FROM SPACE IS LANDING ON YOU! Meteors should cause daze if you get hit by it. i’d by happy with just 1 second with a cooldown of 5 seconds on the daze effect proccing. A warrior smacking you with his shield will stun you, but a flaming rock from outer space landing on you would be over the top if it dazed you? Oh i’m fine, it was just a meteor, i’ll walk it off! It’s not like meteors have ever hurt anything before or caused an entire race of giant lizards to go extinct, why should it daze someone? At the very least, the impact should make a giant crater and cause knockdown and burn.

Well, GW1 MS caused KD… there’s enough rng in gw2 version to add an additional effect to MS.

I’m just afraid they’d nerf the damage if they did give it an additional effect, when that’s the last thing it needs. MS needs a 60% boost in damage as well.

If you give some insta hitting staff skills, that would be great.

My 2 cents will be divided up in 2 sections, one for how well I think they accomplished their goal. The other with what I feel would be some more needed balance.

I saw the goal as two-fold: to reduce the dependence on the arcane trait line, and to remove the imbalance of several water and arcane skills that were available too early.

For the update Overall: – Happy

_
1) Fire magic got a decent boost so they succeeded here.
2) Air magic got very little boost, so I think the patch failed here.
3) Earth magic got a decent boost with diamond skin I think out of place in our line-up, but is more powerful so they succeeded here.
4) Water magic took a noticeable nerf, but I think Soothing wave is too harsh, and out of scope of the original goal.
5) Arcane magic was buffed and nerf, but ultimately I think it did what it was intended. It will open up builds that do not require many/any points in this trait, which I think we all felt obligated to put points in. (also keep in mind low level Ele’s get an immediate boost).

I think looking at the update overall is a success, but I hope they make a few minor corrections. Now if they are looking to expand their scope to balance Ele’s in general I have some Ideas for that too._

For the Fire Trait: Overall – Happy
1) Burning Fire: 40 second cool-down automatic condition removal, in the master tier.

This seems very situational, but keep in mind that Cleansing Fires cool down is 40 seconds, so I think this is balanced (expecially for an adept skill).

2) Conjurer in the adept tier.

Since I prefer Staves and Scepters, I spend a lot of time in the fire attunment. I am very happy that I no longer need to choose between 20% reduction of Fire skills and lightning hammer/ conjured greatsword.

3) Ember’s might changed to 25% longer burning duration.

This I feel is a solid boost for an adept skill, but keep in mind burning only stacks in duration, and I find it easy to keep things on fire (especially since Fire gives condition duration anyway).

4) Burning Rage- 5% -> 10% increase damage to burning targets.

Solid buff of a free skill, expecially since it is so easy to set things on fire and keep them that way as an Ele.

For the Air Trait: Overall – Not Impressed

Soothing winds from 5% -> 7% precision conversion.

base prescision is around 1k, and some builds can get 2k easily. This means that you will get between 70 and 140 healing instead of 50 to 100 healing. so +20 -40. Is anyone going to really take this over the other adepts in the line (Zephyr’s Boon, quick Glyphs or Bolt to the heart). They could go totally nuts and make it 10% the old diamond skin and I would not choose this. This skill needs to be something different all together or it will always be passed over.

Tempest Defense cool down from 60 secs to 25 secs

This is a very big buff to the skill, but we have to keep in mind it is a master skill to be compared to Persistant flames, Pyromancer Puissance, Powerful Aura, and Evasive Arcana. The stun can only stun an attacker once every 2 seconds, and only lasts a few seconds itself, so that means can stun each attacker once. I would not put 30 points in Air to get it, but it is a significant buff, so I guess I should be happy.

For the Earth Trait: Overall – Happy

1) Stone Flesh buff from 1/lvl to 1.5/lvl when attuned to earth/

This is a solid buff to a 5 point free skill. Keep in mind that the base defence for exotic armor is 920 for light and 1064 for medium, a boost of 120 puts us in almost effective medium armor when attuned to earth magic.

2) Strength of Stone from 10% more damage when attuned to earth to 10% of toughness converted to condition damage.

Again a base 80 character has about 100 toughness , and can go to about 2000 easily. This equals an extra 100 to 200 condition damage, which is +5-10 damage per second for bleeding and +25-50 burning damage. Compare that to 52.5 base dps for bleeding (42.5 base with 200 from earth), and 378 (again 328 base and 200 from earth). This is +10-20% for bleeding or 15%-30% for burning increase from the base damage. This is a fair trade for a skill, especially since this is just the old diamond skin available a tier earlier

3) Diamond Skin changed to immunity to conditions when health > 90%

_I know I should like this skill, because one of the first things I plan to shoot straight forwards and get this to see if it is as powerful as it looks on paper. Another part of me does not like this skill though, because this is very powerful in a select situations and will be the be the basis of many classes wanted us to get nerffed. I honestly feel that this skill is more themed with the Gaurdian or Necromancer, but there is really no precedent for a passive immunity to all conditions (even if 10% of our health is so low that this would only save us from the first hit of non-damaging condition skills). It is not that I do not want an OP skill, it is that if we are going to get one, I would rather it be in line with our profession _

For the Water Trait: Overall – Unhappy

_This tree has been discussed in quite a bit of detail in the thread, so I do not think my opinion will add much. I do think the changes were fair except soothing wave (Especially, arcane abatement, as we were the only profession with a master ranked fall skill, not that I ever use it anyway).

If the purpose of nerfing water was to remove the option of getting powerful traits with only 10 points, I would have just moved soothing water to master level, or at least change it to only removing a condition on us. This way it would be on par with Shrouded removal which the Necromancers have. _

For the Arcane Trait: Overall – Happy

This tree has also been discussed fairly thoroughly, and I don’t think I can add much.

Can someone name a decent build that really uses anything in fire? Because even with these changes I don’t see one that relies on any point investment for fire.

You can make an entire build around Fresh Air and Electric Disharge in Air for example … but Fire has nothing that I can see on the surface that is worth anything other than the new cleanse. However, that is more of an addon for other builds … not something to make a build around.

I still feel that Flame Barrier is a horrible joke. Lowest health/armor in the game and in the power line we get an ability that only functions when we get hit? A really , really bad joke.

Now, I mentioned I had some ideas for balancing out Ele’s to other classes.

First I would like to rehash a couple inherent differences between the classes.

Light Armor – 920 Defense| Medium Armor 1064 Defense| Heavy Armor 1211 Defense.
Health
Warriors/Necros – 9,212 + Vitality| Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer 5,922 + Vitality| Gaurdian, Thief, Elementalist 1,645 + Vitality.

Since all classes get the same base attributes everywhere else, and it is 10 hp per vitality

I give you these numbers because I am about to calculate the effective attribute difference between the classes

A warrior in heavy armor had effectively 291 toughness and 756 vitality over a Elementalist. That is over 1000 point difference.

A Mesmer has 427 points over the Elementalist, a Ranger/Engineer have 571, and the least gap comes from the Thief with only 144 points (but have access to stealth)

Keep in mind that your equipment inscriptions add about 2000 attribute points total.

Now with over 1000 point handicap of the Ele and the warrior or a 400-600 handicap to most other classes you would think that the Ele must pack some amazing skills, doing things no other class can (think Thieves and their stealth, as they are in much the same attribute boat as us).

I purpose a very simple fix, correct the deficit in points.

Light armor classes should get a boost of 291 to their power (as they level), and medium armor classes should get a boost of 144, because power and toughness are direct counters.

As for the vitality gap, I have two ideas:

1) Boost stats of the classes like with the armor deficit.
2) Set every class to the same health as in Guild Wars 1. Create items or traits that trade HP or Vit for more damage or power.

I think a lot of imbalance of the game currently is caused by this stat imbalance. certain skills can make up for it, but that is very had to calculate. And currently there is very little that the Elementalist does significantly better than any other class (unless anyone else would like to point out something valuable that we can do tremendously better than any other class).

I always thought of the Elementalist as a glass cannon, a class that inherently traded durability for DPS, CC, or something special. Thieves have stealth, Mesmers have clones, rangers have pets, Necromancers have minions/death shroud, and Engineers have kits/turrets. I am not as familiar with Guardians, but you can see that Warrior have more durability than any other class.

What I want is for Ele’s to have a niche that they are good at and be just as playable and important in PvE and WvW. In lieu of that I will at least ask that I do not have to play with a 400-1000 point handicap.

Taldren.7523:

Can someone name a decent build that really uses anything in fire? Because even with these changes I don’t see one that relies on any point investment for fire.

You can make an entire build around Fresh Air and Electric Disharge in Air for example … but Fire has nothing that I can see on the surface that is worth anything other than the new cleanse. However, that is more of an addon for other builds … not something to make a build around.

I still feel that Flame Barrier is a horrible joke. Lowest health/armor in the game and in the power line we get an ability that only functions when we get hit? A really , really bad joke.

I would argue that the conjurer change has a positive impact on any conjurered weapon build.

I will agree with you on flame barrier though. It would be different if flame barrier punished attackers sufficiently to deter them from wanting to hit us (which takes like 3 to kill us).

Instead it sets them on fire, well guess what, if someone hit me in melee and I am attuned to fire, I have probably already set them on fire. Also keep in mind it is right next to lava tomb which punishes people for wanting to finish us off. Maybe they can combine the two into one also skill that has a 20% chance to create a lava font when we are struck in melee.

Taldren.7523:

Can someone name a decent build that really uses anything in fire? Because even with these changes I don’t see one that relies on any point investment for fire.

You can make an entire build around Fresh Air and Electric Disharge in Air for example … but Fire has nothing that I can see on the surface that is worth anything other than the new cleanse. However, that is more of an addon for other builds … not something to make a build around.

Fire’s vital in PvE for extra damage modifiers, Persisting Flames for perma fury (and perma lava fonts if running staff), and Conjurer if running a S/D + LH build.

Popular S/D + LH specs post-Dec 10th are gonna be: 10/10/25/25/0, 30/10/10/20/0, 25/25/0/10/0. Staff specs will be the same as before, spamming 1, 2, and 3 in Fire atune w/ VI, VII, and XI, but they’re gonna get an additional 5% modifier from the buff to the 25 minor in fire.

Nikkinella.8254:

ThiBash.5634:

That might be a little over the top. You can however get chill on your targets if you combine Meteor Shower with Glyph of Elemental Power (cast in Water Attunement).

Why would that be over the top? It makes sense if you think about it. A FRACKING ROCK FROM SPACE IS LANDING ON YOU!

You know why it’d be over the top. Massice damage, multiple targets, multiple hits and you want to add daze to that? It’d be overpowered even in 1v1 duels…

cheshirefox.7026:

overpowered staff elementalist in a wvw duel.. yeah, that’ll be the day

and for the record i don’t think elem should be getting any stealth or dazes, as they are junk mechanisms used as filler

Already was, in beta, when ppl didn’t know how to counter it properly, and that was the reason to kill the staff in PvP outside of zerg….

Taldren.7523:

Fire has nothing that I can see on the surface that is worth anything other than the new cleanse. However, that is more of an addon for other builds … not something to make a build around.

The cleanse is a cantrip, and fire magic has an adept trait that adds 3 stacks of might (15s) each time you activate a cantrip. You can make a cantrip might-stacking build with 20 in fire, 20 in water and 10 in earth for the automatic armor of earth too.

In a scepter build, you could push for 30 in fire for persisting flames, and get plenty of might/ fury/ regen/ vigor from cantrips and combo finishers.

Assuming that in a normal pvp fight, your armor of earth and cleansing fire traits activate normally, and you start the fight with a lightning flash burst, that’s 9 stacks of might right there without any extra effort, plus regen, vigor, protection, stability and condition removal coming at a free cost.

Can lead to some potentially sturdy glass cannon valkyrie (or even zerker) elementalists, or to more balanced or bunker builds (with soldier or cleric amulet) with good damage sustain.

Still has 10 free points which don’t even demand any arcana investment. Can go for water’s cleansing water, and get even more condition removal, perhaps with the healing glyph for 3 extra stacks of might, regen + condition removal, more protection, and swiftness inbetween battles, or just Signet of Restoration for even more passive defense.

ThiBash.5634:

Nikkinella.8254:

ThiBash.5634:

That might be a little over the top. You can however get chill on your targets if you combine Meteor Shower with Glyph of Elemental Power (cast in Water Attunement).

Why would that be over the top? It makes sense if you think about it. A FRACKING ROCK FROM SPACE IS LANDING ON YOU!

You know why it’d be over the top. Massice damage, multiple targets, multiple hits and you want to add daze to that? It’d be overpowered even in 1v1 duels…

A meteor landing on your head SHOULD be overpowered. It makes no sense that a warrior can do more damage with a sword than something traveling through space at thousands of miles and hour, piercing our atmosphere and landing on someone. I want it to be a near instakill. In most decent games, mages with spells like meteor shower do the most dps of all classes combined, but are squishy in exchange for that. We are just as squishy as they are, but have nowhere near that destructive power. I want to nuke my enemies off the face of the planet, I want to demolish continents! that’s what a mage SHOULD do!

I like the combat system in GW2 better, but the magical classes in games like Tera and Aion make GW2 version look like a pathetic magician at a child’s birthday party. Maybe the devs should play one of those games and learn how to properly design a magical class. Or better yet, Baldur’s gate. Mages should be that powerful, feared by everyone. Not a complete joke like ele and considered a free lootbag to every other class. 10 times the effort for half the payoff of other classes.

Shadowfall.6543:

I would argue that the conjurer change has a positive impact on any conjurered weapon build.

I will agree with you on flame barrier though. It would be different if flame barrier punished attackers sufficiently to deter them from wanting to hit us (which takes like 3 to kill us).

Instead it sets them on fire, well guess what, if someone hit me in melee and I am attuned to fire, I have probably already set them on fire. Also keep in mind it is right next to lava tomb which punishes people for wanting to finish us off. Maybe they can combine the two into one also skill that has a 20% chance to create a lava font when we are struck in melee.

<Begin Rant>
Conjured Weapon should be just like Weapon Kits for engineers.

The Conjurer trait should be moved back into Arcane Adept where it started and summon a duration charged version of the conjured weapon that can be picked up by other players.

Set the ICD on Conjurer to the current cooldown of conjured weapons.
<End Rant>

Whew … that said …

I like your idea of Lava Font on hit and combining it with our “We Lose” ability.

However, it doesn’t address my question. If you are going to go PvE Conjurer you need only put 10 points into Fire … that doesn’t define the line or make it something anyone would seek to base a build around.

CMstorm.8679:

there’s two traits that have still bothered me (kinda) since release: Elemental Surge and Arcane Precision, mainly arcane precision.

they’ll never buff these when they’re trying to get eles away from arcana

As for adept minors, I think I have no issue with Water and Earth. Now, Fire and Air are quite different stories.

Flame barrier: currently burns enemy one sec if the Ele is hit in melee (chance 20%).

I would propose the chance to go for 50-60% chance. Eles are not font of getting hit. Our playstyle is to consciously avoid getting hit. So we already actively limit the power of the trait just by playing. What more, we don’t stay in fire forever. For the sake of argument, assume it 25% of the time in combat. You can imagine how many time an enemy will be burned by this trait during an element switching cycle (somewhere between zero and 1) Not to mention that 1 second of burning is meager in itself for a punishment for hitting us. What’s with the 20% chance, on top of the limitations discussed above? Am I supposed to patiently continue getting hit till it procs before I can happy switch to another element? 75%-100% is understandably too much. i think around 50% is a good compromise.

Air adept minor: Move faster while attuned to air (10%).
Please make it 25%, unless you redesign it to something else. Given the access of swiftness and speed boost an elem can tap into, this trait is not just redundant but also pathetically weak.

I’m looking at these changes and all I can think is, “Those poor Eles just got Rangered.” It seems Anet’s idea to make people not use Water and Arcana as much is to nerf them instead of greatly improving the other lines. It’s the same thing that happened with Ranger bows. “Oh, people are using shortbow almost exclusively over longbow? What’s that, make the longbow stronger? No, just nerf shortbow.”

The Spiral King.2483:

I’m looking at these changes and all I can think is, “Those poor Eles just got Rangered.” It seems Anet’s idea to make people not use Water and Arcana as much is to nerf them instead of greatly improving the other lines. It’s the same thing that happened with Ranger bows. “Oh, people are using shortbow almost exclusively over longbow? What’s that, make the longbow stronger? No, just nerf shortbow.”

This happens to every profession just about every balance patch, and to be fair, some things are a bit out of scale, and others seem to get lost to the assumption that all professions are balanced before they start moving things around.

Which is just completely false. Full stop.

lunyboy.8672:

This happens to every profession just about every balance patch, and to be fair, some things are a bit out of scale, and others seem to get lost to the assumption that all professions are balanced before they start moving things around.

Which is just completely false. Full stop.

I agree the forums are very hard picture to frame. The thing that bothers me is that it is all pointed at the devs when many of the changes or variations of suggestions come from US the players.

I know that healing signet increase was suggested many times and Jon Peters tested it out in sPvP (the infamous 5 signet pic of him in sPvP). Cleansing Ire is a strictly Player made suggestion. They didn’t buff the healing signet or any of the heal buffs prior and just made all the other changes to help Warriors with condi’s but the players said we need more sustain we still can’t stay in the fight. Asking for protection (Daecollo) constantly Chap even said why they didn’t do healing buffs but it was asked for by the players and it was given now people complain about Warriors to the Devs and say the Devs have no clue what they are doing etc when player feedback from the forums influenced balance changes.

I can probably reference every single instance above that would lead you to believe that the majority of the Warrior changes where player influenced though I don’t have a youtube video I can find the threads. I was heavy into my warrior before the buffs happened or where talked about and was on the Warrior forums alot when they where being discussed. The old thief thread (the big one that was moved from WvW for all the stealth complaining) I think is closed.

Let us look down memory lane shall we in regards to Elementalist:

First SOTG – http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/365009593 Elementalist discussion @ 45:51

Elementalist is first classed discussed. Jon Peter’s seemed to think at that time that ele was fine surprised people thought it was strong. Chap sounds like he would side with how we all feel now about Ele that is a high skill cap so it rewards you. The other players don’t seem to feel the same way influenced by the Players, changes/nerfs to ele happened after that video.

I think looking back at this video it was a l2p issue on the playerbase as a whole and people didn’t know how the ele worked or how to counter it. So ele was nerfed other classes brought up which seemed to be the devs initial intention anyway but for months it was Ele =OP on the forums so they nerfed Ele. The better approach would have been to bring the other classes up to the levels that we see now that is what they seemed to want to do going by the video but somewhere it didn’t happen.

April 2013 – The Ele nerf patch!

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/365009593 Elementalist @ 34:42

This is the RTL/Mist Form/ Cleansing Water(pvp) nerf patch. Even after the changes Symbolic states that he doesn’t think the Cleansing Water nerf will have much impact on how well Ele’s can deal with conditions. Chap states internally it showed other wise (which we all know is totally correct). If I remember Symbolic plays/played necromancer.

Not posting this to call people out as the cause of Elementalist nerfs but it isn’t all on the Devs, players that make a suggestion then it comes out to be bad or overpowered don’t get the fingers pointed at them. The Devs end up getting all the criticsm as they should because they are the creators of the product. Though I personally feel that sometimes it isn’t fair to say things like they have no idea what they are doing with ele.

Who does? The players? Which players should you listen to and not listen to? Who’s idea is the best?

If you go back to the last SOTG Chap even says that players asked for more evades on Thieves other weapons so bow wouldn’t feel mandatory. Now people complain about thief evade builds which are now getting nerfed. Necromancers said they couldn’t kill stuff and people could just disengage at will from them, now people complain about necromancer’s killing stuff.

This feedback from Jon imo was really good but it isn’t like they haven’t looked to the forums before and taken feedback from players of that class and then players of another class complain about the changes brought about suggested by players.

Which is why I like the suggested changes for elementalist but I fear that it will be overbuffed and people don’t see it because nobody posted a video of a 1vX build yet. This is exactly what happened with Warrior’s -See beserker’s stance. See last SOTG Chap mentions that skill specifically and why it was brought up in duration 3 times in 3 different patches because players said it wasn’t good enough to slot.

lunyboy.8672:

The Spiral King.2483:

I’m looking at these changes and all I can think is, “Those poor Eles just got Rangered.” It seems Anet’s idea to make people not use Water and Arcana as much is to nerf them instead of greatly improving the other lines. It’s the same thing that happened with Ranger bows. “Oh, people are using shortbow almost exclusively over longbow? What’s that, make the longbow stronger? No, just nerf shortbow.”

This happens to every profession just about every balance patch, and to be fair, some things are a bit out of scale, and others seem to get lost to the assumption that all professions are balanced before they start moving things around.

Which is just completely false. Full stop.

Correction. This happens to every class EXCEPT warriors. Warriors are using something too much because it’s super powerful and have crappy traits they don’t use, boost crappy traits to same level of OPness as the ones everyone else uses.

Will condition duration, range of application, and speed of application be addressed in this patch, or next one?

As a staff elementalist, I suggest that Torment can be applied through the 3rd fire skill (Flame Burst) with staff, which applies burning atm.

As a staff ele what I would really like is 1500 range, at least on all of our #5 staff skills.

This would really improve our survivability, as well as utility.

Staff #5 Skills:
Fire: Meteor Shower
Air: Static Discharge
Water: Healing Rain
Earth: Shock wave

Yes, I would love 1500 range for all staff skill, but I think this minor change would be a nice start, and would be far from overpowered.

MrSilver.5269:

As a staff ele what I would really like is 1500 range, at least on all of our #5 staff skills.

This would really improve our survivability, as well as utility.

Staff #5 Skills:
Fire: Meteor Shower
Air: Static Discharge
Water: Healing Rain
Earth: Shock wave

Yes, I would love 1500 range for all staff skill, but I think this minor change would be a nice start, and would be far from overpowered.

I agree with you. But there are more things eles need to be improved specially the attunement CD and staff skills which are slow and can’t help eles to sustain themselves.

Guizao.4167:

I agree with you. But there are more things eles need to be improved specially the attunement CD and staff skills which are slow and can’t help eles to sustain themselves.

Not getting an argument from me on those points. All ele’s should have a base 10 second attunement cool-down without having to invest a single point.

You could then swap out attunement recharge rate for reduction of condition duration. A 30 point investment in arcane would yield a 30% flat reduction in condition duration.

Just a thought.

katniss.6735:

Will condition duration, range of application, and speed of application be addressed in this patch, or next one?

From reading the article, they are only affecting trait skills, and I did not see any affecting these aspects.

Nikkinella.8254:

lunyboy.8672:

The Spiral King.2483:

I’m looking at these changes and all I can think is, “Those poor Eles just got Rangered.” It seems Anet’s idea to make people not use Water and Arcana as much is to nerf them instead of greatly improving the other lines. It’s the same thing that happened with Ranger bows. “Oh, people are using shortbow almost exclusively over longbow? What’s that, make the longbow stronger? No, just nerf shortbow.”

This happens to every profession just about every balance patch, and to be fair, some things are a bit out of scale, and others seem to get lost to the assumption that all professions are balanced before they start moving things around.

Which is just completely false. Full stop.

Correction. This happens to every class EXCEPT warriors. Warriors are using something too much because it’s super powerful and have crappy traits they don’t use, boost crappy traits to same level of OPness as the ones everyone else uses.

Actually, Warriors are getting a bit of a nerf this balance patch, it won’t be enough, of course. But a still a nerf.

lunyboy.8672:

Nikkinella.8254:

lunyboy.8672:

The Spiral King.2483:

I’m looking at these changes and all I can think is, “Those poor Eles just got Rangered.” It seems Anet’s idea to make people not use Water and Arcana as much is to nerf them instead of greatly improving the other lines. It’s the same thing that happened with Ranger bows. “Oh, people are using shortbow almost exclusively over longbow? What’s that, make the longbow stronger? No, just nerf shortbow.”

This happens to every profession just about every balance patch, and to be fair, some things are a bit out of scale, and others seem to get lost to the assumption that all professions are balanced before they start moving things around.

Which is just completely false. Full stop.

Correction. This happens to every class EXCEPT warriors. Warriors are using something too much because it’s super powerful and have crappy traits they don’t use, boost crappy traits to same level of OPness as the ones everyone else uses.

Actually, Warriors are getting a bit of a nerf this balance patch, it won’t be enough, of course. But a still a nerf.

Warriors are going to be fundamentally hard to nerf (and still be fun for warrior players).

1) Noone would have fun as a warrior if another class could mow them down in the 2 – 4 seconds it takes for them to close the distance.

2) Warriors have a reasonable expectation to have the advantage when engaged in melee versus a ranged opponent (much the same advantage a staff Elementalist would expect from a range of 1200).

3) It would be no fun if the warrior could not catch the caster (remember how frustrating it is to go against Thieves that just stealth and run away, or Mesmers with their clone army?).

As long as the warriors charge their targets with no fear of appreciable damage (and fairly low travel time), the warriors will have the advantage. And remembering that warriors have to be balanced to survive melee with champion and legendary targets, I think it will be a long time until warriors are balanced with the other classes.

WOTC was able to balance Warrior vs Wizard like 20 years ago, and that method is still perfectly valid: honestly it’s hard to believe that in 2013 such difficulties still exist.
The current version of GW2’s Warrior is strongER than the mage, which is WRONG.
In D&D they are equally strong when confronted each other but in two different ways, which is GOOD.
No Warrior in his mind would charge a Mage without sweating cold, and no Mage would even think at engaging combat with Warrior if not very very well organized.

Hopefully, with 10 dec patch things may improve for everyone -not just the Elementalist- but on paper we are still too reliant on the water/arcana trait combo for the very basic self sustainability which should be granted whatever trait line you choose to begin with, only to further focus later on certain combat dynamics.

what warrior’s getting is not a nerf, but an actual balance. Hammer is a cc weapon, it should not do as much damage as it does right now.

The only nerf I see from our patch is cleansing wave, and renewing stamina moving to master tier trait.

over all I’m content with the dec 10th update.

Nikkinella.8254:

A meteor landing on your head SHOULD be overpowered. It makes no sense that a warrior can do more damage with a sword than something traveling through space at thousands of miles and hour, piercing our atmosphere and landing on someone. I want it to be a near instakill. In most decent games, mages with spells like meteor shower do the most dps of all classes combined, but are squishy in exchange for that. We are just as squishy as they are, but have nowhere near that destructive power. I want to nuke my enemies off the face of the planet, I want to demolish continents! that’s what a mage SHOULD do!

Maybe we’re playing a different game then, because my Meteor Shower does exactly that. But that only happened when I started traiting offensively instead of defensively.

Also, GW2’s meteor don’t actually come from outer space.

Shadowfall.6543:

Warriors are going to be fundamentally hard to nerf (and still be fun for warrior players).

1) Noone would have fun as a warrior if another class could mow them down in the 2 – 4 seconds it takes for them to close the distance.

2) Warriors have a reasonable expectation to have the advantage when engaged in melee versus a ranged opponent (much the same advantage a staff Elementalist would expect from a range of 1200).

3) It would be no fun if the warrior could not catch the caster (remember how frustrating it is to go against Thieves that just stealth and run away, or Mesmers with their clone army?).

As long as the warriors charge their targets with no fear of appreciable damage (and fairly low travel time), the warriors will have the advantage. And remembering that warriors have to be balanced to survive melee with champion and legendary targets, I think it will be a long time until warriors are balanced with the other classes.

These are all good points and pretty much the balancing act of warriors. Prior to the buffs warriors where easy targets and it wasn’t fun. On my warrior I would go in do a bit of damage and run out. That is why so many built mostly zerker and max damage type of builds. Your survival time was low so you wanted to get the most damage you could out before your EP ran out.

pho.9412:

renewing stamina moving to master tier trait.

It’s not renewing stamina moving to master tier, its Elemental Attunement. The people gave enough reasoning against moving renewing stamina up -mostly because similar traits in other professions are in adept-, as for Elemental Attunement, I have yet to see an argument that could have a chance at reverting that decision, mostly because they defeat their own argument when they state how important the trait is which can also be seen as how powerful this trait is. Stronger traits should be on higher tiers, not lower. The developers themselves have said this, though in different words.

Delmain.5167:

pho.9412:

renewing stamina moving to master tier trait.

It’s not renewing stamina moving to master tier, its Elemental Attunement. The people gave enough reasoning against moving renewing stamina up -mostly because similar traits in other professions are in adept-, as for Elemental Attunement, I have yet to see an argument that could have a chance at reverting that decision, mostly because they defeat their own argument when they state how important the trait is which can also be seen as how powerful this trait is. Stronger traits should be on higher tiers, not lower. The developers themselves have said this, though in different words.

I think the argument for elemental attunement is how vital the trait is to elementalists survival because of the protection uptime. That is what I have seen from most posts making the case that it should stay at adept. I personally have put on blasting staff during tower defense forgot to swap back and will notice immediately if I don’t have renewing stamina but elemental attunement takes me a bit longer to notice I don’t have it.

ThiBash.5634:

Nikkinella.8254:

A meteor landing on your head SHOULD be overpowered. It makes no sense that a warrior can do more damage with a sword than something traveling through space at thousands of miles and hour, piercing our atmosphere and landing on someone. I want it to be a near instakill. In most decent games, mages with spells like meteor shower do the most dps of all classes combined, but are squishy in exchange for that. We are just as squishy as they are, but have nowhere near that destructive power. I want to nuke my enemies off the face of the planet, I want to demolish continents! that’s what a mage SHOULD do!

Maybe we’re playing a different game then, because my Meteor Shower does exactly that. But that only happened when I started traiting offensively instead of defensively.

Also, GW2’s meteor don’t actually come from outer space.

Even if you spec fully into fire and air, have nothing but offensive traits and all zerker gear, you still wont be as good as a warrior or have anywhere near their survival. Why do they get to be super tanky and STILL deal more damage than us? Show me a vid of an ele hitting something for 80k, then i’ll believe you. I’d like it better if each meteor hit for 10k+ and did knockdown for 5 s.

Oh also, am I the only one who thinks we should get the Unstable Nova skill as a new elite?

Nikkinella.8254:

Even if you spec fully into fire and air, have nothing but offensive traits and all zerker gear, you still wont be as good as a warrior or have anywhere near their survival. Why do they get to be super tanky and STILL deal more damage than us? Show me a vid of an ele hitting something for 80k, then i’ll believe you. I’d like it better if each meteor hit for 10k+ and did knockdown for 5 s.

Oh also, am I the only one who thinks we should get the Unstable Nova skill as a new elite?

Only Warrior and Thief compare in damage but a Warrior putting out big damage is usually glassy. Unsuspecting foe is the saving grace that lets them go tanky and do damage but it is getting moved up a tier. That is a build though not all warriors, I am sure you have come across a rifle warrior and I don’t think I ever seen a Tanky rifle warrior.

It’s like how people use to always refer to Ele by the D/D 0/10/0/30/30 build and when people talked about ele being OP they refered to a 30/30/30/30/30 build that didn’t exist.

oZii.2864:

Nikkinella.8254:

Even if you spec fully into fire and air, have nothing but offensive traits and all zerker gear, you still wont be as good as a warrior or have anywhere near their survival. Why do they get to be super tanky and STILL deal more damage than us? Show me a vid of an ele hitting something for 80k, then i’ll believe you. I’d like it better if each meteor hit for 10k+ and did knockdown for 5 s.

Oh also, am I the only one who thinks we should get the Unstable Nova skill as a new elite?

Only Warrior and Thief compare in damage but a Warrior putting out big damage is usually glassy. Unsuspecting foe is the saving grace that lets them go tanky and do damage but it is getting moved up a tier. That is a build though not all warriors, I am sure you have come across a rifle warrior and I don’t think I ever seen a Tanky rifle warrior.

It’s like how people use to always refer to Ele by the D/D 0/10/0/30/30 build and when people talked about ele being OP they refered to a 30/30/30/30/30 build that didn’t exist.

The difference though is that ele never was OP. It always felt weaker to me than all the other classes. Warrior on the other hand is extremely OP, which is why I’ve been spending more time lately on my warrior than my ele. Warrior doesn’t even seem like it belongs in this game its so far above the other classes. You don’t have to sacrifice anything with warrior. You can be super tanky, deal insane damage, have excellent cc and mobility and sustainability all in one build. And you can be drunk, half asleep, or a lobotomized monkey and still faceroll with that class.

Why did people complain about ele being OP in the past when it was never even a fraction as good as warrior is now even in beta? Ele is 100 times more fun to play though, which is the only reason I don’t just say screw it and play warrior exclusively. If only warrior and ele’s position could be switched and ele was Anet’s golden child who gets everything. Unfortunately ele is the redheaded stepchild of this game while warrior is the firstborn who is favored above all else.

Nikkinella.8254:

I’d like it better if each meteor hit for 10k+ and did knockdown for 5 s.

I’d like to see stronger meteor too, but this would be totally OP, (5sec KD = IK to any class if the meteors hit for 10K).
Also Meteor shower is able to reach those numbers, unfortunately the Ele who cast a meteor like that can’t stand a hit without going downed. But I’ve seen MS hit for 12K if I remember correctly

Make is so condition duration makes the meteor shower last longer. >:)

It wouldn’t be op. We’ll just say what warriors say about the fact they can stun you for 4 seconds every 7 seconds. Bring a stunbreaker/stability and L2P! Dodge the obvious red circles on the ground. Meteor is the easiest attack to avoid getting hit with. So yes, a 5 sec knockdown +10k damage is completely reasonable if its ok for warriors with their stunlock BS. I want MS buffed like that, or I want all the stuns warrior can spam reduced.

If you want to improve staff, take a look at its air magic skillset, and at how slow or underwhelming its survival skills are. I don’t mind staff being a slow weapon for damage, utility or party support, but it shouldn’t be that slow for survival. If any duelist build can beat a staff ele, fine, but at least the staff ele should be able to hold their ground for a while longer than they do now.

Meteor Shower is fine. Staff elementalists still have many issues. Fire magic isn’t one of them. It also happens that one of the best survival skills for staff is… in fire magic!

Nikkinella.8254:

It wouldn’t be op. We’ll just say what warriors say about the fact they can stun you for 4 seconds every 7 seconds. Bring a stunbreaker/stability and L2P! Dodge the obvious red circles on the ground. Meteor is the easiest attack to avoid getting hit with. So yes, a 5 sec knockdown +10k damage is completely reasonable if its ok for warriors with their stunlock BS. I want MS buffed like that, or I want all the stuns warrior can spam reduced.

Stun warrior have been nerfed since sigil of paralyzation has been “fixed” that is why you don’t see alot of warriors with mace/shield + GS at least I haven’t seen many anymore.

Hammer is getting its damage nerfed

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Mace

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. (same cast time as lightning whip)

Nobody is using mace that I have seen in WvW since it doesn’t give a full 100blades anymore nobody wants to use it (still a great control weapon imo). Hammer damage nerfs are pretty big. People will still use it for the CC but the damage won’t be as scary on somebody wearing almost full Soldiers gear with 20 points in tactics.

Delmain.5167:

as for Elemental Attunement, I have yet to see an argument that could have a chance at reverting that decision, mostly because they defeat their own argument when they state how important the trait is which can also be seen as how powerful this trait is.

Actually, the reason it’s so important is that Elementalists run off of boons; a great deal of their skills were obviously balanced around having decent might stacks, and protection is an absolute must for a low health profession.

You could completely remove its aoe and cut the protection duration in half and it would still be brought because the boons are base level operating for Elementalists.

More traits should have the synergy Elemental Attunement does; simply nerfing/raising tiers does nothing to help the viable trait option problem.

oZii.2864:

Stun warrior have been nerfed since sigil of paralyzation has been “fixed” that is why you don’t see alot of warriors with mace/shield + GS at least I haven’t seen many anymore.

Hammer is getting its damage nerfed

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Mace

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. (same cast time as lightning whip)

Nobody is using mace that I have seen in WvW since it doesn’t give a full 100blades anymore nobody wants to use it (still a great control weapon imo). Hammer damage nerfs are pretty big. People will still use it for the CC but the damage won’t be as scary on somebody wearing almost full Soldiers gear with 20 points in tactics.

Those nerfs aren’t a big deal at all. What needs a nerf is the cooldown on burst skills. Wow, the aoe 2 second stun will deal less damage? Unfortunately, any aoe stun that can be used every 7 to 10 seconds is still op as hell in a team fight. Earthsaker would still be a great skill if it did zero damage. Damage isn’t why you use the skill in the first place and the damage isn’t what is making warriors too good when used by terrible players. A 10 second base cooldown and the ease of building adrenaline means earthshaker and skull crack can be used effectively by spamming them. Updraft, earthquake and gale are on 40+ second cooldowns. Do you think good eles use those on cooldown without thinking? All cc effects should be things you have to use with some intelligence, but this doesn’t apply to warriors.

The skull crack change is nice in principle, but I’ll have to wait and see. 1/4 of a second is impossible to dodge with reaction. Is doubling the time of impossible going to be enough? It’s a step in the right direction, but Anet is being far too timid in their attempts to nerf things that are clearly too strong and making gameplay uninteresting and unskilled.

Tei.1704:

oZii.2864:

Stun warrior have been nerfed since sigil of paralyzation has been “fixed” that is why you don’t see alot of warriors with mace/shield + GS at least I haven’t seen many anymore.

Hammer is getting its damage nerfed

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Mace

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. (same cast time as lightning whip)

Nobody is using mace that I have seen in WvW since it doesn’t give a full 100blades anymore nobody wants to use it (still a great control weapon imo). Hammer damage nerfs are pretty big. People will still use it for the CC but the damage won’t be as scary on somebody wearing almost full Soldiers gear with 20 points in tactics.

Those nerfs aren’t a big deal at all. What needs a nerf is the cooldown on burst skills. Wow, the aoe 2 second stun will deal less damage? Unfortunately, any aoe stun that can be used every 7 to 10 seconds is still op as hell in a team fight. Earthsaker would still be a great skill if it did zero damage. Damage isn’t why you use the skill in the first place and the damage isn’t what is making warriors too good when used by terrible players. A 10 second base cooldown and the ease of building adrenaline means earthshaker and skull crack can be used effectively by spamming them. Updraft, earthquake and gale are on 40+ second cooldowns. Do you think good eles use those on cooldown without thinking? All cc effects should be things you have to use with some intelligence, but this doesn’t apply to warriors.

The skull crack change is nice in principle, but I’ll have to wait and see. 1/4 of a second is impossible to dodge with reaction. Is doubling the time of impossible going to be enough? It’s a step in the right direction, but Anet is being far too timid in their attempts to nerf things that are clearly too strong and making gameplay uninteresting and unskilled.

Thank you so much for saying it for me. You said it better than I would have.

Tei.1704:

oZii.2864:

Stun warrior have been nerfed since sigil of paralyzation has been “fixed” that is why you don’t see alot of warriors with mace/shield + GS at least I haven’t seen many anymore.

Hammer is getting its damage nerfed

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Mace

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. (same cast time as lightning whip)

Nobody is using mace that I have seen in WvW since it doesn’t give a full 100blades anymore nobody wants to use it (still a great control weapon imo). Hammer damage nerfs are pretty big. People will still use it for the CC but the damage won’t be as scary on somebody wearing almost full Soldiers gear with 20 points in tactics.

Those nerfs aren’t a big deal at all. What needs a nerf is the cooldown on burst skills. Wow, the aoe 2 second stun will deal less damage? Unfortunately, any aoe stun that can be used every 7 to 10 seconds is still op as hell in a team fight. Earthsaker would still be a great skill if it did zero damage. Damage isn’t why you use the skill in the first place and the damage isn’t what is making warriors too good when used by terrible players. A 10 second base cooldown and the ease of building adrenaline means earthshaker and skull crack can be used effectively by spamming them. Updraft, earthquake and gale are on 40+ second cooldowns. Do you think good eles use those on cooldown without thinking? All cc effects should be things you have to use with some intelligence, but this doesn’t apply to warriors.

The skull crack change is nice in principle, but I’ll have to wait and see. 1/4 of a second is impossible to dodge with reaction. Is doubling the time of impossible going to be enough? It’s a step in the right direction, but Anet is being far too timid in their attempts to nerf things that are clearly too strong and making gameplay uninteresting and unskilled.

Meanwhile when DD eles were OP Anet was like

“lets nerf their survivability, damage, mobility, lets nerf their healing, lets nerf cantrips and Lets make it so they can’t heal in mistform anymore without justifying the reason behind it other than calling it a bug, a 75 second cooldown 3 second long invulnerability is enough on its own right?”

Tei.1704:

Those nerfs aren’t a big deal at all. What needs a nerf is the cooldown on burst skills. Wow, the aoe 2 second stun will deal less damage? Unfortunately, any aoe stun that can be used every 7 to 10 seconds is still op as hell in a team fight. Earthsaker would still be a great skill if it did zero damage. Damage isn’t why you use the skill in the first place and the damage isn’t what is making warriors too good when used by terrible players. A 10 second base cooldown and the ease of building adrenaline means earthshaker and skull crack can be used effectively by spamming them. Updraft, earthquake and gale are on 40+ second cooldowns. Do you think good eles use those on cooldown without thinking? All cc effects should be things you have to use with some intelligence, but this doesn’t apply to warriors.

The skull crack change is nice in principle, but I’ll have to wait and see. 1/4 of a second is impossible to dodge with reaction. Is doubling the time of impossible going to be enough? It’s a step in the right direction, but Anet is being far too timid in their attempts to nerf things that are clearly too strong and making gameplay uninteresting and unskilled.

You have valid points but the only thing that changed in regards to hammer is being able to move with staggering blow. The rest of the buffs like changes to burst recharge by putting points in discipline and burst mastery are buffs to all warrior weapons. Though not all warrior weapons have great burst skills like Greatsword.

Other than that hammer is almost exactly the same since launch but nobody had a problem with Warrior back then. Pretty much considered the worst class as far as PvP goes along with rangers before people found spirit builds. The other buffs like a dogged march, healing signet, and cleansing ire. The warrior now has had buffs that make hammer stronger because you can’t kite warriors as easily as you use to pre-buffs but hammer really hasn’t changed.

Hammer is very telegraphed and very easy to dodge especially on ele with the vigor uptime. It isn’t like warriors are using auto attacks to bait dodges or using hammer 2. It’s hammer F1, 4, and 5 in some order then weapon swap. I never had a problem with hammer wars on my ele or any of my classes. Mace/Shield was a different story.

I think the Hammer nerfs are actually going to be pretty big but we have to see how it plays out. Axe/Shield + GS was at one time the most popular set. Anet left the total damage on the auto attack (which could keep up with 100 blades dps) but they moved most of the damage to the 3rd attack and that was a good change. This is a raw damage nerf no compensation at least axe kept it’s damage.

Leuca.5732:

Delmain.5167:

as for Elemental Attunement, I have yet to see an argument that could have a chance at reverting that decision, mostly because they defeat their own argument when they state how important the trait is which can also be seen as how powerful this trait is.

Actually, the reason it’s so important is that Elementalists run off of boons; a great deal of their skills were obviously balanced around having decent might stacks, and protection is an absolute must for a low health profession.

You could completely remove its aoe and cut the protection duration in half and it would still be brought because the boons are base level operating for Elementalists.

More traits should have the synergy Elemental Attunement does; simply nerfing/raising tiers does nothing to help the viable trait option problem.

But part of the developers jobs is to balance the traits. People may just get Elemental Attunement just for the protection, but the fact still remains it grants might, regeneration, swiftness, and protection to you and 4 other people at most. This trait has been stated by developers as being too strong for an adept trait and they are completely right on that issue. While this does nothing to improve our trait options, it does not give an excuse to have powerful traits early. As an adept trait, Elemental Attunement was the best choice among most of the adept and master traits. It is unreasonable for people to expect this trait to stay in adept, not to mention the outcry the developers would get if they weakened the trait to fit in adept.