Guild Wars 2

I didn’t have the opportunity to play beta so im quite curious about how ele played before the ‘big nerf’.

Was it stupidly OP against other classes? Did it have spike damage and higher base damage overall? What about in PvE or PvP? Were the cooldowns for skills different?

Just wondering about our ‘grandparent’ eles. Thanks you anyone who replies :P

D/D Elementalist could, assuming their fingers were fast enough, do their RTL, Updraft, Burning Speed, Cleansing Flame, Fire Grab, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast combo and take people from full to zero instantly in sPvP.

So the damage got nerfed a bit.

Why its pretty over the top stringing together a 10 key combo and kill someone in 4 or 5 seconds. When they have a chance to dodge it, when the ele has to execute it perfectly. However it is not over the top to be killed from stealth in less than 2 seconds…or use the three buttons a warrior can kill you with in 3 or so seconds?

I know the ele is a different class than the ones mentioned above…but even with a glass build the damage does not feel there now, and thats assuming you can do what you need to to land all your attacks.

I hate the arcane utilities; our class has to be balanced around them so our base dps when not specing for them is always going to be lackluster so long as they exist. They hurt us more than they help in the grand scheme of things to be sure.

D/D Elementalist could, assuming their fingers were fast enough, do their RTL, Updraft, Burning Speed, Cleansing Flame, Fire Grab, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast combo and take people from full to zero instantly in sPvP.
So the damage got nerfed a bit.

You mean like a backstab thief can now, except they only need to use 3-4 buttons instead of 8?

hmm…

PinCushion.7390

D/D Elementalist could, assuming their fingers were fast enough, do their RTL, Updraft, Burning Speed, Cleansing Flame, Fire Grab, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast combo and take people from full to zero instantly in sPvP.
So the damage got nerfed a bit.

The nerfs being referred to in the OP didn’t touch any of the abilities you mentioned. The big set of nerfs that all hit at once just a couple weeks before release were as follows:

• Cleansing Water moved from tier 1 to tier 3 Water.
• Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast cooldowns increased and damage decreased significantly
• Meteor Shower and Lava Font damage decreased significantly.

Aside from having to go deeper into Water to get extra condi removal, the nerfs didn’t hit D/D at all. And in fact Scepter/Dagger was by far and away the most popular weapon combo for sPvP at the time.

The big nerf was at the end of BWE1, the one some weeks before release was nothing compared to that.
The nerf at the end of BWE1 was equal to a general damage reduction of 75%

Pretty much what Warmage said. Some “gifted” Ele players were literally doing what thieves do today but using the usual scepter/dagger rotation. D/D wasn’t as popular at the time. They then proceeded to nerf the poopoo out of us and combined with the subsequent nerfs that Mouse mentioned as well as Dragon’s Tooth no longer being a ground-target skill the stage was set.

Pretty funny when you compare it to Warriors and Thieves now and when you read statements like “we don’t want to whack-a-mole balance” and “we want to let the meta establish itself”. Blah blah blah…

Sad thing is once everyone learnt how to play our big 10 button combos become way less effective.

I was referring to stuff like the above video. We can’t really do that anymore.

it was nearly fine back then, it seems. It is puzzling to figure out what madness drove the nerf bat… I mean, you usually don’t fix something that is not broken…

At least thieves have been getting nerfed, and will get more so now that the devs said they’re looking forward to town down their initial bursts with backstab and the like.

That being said, I feel like our damage nerf was way too extreme. We went from killing too fast, to not killing fast enough with glass cannon builds.

Back during beta ANet made huge sweeping changes to multiple facets of the ele at once. From my experience in previous MMOs it’s generally a big no-no to alter more than one variable at once as the effect is multiplied and generally unpredictable… but that’s precisely what ANet did.

For some reason post-launch they stopped doing that, but are unwilling to accept that the changes they made during beta were too hasty and ill thought out.

You guys are forgetting the Tornado nerfs, if you were there.

Tornado was a wrecking ball, damage like pre-nerf whirlpool, three times in a row with lightning strikes to everyone every other second. It was definitely over the top, but felt good with the cooldown.

Now its a kick me sign.

Then the dps nerfs came right off in the first beta. scepter, dagger, staff all took damage nerfs.

And the nerfs kept coming in the form of ‘fixes’ though they failed to fix bugs like RTL that were reported pre bwe1.

:(

Attunement CD used to be 5, then 10 and now 15 :P

Hmm interesting, that explains why ele feels so half-baken.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Looks like it was too OP before. With our CC AND instakill we would have been stupidly strong XD

Am very disappointed though that they nerfed us SO bad. If what you guys say is true we went from being the best classes to one of the worst.

75% dmg reduction seems so harsh. Give us some back! haha

Signet of water used to be a condition every 3 sec, nerfed to 10. Dragons tooth, meteor shower, phoenix, lava font and fire grab were all obliterated, but were latter rebuffed slightly. They are currently at 54% of their original raw damage, except for meteor shower at 47%. Phoenix used to be 10sec recharge, arcane blast used to be 20 sec recharge. Fire grab used to have a 30sec recharge. Lava font used to be 6 sec duration instead of 4.

And probably a lot of other things I’m forgetting, but those were most of the fire nerfs.

So many skills have just been nerfed into uselessness, the work of amateurs.

What is really frustrating is that in a lot of cases they nerfed a skill by increasing the cooldown, then later nerfed the damage making the increased cooldown unreasonable. Eles have a LOT of skills on 30-40s cooldowns that don’t do enough damage to warrant it.

What is really frustrating is that in a lot of cases they nerfed a skill by increasing the cooldown, then later nerfed the damage making the increased cooldown unreasonable. Eles have a LOT of skills on 30-40s cooldowns that don’t do enough damage to warrant it.

fire grab, earthquake, water 4 for D/D are all pretty bad. Even updraft’s CD is long compared to other classes knockbacks.

Im all for nerfing in stages but they have to work with each other…ele seriously needs a damage boost. Takes me about 1min to kill anyone in sPVP. Even though im a casual player, its still forever compared to thiefs 3 second instakill.

Signet of water used to be a condition every 3 sec, nerfed to 10. Dragons tooth, meteor shower, phoenix, lava font and fire grab were all obliterated, but were latter rebuffed slightly. They are currently at 54% of their original raw damage, except for meteor shower at 47%.

If they are currently at 54% I would recommend buffing some up to 60-70% of original damage. Especially skills like fire grab and dragons tooth these are our only ‘spike damage’ skills but they don’t spike at all.

MarzAttakz.9608:

Pretty much what Warmage said. Some “gifted” Ele players were literally doing what thieves do today but using the usual scepter/dagger rotation. D/D wasn’t as popular at the time. They then proceeded to nerf the poopoo out of us and combined with the subsequent nerfs that Mouse mentioned as well as Dragon’s Tooth no longer being a ground-target skill the stage was set.

Dragon’s Tooth was never ground targetted in the betas. Here’s a press beta video prior to BWE1 where the specifically mention Dragon’s Tooth’s targetting around 13:30

Some nerfs I remember:
Lava Font had an instant tick of damage when it finished casting, now it waits 1s, not only did that reduce overall damage about 20%, but the first tick is obviously the easiest to hit, so in practice it was often even worse.

Eruption used to have a very short cast time, and I believe it started its cooldown when you cast it instead of when it erupts, which nearly doubles the cooldown without being effecting by Geomancer’s Alacrity. Prior I had a condition staff build that could use Signet of Earth + Shockwave to immobilize a target through two eruptions (with +30% condition duration and Geomancer’s Alacrity)

Static Field had 4s stun at one point, then 3s, now 2s.

So staff was a lot stronger in the beta, especially damage and condition builds.

Also Glyph of Elemental Harmony was 20s cooldown, though the other heals weren’t as good back then.

Arcane Lightning used to give permanent 3% crit damage for each arcane skill instead of for 10s after use.

Some of the gear in the beta also had more critical damage, Berserker’s Amulet in BWE1 had 30% with no vit for example, and Divinity Runes had 18%, so everything hit harder back then. While damage has gone down I think nerfed gear plus fewer players running 30 fire 30 air builds makes the difference seem even bigger.

Antiriad.7160:

Hmm interesting, that explains why ele feels so half-baken.

Its also worth noting that the balance changes were made when they only had 1 person working on class balance. Which makes it even more mystifying why they aren’t willing to roll back some changes.

Elementalist could still use a damage buff, but 10k fire grab? Hahaha gimme.

I’d roll all the zergs with that……

The thing people have to remember is elementalist is one of the most difficult classes to play by far. If you give too much of a damage boost, the really good people are just going to run over everyone. So for sPvP they have to be careful. I wouldn’t mind a small damage boost though, say perhaps 10-15%.

Or I’d just be happy if aoes were uncapped. I’d be overjoyed if that happened.

I feel the opposite. I -like- using all my attunements and buttons to win. I dont like hitting 3 buttons (warrior / thief). That gets boring fast.

I love the fact that elementalist is high skill cap. But I think a lot of people were expecting the same elementalist as guild wars 1. That’s not really what happened.

I love the style of the ele, and really enjoyed it all the way to lvl 80. But now that I landed in Orr… I’m simply too weak. I can’t aggro more than 1 mob, and even a single mob takes more than 1 minute to kill. Everything goes so extremely slow that sometimes mobs respawn in my back.

We do really need a buff. Not in spiking power, but in utility and sustained DPS. Of course, it’ll be difficult to do this, but hey, Arenanet did a great job so far, trust them!

Reading all the nerfs we got makes me really sad. : ( Why did Anet not wait for meta to build up before balancing?! The irony… Gimme back my viable damage build ;_;

Kuthos.9623:

I feel the opposite. I -like- using all my attunements and buttons to win. I dont like hitting 3 buttons (warrior / thief). That gets boring fast.

I love the fact that elementalist is high skill cap. But I think a lot of people were expecting the same elementalist as guild wars 1. That’s not really what happened.

I dont think anyone has a problem with attunement swapping, and its only a minority that want ele to be a stand and spam fireball mage.

The main issue at the moment is that even with attunement cycling, landing bursts and laying on conditions the damage is simply weak compared to other classes.

For instance, a thief can take about 2/3 of my HP if they are good in around 5 seconds.
After laying on vulnerability and burning my fire grab still only removes about 1/3 to half their HP, considering the time it takes to stack vunerabilities and burn the foe before gettin into the correct position to land grab its just silly how little damage we actually do.

Granted I am a bunker but there really isnt a reliable way to trait power ele without dying about 15 times per match in sPVP lol.

The point is, yes Ele was a powerhouse pre nerfs, and they definitely gave us damage to compensate for having lowest hp and armor in the game.

They took that away, and so now what we’re left with is ‘deal with it, or reroll class’

what ele defenders don’t realize, is if the other classes learned to play with half the skill eles do, they would rofl stomp us every kittenime. but they don’t need to in most cases to rofl stomp us already.

“what ele defenders don’t realize, is if the other classes learned to play with half the skill eles do, they would rofl stomp us every kittenime. but they don’t need to in most cases to rofl stomp us already.”

Pretty much yes…

I just finished getting my warrior to 80 – it was a breeze leveling it, specially the water combat compared to elementalist left me completely stupified… spear 2 and 5 will kill ANYthing under water immediately and it’s AoE.

Decided to go farm abit in Orr and all I can do is “lol” as I gather 6 or 7 random crap in front of me and let the auto-attack deal with it before I lose 50%.

Or if I’m feeling like going at it abit, I can use all the skills and not even go below 90%.

The difference in efficiency vs damage vs survival is not a small one, it is indeed MASSIVE in ways I never would have expected before I leveled my warrior. It’s simply mind boggling.

D/d is the only decent damage spec imho, the other weapons are terrible at applying damage, mainly because of bad design – dragon,s tooth ruins sceptre and what was the thinking behind making staff purely aoe, or d/d purely melee? Around 2/3rds of our traits are totally ineffectual.

…this thread bring back memories from the time spent in Beta….kitten, at that time any class were actually afraid to go against an ele, but now:

1) 15s attunement CD is freaking too much, 10s was “optimal”
2) Static field got a 40s CD, a miserable 2s stun does not justify the CD
3) Firegrab, I’ve been crying about this skill from day 1 after the nerf on gw2 guru, I mean 15s CD increase and 60% dmg decrease for a skill which require the ele to stay at close range, now it deal as much dmg as skill n2 on a any other class while having 8 times the CD
4) Tornado used to be useful. then after the kittening noob cry on gw2 guru( despite not having actual game data post release), Anet simply nerfed this elite to uselness and buffed dagger storm to the current version, now tornado is the most useless elite in game

Many of you may not know, but before release the ele was the most talked profession, there were dozen of threads and videos crying for nerfs on ele, the s/d combo was as avoidable as it is now…just Anet took in consideration the tears of some random scrub too bad to bring a stunbreaker+condion removal.

And staff was actually the most feared weapon in terms of dmg after Karl’s video, but after Gstar 2011 the staff has been nerfed to the ground, with meteor storm being the joke is now, along with static field and lava font

Well I came to the conclusion that basically the game is still beta state and was just released way too early.

Taikanaru.5746:

Reading all the nerfs we got makes me really sad. : ( Why did Anet not wait for meta to build up before balancing?! The irony… Gimme back my viable damage build ;_;

Exactly, Anet now wnat us to :" wait for meta to settle", when a profession like mesmer can burst 3k armour targets for 14k dmg every 8-10s and very easily on top of that, no complicate combo like s/d ele which you can see coming from miles away….haaa the irony

Kuthos.9623:

Elementalist could still use a damage buff, but 10k fire grab? Hahaha gimme.

I’d roll all the zergs with that……

The thing people have to remember is elementalist is one of the most difficult classes to play by far. If you give too much of a damage boost, the really good people are just going to run over everyone. So for sPvP they have to be careful. I wouldn’t mind a small damage boost though, say perhaps 10-15%.

Or I’d just be happy if aoes were uncapped. I’d be overjoyed if that happened.

So the good eles would actually accomplish the incredible?….isn’t that what pro mesmers are doing now , destroying people in the blink of an eye?

Also fire grab was 150% dmg increase on burning targets, we’re talking about the only real burst skill on d/d, a dmg nerf of around 20-30% would have made the trick, but 60+% dmg decrease is pure incomptence, because that has been doubled by the increase in CD by 50%

Staff Ele was decent before nerf.
It got nerfed becouse alot of players used Meteor shower at the same time “beeing op”
Now its just meh, and misses most of the time, the rest of the staff skills are easily avoidable in WvW.

why do you think MMOs always do this to the casting classes. I have yet to see a game maybe eq2 where casters stood on equal terms to melee

I honestly will be shocked if the disparity between classes functionality and basic game mechanic awareness isn’t fixed.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that my husband who is a level 80 fully exotic geared gaurdian should have an HONEST answer of “What’s a field?” when I asked him how many he has.

It is complete and utter crap that the ONLY class in this game who is dependant or even cares about this games mechanics is the elementalist.

I think this situation has become some kind of taboo in Anet. If we ignore it, it doesn’t exist, right? They don’t even talk to us. They don’t have the time to type some of their thoughts, but I’m sure they had 5 minutes of free time in the previous 20 weeks. Now, how many threads with negative -constructive- opinions have moderators and CCs closed? This is why I don’t even care anymore and stopped reporting bugs.

I honestly won’t be shocked if the disparity between classes functionality and basic game mechanic awareness isn’t fixed.

Efaicia.3672:

I honestly will be shocked if the disparity between classes functionality and basic game mechanic awareness isn’t fixed.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that my husband who is a level 80 fully exotic geared gaurdian should have an HONEST answer of “What’s a field?” when I asked him how many he has.

It is complete and utter crap that the ONLY class in this game who is dependant or even cares about this games mechanics is the elementalist.

Sometimes I wonder if this means that buffing elementalist isn’t what needs to be done, but nerfing other classes. I actually main a mesmer, while leveling was incredibly difficult at first and I quickly had to learn that all my fields were ethereal and what each of the finishers did in an ethereal field, once I hit around 30-40, PvE became “Summon 3 phantasms. Auto attack til it’s dead. Dodge roll if it gets too close.” I don’t know where all the challenge went but playing elementalist and getting the excitement and challenge of having to strategize for every single mob you pull just does the game’s mechanics so much more justice in comparison. Yes, the phantasms got a bit of a nerf, and it’s a bit harder now, but not for Guardians and Warriors. If all the classes were more on-par with elementalists this would be a much different game.

PS. As for your question, he’s got… 1, maybe 2. And they’re all on his longbow if I remember right. Maybe it’s not right to blame him for not knowing fields, but if he’s played with you long enough he should’ve at least realized how many finisher’s he’s got.

I am not asking for anyone to be nerfed, I am asking for every class to have the same amount of focus on comboing as the elementalist, if that means they have to be nerfed to compensate for them buffing themselves through combos then so be it. One class out of the 8 that are in this game being forced to use and understand the mechanics even to be half kitten viable is not acceptable in my view.

Efaicia.3672:

I honestly will be shocked if the disparity between classes functionality and basic game mechanic awareness isn’t fixed.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that my husband who is a level 80 fully exotic geared gaurdian should have an HONEST answer of “What’s a field?” when I asked him how many he has.

It is complete and utter crap that the ONLY class in this game who is dependant or even cares about this games mechanics is the elementalist.

Not to dig on your husband, but if he is a Guardian and has no idea what his (and other professions’) fields are he really needs to take the time to learn.

As Guardian, I know full well most of my fields (and good number of those from other professions) . Hammer 1 chain 3 & 5, GSword 4 (or is it 3 now, ANet likes to move them around to mess with us), Mace 2, Staff 3 & 5. They are all Light fields. Hammer 2 will is a blast finisher causing area retaliation, GSword 3 is a projectile finisher that cures conditions.

Hammer 3 having such a short cooldown means Guardians can take regular advantage of blast fields more than any other profession. I see a water field, Hammer 3 AoE healing, I see a purple bubble, Hammer 3, Chaos Armor for everyone! And as a Hammer Guardian I am keeping retaliation up on my allies by using my Hammer 1 chain along with Hammer 2.

Sarelm.8317:

…
PS. As for your question, he’s got… 1, maybe 2. And they’re all on his longbow if I remember right. Maybe it’s not right to blame him for not knowing fields, but if he’s played with you long enough he should’ve at least realized how many finisher’s he’s got.

Guardians don’t have access to longbows, not sure where you got that from

How was ele before nerf? here is a video…pls before the dmg done, check the HP of ele, 11K HP, and still unable to deal as much dmg as the current thief…still the ele got nerfed, with the dmg reduced by over 60%, for no apparent reason

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32-V1vmS720

What frustate me the most is that Anet has never given us a legitimate reason for nerfing ele so much…or even a note of “apology” for doing so with little thought

Arheundel.6451:

How was ele before nerf? here is a video…pls before the dmg done, check the HP of ele, 11K HP, and still unable to deal as much dmg as the current thief…still the ele got nerfed, with the dmg reduced by over 60%, for no apparent reason

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32-V1vmS720

What frustate me the most is that Anet has never given us a legitimate reason for nerfing ele so much…or even a note of “apology” for doing so with little thought

A glass cannon elementalist killing in 2 hits and without ever having to change attunements for the entire match?

I now understand why the devs desperatly wanted to nerf the damage in big chunks. That was not an elementalist. It was some sort of broken god-like elemental creature.

Arheundel.6451:

What frustate me the most is that Anet has never given us a legitimate reason for nerfing ele so much…or even a note of “apology” for doing so with little thought

There was no legitimate reason. It was a knee jerk reaction because of the forum outcry and done at a time when they had very few resources in class balancing and so could not do any sort of decent analysis of what should have been done.

Whats worse is that they continually fail to address it and give us any feedback on it. Its also annoying that they were prepared to make knee jerk huge balance changing nerfs then but refuse to role them back now when they have adopted a more considered approach.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Arheundel.6451:

How was ele before nerf? here is a video…pls before the dmg done, check the HP of ele, 11K HP, and still unable to deal as much dmg as the current thief…still the ele got nerfed, with the dmg reduced by over 60%, for no apparent reason

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32-V1vmS720

What frustate me the most is that Anet has never given us a legitimate reason for nerfing ele so much…or even a note of “apology” for doing so with little thought

A glass cannon elementalist killing in 2 hits and without ever having to change attunements for the entire match?

I now understand why the devs desperatly wanted to nerf the damage in big chunks. That was not an elementalist. It was some sort of broken god-like elemental creature.

That was because of the enemy, I dunno you but very few people can get killed by cloth profession with 11k HP who just spamm fire, nowadays we know plenty of ways to avoid that combo, and the ele compared to the thief…can’t go stealth to avoid retalation.

Did you see the ele HP go down to 40% after 2 hits from the warrior who did survive the combo? yeah…

TheBlueRaja.4293:

Sarelm.8317:

…
PS. As for your question, he’s got… 1, maybe 2. And they’re all on his longbow if I remember right. Maybe it’s not right to blame him for not knowing fields, but if he’s played with you long enough he should’ve at least realized how many finisher’s he’s got.

Guardians don’t have access to longbows, not sure where you got that from

I am so sorry, I honestly read that as warrior. Then yes, they have a field on every one of their weapons, there’s a problem there.

I actually went back and checked through wiki’s history. Literally every weapon skill except for 18 were nerfed. Arcane blast&wave, signet of water and air, Glyph of elemental harmoy, and finally tornado damage were nerfed. Two traits as well:stop drop and roll and cleansing water. Basically, all damage is reduced to about 54%. .

That’s a grand total of 69 skills and 2 traits nerfed

Umm in sPvP, they removed all the jewelry like rings and accessories you can put on along with jewels in the weapon slots, etc…

So of course you will not see the same damage like in most vids.

Uthar.8967:

why do you think MMOs always do this to the casting classes. I have yet to see a game maybe eq2 where casters stood on equal terms to melee

I see you’ve missed playing Aion. Sorcerers, Spiritmasters and MR clerics were all more than equal to melee.
Good ol’ Ncsoft, they sucked at balancing so much.

TheBlueRaja.4293:

Efaicia.3672:

I honestly will be shocked if the disparity between classes functionality and basic game mechanic awareness isn’t fixed.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that my husband who is a level 80 fully exotic geared gaurdian should have an HONEST answer of “What’s a field?” when I asked him how many he has.

It is complete and utter crap that the ONLY class in this game who is dependant or even cares about this games mechanics is the elementalist.

Not to dig on your husband, but if he is a Guardian and has no idea what his (and other professions’) fields are he really needs to take the time to learn.

As Guardian, I know full well most of my fields (and good number of those from other professions) . Hammer 1 chain 3 & 5, GSword 4 (or is it 3 now, ANet likes to move them around to mess with us), Mace 2, Staff 3 & 5. They are all Light fields. Hammer 2 will is a blast finisher causing area retaliation, GSword 3 is a projectile finisher that cures conditions.

Hammer 3 having such a short cooldown means Guardians can take regular advantage of blast fields more than any other profession. I see a water field, Hammer 3 AoE healing, I see a purple bubble, Hammer 3, Chaos Armor for everyone! And as a Hammer Guardian I am keeping retaliation up on my allies by using my Hammer 1 chain along with Hammer 2.

Sarelm.8317:

…
PS. As for your question, he’s got… 1, maybe 2. And they’re all on his longbow if I remember right. Maybe it’s not right to blame him for not knowing fields, but if he’s played with you long enough he should’ve at least realized how many finisher’s he’s got.

Guardians don’t have access to longbows, not sure where you got that from

I realize that his lack of taking his time to learn them is bad lol. My original point was How is any other class able to make it all the way to end game, get fully geared, and 100% map done, be nigh unkillable in PvP (I follow him around as he is like a brick wall and just smashes people), be highly survivable in end game zones all by himself to where he can farm nonstop, rarely dying, to build his gold stash to 10x what I could be capable of doing, all without understanding Game Mechanics.

That is the issue, not weather or not someone is bad (by opinion only, because seriously it isn’t that important to other classes) if they don’t take the time to learn. Why are other classes not as dependant on the games mechanics as elementalist? They either need to remove our overdepence on them or increase every other classess’.