Guild Wars 2

Hi Izzy,
I’ve always appreciated your input in previous videos and such, and I think, as you can see, there are a fair number of honest and sincere questions, and genuine concerns, here about the current and future state of the Elementalist profession.
When I first saw the video concepts for this class I was immediately intrigued, and new it was going to be my favorite, (my 2nd favorite being the Ranger…and yes my concerns are pretty much the same with that class). But my observation of Anet’s execution of this class has been…disappointing.

I understood from the beginning that the ele would be a more complex class to play than, say, a warrior. I had not expected the thief class to be so simple to play and so overwhelmingly powerful.

But, I looked forward to that higher complexity being rewarded with some kind of exceptional ability, better damage output, or healing, or crowd control utility, or something: but I find that, this concept of the “jack of all trades, master of none” comment that I heard from Karl M on the sotg in March, seems to be overwhelming any other consideration, and if any exceptional ele players manage, somehow, to extract any kind of exceptional ability out of it, that ability is almost immediately nerfed into near uselessness, viz a viz our healing, mobility, and the initial massive damage and cc nerfs during beta when a tiny handful of people who knew the class well managed to overwhelm a number of new players who didn’t know their classes at all and complained about it, loudly and visciously.
(the same thing happened to the Ranger).

I, and I believe many of us, understand that you are trying to balance the game and it’s mechanics to an optimal level for everyone, and that this is no simple task. Please try to give us some indication that we are being heard, that our concerns are being addressed, and that what we all perceive as what seems to be some favoritism toward a certain few classes is not, in fact, what it appears to us.
I love this game, pre-purchased the collectors edition and have sunk many hundreds of my hard earned dollars, and thousands of hours of my life into this game. I know I’m not unique in this. Please, please don’t let us down.

Other than that, my questions are:

a)Where did this idea of the ele being a “jack of all trades, master of none”, (as stated by Karl M in the march sotg) come from? and is this the driving force behind why the ele seems to be getting nefed in any area that it seems to excel, such as healing, mobility, etc? Can we hope for some change in this view of the profession, and a better or more precise handling of it’s abilities? In short, can we find and create a niche for this class so that it has usefulness in Wv3? My Wv3 commander told me point blank that he would rather have me on my lvl 39 necro than on my fully exotic’d lvl 80 elementalist. This is a disturbing thing to me, and I hope to you as well.

b) as has been stated previously: the ele has the lowest hp, lowest armor rating, and puts out the least damage of any class. In my observation and experiment, I have to do about 5 times the work to achieve about half the damage, or less, that any other class can deal out with ease. I needn’t point out that for my 15 button operations to get, if I’m lucky, an 11k crit, a
thief can do twice as much damge or more by hitting 1 or 2 buttons 4 times.
I’ve heard the argument that warriors do so much more damage because they are in melee range. But a D/D ele is in melee range, but does less than 1/3 the damage of a warrior, or a thief, or a properly traited necro, or mesmer, without any of the damage mitigation that all of these other classes have. Is this going to be looked at and adjusted?

c) Why is it that the mesmer greatsword ability Illusionary Wave makes a 170 degree arc knockback with damage and 450 range, the warrior stomp does damage and knocks foes back in 360 degree radius to 450 range and provides a blast finish, guardian Sanctuary knocks back foes in 360 degree radius to a short 120 range, but provides massive healing, and keeps foes out for a full 6 seconds, necro marks cause fear in a 360 degree radius and cause massive damage if traited, engineer Big Ol’ Bomb does 360 degree radius knock back to 450 range, causes damage and is a blast finisher…

But the ele, (and the ranger), gets a single target knock back to 400 range, that does no damage and has no blast finisher or any other effect? Can we hope to see this balanced to be comparable to these other classes? I am aware of the recent correction to gust, such that it knocks back foes in line. This, however, is not at all comparable to these other abilities.

c) I am concerned that melee and mid-range ele mobility has been so severely truncated in recent patches. Can we see a restoration to the range and cool down of ride the lightning kitten many have requested? It is deeply disturbing to see that our ability to escape from a fight that we are almost destined to lose, (with our lower health pool, lower armor rating and reduced damage output), be so summarily cut off.

In wv3, if one is killed in a battle and trying to reconnect with the group from the spawn point, the ability to avoid getting ambushed by roaming mobs is essential. The use of rtl, and the ability to avoid stuns using mistform, lightning flash, cleansing fire and armor of earth, made this possible, though it did require stacking the utility bar with cantrips and making it impossible to use anything else. But because these abilities provided mobility, along with stun breaks, they were useful, in fact they were essential: rtl/lf being the most used. Having mobility with no stun break, or stun break with no mobility is…severely limiting. Can we see a re-balancing of these abilities in the near future, or at all?

d) I understand that the tornado/res exploit needed to be resolved. However, I am concerned at how the solution was handled. It appears that rather than actually fix whatever was causing the exploit to be possible, what was done was to make this 30 point elite skill so weak and useless that it was not going to be used by anyone, which is essentially what happened. Can we see a correction to this situation, restoring the tornado skill to a usable and viable form while still correcting the self-res bug? Is there any hope of it being restored to a point where it is comparable to, say, the thief’s “thieves guild” or “hounds of balthazar”, or even the necro death shroud, which I realize is not an elite ability, but functions very similar to one and is insanely powerful. That massive boost to toughness and health would be very welcome in the tornado mode.

e) Echoing Mek’s concerns: With the number of outstanding bugs that still need to be corrected in all the professsions, particularly the ele, what was the thought process behind introducing a new condition to the game that operates in direct conflict with the stated concept of the game’s dynamic active combat?

f) The elementalist can summon a maximum of 2 “elementals” by sacrificing one utility and their elite slots, that are pretty squishy, don’t do much damage, have no special abilities, and last only 60 seconds: while a mesmer can summon up to 4 clones, illusions, and phantasms, (although I’ve seen as many as 6), some of which deal a massive amount of damage, and each of which has some special ability, and all of which can be shattered for an additional massive amount of damage after pummeling you for massive damage, and they remain until either they, or more likely, you, are dead, (or until they are shattered by the mesmer to finally kill you); and a necromancer can summon up to 4 or 5 minions that are fairly tough, deal sizable damage, each of which have special attack abilities, and remain until they are killed, and now are also able to regenerate health when out of combat. This seems like a grievous imbalance. Can we hope to see any buffing of ele’s elementals to make them comparable to these other classes pets?

g) I understand your desire to see greater diversity in character builds. However, mmo games are notorious for min/max’ing the builds to find what will deliver the most damage, provide the greatest tankyness, or healing, or whatever. Do you think it’s possible to deliver the kind of diversity you are hoping for by looking at how to strengthen other builds to make them more attractive to players, without dismantling any builds that are currently viable? Or, more importantly, do you think it’s possible to deliver the kind of diversity in character build you are hoping for while still having the disparity in damage output and survivability between classes and builds?

h) is it simply coincidence that so many of the new and revised traits and buffs seem to center around being in a downed state? Is this some indication of what we ele’s have to look forward to as players in Wv3, PvE and s/t pvp? Is there any possibility of reviewing the changes of the past 11 months, (back to beta), and maybe giving us a slightly better chance at not getting downed in the first place? ;-)

and finally, will we ever see public test servers? Speaking only for myself, but I believe that We, as a community, would be thrilled with the opportunity to assist in the game development in this way, help find bugs, provide feedback on what works and what doesn’t, and help streamline major game changes before they are implemented. And, hey, it’s free labor.

Thanks Izzy, I look forward to the cast.

The biggest benefit of the ele is supposed to be the your choices of skills, yet one of the first lessons I learned as a GW2 ele was to use them all or you’re just crippling yourself.
What does Anet think about this contradiction in terms of stated intentions versus reality with respect to weapon skill choices?
When Anet indicated that we’d have the selection of 4 attunements worth of skills, I initially thought I could pick one or two and focus on those. But those builds are fairly unviable from both a cooldown perspective and a trait perspective. Did Anet mean something else when they talked about “selection of skills”? Or does Anet think the Ele needs a lot of work?
This issue is further exascerbated underwater for eles
Let’s put out the following statements on the table for underwater eles:
1) We have 1 underwater weapon
2) Use all attunements (or you’re a “noob”)
Based on these 2 statements, Eles have actually no choices. We have no ability to pick and choose anything. You can either use the skills provided by the trident, or you can’t.
So this brings up a secondary question which I think has been asked a fair number of times, but is worth repeating.
Does Anet ever intend to make single or dual attunement based builds viable?

My other issue is we don’t have any elite skills. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at GW1 elites, and what they did. They were the central core of the build. They helped define the build, and would work closely with the other skills in the build. Typically in a GW1 build, the first skill you equipped was the elite, and all other skills were selected to work around or with the elite.
1) Searing flames required supporting skills that sustained energy regen because it was a low cooldown, expensive and hard hitting skill
2) Elemental Attunement was about finding combinations between attunements and making it viable to spread your stat points around between all the attunements (Side note, my favourite build and considered one of the strongest single character offensive builds made among my group of friends used this elite. It was heavily used in JQ and FA, and consistently had a good track record)
3) Glyph of energy was all about removing exhaustion as a cost
Now lets look at GW2 elites:
They are fairly weak skills overall, have little synergy with the rest of the build, combined with the fact that they have massive cooldowns and the end result is that I typically forget about them completely when I play as an ele. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve stated I wish I could just bring another utility rather than be forced to bring something I forget to use. So my last question is:
What plans or ideas does Anet have to make elites viable instead of us just wishing we had a 4th utility slot?

Will we ever get an elite that’s actually good? I mean Engineers get the supply drop which is basically an instant win button if you drop it on someone squishy, which is most people in WvW since its all damage and zerker gear and everyone just runs in a giant blob. But the horrible state of WvW is another subject entirely. Mesmers can turn people into a Moa which completely shuts down anyone and makes them an easy kill. Warriors have that amazing signet of rage. I’d kill for that on Ele. Thieves have that dagger storm thing which tears groups of people to shreds. Thieves’ guild is amazing too. I could go on with how good other classes elites are and how horrid ours are by comparison, but I think you get the point. Where’s our “oh crap button” that completely changes the tide of battle?

The elementals are weak and only occasionally use their specials, most of the time when you don’t need them to do it, but won’t do it when you do need them to do it. It would be nice if when we summoned them another bar would pop up similar to the Ranger’s pet bar and we could control them and make them use their abilities and command them. That alone would make them suck slightly less.

The fire greatsword is decent, but the time for summoning it is horrible. all other conjures come out instantly. you’ll get killed trying to summon this thing. especially since the mist form nerf, since we can no longer mist form then summon it while protected.

The tornado is completely useless. Just make it function the same way as Thief’s dagger storm and it will actually be worth using. Right now it’s just a big bullseye that barely does any damage, while locking you out of any of your other skills. You’re basically turning yourself into a Moa when you use this. You’re about as effective as you are when a Mesmer nails you with their elite.

Are we ever going to get a buff to our stats? we desperately need it. Other classes can go glass cannon and actually do great damage but have the drawback of dying easily. We go glass, do mediocre damage, and still die easily.

Staff needs a boost in damage. It was great back in beta. What I would expect of a mage. Staff is horrible now unless you’re in a group to protect you. I always go after the staff ele first when I see one. They are a guaranteed free kill. This needs to be changed.

The patch did help somewhat, they’re more useful in a group now. But they’re still very easy to kill, which is a shame because I loved playing staff ele before. It’s just not worth it anymore though. Right now it’s not like someone sees a staff ele roaming alone and goes “oh i’d better be careful and plan out what i’m going to do to take this guy down.” Right now it’s just “rush up to them, MAYBE get hit by 1 meteor, which has horrible accuracy at hitting anything even if it’s standing still, then kill them in 1 or 2 hits and laugh off any pathetic damage they do if they actually manage to hit you”.

With my warrior with mobile strikes on I can just rush through any CC they put out IF they actually manage to hit me with it in the first place, then rush up and kill them in a couple hits.

Staff needs a significant damage buff to make up for how squishy you are when wielding one. If people are too foolish not to stand in the obvious giant red circle and they die from it, they deserve to die. Let them whine.

Why are aura so weak, they meant to be one of the active defenses we supposedly have to make up for our low dps, hp and armor, and they are all on extremely high CD and they are weak.

All our active defense skills all seem to be bad as the result their extremely high CD.

Moving on, most of our dps skills are on an extremely high CD for no apparent reason, while other classes like thieves can spam and output our damage without any thinking involved? Why is it that it takes on 5 moves to achieve something that takes a thieve 2 movies?

In every other class, close combat weapons are suppose to out put a high amount of damage to make up for the risk. However, for the elementalist that doesn’t ring true. We get low damage daggers, most of the high damage is on a 30+ second CD, combine with our low dps, hp and armor and have very few built in damage mitigation tools while again the thieves get few evades, the mesmer can distort while having a much higher amount of dps, armor and hp. Why is that?

To summed it up, it seems after bwe 1, you guys panic and made some changes to the elementalist and yet did not compensate us for those changes. why?

Also what is being done to fix the focus, scepter (dragon tooth and water attunement skills) and what abotu our traits?

I’m wondering if you lot have plans for similar traits to Fresh Air but for other attunements.

Could we get a livestream of playing Ranger in that new Aetherblade dungeon next? I think that would help even more people right now…

Well. I thank Izzy for taking the time, but I thought it was funny that most of the focus was on builds that have been around for a while and he’s just starting to experiment with new traits. He recognized that a criticism is that Eles have to rely heavily on Arcane and Water, after spending most of the feed talking about Arcane and Water.

In short, things really haven’t changed that much at all and rather than the new traits and changes introducing new tested and tweaked builds, they are just throwing some new stuff out there to see how it works.

I really was hoping this feed would be about showing how many new, viable builds the update has made possible, but it seems that even Izzy has no idea if this has really done anything to introduce new, viable builds. He mentioned one or two builds, not because he vetted them and knows they work with the updates, but because he “read about them on the forums”.

Sigh.

Becoming more and more clear that this last update was just a “baby step” for the game. A step in the right direction, but there is a lot more work to be done. I hope it will be focused more around introducing new viable builds and less about tossing things out there to see if the community can make anything of them.

I don’t know if you’re going to be reading this, I just finished watching the stream, Izzy, and I want to say thank you for your time and consideration. I did get some good information on ideas and theory on how to maximize the damage output, and various other abilities that the ele has, which I will be experimenting with. Though, I was hoping to see some actual footage of you playing, to see if there is some trick to getting a more viable damage output from the ele. Maybe next time.

However, I am concerned about some of the answers to forum questions you presented.
I want to thank you for addressing the “jack of all trades, master of none” question that I had, however I feel I need to point out that in a game where the creative concept is the deconstruction of the “holy trinity”, where every class can, in theory, be a tank, a healer or a dps…every profession becomes a jack of all trades, by definition.

Yet, every other class has been given some special designation, or some special niche, with powers and abilities commensurate with that designation.

Only the ele has been relegated to the somewhat disheartening monicker of “jack of all trades master of none”. If I were to look at this objectively, it would appear the ele class was something of an afterthought, that no one could think of a better classification for.

I understand the idea that the ele has access to 20 abilities, while all other classes have access to 10, seems to suggest that the ele therefore has some special advantage. But in actual fact, that isn’t quite true. The mesmer has access to 14 abilities, 2 of which do insane amounts of damage far and above what the ele can produce, and two of which apply heavy control conditions. The ranger has access to 16 with it’s 2 pets. the Necro has 15 available with Death Shroud…18, or 20 if you count plague form or Lich form, respectively. Engineer has something like 25 with all their kits and weapon swaps. Warriors and Guardians are similarly equipped.

So, Ele’s are not some specialty class with so many extra weapons at their disposal that their damage needs to be reduced in order to make them “fair”. Nor are they so abundant with CC’s and heals that other classes don’t have. In fact, almost all other classes, (except possibly the mesmer), can heal a group or themselves as well as, if not better than, the ele. Each of the other classes has access to powerful CC’s, powerful group and Individual boon’s, and some even have boon stripping, which to my knowledge, the ele does not have, and all of them have vastly superior elite skills, (unless your ele is human and has Hounds of Balthazar).

And each of these other classes can apparently do all of these things better than the ele. Because the ele is the designated “jack of all trades”.

The real problem is that in a game like this there is no place for a profession that is a master of nothing. Thus we see the ele swiftly dropping from the ranks of Wv3, and the constant struggle ele’s have even in pve. Check out gw2lfg…you never see anyone saying: “need 1 ele…” for anything. The majority of the time, if they know you’re running an ele, they won’t allow you in the party.

I leveled a ranger first, my ele second. I had a MUCH more difficult time leveling the ele, even though I had already learned about attunement swapping and working with my abilities, and had several weeks of game play experience, and had already achieved world map completion on my Ranger, so nothing was new.

I was simply unable to put out enough damage to keep myself alive, and it literally took about twice to three times as long to finish the same map completion. In fact, the only way I was able to do it at all was by craft-leveling my ele, gearing him out in exotics and then going back and doing the mid- and upper-level maps. And even then I actually needed help.

Having now leveled a ranger, ele, necro, and mesmer, I am deeply concerned about how little damage the ele is able to put out compared to the necro and mesmer. I’m also concerned about the ranger, but that’s a subject for a different thread.
Try to imagine how humiliating it was to have to have a guardian escort me through Orr map completion because I literally could not survive. How many friends do I have in-game that have simply not bothered to complete the Orr maps on their ele’s? Too many.

Again, I appreciate the developer’s desire to help create greater diversity in character builds, and your efforts to provide game balance. And I realize this is far more complicated and difficult than most of us probably think. I would love to see another stream like this dealing more with the Wv3 and s/pvp sides of the equation. But more importantly, I’d like to see some of these issues resolved, get the profession back to a point where it can stand on it’s own feet and has an actual place in the game that means something, rather than an afterthought, or as the broken toy that no one wants to play with anymore, because their lvl 40 alt is already so much more powerful.

Fiontar.4695:

Well. I thank Izzy for taking the time, but I thought it was funny that most of the focus was on builds that have been around for a while and he’s just starting to experiment with new traits. He recognized that a criticism is that Eles have to reply heavily on Arcane and Water, after spending most of the feed talking about Arcane and Water.

In short, things really haven’t changed that much at all and rather than the new traits and changes introducing new tested and tweaked builds, they are just throwing some new stuff out there to see how it works.

I really was hoping this feed would be about showing how many new, viable builds the update has made possible, but it seems that even Izzy has no idea if this has really done anything to introduce new, viable builds. He mentioned one or two builds, not because he vetted them and knows they work with the updates, but because he “read about them on the forums”.

Sigh.

Becoming more and more clear that this last update was just a “baby step” for the game. A step in the right direction, but there is a lot more work to be done. I hope it will be focused more around introducing new viable builds and less about tossing things out there to see if the community can make anything of them.

sadly, I’m afraid I have to agree with you. That’s why I asked for public test servers…so that we can actually do this stuff before it gets put into the game.

solarisnox.8521:

Fiontar.4695:

Well. I thank Izzy for taking the time, but I thought it was funny that most of the focus was on builds that have been around for a while and he’s just starting to experiment with new traits. He recognized that a criticism is that Eles have to reply heavily on Arcane and Water, after spending most of the feed talking about Arcane and Water.

In short, things really haven’t changed that much at all and rather than the new traits and changes introducing new tested and tweaked builds, they are just throwing some new stuff out there to see how it works.

I really was hoping this feed would be about showing how many new, viable builds the update has made possible, but it seems that even Izzy has no idea if this has really done anything to introduce new, viable builds. He mentioned one or two builds, not because he vetted them and knows they work with the updates, but because he “read about them on the forums”.

Sigh.

Becoming more and more clear that this last update was just a “baby step” for the game. A step in the right direction, but there is a lot more work to be done. I hope it will be focused more around introducing new viable builds and less about tossing things out there to see if the community can make anything of them.

sadly, I’m afraid I have to agree with you. That’s why I asked for public test servers…so that we can actually do this stuff before it gets put into the game.

Agreed. We desperately need public test servers. I’m guessing their pool of alpha testers has dropped off significantly. Friends and family, people from all around NCSoft, even everyone working at ANet; I’m guessing most of those people play very little on the alpha servers now, compared to pre-launch.

Besides, a stale tester pool just invites blind spots and group think.

And trust me, there has been nothing since launch that would have been “ruined” by early exposure via a public test server. Much more likely a lot of mis-steps could have been prevented.

This stream was just disappointing.

You say that you don’t want the elementalist to be the fastest class, ok, fine, then up their base survivability. Period. At this time, almost any class except an engineer or a necro can and will catch you most of the kitten time (yes, even the guardian can) and there will be little you can do about it unless you blow your god kitten elite to get away. Your elite that is on such a kittening long cooldown. Either up base survivability, or up mobility since you do not want “heals” to impact the game too much. Make your kitten minds up.

And your last bit about “Jack of all trades masters of none” answer just sounds like “delete your elementalist” since all other classes will specialize in something and you will be ok in everything. There would be no point in bringing an elementalist to do anything if this ends up being true. Want damage? bring a warrior. Want a tank? bring a guardian. Want condition damage? bring an engineer or a necro. Your answer to this means that this class will have no real niche, no real role since there will ALWAYS be someone who can do it better than your class. Meaning, there is no reason for the class to exist. There is no reason to bring a class that is “ok” at everything since you can craft a group that has a specialist in the area to have a group that has the best in everything.

This is saddening that you cannot envision something better for such an amazing class. The mechanics are awesome and fun and challenging, but your ideas just end up crapping on the class more. You have made the class one of the easiest to catch, with the lowest base health, and relatively average damage (even when you spec for burst you need to blow 10 skills to kill something) and have removed its ability to disengage or give it some breathing room to heal up properly or try to survive.

Staff still sucks in anything but a zerg. There is no real reason to leave the water/arcane line for many people as the damage you gain is more often than not, not enough to overcome the inherent squishiness of the class. Both lines are a crutch, yes. But they’re a crutch for a reason because mostly without them, there is just little they can do that another class cannot just outclass you with. The scepter/dagger burst builds are fun. Yes they do awesome damage. You still don’t come close to the damage a thief or a warrior can do. You can heal very well, second to only the guardian.

There is just nowhere the class shines. The class is an all arounder and the game play in this game just doesn’t need it. Other classes roam better. Other classes fronline better. Other classes can support better. Where is it that one can say, kitten this is where I need an elementalist. Static field? yay! one ability on a 40 second cooldown that is unique to only us. I love the elementalist class. I will always play it. But come on. Do something with it to make it unique and useful in some sort of niche that isn’t one freaking ability and the ability to aoe downed players.

Your vision needs glasses. And better ideas.

Can anybody give a summary of his stream? In particular, did he say anything about our low health pool, and what specifically did he say about us being “jack of all trades, master of none”?

@Raif.9507

Amen brother. I did not watch the stream but from your comments they seem to be justifying their horrible class decisions.

Jabberwock.9014:

Can anybody give a summary of his stream? In particular, did he say anything about our low health pool, and what specifically did he say about us being “jack of all trades, master of none”?

Just read what Raif.9507 I think he summed it up well.

Wow, if this is true I’m becoming more and more tempted to just uninstall this game and be done with it. Wasted a legend and 100g of dyes on my ele, and for what? A class that will never have a role, has terrible dps despite having the worst hp and armor and a FULL MELEE weaponset, and can be beaten by any class but a necro in a footrace. Brilliant.

Jabberwock.9014:

Wow, if this is true I’m becoming more and more tempted to just uninstall this game and be done with it. Wasted a legend and 100g of dyes on my ele, and for what? A class that will never have a role, has terrible dps despite having the worst hp and armor and a FULL MELEE weaponset, and can be beaten by any class but a necro in a footrace. Brilliant.

Note I was just inferring based on what Raif said I think they will put up the stream later for you to make your own decision.

Where do they put the streams up?

Jabberwock.9014:

Where do they put the streams up?

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2491717

Gotta say that stream confirmed my fears. No mention of health pool means they are not even thinking about it. He claims that we have so many “little things” but those little things are only worthwhile if you spec for it. For example, we have little good healing or defense in a glass cannon build no matter what “mode” we are in. Even if we switch to water or earth, a glass canon ele will die, and faster than any other class with our horrible mobility, health, and escape. Attunements aren’t nearly as versatile as Isaiah seems to believe, since they all reflect our traits and build and provide VERY LITTLE ACTIVE DEFENSE like stealth or clones. Even a necro has better defensive modes in plague form and death shroud. An offensive specced ele has very little defense or escapability, whether in fire or water.

He also claims that we should focus on direct AND condition damage, yet in doing so we have to neglect the holy dps trinity of power/prec/crit damage which multiplicatively stack, while condition damage gains and contributes nothing. Ascended gear exacerbates the problem since every further point of power/prec/crit damage gets more and more powerful the more you have invested in them, while condition damage remains static. I’d much rather get rid of all these superfluous conditions if it would give us a chance to get comparable dps to other classes. I feel like they have been balancing our dps qualitatively rather than quantitatively this whole time, since our direct damage + conditions look good on paper but suck in practice.

Honestly the supposed versatility of eles is a myth that never came to fruition. Ironically we are probably the least versatile class with no active defense and pigeonholed weaponsets and traits.

Also love how he recommends the 50s starcakes as ideal for elementalists. What great symbolism for the elementalist: put in 10 times as much as other classes just to try to keep up.

Had this on in background whilst watching SOACGaming stream.
MMO Champion, someone had said anet were going to show an ele` doing a dungeon, to which I almost fainted.
Not just because Ele`, in dungeon, but anet dev playing in dungeon would be comical.
Wasn`t surprised to see, well, sod all in the end…

I were hoping to see some gameplay and not just talk about different builds. It makes your words less trustworthy if you don’t show us that you can succeed with those types of builds.

Raif.9507:

This stream was just disappointing.

Wall o’ text

While I do appreciate the time they take to do this, I’ll have to agree. It’s already been discussed in the past how the low health pool, high base attunement recharge, and now low mobility all work together to encourage arcane+water builds. I’ll admit though this patch and new traits like fresh air were a step in the right direction but it still fails to address the core problem.

There’s some shred of hope in there though towards the end when he mentioned arcane+water builds. Couple that with the earlier comments he kept making about the ele being about swapping attunements, I hope this means we can get rid of traits like the following which require you to be in an attunement for extended periods of time to have any effect at all:

one with fire
flame barrier
pyromancer’s puissance
zephyr’s speed
one with air

Fixing terrible traits can go in another thread, but these were chosen specifically to highlight the disconnect between their vision, as I interpreted from this stream, and reality.

If this really represents the Developer’s take on the Elementalist then I’m supremely glad I resisted the temptation to buy any gems and support this product any further after coming back to the game recently.

What a shame.

jack of all trades master of none = i don’t know what to do with this class :P

I want those 31 minutes 37 seconds of my life back! First he nerfs us into the ground, then kicks us while we are down, then nerfs us again, then another nerf, and then wastes our time with a day-1 youtube-esq tutorial guide as if we don’t know what a combo field is.

I thought the utility of combo fields and finishers brought up some interesting points. I’ve been playing a Forgemaster lightning hammer build. Not as dangerous as you might think since every third hit with the LH is a blast finisher and applies an AOE blind. Then if I need to swap for support, I just use the staff, or for ranged dps the FGS. Huge damage, decent survivability if you know your enemies.
I still miss my D/D play though. Attunement juggling, bursting and managing combo fields is way more fun but the damage just isn’t competitive.

And the “oh hey yeah screw your mobility kittenes” is ensuring that I will never buy another game with that fizzy kid working for the company.

So because we have the innate ability to do more than on thing we are nerfed to the point where even though we can do everything we are the worst at everything. While we’re at it we’re gonna destory your ability to get out of tough situations too!
How fun…..

This stream only reinforce my theory about how disconnected, perhaps not the devs but the one with decision powers, really are from certain classs and evidentially they lack having a roadmap for each and every class.

Not everyone do pve, as stated earlier I and many more like me do just wvw, that often come as an afterthought when it comes to balance decision. But of course, it’s easier to balance in pve since its very predictable and doesn’t come close in the number of variables involved when there’s human players pitted against others. Still, if you offer both worlds of pve and any form of pvp, you better start balancing, and at least give a thought how changes will work in a pvp environment, for both types of game plays or you’ll paint yourself further and further into that corner your about to trap yourself into. Because pve and pvp is a whole different gameplay. You should know that, it’s you who want spvp to be an esport, not the pve part.

cheshirefox.7026:

this was an interesting video
let me hop in my time machine to half a year ago, when it may have been relevant

i enjoyed the career politician breakdown of how neat elementalist is

omg did you know eles are so FUN that they can use blast finishers inside of fields for mediocre support? If you use one in your static field you might even be able to outrun a necro if they don’t cripple or chill you! How swell!

so much hate here

thank you Izzy for the video, definitely helpful for some of my friends who never played an Ele and are interested in doing so. People QQ over eles but seing how loved we are in WvW I have no fear. I love my Ele, even if he might not do the most damage we do pretty good damage. I’m starting to hate the min-maxers these days, this thread is the perfect showcase of why I do.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

so much hate here

thank you Izzy for the video, definitely helpful for some of my friends who never played an Ele and are interested in doing so. People QQ over eles but seing how loved we are in WvW I have no fear. I love my Ele, even if he might not do the most damage we do pretty good damage. I’m starting to hate the min-maxers these days, this thread is the perfect showcase of why I do.

it’s nice that this video helped your friends who don’t know much about the ele, but for the rest of us who have spend so much time in this class this video was more like a kick in the teeth.
we don’t need a video to explain how a blast finisher works, nor do we need a video re-iterating information from viable builds we already know about. we knew about that on DAY 1

I think it is a quite useful video as a tutorial and an introduction to the class. At the same time, choosing this “tutorial” approach few days later a significant change to skills and traits wasn’t very wise. I mean, like it or not, those who have been playing and researching the profession since day one will be quite angry.

While I find many comments way too harsh (I mean, people, we are talking about minor changes to an online videogame, let’s keep rage and anger for more serious stuff in life…) I am quite disappointed myself. From a lead developer of this game I would expect a little more detail and sense of direction for the class than “we tried to put these new talents, let’s see what happens”. Particularly after you asked in this thread for questions, you received an extremely detailed and well-thought list of issues that then you pretty much ignored in the video…

Alesthes.4287

Particularly after you asked in this thread for questions, you received an extremely detailed and well-thought list of issues that then you pretty much ignored in the video…

And that right there is my problem. If they want to put out video tutorials talking about the pros of the profession that’s fine, but don’t come to the community and ask for tips, tricks, builds, concerns, comments, etc. Honestly, IMO, the video was insulting to the Ele community and a giant waste of time for existing players. Next time bill the live stream as an introduction to the profession and there won’t be so much rage.

Honestly, I have a different view on the elementalist class than most people here.

Even though the elementalist is clearly difficult to balance for, and there’s certainly some inherent problems with the class, I feel that the core of the problem is not (only) the class, but pve’s design.

There’s a reason why elementalists are extremely strong in pvp. Yes, they are as much a jack-of-all-trades in pvp as they are in pve, but being good at too many things has proven to be competitive enough against being great at a few things, bad at others. An elementalist, in pvp, can run away decently, can heal themselves back to health, can spam boons on themselves, can burst and crowd control with plenty of aoe and decent single-target burst. A specialized burst build might be able to take them down faster – but if it’s unable to, chances are, it’ll lose, because it can’t keep up with the elementalist’s survival.

There’s also a reason why warriors are so overpowered in pve, while they have been sucky in pvp.

I believe the problem is pve’s design and its shallow meta state. GW2 was designed around a trinity, named damage/ control/ support, but GW2’s pve is dominated by damage, and specifically critical damage. Conditions are crippled by capped stacks; control is ruined by defiance; support is pointless in an environment that is too much focused on solo players, self-defense, and when there’s a lack of infrastructure to reliably support our allies without missing our healing fields just because they moved away from them.

An elementalist, by being a jack-of-all-trades, means that they are decent at everything: burst, aoe damage, condition damage, crowd control, party support. PvE, akittens current state, is all about burst, and little about anything else. What is the end result of all this? An elementalist is mediocre compared to most other professions.

What is the single best pve team setup? A mesmer, a guardian and three warriors. You might take out one warrior for a specialized condition build. The warriors offer extreme critical damage; a mesmer offers strong sustained damage in addition to time wrap and some extra party support, and guardians party damage mitigation is the most reliable in the entire game. You don’t see mesmers being used to interrupt foes; you don’t see warriors without greatswords; you don’t see stuff like that, because pve’s environment is that shallow.

If control, party support, aoe and condition damage were all equally viable to burst damage, an elementalist would offer a lot to the party. A profession that can, single-handely, heal the party and fill it with boons, interrupt foes and crowd control, and still have all kinds of damage available for all kinds of situation, makes the profession strong in theory. If pve’s environment was more complex, if the strategy behind each content was far more diversified and far deeper, the value of adaptable classes like the elementalist would be far more valued.

Think about it: would you want a specialized build that would be conditionally good, conditionally bad? Imagine if half the time, warriors were crippled, chilled, immobilized, blinded, etc, and couldn’t do anything without party support? Imagine if defiance was only applied at specific times, instead of being completely passive, and in addition to offering immunity to control, it would also offer immunity to criticals? Imagine if there were situations where bosses were immune to direct damage, and only conditions would work? If pve had a more diversifed experience and difficulty, the jack-of-all-trades classes would shine, because there would never exist a time where they would be wasting their time.

In the end, elementalists, among several other professions, suffer from a shallow pve experience that is driven by a single strategy – berzerker gear and specialized burst builds.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s a reason why elementalists are extremely strong in pvp. Yes, they are as much a jack-of-all-trades in pvp as they are in pve, but being good at too many things has proven to be competitive enough against being great at a few things, bad at others. An elementalist, in pvp, can run away decently, can heal themselves back to health, can spam boons on themselves, can burst and crowd control with plenty of aoe and decent single-target burst. A specialized burst build might be able to take them down faster – but if it’s unable to, chances are, it’ll lose, because it can’t keep up with the elementalist’s survival.

There’s so much wrong with this:
- Eles can’t run away anymore since the last RTL nerfs.
- Eles can’t heal any better than other classes UNLESS HEAVILY SPECCED FOR IT.
- Eles can’t “spam boons on themselves” UNLESS HEAVILY SPECCED FOR IT.
- Eles can’t burst and aoe at the same time because those are completely different weapon sets and eles can’t weaponswap.

Sorry, but I know how my class works. :P

- We can indeed run with RTL. Just not as often, so generally you won’t be able to do it a second time. Doing it once is still enough to get back to full health. We also have decent access to swiftness (healing glyph, staff, switching to air with elemental attunement, using auras with zephyr’s boons, using any other glyph with the glyph’s trait, or to a lesser extent, signet of air), we have good access to anti-movement skills (staff has a chill, cripple, stun and immobilize; OH dagger has a lunch, a KD and frost aura, MH dagger has chill, criplle and stun aura; focus has magnetic wave and freezing gust) and there’s always Lightning Flash.

- All eles can heal with frost cone, water trident and cleansing water when using d/d and s/d, and heal and apply large aoe regeneration with geyser, healing rain an blast finishers (from earth, with arcane wave, from traits, there’s many ways to do it). Only focus has no heal, but it can still support the party with a massive anti-projectile skill. Certainly, 20 in water and 30 in arcana only makes things better.

- Eles are a boon class. Almost any worthwhile trait gives them boons. Boons on auras, boons on cantrips, boons on attunement change, boons on fire fields, boon on glyphs, boons on signets. What you mean by “unless heavily specced for it”, you’re actually saying “every single good spec that exists for an elementalist”. Of course, I’m not judging this class by its horrible “don’t-switch-attunements-please” traits

- Eles can burst and aoe at the same time with s/d or d/d. Staff has even better aoe, and you can always bring a good conjure for the burst (like the elite, or lightning hammer). If conjure weapons get buffed in the future (which they should), this will only get better.

You seem to know nothing about “your” class:

- RTL is 1200 range 40 seconds CD. Every single class besides maybe mesmers and necros can easily catch you with their own 1200 range 12 seconds mobility skills or low-cooldown teleports.

- These days every class has easy access to swiftness and/or 25% passive runspeed so again they will catch you. On top of that they can simply switch to a ranged weapon and kill you from afar.

- Frost cone, water trident and cleansing water heal for kitten if not specced and equipped for it. Staff is not a pvp weapon.

- D/D is not a burst weaponset because it has no defenses. Staff is not a burst set because it has no defenses.

Of course all this is about pvp. Everything is viable in easymode pve.

ok i’m going to write down what he talks about through this video, for anyone who hasn’t watched or wants a reminder of what izzy was talking about

00:50 – no plans on single attunement builds. don’t stick to one attunement since you have 20 skills
1:14 – using combo fields
1:30 – use eruption with fire fields for might
1:50 – use static field with blast finishers for swiftness
2:13 – ele uses more stats than other professions, each weapon has mix of dmg/condition, try to spec for all-round
2:50 – divinity runes and dragon starcakes are best for ele, “they are phenomenal”
3:18 – using combo fields, eruption is a blast finisher, use with combo fields
4:14 – use might, might gives dmg and condition buff, good for ele
4:43 – sigil of battle works with ele, all “swap-sigils” work with attunements
5:14 – eles have “a real desire to spec to arcane and water magic”
5:24 – using trait ‘elemental surge’, “one of the most fun traits”
5:43 – was talking about ‘evasive arcana’, not elemental surge, EA gives a blast combo in earth, ‘cleansing wave’ in water
6:12 – ‘persisting flames’ is good with blast finishers
6:44 – trait elemental attunement is good
6:51 – think about what attunement you want to start in before entering combat
7:28 – attunement swap is instant, good with EA when you want something on dodge
8:01 – arcane trait line is good for swapping attunements, a lot of builds use arcane trait
8:21 – water trait is used a lot in ele builds, mainly defense
8:36 – use ‘cleansing water’ with cantrips traited for regen
9:00 – sigil of energy is good for evade, eles use evade a lot in their traits
9:19 – using damage traits in water in combination with scholar runes
9:54 – use those traits with ‘bolt to the heart’
10:05 – use in combination with ‘conjure hammer’ for heavy aoe damage
10:27 – ‘diamond skin’ for high condition damage, use with rabid armour and undead runes, use condition consumables, sceptre earth skill #1 and earth trait ‘obsidian focus’, earth #1 is projectile finisher so use with fire fields
12:08 – food buffs – dragon starcakes are best for maxing dmg, truffle steak dinner is good, rare veggie pizza for condition
12:46 – PvE staff ele can kite while using aoe conditions, magnetic aura for ranged
13:31 – use FGS, skill #3 and #4 have mobility, looking into for balance, “get out of jail” skills
14:05 – burning retreat for escape
14:21 – “a lot of your defence comes from your mobility on your staff”
14:40 – focus is built for defence
14:48 – dagger is high dps, lots of dmg and condition, “in PvP and WvW, daggers are fun and strong to go for”

(part 2)

15:10 – staff uses combo fields “in a weird way”, “one of the better healers”, use healing power, has lots of aoe for PvE and WvW
16:03 – sceptre is single focused, dragons tooth is a combo finish, hurl is a combo finish
16:30 – focus is built for defence
16:49 – flamewall is bugged since last update, cancels itself
17:09 – sigils, bloodlust/corruption/precision
17:31 – izzy doesn’t use any of above
17:42 – “the ele has really powerful… getting up from being downed, especially with all the persistent aoe and damage the ele can throw around. A lot of your skill damage can be triggered when you’re in your downed state and you can fight back, so there’s a lot of ‘getting back into the fight’ with the ele”
18:00 – on-kill sigils are good, izzy prefers weapon-swap, sigil of force and on-crit are good
18:24 – food, boon duration is good for attunement swap, works well with ‘bountiful power’
19:12 – trait ‘healing ripple’ good for swapping to water, gives regen and health from ‘soothing mist’
19:47 – sharpening stones and tuning crystals are good consumables
20:03 – precision is used in a lot of builds, can be better than power depending on how much power you have
20:14 – divinity runes for “raw damage”, scholar runes only if traited for high damage
21:03 – rampage armour is “underappreciated”, use with berserker jewellery with beryl jewels
21:47 – use rabid for condition builds
22:10 – boon duration runes are good with attunement swap
22:36 – utility skills, cantrips are good, use lightning flash with churning earth or burning speed
23:29 – mist form is good, commonly used
23:44 – signet of earth is good for WvW and PvP, signet of fire is good for burning, glyph of storms is “underestimated”
24:46 – arcane wave is a blast finisher
25:10 – signet of restoration is good for “spammy builds”
25:30 – Question: single or dual attunements – fresh air, otherwise you must use all attunements
26:45 – Question: balance changes to mobility – “we don’t want the like to be the best mobile character in the game”, ele can change roles during combat so mobility is a trade-off
28:15 – Question: ele locked in water/arcane trait – working on it
28:56 – Question: “jack of all trades” – “if any one of those things becomes just as powerful as other professions who are entirely designed to do that or entirely set up… this is a big build of theirs to be heavy into that, then when you have the comparison with someone who can do that and a bunch of other little things, it makes that profession so much better than the other professions”, “we want the ele to be able to swap between powerful modes and really successful things, but we don’t want them to overshine others because they innately come with different things they can do”

“jack of all trades” – so it’s ok for example that rangers do better conditions than us, burst better, survive better and have more mobility? I smell hypocrisy.

Aether McLoud.1975:

You seem to know nothing about “your” class:

- RTL is 1200 range 40 seconds CD. Every single class besides maybe mesmers and necros can easily catch you with their own 1200 range 12 seconds mobility skills or low-cooldown teleports.

- These days every class has easy access to swiftness and/or 25% passive runspeed so again they will catch you. On top of that they can simply switch to a ranged weapon and kill you from afar.

- Frost cone, water trident and cleansing water heal for kitten if not specced and equipped for it. Staff is not a pvp weapon.

- D/D is not a burst weaponset because it has no defenses. Staff is not a burst set because it has no defenses.

Of course all this is about pvp. Everything is viable in easymode pve.

RTL is not affected by chill and cripple, which makes it a very reliable escaping tool. If your opponent is under any of those, they won’t be able to catch you. That’s 12 seconds for you to recover.

Unless you’re on an open field, you can prevent a lot of the ranged damage by covering yourself in walls and obstacles. There’s plenty of those in pvp. Also, not everyone has a ranged weapon ready for this situation.

And you can indeed burst with D/D. Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Fire Grab? Churning Earth + Lightning Flash or Shocking Aura? You won’t burst as often as with a scepter, certainly, but you can burst and still deal good sustained damage.

Also, if we’re only talking about pvp, then what’s to worry about? S/D burst builds and D/D bunker builds are meta. Being jacks-of-all-trades hasn’t been hurting us that much there.

This makes me wonder if The people who make this game have ever actually played the elementalist or just throw a bunch of random crap out and make stupid changes to the class and just ASSUME everything works fine.

Jabberwock.9014:

cheshirefox.7026:

this was an interesting video
let me hop in my time machine to half a year ago, when it may have been relevant

i enjoyed the career politician breakdown of how neat elementalist is

omg did you know eles are so FUN that they can use blast finishers inside of fields for mediocre support? If you use one in your static field you might even be able to outrun a necro if they don’t cripple or chill you! How swell!

Both quoted for truth. This slap in the face video is such an insult. That fizzy kid should be fired and someone with a clue needs to start working for anet.

^I have a dog that can understand basic commands like sit and fetch. I think he could do a better job at fixing the ele.

Engineers are currently better at being the Jack of All trades than the Ele. They also have higher health and armor. Something to meditate on, Izzy.

^ they also have ride the lightning with 20 sec cooldown :P