Guild Wars 2

They can’t balance the elementalist at all and as usual they just break it more:

“Hey were gonna make meteors have a big fat huge red circles so that now everyone will jump out of it before the first meteor hit the ground after 3 seconds. "
- “Yay thank you”

“We’re also gonna make your 2 most useful traits cost 2 more points each for the sake of build diversity.”
- “Yay thank you”, we replied again

“We’re also going to nerf your mobility with daggers by 50%.”
- “amazing”, we said (/sarcasm)

“Oh and you cant no longer heal conditions in mist form or do anything beside run away”
- “Right….” (and we thought, wtf is that balance team doing?)

“Oh and remember that tornado useless skill that you’ve been using to bump up your damage because your so squishy you have to puts all your points in defence?”
- “yeah…” (gosh please don’t do that again)

“Well, we prefer when it was totally useless”
(player base gone for good) No more replies

I can spot two buffs to signets in the video that Karl didn’t mention.

1) The cast-time of the signets with cast-time (fire, earth and water) has had their cast time reduced from 3/4 second to 1/2 second.
2) Signet of Earth also had it’s cooldown reduced to 25 seconds (like air and water)

I must say Signet of Earth is looking REALLY promising. It will be easier to hit with the 0.25 sec reduce in cast time, while the bleed stacks are good for masking the root debuff and will probably do significant damage for celestial / condition elementalists.

New WvW meta with Air/Water GoS+Piercing Shards+Vital Striking+Bolt to the Heart?

I think whole zergs can be melted with this!!

I still fell bad that all of out elites are useless now.

Typical ele patch. Pointless buffs to fundamentally useless things while nerfing useful things.

New ele meta: empty elite slot!!!!!!!

Coldtart.4785:

New ele meta: empty elite slot!!!!!!!

Oh man!!! I sure do love that we have the option to not use an elite at all!!!!

Definitely feeling this…

Mbelch.9028:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

You’ve forgot a major note and that is a nerf to Vapour Form. It’s no longer immune to cc’s. No more sneaking inside a keep in WvW.

What disappoints me is the lack of buffs to a new meta. I feel completely lost.

So I didn’t actually realize this was a change. Yes a huge nerf. I thought this was just a visual thing.

Honestly though, this was a merited change. Nobody should be able to sneak into keeps untouched. No other class can.

Grumble As much as I didn’t want it to happen, mist form was way too good for a cantrip/instant. It is almost impossible to counter and has secured more cheese stomps for me than I want to admit…

New meta build coming through!

Reokie.7809:

Mbelch.9028:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

You’ve forgot a major note and that is a nerf to Vapour Form. It’s no longer immune to cc’s. No more sneaking inside a keep in WvW.

What disappoints me is the lack of buffs to a new meta. I feel completely lost.

So I didn’t actually realize this was a change. Yes a huge nerf. I thought this was just a visual thing.

Honestly though, this was a merited change. Nobody should be able to sneak into keeps untouched. No other class can.

Grumble As much as I didn’t want it to happen, mist form was way too good for a cantrip/instant. It is almost impossible to counter and has secured more cheese stomps for me than I want to admit…

Mist form goes unchanged. It’s vapor form we were talking about. But the vapor form change isn’t anything past visual. What you quoted was incorrect on myself and the guy who I quoted.

Coldtart.4785:

Typical ele patch. Pointless buffs to fundamentally useless things while nerfing useful things!

So the only way pointless stuff gets better is by buffing it. By slowly buffing things up, they’re making sure they don’t make something crazy out of balance.

I tend to agree with this style of balance patch… It just needs to happen monthly. Not bi-annually.

Xillllix.3485:

They can’t balance the elementalist at all and as usual they just break it more:

“Hey were gonna make meteors have a big fat huge red circles so that now everyone will jump out of it before the first meteor hit the ground after 3 seconds. "
- “Yay thank you”

“We’re also gonna make your 2 most useful traits cost 2 more points each for the sake of build diversity.”
- “Yay thank you”, we replied again

“We’re also going to nerf your mobility with daggers by 50%.”
- “amazing”, we said (/sarcasm)

“Oh and you cant no longer heal conditions in mist form or do anything beside run away”
- “Right….” (and we thought, wtf is that balance team doing?)

“Oh and remember that tornado useless skill that you’ve been using to bump up your damage because your so squishy you have to puts all your points in defence?”
- “yeah…” (gosh please don’t do that again)

“Well, we prefer when it was totally useless”
(player base gone for good) No more replies

This is heavily over-exaggerated. I feel like ele is in a great spot (minus celestial/strength runes) and it is only becoming more well rounded.

-Meteornado was OP.
-Mistform heal was OP with no counter play.
-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.
-The trait motions were definitely a heavy handed nerf which I disagreed with.
-All aoe gets circles. This was a necessary balance change. Deal with it.

nearlight.3064:

Mbelch.9028:

nearlight.3064:

I agree. All they did was buff utilities that are still niche or unused because we need survivability utilities for most of pvp, and fix crappy GM traits to have some purpose or use. I’m honestly sad that they didn’t do anything positive to weapon skills, since stuff like like shatterstone or scepter autos will still suck.

Oh well. 6/6/0/0/2 blind ashes fresh air S/F nuke build anyone?

I’m thinking D/F 6/0/6/0/2 signet build honestly.

I’m pretty happy that this patch they’re only really buffing the poorer things and not nerfing the used items to compensate.

They’ve done that in the past and it is a NIGHTMARE.

Maybe I’ll try that out too.. If it doesn’t use clearasil diamond skin lol.

The only satisfaction I get out of ele anymore is blowing things up with scepter builds. If I want condition builds I might as well go play the soon to be buffed torment spam PU mesmer, like why did anet buff the most toxic build in the game? I guess I’ll also out cheese people on celestial might stacking ranger in pvp.. it’s just disenheartening for anet to buff low risk high reward builds even further.

No no no. Signet master for sure for that build. You’ll be able to use valk armor/zerk armor too with it. Which might make it interesting.

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

Heavy handed nerfs? Or making things more balanced? I’m sorry you can’t Meteornado and 1 hit noobs any longer. You’ll live.

Try to be semi objective for the sake of the game overall.

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

OH NOES FGS IS NERFED WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, OH NO WE CAN’T ABUSE THE PRETTY OBVIOUSLY UNINTENDED TORNADO GLITCH ANYMORE

Oh right, aoe vuln and continue nuking.

Sorry, but you people who honestly think we’re being hit hard are adorable. If you honestly required FGS to not be useless in groups or Tornado-meteor to be useful in a zerg, you shouldn’t be playing ele.

Mbelch.9028:

Xillllix.3485:

They can’t balance the elementalist at all and as usual they just break it more:

“Hey were gonna make meteors have a big fat huge red circles so that now everyone will jump out of it before the first meteor hit the ground after 3 seconds. "
- “Yay thank you”

“We’re also gonna make your 2 most useful traits cost 2 more points each for the sake of build diversity.”
- “Yay thank you”, we replied again

“We’re also going to nerf your mobility with daggers by 50%.”
- “amazing”, we said (/sarcasm)

“Oh and you cant no longer heal conditions in mist form or do anything beside run away”
- “Right….” (and we thought, wtf is that balance team doing?)

“Oh and remember that tornado useless skill that you’ve been using to bump up your damage because your so squishy you have to puts all your points in defence?”
- “yeah…” (gosh please don’t do that again)

“Well, we prefer when it was totally useless”
(player base gone for good) No more replies

This is heavily over-exaggerated. I feel like ele is in a great spot (minus celestial/strength runes) and it is only becoming more well rounded.

-Meteornado was OP.
-Mistform heal was OP with no counter play.
-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.
-The trait motions were definitely a heavy handed nerf which I disagreed with.
-All aoe gets circles. This was a necessary balance change. Deal with it.

The problem with meteornado being removed from play is that it makes the elite entirely useless. Meteornado was the only reason people used Tornado at all. Yeah you can launch people, but you’re not doing very much damage during that time so you’re kind of wasting that cc.

The problem with you guys justifying the changes is that you completely ignore that the elite is now not useful for any real purpose, the only purpose being launching off a cliff, which is so niche you will probably never slot it, maybe after a hard won fight in a Lord’s room you might think “hind sight I should have used tornado to push everyone out of the circle so we could cap easier”

But it’ll all be hindsight. Because almost every time you’ll have FGS slotted as an escape weapon instead

Devildoc.6721:

The problem with you guys justifying the changes is that you completely ignore that the elite is now not useful for any real purpose, the only purpose being launching off a cliff, which is so niche you will probably never slot it, maybe after a hard won fight in a Lord’s room you might think “hind sight I should have used tornado to push everyone out of the circle so we could cap easier”

But it’ll all be hindsight. Because almost every time you’ll have FGS slotted as an escape weapon instead

Oh I’ll agree with tornado being useless now (the fact that it was only good for a bug that needed to be fix is a problem) , I just am tired of people kittening and crying like ele is dead now.

Glyph of storm does not stack 25 vul per hit. On zerg, gvg, pve and in spvp, this utility will be very useful.

I agree with nearlight. the continuous buff to low risk high reward builds is absurd. There will definitely be a lot of forum rage against the torment stacking mesmer meta coming lol. Also, look out for more bunker eles with that water element elite and a signet bunker condition ele. Yet once again scepter and focus are left in the dark unless all the buffs were not covered on the ready up episodes. In short bunker and condition builds are still meta.

@Celestina – I also agree with you. In terms of pve and wvw zerging to take away something that worked so well most be heartbreaking for players that find it hard to adapt to changes.

Celestina.2894:

Devildoc.6721:

The problem with you guys justifying the changes is that you completely ignore that the elite is now not useful for any real purpose, the only purpose being launching off a cliff, which is so niche you will probably never slot it, maybe after a hard won fight in a Lord’s room you might think “hind sight I should have used tornado to push everyone out of the circle so we could cap easier”

But it’ll all be hindsight. Because almost every time you’ll have FGS slotted as an escape weapon instead

Oh I’ll agree with tornado being useless now (the fact that it was only good for a bug that needed to be fix is a problem) , I just am tired of people kittening and crying like ele is dead now.

No, Ele as a class is still good, it’s just our elites that are bad now.

actually though.. when I first played Ele in beta and at launch, my thoughts were: “Ele is a great versatile class, a bit too squishy and doesn’t deal enough damage vs a warrior to really offset it, but it is more fun than warrior, but man, do the elites suck”

I used glyph of elements because well, the other elites seemed not worthwhile. Tornado usually ended up getting you downed, and FGS was only useful for escapes, you could do more damage by using your regular weapons and utilities than you could with FGS, and I thought what Ele needed was a big damage nuke.

Then a guildmate told me that Tornado gave you a ridiculous amount of power, and to use meteor, then Tornado, there was one big damage nuke.

Then another guildmate told me to untarget a boss against a wall and fiery rush straight into it, there was another big damage nuke, so for a time, The general lacking of the skills was masked by the fact that they had “unintended” quirks that made them useful.

Now those are being removed and I’m again left with the opinion that Ele is a strong versatile class, that is perhaps a little underwhelming in damage compared to how squishy it is compared to warrior, that has garbage elites.

So now that those “unintended uses” are going to be gone, maybe the underlying underwhelming functionality of the skills needs to be looked at.

FGS does less damage than fire attunement on a staff, with the exception of fiery whirl against a wall and fiery rush against a wall, all 5 skills, even firestorm, underperform compared to fireball, lava font, and meteor shower if you’re not doing it against a wall.

Tornado, even worse.

Devildoc.6721:

Celestina.2894:

Devildoc.6721:

The problem with you guys justifying the changes is that you completely ignore that the elite is now not useful for any real purpose, the only purpose being launching off a cliff, which is so niche you will probably never slot it, maybe after a hard won fight in a Lord’s room you might think “hind sight I should have used tornado to push everyone out of the circle so we could cap easier”

But it’ll all be hindsight. Because almost every time you’ll have FGS slotted as an escape weapon instead

Oh I’ll agree with tornado being useless now (the fact that it was only good for a bug that needed to be fix is a problem) , I just am tired of people kittening and crying like ele is dead now.

No, Ele as a class is still good, it’s just our elites that are bad now.

Sorry I should have been more clear, wasn’t saying you were saying ele was dead, it was more of a blanket statement directed at certain other people on this forum/reddit. I apologize if you took it otherwise.

(also sorry if I misunderstood your post also, kind of out of it tonight)

LightningBlaze.4913:

Glyph of storm does not stack 25 vul per hit. On zerg, gvg, pve and in spvp, this utility will be very useful.

I agree with nearlight. the continuous buff to low risk high reward builds is absurd. There will definitely be a lot of forum rage against the torment stacking mesmer meta coming lol. Also, look out for more bunker eles with that water element elite and a signet bunker condition ele. Yet once again scepter and focus are left in the dark unless all the buffs were not covered on the ready up episodes. In short bunker and condition builds are still meta.

@Celestina – I also agree with you. In terms of pve and wvw zerging to take away something that worked so well most be heartbreaking for players that find it hard to adapt to changes.

Yeah it definitely doesn’t stack to 25 per hit it hits 2 stacks per hit. I hope what I wrote didn’t come off that way.

I’m also not sure if you are in line or not with the torment rage, but I’m a member of the torment rage group.

I can’t believe they want more condis on auto attacks. It is ridiculous to me. And torment was the worst addition to the game in my opinion.

Mbelch.9028:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Glyph of storm does not stack 25 vul per hit. On zerg, gvg, pve and in spvp, this utility will be very useful.

I agree with nearlight. the continuous buff to low risk high reward builds is absurd. There will definitely be a lot of forum rage against the torment stacking mesmer meta coming lol. Also, look out for more bunker eles with that water element elite and a signet bunker condition ele. Yet once again scepter and focus are left in the dark unless all the buffs were not covered on the ready up episodes. In short bunker and condition builds are still meta.

@Celestina – I also agree with you. In terms of pve and wvw zerging to take away something that worked so well most be heartbreaking for players that find it hard to adapt to changes.

Yeah it definitely doesn’t stack to 25 per hit it hits 2 stacks per hit. I hope what I wrote didn’t come off that way.

I’m also not sure if you are in line or not with the torment rage, but I’m a member of the torment rage group.

I can’t believe they want more condis on auto attacks. It is ridiculous to me. And torment was the worst addition to the game in my opinion.

Lightning storm will be excellent against large targets like world bosses though, it WILL stack 25 vuln on those.

I do wonder if those conditions will apply to the conjured weapons versions.

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Agreed with those saying we have crappy elites now.

In particular, Tornado really needs a revamp before I’ll ever consider putting it on my bar. Something like projectile reflection for its duration would be a good first step. Also, make its Stability un-rippable, or make it double/triple Toughness also. Also, I think it’d be cool if it pulled people IN instead of blowing them away; that way you wouldn’t needlessly be pushing people out of your teammates’ fields. Given the proposed changes, it is a useless skill that will, in most cases, cause more harm than good. The only thing I see it working well with is the new Lightning Rod, but it’s not good enough to take just for that reason.

Honestly, I’m really considering using racial elites now whenever I don’t need to run away quickly (in which case FGS is still viable, thankfully)….that’s how bad I think it is.

Solo.9027:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Thanks for clarifying. I can’t speak to that as I don’t even recall it.

Solo.9027:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Mesmer is my second main, so I am actually 100% happy with the changes they’re getting. Still don’t see myself going a scepter condition build but I do think it’ll be an excellent option.

Devildoc.6721:

Solo.9027:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Mesmer is my second main, so I am actually 100% happy with the changes they’re getting. Still don’t see myself going a scepter condition build but I do think it’ll be an excellent option.

Excellent option? If you just want to master a build in a less than a day and faceroll most things you come across, then yeah its an excellent option. I’m disgusted by people jumping on the bandwagon of the most cancerous and forgiving of mistakes spec in the game. Even condition ranger with its new mightstacking will take more of a pulse to win than that build.

Why don’t people see the fluidity and complexity of challenging builds as desireable anymore?

nearlight.3064:

Devildoc.6721:

Solo.9027:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Mesmer is my second main, so I am actually 100% happy with the changes they’re getting. Still don’t see myself going a scepter condition build but I do think it’ll be an excellent option.

Excellent option? If you just want to master a build in a less than a day and faceroll most things you come across, then yeah its an excellent option. I’m disgusted by people jumping on the bandwagon of the most cancerous and forgiving of mistakes spec in the game. Even condition ranger with its new mightstacking will take more of a pulse to win than that build.

Why don’t people see the fluidity and complexity of challenging builds as desireable anymore?

I just said I wasn’t going for a scepter build, I love sword/focus and sword/sword and sword/pistol too much to go conditions.

I just said it’d be a viable build compared to before.

Also I did forget about mimic, not really sure if I really “like” that change, I didn’t really use mimic before because it was such a niche skill, but the new mimic… I don’t know.. why would I use it over arcane thievery?

pretty good change on the sword.. the leap is getting a buff.. it was a pretty wonky skill to begin with and why it took them so long to correct is beyond me
the storm glyph change is long overdue.. same with earth signet.. air and fire were alright, but the buffs are appreciated.. water signet buff was fair, and fixing the elemental auxiliary functions deserves credit.. and a certain crowd of players had their grandmasters debugged.. it’s absurd to think burning retreat needed attention but it’s possible it got thrown in with the rework, so whatever

only time I ever used earth signet prior to this was in GvG zerg skirmishes where the tactic was to target the enemy elementalist and spam them with immobilizes and they drop like a stone.

since I’m not a condition person… probably still going to be the only time I ever might use it.

Celestina.2894:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

OH NOES FGS IS NERFED WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, OH NO WE CAN’T ABUSE THE PRETTY OBVIOUSLY UNINTENDED TORNADO GLITCH ANYMORE

Oh right, aoe vuln and continue nuking.

Sorry, but you people who honestly think we’re being hit hard are adorable. If you honestly required FGS to not be useless in groups or Tornado-meteor to be useful in a zerg, you shouldn’t be playing ele.

You cannot deny we took some of the biggest nerfs of all profession (40% of our damage out put??). Which for all intends and purposes was expected. Now we have no elite skills worth noting, yeah fgs for running away. Very occasional use of elementals. Now again you could say: Well first fix the old stuff and next consider buffs. However like you pointed out balance patches are infrequent, they will leave us without viable elites for half a year.

Mbelch.9028:

One thing I did miss was the Glyph of elemental storm seems to be overpowered now.

• This glyph which creates a storm in a location can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability now for each hit on a target that stands inside it.
• Each different storm gets a different condition, water just seems the most overpowered.

Yeah, think nuking some zergs from above with staff with all the + % dmg traits taken.

And then get destroyed by retal? Also Conjure Weapons already do 2 of the 4 things that the Glyph of Storms does.

Devildoc.6721:

2 out of 3 elites neutered. FGS might still be worthwhile for whirl and firestorm., and for the fact that the other 2 elites are really bad, Glyph is only useful for soloing and spawning a tank, Tornado was only useful for upping meteor damage.

Will anyone use tornado after the change? Ever? I really can’t see myself doing it. Maybe on the way to defending or capping a Lord’s room it can push people out so it isn’t challenged. But that’s it.

It could possibly be used for shooting out bursts of lightning because those hit for a good amount of damage. Add sigil of air, fire and the new and improved Lightning Rod and you’ve got yourself a nice little nukage form.

Dirame.8521:

Mbelch.9028:

One thing I did miss was the Glyph of elemental storm seems to be overpowered now.

• This glyph which creates a storm in a location can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability now for each hit on a target that stands inside it.
• Each different storm gets a different condition, water just seems the most overpowered.

Yeah, think nuking some zergs from above with staff with all the + % dmg traits taken.

And then get destroyed by retal? Also Conjure Weapons already do 2 of the 4 things that the Glyph of Storms does.

Devildoc.6721:

2 out of 3 elites neutered. FGS might still be worthwhile for whirl and firestorm., and for the fact that the other 2 elites are really bad, Glyph is only useful for soloing and spawning a tank, Tornado was only useful for upping meteor damage.

Will anyone use tornado after the change? Ever? I really can’t see myself doing it. Maybe on the way to defending or capping a Lord’s room it can push people out so it isn’t challenged. But that’s it.

It could possibly be used for shooting out bursts of lightning because those hit for a good amount of damage. Add sigil of air, fire and the new and improved Lightning Rod and you’ve got yourself a nice little nukage form.

If you’re worried about retal, go home. It’s a prevalent threat in a Zerg.

Mbelch.9028:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

Heavy handed nerfs? Or making things more balanced? I’m sorry you can’t Meteornado and 1 hit noobs any longer. You’ll live.

Try to be semi objective for the sake of the game overall.

Please, I don’t pve nor zvz, so try not to be condescending. Neither the tornado or the FGS nerfs could mean less to me.

That aside, the nerf to the trail stacking is heavy handed, and will effect unrelated skills because of what is our usual sloppy chopping. The burning speed + LF is one od the few decent burst combos that required timing to execute, and a good chunk of its damage is now lost, meh.

Celestina.2894:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

OH NOES FGS IS NERFED WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, OH NO WE CAN’T ABUSE THE PRETTY OBVIOUSLY UNINTENDED TORNADO GLITCH ANYMORE

Oh right, aoe vuln and continue nuking.

Sorry, but you people who honestly think we’re being hit hard are adorable. If you honestly required FGS to not be useless in groups or Tornado-meteor to be useful in a zerg, you shouldn’t be playing ele.

Been playing ele for around two years, you’re not talking to an idiot, so drop the caps, plees.

Now, eles got hit hard, wether the functionality of such skills was intended or not. I can see the reasoning behind nerfing meteornadoes, but the FGS nerf will mean zilch in the grand scheme of (PvE) things.

People are undervalueing the elite changes. Yes, their broken combos no longer exist, but there’s some interesting details to keep in mind.

On normal occasions (aka, outside of unintended functionality), the buff to Fiery Rush is HUGE. I mean, 140% increase? That’s an easy (single target) Dragon’s Tooth right there, no? It’ll be slightly stronger than Burning Speed, although without the evade and a bit slower.

Tornado will now fully benefit from Lightning Rod, which will trigger twice if you activate Debris. Unfortunately, the lightning field whirl effect is weak by itself, and you’re still frail as a tornado, but with some team playing, you can make interesting daze combos.

The changes to elementals are the most exciting out of the three. I’ve seen on-demand weakness there, and on-demand bursting.

EDIT: Elite Air Elemental fires a stunning bolt every 15 seconds. Wonder if that’ll work with Lightning Rod?

EDIT 2: ON DEMAND 7k HEAL TOO. Maybe it’ll get nerfed?

As I am running plain stupid 6/6/2/0/0, zerker amulett, rune of strength, and doing quite well in PvP (mostly hot join though, but players in SoloQ often are not that much harder) I can only wait for these GM trait buffs.
As I am using blinding ashes atm anyway, thats gonna be a huge buff for that build, and ill consider taking that air as well.
Though I think if applied on every burning tick, blinding ashes might get really OP for a class that does nothing else but burning AoE in fire.

On the other hand I think Fire Trait Line needs such a massive buff, if they really want to get ppl out of Arcane/Water Combination without getting ppl entirely out of that class (if you know what i mean).

DutchRiders.2871:

Celestina.2894:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

OH NOES FGS IS NERFED WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, OH NO WE CAN’T ABUSE THE PRETTY OBVIOUSLY UNINTENDED TORNADO GLITCH ANYMORE

Oh right, aoe vuln and continue nuking.

Sorry, but you people who honestly think we’re being hit hard are adorable. If you honestly required FGS to not be useless in groups or Tornado-meteor to be useful in a zerg, you shouldn’t be playing ele.

You cannot deny we took some of the biggest nerfs of all profession (40% of our damage out put??). Which for all intends and purposes was expected. Now we have no elite skills worth noting, yeah fgs for running away. Very occasional use of elementals. Now again you could say: Well first fix the old stuff and next consider buffs. However like you pointed out balance patches are infrequent, they will leave us without viable elites for half a year.

As someone who never used FGS except as an escape utility, I think you are over exaggerating how hard we were hit with the nerf hammer. I personally always use the elemental elite in pvp settings. I was hoping they would buff it somehow, not the lesser one so that it feels more like “an elite”. But they didn’t, but will we live? Yes. We’ll do just fine. Only thing that hit d/d ele was the minor nerf to burning speed. Other than that, I’m fine with this balancing. Would be interesting to see how the new buffs to the new utilities work and if there’s more build diversity…I’m all for it. Be nice to see less cookie cutter eles trying to be good.

DutchRiders.2871:

Celestina.2894:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

OH NOES FGS IS NERFED WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, OH NO WE CAN’T ABUSE THE PRETTY OBVIOUSLY UNINTENDED TORNADO GLITCH ANYMORE

Oh right, aoe vuln and continue nuking.

Sorry, but you people who honestly think we’re being hit hard are adorable. If you honestly required FGS to not be useless in groups or Tornado-meteor to be useful in a zerg, you shouldn’t be playing ele.

You cannot deny we took some of the biggest nerfs of all profession (40% of our damage out put??). Which for all intends and purposes was expected. Now we have no elite skills worth noting, yeah fgs for running away. Very occasional use of elementals. Now again you could say: Well first fix the old stuff and next consider buffs. However like you pointed out balance patches are infrequent, they will leave us without viable elites for half a year.

No, you and so many others are just making mountains out of mole hils. Remember how revealed kill thief in pvp and pve?

Oh, it didn’t you say?

Shocker.

FGS will still be strong, just not broken strong in PVE. The elemental summon DOES have it’s uses, I have no clue how you all manage to lose your elementals so fast in high level dungeons as mine always live long enough in fractal 50 and such to do what I needed them to do.

Tornado is the only legit complaint, as the fact that it was useful only due to a bug is an issue. Though quite honestly, this is a problem with tons of elites, not just ele.

Hekmatyar.8725:

Celestina.2894:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

OH NOES FGS IS NERFED WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, OH NO WE CAN’T ABUSE THE PRETTY OBVIOUSLY UNINTENDED TORNADO GLITCH ANYMORE

Oh right, aoe vuln and continue nuking.

Sorry, but you people who honestly think we’re being hit hard are adorable. If you honestly required FGS to not be useless in groups or Tornado-meteor to be useful in a zerg, you shouldn’t be playing ele.

but the FGS nerf will mean zilch in the grand scheme of (PvE) things.

Exactly, so quit the kittening.

Sorry I’m just so tired of the people crying that “we’re going back to the 4 war/1 guard meta!!111!1!1”

Hekmatyar.8725:

Mbelch.9028:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

Heavy handed nerfs? Or making things more balanced? I’m sorry you can’t Meteornado and 1 hit noobs any longer. You’ll live.

Try to be semi objective for the sake of the game overall.

Please, I don’t pve nor zvz, so try not to be condescending. Neither the tornado or the FGS nerfs could mean less to me.

That aside, the nerf to the trail stacking is heavy handed, and will effect unrelated skills because of what is our usual sloppy chopping. The burning speed + LF is one od the few decent burst combos that required timing to execute, and a good chunk of its damage is now lost, meh.

ZvZ is the only situation Meteornado works.

I’m not being condescending. I’m being straight forward. You’ll live, you’ll keep playing ele, your builds won’t change or get worse because of this patch. That’s a success in my book, and if it isn’t in yours, you’re taking for granted the terrible nature of patches in the past.

Fiery greatsword trail isn’t that large of a nerf. If your build in WvW or PvP relied on it then it was probably a poor build. I do feel for the PvE eles, though.

Celestina.2894:

Exactly, so quit the kittening.

Sorry I’m just so tired of the people crying that “we’re going back to the 4 war/1 guard meta!!111!1!1”

And where the kitten did I exactly imply that?

If the nerf kittenes me off it’s because it affects completely unrelated skills that work just fine, all for the sake of fixing a PvE problem that will remain a problem after this nerf. Add to that that there’s stil more than PvE to this game and, well, you’ll see why I think this change is kittened.

Mbelch.9028:

Hekmatyar.8725:

Mbelch.9028:

Hekmatyar.8725:

No real issues adressed with some heavy handed nerfs on the side.

Laughable.

Heavy handed nerfs? Or making things more balanced? I’m sorry you can’t Meteornado and 1 hit noobs any longer. You’ll live.

Try to be semi objective for the sake of the game overall.

Please, I don’t pve nor zvz, so try not to be condescending. Neither the tornado or the FGS nerfs could mean less to me.

That aside, the nerf to the trail stacking is heavy handed, and will effect unrelated skills because of what is our usual sloppy chopping. The burning speed + LF is one od the few decent burst combos that required timing to execute, and a good chunk of its damage is now lost, meh.

ZvZ is the only situation Meteornado works.

I’m not being condescending. I’m being straight forward. You’ll live, you’ll keep playing ele, your builds won’t change or get worse because of this patch. That’s a success in my book, and if it isn’t in yours, you’re taking for granted the terrible nature of patches in the past.

Fiery greatsword trail isn’t that large of a nerf. If your build in WvW or PvP relied on it then it was probably a poor build. I do feel for the PvE eles, though.

No build relies on either of those things. Not mine nor anyone else’s. But you’ll have to understand that despite of wether the ele has been viable or not at a given peeiod od time, it’s always suffered from some very constant issues that are always left untouched. And that’s just becoming increasingly evident after two years. And annoying.

I’m not ‘taking for granted’ the bar nature of ele patches, it’s just too rare to see anything good to come from them. And this gone is not changing the trend, either.

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

Ride the lightning.

GoodWithGravy.8019:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

Ride the lightning.

Yeah we need to work on RTL. Someone start a petition in balance.

Seriously, who will even use FGS for anything else than running faster since it does less damage than any good rotation? What the hell sort of balancing is that?

An elite like FGS, on a class as squishy as an Ele and lasting for a set number of charge should do as much damage as a berserker warrior wielding a Great sword and having twice more health.

Xillllix.3485:

Seriously, who will even use FGS for anything else than running faster since it does less damage than any good rotation? What the hell sort of balancing is that?

An elite like FGS, on a class as squishy as an Ele and lasting for a set number of charge should do as much damage as a berserker warrior wielding a Great sword and having twice more health.

Someone is going to have to eventually accept that the destiny of the FGS is not to be ran up against a wall.

I rarely used it as such. It’s just less fun. Neat to see the numbers/get quick downs in those specialized situations, but that’s just it. I don’t keep it on my bar for specialized situations.. It’s more for running or an aoe burst.

You honestly won’t miss the small amount of times you used this in the coming future. Promise.

Dirame.8521:

Mbelch.9028:

One thing I did miss was the Glyph of elemental storm seems to be overpowered now.

• This glyph which creates a storm in a location can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability now for each hit on a target that stands inside it.
• Each different storm gets a different condition, water just seems the most overpowered.

Yeah, think nuking some zergs from above with staff with all the + % dmg traits taken.

And then get destroyed by retal? Also Conjure Weapons already do 2 of the 4 things that the Glyph of Storms does.

Devildoc.6721:

2 out of 3 elites neutered. FGS might still be worthwhile for whirl and firestorm., and for the fact that the other 2 elites are really bad, Glyph is only useful for soloing and spawning a tank, Tornado was only useful for upping meteor damage.

Will anyone use tornado after the change? Ever? I really can’t see myself doing it. Maybe on the way to defending or capping a Lord’s room it can push people out so it isn’t challenged. But that’s it.

It could possibly be used for shooting out bursts of lightning because those hit for a good amount of damage. Add sigil of air, fire and the new and improved Lightning Rod and you’ve got yourself a nice little nukage form.

You can do so much more damage not using tornado though, tornado lightning bolts do at tops 4k or so, and that’s once every 3s. Lava font can do more than that and it pulses every 1s and doesn’t make you defenseless while you’re using it.

Devildoc.6721:

Dirame.8521:

Mbelch.9028:

One thing I did miss was the Glyph of elemental storm seems to be overpowered now.

• This glyph which creates a storm in a location can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability now for each hit on a target that stands inside it.
• Each different storm gets a different condition, water just seems the most overpowered.

Yeah, think nuking some zergs from above with staff with all the + % dmg traits taken.

And then get destroyed by retal? Also Conjure Weapons already do 2 of the 4 things that the Glyph of Storms does.

Devildoc.6721:

2 out of 3 elites neutered. FGS might still be worthwhile for whirl and firestorm., and for the fact that the other 2 elites are really bad, Glyph is only useful for soloing and spawning a tank, Tornado was only useful for upping meteor damage.

Will anyone use tornado after the change? Ever? I really can’t see myself doing it. Maybe on the way to defending or capping a Lord’s room it can push people out so it isn’t challenged. But that’s it.

It could possibly be used for shooting out bursts of lightning because those hit for a good amount of damage. Add sigil of air, fire and the new and improved Lightning Rod and you’ve got yourself a nice little nukage form.

You can do so much more damage not using tornado though, tornado lightning bolts do at tops 4k or so, and that’s once every 3s. Lava font can do more than that and it pulses every 1s and doesn’t make you defenseless while you’re using it.

I suppose popping armor of earth before entering tornado might allow a nice nuke on a Zerg, but I think the ICD should be looked at for sure.

FGS – As a s/f roamer in WvW being able to pull back quicker than other classes is worth an elite slot in itself. Being able to reset a fight is almost like getting an extra life and is worthy of an elite slot in that sense. It also allows you to chase targets that are running and you’ll probably catch up, the mobility does make WvW a lot better in terms of not being run over everytime a 4+ people show up. That said I drop the sword when I get in any real fight.

I haven’t played in about 2 months or so. Looked at video today thought it was a good overall balanced update. Like the blinding ashes change since going 6 fire makes you squishy this gives you defense when outnumbered. Like the lightning rod change. FGS is better with imo with a real attack on rush not situational. Rush was going to get changed anyway. Like the elemental change to get a good attack on demand. I like the elemental contingency change also.

This is a WvW perspective.

oZii.2864:

I haven’t played in about 2 months or so. Looked at video today thought it was a good overall balanced update. Like the blinding ashes change since going 6 fire makes you squishy this gives you defense when outnumbered. Like the lightning rod change. FGS is better with imo with a real attack on rush not situational. Rush was going to get changed anyway. Like the elemental change to get a good attack on demand. I like the elemental contingency change also.

This is a WvW perspective.

Hey glad to hear you’re on board. Also glad to hear from you.