Guild Wars 2

•Diamond Skin going from condition immunity to condition removal (1 condition removed on a 1s internal cooldown). Health Threshold is now 75% instead of 90%. So rapid conditions applications will spike you down.
•Auras – duration and overall availability of auras too much since HoT. Overall uptime too high. We are reducing all the auras activated from skills/traits to 4s.
•Fresh Air – In addition to its refresh mechanic, everytime you reattune to air, you get 250 Ferocity for 5s. This bonus doesn’t stack in intensity. So you will be critting and then critting hard.
•Shatterstone (Water Scepter)– Reduced the timeit takes for the shatterstone to explode from two seconds to one. It has a small radius so the explosion would often miss. Cooldown increased from 2 to 3s.

So diamond skin was buffed imo, Auras got a cd nerf and Fresh Air HUGE buff.

I hoped for Auras to get 3 seconds… but 4 seconds is a start.
The perma 43% dmg reduction on the group is a bit annoying.
For the rest i dont care much.

That’s a long list of scepter improvements.

Like… ahh whatever… it feels so useless to give feedback at this point.

don’t warry cele ele will be OP …

Add the Lightning Rod bug fixes that were confirmed by Grouch.

PierPiero.9142:

don’t warry cele ele will be OP …

Cele Amulet is gone in case you’re not aware.

Xillllix.3485:

That’s a long list of scepter improvements.

Like… ahh whatever… it feels so useless to give feedback at this point.

Pretty much. It seems someone at Anet is OBSESSED with Shatterstone, and thinks it is the only sceptre skill.

Axialbloom.8109:

Xillllix.3485:

That’s a long list of scepter improvements.

Like… ahh whatever… it feels so useless to give feedback at this point.

Pretty much. It seems someone at Anet is OBSESSED with Shatterstone, and thinks it is the only sceptre skill.

Karl is in charge of Ele. He’s also the least PvP dev we have. We need to have a dev who play PvP to be in charge of Ele or else they may not even know Scepter exists.

Hahahahahhahahahahahahahah

Oh man I can’t stop laughing at that preview….

Let’s do a quick recap right on the “announced goals”:

“fine-tune” Defensive additions
What was done?

- Diamond Skin: nerfed to be a 1 condi removed on 1s internal cooldown, but only active as long as above 75% health. [Aka, condi builds will really trash you fast]

- Auras: Duration reduced, so no longer keeping them up for a long time.
[Meaning you will die faster]

But Azel, you don’t get kitten, the goal is to make Elementalists not so bunkerish, but rather more balanced and being able to kill stuff.

Ok, so what we got to be able to “kill faster”

- Fresh Air: Added 250 Ferocity for 5s to crit more often.

Ok Ferocity which has a lot of diminishing returns now we will get that bit of extra % damage when we crit after jumping in an out of air.

Fantastically mediocre.

Scepter buffs:
Shatterstone now more reliant to hit.

Boy oh boy time to dust off the old scepter huh?

Focus buffs:
Wait, what there is none? But what about the positive quality of life modifications??? Guess they only mentioned changes because aura duration is getting changed….

Other Air grandmasters:
Wait, what there is no change?? But why did they say "Air grandmaster trait*s* will be getting usability and damage improvements if only one is being changed???

But Azel you dumbkitten this is just a preview! A “sneak peek”!

They even commented on how they want our opinion and that they will bring massive changes in this patch and that we will have awesome new stuff.

Hahahaha, with never getting any feedback on the last Tempest beta event, with only 11 days to go for this balance patch to go live, without a single post looking for any comments and this pathetic number of changes (which, btw, all previous balance patches previews in previous patches contained all the changes that actually existed) you still tell yourself more changes are coming???

Hahahahaha, excuse me while I die of laughter.

Oh, just before doing so, remember that Celestial’s and Soldier’s amulets are getting shafted, which historically were the amulets that were used for elementalists to have survivability…. let that sink in.

So glad I have decided to discard this game…. but so full of regret that after not getting a lot of their promises with HoT *cough*WvW*cough* I can’t get my money back on this terrible expansion.

Live and learn I guess.

Warhorn is like scepter barely being used where are the changes for it?

Elementalist will not see any improvement until Karl is rotated off it.

The Air Grandmaster trait usability improvement is the two massive bug fixes on Lighting Rod. It was confirmed to be fixed by Grouch.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3x9941/lightning_rod_is_not_working_properly_video_proof/

We can’t ask for petition to rotate Karl out of Ele on the forums since that’s not allowed. What can we do then?

Azel.4786:

- Diamond Skin: nerfed to be a 1 condi removed on 1s internal cooldown, but only active as long as above 75% health. [Aka, condi builds will really trash you fast]

1v1 vs anything other than a necro dumping all the condis, this sound more like a buff.

As a condi its still hard as kitten now to even get a good elementalist below 90% because of massive healing. Condis which apply lots of stacks but not that many different types will probably find it impossible to bring an ele below 75%. 1s icd is nothing, if an engie use pistols to dump skills 2/3/4 it would easily take each condition out on cd.

1vX though, eles are boned with that change.

But I suppose it will be interesting to see how it works in practice.

Dawdler.8521:

Azel.4786:

- Diamond Skin: nerfed to be a 1 condi removed on 1s internal cooldown, but only active as long as above 75% health. [Aka, condi builds will really trash you fast]

1v1 vs anything other than a necro dumping all the condis, this sound more like a buff.

You forget condi Rev/Mesmer/Ranger, all of them can put a load of condis on you that can’t be cleansed one by one.

morrolan.9608:

Warhorn is like scepter barely being used where are the changes for it?

Elementalist will not see any improvement until Karl is rotated off it.

I honestly think nothing healthy will happen until Karl is rotated out of Class Design altogether, at least that’s my person opinion.

I disagree on the Auras getting nerfed. Ele’s are Bunkers and taking this away takes away what little meta exists for them outside spamming Air and Fire Overloads, and mind you I’m talking from a PvE perspective here. Auramancer was what Tempest was sold to us AS. Why dig away at that?

What Aura’s are actually the problem anyways? Fire Aura — well you’re giving that to Berserkers now so obviously not that.

Frost Aura — Its pretty strong, 10% damage reduction and Chill, but we only have Three sources of it in D/W, Getting Criticaled (which I don’t think happens all that often in PvE), getting hit after falling below 75% HP (which again, shouldn’t happen a lot), and Overloading Water (Which should happen alot). Must not be that.

Shocking Aura — Stuns aren’t that big a deal unless we’re trying to nuke a break bar — which we shouldn’t be relying on getting hit in the first place to do. A lot of ways to get this with Dagger Warhorn.

Magnetic Aura — Reflections are pretty freaking awesome, not gonna lie. Though the problem is we don’t have very many ways to get it. Sand Squall, Earth Overload, Aftershock, and Rebound being the only major sources I can think of.

So 5 seconds to 4: Its kind of a big deal. Having an Aura up at all times is kinda what Tempest seems to be made with in mind. While having Multiple up at once isn’t what was intended I’m guessing, sharing those Auras with our teammates was.

So what I’m gathering is that its not the Auras that are actually the problem (at least from my perspective), its the Boons that we can pump.

Or was it just not understood how strong the changes to Auras were before tempest came out? I kinda like the idea of bubbling up my party with Auras when Pull Mobs — I know as a Scrapper Tank I LOVE having a Tempest Healer in the party.

Just my two cents.

So… where are the scepter buffs?? They said buffs as in plural, so I dare to assume that would mean improvements to at least two or more skills. This isn’t multiple buffs, it’s a single buff to a lackluster skill.

So they are nerfing one of the only forms of active defense eles have? And they expect a new playstyle other than “tank up and bruise away” to develop without any defensive options for that? Regardless, auras are MOSTLY used for the other stuff they provide (trait procs) and are still pretty garbage on their own (besides shocking and situationally magnetic)

And they are changing shatterstone from a skill that never hits…to a skill that never hits and doesn’t do all that much when it does…..?

And all of this while taking away the only pvp amulet that allows eles to play a bruiser role…?

And finally, the fresh air change…..completely misses the point. Fresh air is already an amazing trait. It doesn’t need more crap added to it. It just needs some viable form of defense to let you actually use all that damage. Eles have a few traits that are OPAF, a few traits are decent, and a lot of complete trash, and they decide that one of the OP traits needs a buff rather than actually understanding why it isn’t actually used?

Hahahaha…….Anet is so clueless……

unblivable. Totaly away from what was needed. No real scepter buffs. Aura nerfing hits non meta Tempest builds much harder als usual. Fresh air? It was the good skill now its better … and cele nerf is overal ele meta nerf.
While i agree cele nerfed the rest looks like clueless garbage … DS is good in its new form.

the diamond skin change is what everyone has been asking for. no complaints from me. scepter will never be viable unless it starts nuking like it used to or we get utility skills that fit a niche role for scepter defence. i wish they had aura as a utility, each like 20s cd. id use the hell outta that.

What a terrible Diamond Skin change. I was hoping for ACTIVE condition removal, an earth version of Cleaning Water basically.

So now every ele will be back to water for pvp for condition removal. Sad day.

And the removal of celestial amulet WITHOUT ele defensive buffs bascially kills the class.

Over on the PvP forum there’s some quotes from Phantaram that ele will be pretty much useless with these changes.

morrolan.9608:

Over on the PvP forum there’s some quotes from Phantaram that ele will be pretty much useless with these changes.

It is honestly just the cele amulet that craps on ele viability. Ele needs HUGE changes to play anything other than bruiser, and NEEDS vit, toughness, AND healing power to play a bruiser. Neither of of these things are happening.

If they are removing celestial, then some subset of the following changes would be necessary for dps ele to MAYBE have a place:
- Arcane shield CD reduced to 20s, damage reduced by like 30-40%
- Lightning flash CD reduced to 20s, now a stunbreak again
- Mistform CD reduced to 30-40s
- RtL CD reduced to 15s, no on-hit penalty
- Ele given a trait to make vigor more effective (back to 100% regen for the ele)
- Scepter autos buffed by about 100% across the board (they are really that bad)
- Warhorn changed from top to bottom, basically every skill is useless unless you are a tanky bruiser…which is impossible w/o proper stats.

FrownyClown.8402:

the diamond skin change is what everyone has been asking for. no complaints from me. scepter will never be viable unless it starts nuking like it used to or we get utility skills that fit a niche role for scepter defence. i wish they had aura as a utility, each like 20s cd. id use the hell outta that.

How is this DS nerf something everyone has been asking for? This nerf might be something that necro mains wanted, but it sure as hell isn’t what I and -from what I’ve seen in my threads in the last couple weeks- many others wanted.

I wanted a proper rework to give us a trait that doesn’t disappear when I’m fighting a power build user, or in any other case where my health is dropped below a certain threshold. If there was one thing that should have changed, it’s the removal of that god forsaken health threshold, but that’s the one thing they kept from the old DS.