Guild Wars 2

I know theres been a number of these threads but hopefully we’ll get some dev feedback eventually. Maybe we are balanced exactly as intended (and perhaps they can say so one way or another) but I still believe we should be able to dish out damage so I’m holding out.

As much as I’d like to say otherwise, I agree that our damage is lacking compared to our inherent survivability. Or perhaps its simply that our burst is so easily avoidable and inefficient. (churning earth is a great example, followed by DT and even burning speed, and even firegrab has such a small range it should have a better damage (wasn’t it higher in beta?))

Hopefully alleviating any L2P comments, I’ve got 1200+ tournaments played so far and a rather high win rate. Apologies if that sounds conceited, it is not my intent, I just hope it lends some small bit of credibility to my claim.

I could be biased of course but you really don’t see cries of OP ele dps on the forums. You even see dps cries on guardian forums of all things.

I really think its an issue currently. I’m sure it must be difficult to balance with the utility we have but something really has to change. More hp would make bunkers even more absurd.

And tweaking damage on abilities would help with risk vs. reward – but it would be bad if it crossed the threshold and people started running 30/30/x/x/x glass that megaburst people like thieves do.

Nerfing instagib specs like bs thief would help a lot as well though. The damage doesn’t even have to be killed but spread it out.

Shortening our CDs a bit would help us but not really fix the issue. we have so many abilities it takes much longer to execute them and people have so much more time to react.

Perhaps making our burst more reliable, make firegrab a leapfinisher like heartseeker (seeing as how they do equal damage anyway) maybe even make it do X% more damage when below X%. But even then the CD on FG is horrendous.

I have a couple other quick suggestions.

Churning earth – add pulsing damage to the charge up. People can still walk and dodge out of it but at least we aren’t then taking a huge drop in dps.

Magnetic Grasp – currently this acts as a self immobilize as well which is bad, make this pull the target to your position.

Ride the lightning – add a 1s daze to the blast effect. RTL is amazing, bugs aside, and this might be a big request but I think it makes sense.

Shatterstone (Scepter Water 2) – add brief chill effect, perhaps a blast finisher as well

Burning Speed – make this lunge -at- the target like a leap attack. This would help d/d a lot. A close range squishy fighter should be fearsome when up close, however this ability punishes the d/d ele being up close to your target, you have to get at range again to use it which is a huge tell to competent players.

The best change you can do for ele is make attunement recharge a flat 9 seconds, or lower, and make arcane tree points grant something different than attunement recharge.

@Devs if any are reading – Can you please give us ele loyalists some feedback on how you feel about state of the elementalist currently? Are things currently in line with your overall vision? Or are there substantial changes to be expected?

Any straightforward information would be extremely appreciated. Even if its to say some of our hopes for ele are unreasonable. Then at least we’d know not to hold out for something that’s not coming.

Agree to some point,
The reliablity is the main issue i belive. our dmg is so easily dodged/avoided and with such high cooldown/combo/setup it’s not even being close to being reliable.

I think they need little tweaks to d/d s/d and some trait tweaks and we will be fine.
If they do to much major our bunker specs will get to much out of hand and we will get the BIG nerfbat again like in beta.

In tpvp bunker specs are so much better then our dps counter parts.
Yes i can do well with my s/d in tpvp and be a burst/minor support for my team but if you compare the usefullness of bunker spec compared to the usefull ness of our burst spec it’s kinda sad.
If you compare our burst to other classes they can fill that role just way better. mainly in reliable fast burst dmg, ours need’s a setup to do burst, own combo or coordination with your team to land your DT,phoenix,rof,fg ect while a thief can just bs/hs/hs/hs in 1/5th of the time or they can just clusterbomb spam for heavy aoe dmg that is instant. Or you have a shatter burst mesmer can that aoe shatter for 15k dmg.That right there is the drawback of ele dps, we are far more usefull as bunker then as burst spec compared to other classes. Yes we can fufill the burst role but other classes just to it 100 times better.

To bad we never get a DEV on ele forums that actually gives us information or feedback. We only get DEV’s that complain about the topic derailing.

Well you do need viable burst spec’s but… you got so much cc on your element swap, that, big damage would make it unbalanced class. Atm you can tottal disable target for some 4 seconds. With reliable burst it is enough to kill sqishy targets, even maintaining tankyness.

@Prince. as my quote button has disappeared… “Churning earth – add pulsing damage to the charge up. People can still walk and dodge out of it but at least we aren’t then taking a huge drop in dps.” Funny thing is, this used to be a Hold and Release spell, that did exactly what you describe. It was intended to send out shockwaves that cripple nearby opponents in waves to help keep them in the blast radius. However, BWE3 we saw a lot of unspecified nerf’s. Our damage was actually quite nice. Maybe it was because no one knew much about the game yet, or maybe we just had more damage. All I know is pre-launch I ran an all Fire ele because the damage was awesome. With 2 daggers I could die quite fast if I did not dodge in time, but the risk was most definitely worth the Damage I was dishing out. I could easily take out groups of monsters in PvE with high damage (and this was before learning combos). The thief in Beta was the opposite, less damage, high survivability due to their escape tactics. Somewhere during those Betas we got our roles switched. I was under the impression that since we had the lowest base health and armor in the game, we would also have some of the highest spike damage. Which makes a lot of sense.

If you have a class that dies in 1 to 3 hits (Even Thief dies this fast) then they should be able to dish out loads of Damage. However, on the Development side of things, you have to take into consideration, thieves are mainly 1 v 1 attackers. I believe they may have felt the ability to dish out all that damage in an AoE form was over powered. This made the Elementalist seem like the most useful profession in the game.

I hope to see some of our Pre-Release nerf’s undone and allow us to be the profession we were. With Churning Earth being a Hold / Release / Pulse Cripple being one of the best things ever. It would allow us to use it to cause some damage / cripple, but if situation got to bad we could release it early for less damage and less range, but rewarding those who held it till full charge to be released in a massive aoe damage with bleed.

Again sorry if this is long winded, but I am hoping for some answers myself. Love the Ele, don’t plan on changing. If we get buffed so we can go back to Glass Cannon, I am all for it, and will gladly get out of this Bunker role. I don’t mind dieing, as long as I take 3 – 5 people with me!

TL;DR – Churning Earth was a cripple / pulse / charge to release skill. BWE Nerf. Overpowered due to massive aoe dmg compared to thief single target. Why I believe they changed it. Hoping for explanations and some buffs / responses. Goodluck fellow Elementalists!

this is 100% true. Using D/D I miss a lot, and when I don’t miss I feel I have to work a lot harder than with my thief and I’m not speaking about attunment or combos.

- With Firegrab I must have 100% aligned with the target.
- with Dragon fire and Cone of cold I must try to guess where my target is going to be if she or he its moving so the cone will hit.
- with Lightinging whip I can’t be too far or too close or straffing to much
- Vapor blade will hit only twice if the target is stationary if its moving.. well no way, even if you are moving will miss a lot more
- Burning Speed I can’t be or too far or too close. Sometimes I have to waste a dodge backwards just to be on the “right position” just to be able to use it.
- Magnetic Grasp if the target is moving away I must be at least 50%closer to be able hit , because the projectile is moving so slow the target will just move away runing even if it was in the range of the ability

this is only hit issues even after the “improvement” they hit a lot more but the abilities still are missing a lot. I don’t miss with my other characters why I miss so much with the elementalist?

if we start to see how many requirements we need to be able to hit with our spells then … well it becomes quite crazy.

Anyways I believe our auto attacks should have a little bit more damage for 1 fire, 2 water and 4 earth(bleed a little longer)

Nice suggestions, and I agree with most of them. I still think the real issue for eles is the cooldowns though.

Back in beta one of the devs stated that they balanced the ele’s versatility with longer cooldowns. IMO this has always been a flawed system though as there are many many times when we simply don’t need the extra versatility and thus are left waiting for the long 30-40s cooldowns on some of our more useful abilities in order to actually do what is needed at the time. The unreliability of some of our skills is enough of a tradeoff in my opinion; the longer cooldowns are unnecessary.

Our damage skills are effectively designed like a thief who builds for his 40s backstab burst combo… except the damage isn’t there and is much harder to pull off. When firegrab misses it is nothing but infuriating to see it on a 40s cooldown for nothing.

If they simply reduced cooldowns across the board the unreliable nature of many of our skills would be more acceptable and more forgiving.

Well, bunkerbuilds arent that great any more. Nowadays i dont see alot of bunkers that could survive as well as before halloween. Now that they are slightly adjusting armor, no its not in the patchnotes, yes arenanet is allowed to make such changes as testing without notifying anyone. Its only slightly though.
What i totally agree with are the dmg suggestions, also i have to agree that some spells might need a slight revamp instead of yust buffing dmg in general.
What i do have to add is next to the sceptre/dagger/focus builds, staff builds more focussed on avoidance and going for dmg might need some changes to.
Yes, on targetdummies staff elementalists seems to do great dmg and are on par with other professions
In pvp though. Where an warrior pulls off 50% of the dmg he does on a targetdummy, as staff elementalist it already takes skills to pull 15% of his practise dmg.

Not saying non-bunker staff eles are bad atm, not at all. I play a non-bunker staff ele myself and adore every little part of it.
But the fact that 50% of the spells require the enemies to be morons is a bit sad.

For staffs for example i would think of some small revamps making it more easier to hit, even if its yust a tiny effect.

Lets say.. For example:

Static field dazes everyone who crosses the fieldlines and the field lasts 4 seconds. Now the problem is if an spellcaster is in it, t can be quite useless. So what if for example the static field after being up for 2 second applied 10 stacks of vulnerability (5 seconds duration) on everyone inside the field.
Such a change is very small, but then it feels as if even if noone gets dazed by the walls, it really did something

Let geyser aside from the heal apply 1 stack of vulnerability every 0.5 seconds to enemies

Let eruption cripple people for 1 second if they enter the field where eruption is churning

Let lava font give 1 second of burning to everyone who walks over it.

Such small changes, such little effects that barely change anything. But by that the staff would feel so much more dynamic and more then only usable when hiding somewhere to rain areas only when there are more then 4 people in a small cirkle

I say.. If other professions miscoordinates or misses an attack its usually something they can restore
If an elementalist does that, we lost so much.
With all weapons i would say, add a slight featere that if our spell doesnt work out it is not entirely lost. I think we deserve that for having such a demanding class

(aside from bunkers eles ofc. But if they like doing nothing aside from running around and prefer dealing 400 dmg with meteor shower. Not my problem )