Guild Wars 2

From the “Feature” pack:
- – - – - – - -
“The elementalist’s cantrips are popular in all parts of the game, and in the interest of promoting build diversity, we’ll be using the feature pack as an opportunity to work on other types of utility skills.”

Literally this is the same exact thing they said last time before nerfing 2 essential traits (elemental attunement and soothing disruption) and removing the stun breaker from a cantrip.

If they wan’t to promote build diversity they need to come up with new skills that basically do the exact same thing as our cantrips (stun break, invul, protection, stability, healing, vigor), because we are so squishy and have been nerfed so bad already and our hp is so low that without cantrips we’re sitting ducks.

But if they nerf the cantrips more…

- – - – - – - -
“For example, the fire and air storms from the Glyph of Storms will now apply conditions of their own.”

I still won’t use it or remove a cantrip for it. Our condition damage isn’t worth it because of how slow the ele can stack conditions compared to a necro or mesmer.

- – - – - – - -
“In addition, we’ll rework some of the new grandmaster traits that currently don’t have enough of a payoff or are too difficult to use. "

In my opinion: Grandmaster traits require all your investments while we are required already to spend 6 points in arcana. If you trait in water, like most of us do for survival, then you only have 2 or 4 points left for offence. The problem with the ele traits are the basics ones, not the grandmasters.

- – - – - – - -
“Finally, we’ll be addressing the Tornado and Fiery Greatsword elite skills; we’ll make some usability improvements and tone down some of their unintended functionality.”

Translation: no more skill 4 on FGS (that I understand), no more Meteornado.
That is just sad for the meteornado and another huge nerf to the class.

We don’t know what kind of conditions GoS will have. Yes, burning is predictable on fire, but what abour air’s? If it gains enough utility, it might be worthier.

Also, they are going with the right philosophy to address FGS and tornado. Remove their unintended abuse, while making them stronger at what they were intended to be. Now let’s just hope that the buffs will be enough to justify using both skills in normal situations.

Honestly, FGS is too strong against walled targets right now. You give yourself and a teammate the weapon, and the damage on skills 3 and 4 are just too good. Even without skills 3 and 4, skills 1 and 5 are good enough to validate using the weapon in the first place. As for Meteornado, I can’t speak for it, as I’ve never tried it before.

The Glyph of Storms will probably cause Vulnerability, Blindness or Weakness by the way.

(I say this as someone who mains an Ele.)

DiogoSilva.7089:

We don’t know what kind of conditions GoS will have. Yes, burning is predictable on fire, but what abour air’s? If it gains enough utility, it might be worthier.

Also, they are going with the right philosophy to address FGS and tornado. Remove their unintended abuse, while making them stronger at what they were intended to be. Now let’s just hope that the buffs will be enough to justify using both skills in normal situations.

The reason everyone use cantrips is that they can be traited for healing, vigor, might and 20% recharge time, on top of being our best source of stability, protection and stun break.

Unless GoS can GoS the same, give you retaliation, regen, etc, then it will not be worth traiding it for a cantrip, in a competitive environment at least.

They already tried to buff GoS last balance patch and didn’t succeed at making it more useful; every time they buff an ele skill they seem to half-do it. Hopefully this time it will make a difference.

(WvW/PvP) well Ele’s elites have always been extremely poor.
Let’s face it: Moa Morph is a death sentence, and that’s how an Elite skill should feel (I could list all the others, but I think you know about them already).
Ele’s ones are good on paper, but they simply don’t deliver….
My guess is that things ain’t gonna change much, don’t get your hopes too high -,-

Grevender.9235:

(WvW/PvP) well Ele’s elites have always been extremely poor.
Let’s face it: Moa Morph is a death sentence, and that’s how an Elite skill should feel (I could list all the others, but I think you know about them already).
Ele’s ones are good on paper, but they simply don’t deliver….
My guess is that things ain’t gonna change much, don’t get your hopes too high -,-

Exactly, Moa is a death sentence; cast FGS/tornado/Elemental summoning and a thief or warrior will just laugh at you as you get stomped.

GW1 had amazing ele elites. Why can’t they bring some of those back?

I’m going to cry tears of QQ if they let shatterstone, or kittenterstone wallow in uselessness any longer :/

Nothing about master traits in fire and air

No one saying that FGS requires a “setup of perfect conditions” in order to melt stuff or that how “encounters are designed” is not the overarching issue. You know. Stacking.

Too bad anet dump smarter AI in beta, huh.

blakdoxa.7520:

No one saying that FGS requires a “setup of perfect conditions” in order to melt stuff or that how “encounters are designed” is not the overarching issue. You know. Stacking.

Too bad anet dump smarter AI in beta, huh.

They did that?

Lavafrost of Maguuma.6807:

Honestly, FGS is too strong against walled targets right now. You give yourself and a teammate the weapon, and the damage on skills 3 and 4 are just too good. Even without skills 3 and 4, skills 1 and 5 are good enough to validate using the weapon in the first place. As for Meteornado, I can’t speak for it, as I’ve never tried it before.

The Glyph of Storms will probably cause Vulnerability, Blindness or Weakness by the way.

(I say this as someone who mains an Ele.)

I would never use FGS for its autoattack. Just spamming the dagger air autoattack is doing more damage, let alone Lightning Hammer. I would also always prefer an Ice Storm over FGS 5. It’s pretty much only skills 3/4 that make FGS viable at the moment and if you cannot rush them into a wall they are pretty average, too.

So if they really want to change the functionality of skills 3/4, they better improve the weapon overall and by that I don’t mean making it more “usable”. Other than that they can just tweak some numbers and tone down the damage of the fiery trail, but that would just push FGS further into the niche of being used into a corner (pun not intended).

I like to see something done with ICD of Glyph of Elemental power to where it cd on its effect is per person it hits not per activations. So you can see a lot more use with ele aoe. Other then that storms would be good if it was just on a lower cd adding say burn to fire and weakness or vonablity to air would be nice but that cd is way too much. As for nado i think its getting an stun field on it.

FGS needs to be fixed its braking pve in GW2 badly the rush needs to be a true leap with more to it then just dmg then the FGS can start to give more then just attks maybe add vit to it and make it an over all elet level tool that eles and other classes can get good use out of it. As long as there is a rush into a wall trick FGS will only get nerfed.

So finally “Mr izzy i play only war and i hate ele” managed to nerf ele again.
Did he spot some ele in WWW and pve and he didn t want them i guess XD

He said many months ago while ele was unviable and still asked to nerf ele FGS …

I have no words on how biased some people is and how much they can .

Trust me until izzy is in the balancing team you can forget a balanced ele in ANY part of the game.
2 years and still nerfing anything that makes us viable.

The meteornado nerf will just release ele to the role of waterbot again in WWW.

I just hope you can check how many ele players will be in WWW before and after this great idea.

we are already few…but we will be less.
And War GS is untouched GG….

Oh and trust me not only FGS 4 will be nerfed.
Expect also FGS 3 i can bet on it.

LordByron.8369:

So finally “Mr izzy i play only war and i hate ele” managed to nerf ele again.
Did he spot some ele in WWW and pve and he didn t want them i guess XD

He said many months ago while ele was unviable and still asked to nerf ele FGS …

I have no words on how biased some people is and how much they can .

Trust me until izzy is in the balancing team you can forget a balanced ele in ANY part of the game.
2 years and still nerfing anything that makes us viable.

The meteornado nerf will just release ele to the role of waterbot again in WWW.

I just hope you can check how many ele players will be in WWW before and after this great idea.

we are already few…but we will be less.
And War GS is untouched GG….

Oh and trust me not only FGS 4 will be nerfed.
Expect also FGS 3 i can bet on it.

Melodramatic much?

Tornado in WvW was nice, but it wasn’t the must defining thing about the ele. It’s lost wont suddenly make us healbots, well you can if you want to.

Secondly, did not say anything about nerfing tornado, they just said they will change the functionality so how about we just wait and see in the next 3 weeks or so.

FGS needed to be nerfed, so that is good. It is good for the game.

I don’t have confidence in Anet’s ability to change fgs and tornado appropriately. The very idea of them was flawed to begin with. You’re essentially giving up being an elementalist to use these elites. Fgs is actually doing just about what you would expect from an elite that only deals damage and has a 3 minute cooldown. It can deal sickening amounts of damage in specific situations. It can be argued that the situation is too specific for pvp and the damage is too high, but the basic idea is actually ok.

The only ways I see fgs with a nerfed rush being of any use other than running away is to have more damage than lich form, get effects other than pure damage and mobility that surpass what our weapon skills already do or have a 30 cooldown max and no cast time.

Tornado should probably stop being a transformation all together. How about we just pick a spot to place a tornado? If we want to get really fancy, we could call it back then shoot it out again as much as we want for the 15 seconds it lasts.

after 2 years i can confidently predict upcoming elementalist balance
the flagship change will be a new elite
    signet of inadequacy
   

We all know what they mean with ‘tone down’. So it’ll be totaly useless in comparison with normal attack, for pve at least. (wvw had to be changed though). There won’t be new elites i think, seeing previous patches, that means we’ll go with race elite. (mistfire?)
Maybe a nice change to tornado would be that in a certain attunement it works like vortex or FGS only for the casting ele. I hope they do a good change, but seeing most patches before … i’ll be prepared.

I’ve been a main ele for less than a month (was first alt since game launch). It would be nice to see glyphs get some buff; they were ele exclusive in GW1. Plus, I’d love to see them be usable also underwater (and improved AI on the elemental summons).

Sometimes i have to wonder if everyone on the balance team has an extra set of chromosomes or something. It just baffles me the way they work, especially when it comes to “balancing” ele. They listen to all the whine threads of people who have never played the class rather than the people who actually do play it and know how it works. They’ve still not addressed the main problems that ele has had for the past 2 years that we’ve all told them about ad nauseum.

Here, i’ll give you guys an idea of how the balance team for ele works. It would be similar to me going to a mechanic and being like “hey my carburetor blew out, need a new one.” And they’re like “No problem I’ll fix your car right up!” Then I come back later and they’re like “Hey I painted your car green just like you wanted, it should work perfectly now!” And then I wait months before the next balance patch hoping they hired someone with atleast half the intelligence and reading comprehension of a trained sign language monkey.

Please do not touch Elemental Surge
I love that trait!

Comes natural to think he is in their balance team…all honor and glory though!

I see a lot nerfs incoming again…

The only GM trait improvement Id really wish for is Fire (blind skill) CD being on target and not global.

Ah and did you look up Necro?
They will increase his survivability, not that it isnt already hard for an Ele to kill a necro if he has half deathshroud loaded.

Just received these interesting suggestions from someone that was apparently banned for some misunderstanding (may he get unbanned so we can discuss them, these are not mine):

“I had a few ideas
Fiery Greatsword: This, i would reduce the duration to 30 seconds. Remove the usage cap. Remove/reduce the mobility and increase the damage so it is on the levels of Lich Form and such.

With such changes the skills would need to be adjusted:

Flame Wave: Increase the damage, reduce the speed of the projectile. So it is something similar to. Maybe reduce it to 1 projectile at a time and increase the damage. Cast time would need to be reduced as well.

Fiery Eruption: Think this skill is in a reasonable place. Maybe reduce the cast time a little as it is currently a little too long. Maybe make it so that it makes a trail for a few seconds following its target

Fiery Whirl: This would be one of the skills that would need a total redesign. It has too much mobility currently. Could make it something like Warriors 100b that it looks you in place and you swing the flaming sword around damaging and burning foes.

Fiery Rush: Second skill that needs a total redesign. It is okay for it to have a little mobility. Its “exploit” needs to be fixed that is for sure. Could maybe make it so that it is a leap that leaves something like a Larva Font or something at the target and inflicts say 1-2 second Immbo as well

Firestorm: Radius needs to be increased a little, the damage is rather low as well

All skills would need cool down adjustments as well

Tornado:

I would remove the Meteor Storm + Tornado “exploit”. Add to it so that it increases Toughness. Being a HUGE melee target with no toughness increase was a terrible design.

Add in Projectile reflection and increase its damage to counter the loss of damage from the Meteor Storm and Tornado combo. Could maybe make it so that rather than just a blind it creates a blind field that procs blind every 1 second with a 5 second duration for 5 seconds, do the same with an electric field give them reasonable cool downs and add a 4th skill as a “auto attack”

Tornado currently is just a little underpowered, it isnt as anywhere near as broken as FGS is. I would say its our most balanced elite and that says alot seeing just how situational it is, the Elemental elite is in a terrible place as well."

Silvia.9130:

Comes natural to think he is in their balance team…all honor and glory though!

Give this lady some cake!

Excited for the patch! Can’t wait for more details on the Ready Up, whenever that happens.

Here are my hopes, dreams, wishes.

Traits:
-Persisting Flames changed so your blasts on ANY fields grant fury, not just fire. Seems to mesh well with their desire to fix traits that are “too difficult to use.”
-Lightning Rod applies damage when you interrupt, stun, or daze an enemy.
-Diamond Skin gets its threshold knocked from 90% to 80%

Glyph of Storms gets Burning in Fire and Vulnerability in Air.
Glyph of Elemental Power gets its chance to proc increased or has its internal cooldown changed so it works better with AoE spells.

As an added bonus, I’d like to see Lightning Surge (Air staff #2) apply its blind instantly, damage at the end. It’s always felt silly to have a 1.5 second warm-up for a defensive condition.

those changes will be just a very lame improvement and a very big nerf

Better get prepared to go back to 4 warriors and 1 mes dungeon runs after this patch. and ele going back to being mediocre in spvp to the point where people curse you out if you dare to join a game as an ele. 1 step forward, 5 steps backwards. Just the usual from our brilliant balance team. I just find it hilarious that Necro of all classes is getting its survivability boosted. Really anet? Necro doesn’t need its survivabilty boosted, i have no problem surviving on mine. it just has terrible mobility. I’d rather have mobility than be even more tanky than it already is.

Open your minds people. Even now, I’ve run a very successful build without 6 in arcana for the last few months. Build diversity exists and they are pushing it forward some more.

That being said, I do agree about the whole cantrip survivability thing. We need survival added to other skills/traits, not more offense.

Tornado needs to grant toughness! I hate having to pop Armor of Earth just before it just to make the skill viable. As others have said since you are locked out of your skills and only have Stability you make yourself a giant target and with Eles being as squishy as we are you often are forced to exit Tornado early while they stack AoE on you.

They should make tornado give us the same effect as zerker stance and endure pain !
Then maybe it would feel “elite”. Including the BS capture point crap

Qori.9671:

They should make tornado give us the same effect as zerker stance and endure pain !
Then maybe it would feel “elite”. Including the BS capture point crap

I see Tornado as a more violent version of Mist Form. How the kitten are you supposed to “hit” a tornado anyway? At this point I wouldn’t even use Tornado as a utility skill.

Well as far as we know Tornado going to be like the eng and that info is out there endless wherl combo and lighting field. FGS i think just the rush trick going to get hit they may in fact buff FGS out side of the rush trick. The grand master are only for the new ones that are “hard” to use so air water earth and arcan i think fire going to stay the same earth may get an update i am not sure same with air but arcan for sure going to get an update i think its comply worthless as is.
Other then that the the unused unitlys we may see more condition removal as in reg on skills and maybe some stun brakes.

Nikkinella.8254:

Better get prepared to go back to 4 warriors and 1 mes dungeon runs after this patch. and ele going back to being mediocre in spvp to the point where people curse you out if you dare to join a game as an ele. 1 step forward, 5 steps backwards. Just the usual from our brilliant balance team. I just find it hilarious that Necro of all classes is getting its survivability boosted. Really anet? Necro doesn’t need its survivabilty boosted, i have no problem surviving on mine. it just has terrible mobility. I’d rather have mobility than be even more tanky than it already is.

Give them another balance or two and we will go to 5 wars team…just wait that they nerf guardian’s damage to make different builds “more viable” and that they nerf mesmer a little more…next step to balance game is to give warrior a good “feedback of reflection 2000” skill and they will have finally achieved “warriorbalance of the game”.
And the boost to Necro’s survivability is the proof they have no idea what they are doing, with all the problem Necros have, they went to boost the only thing they had good already.

To all of you making the weird assumptions that everyone’s going to be using warriors now, are you even aware of the fact that they’re being hit the hardest aside from FGS?

Even as it stands right now, a D/F ele deals higher DPS than a warrior. a scepter+LH and staff ele deals WAY higher DPS than a warrior.

I’m just as irritated with the terrible balance updates as you all, but it’s really creepy that you’re all glorifying warriors so much for no reason.

Purple Miku.7032:

To all of you making the weird assumptions that everyone’s going to be using warriors now, are you even aware of the fact that they’re being hit the hardest aside from FGS?

Even as it stands right now, a D/F ele deals higher DPS than a warrior. a scepter+LH and staff ele deals WAY higher DPS than a warrior.

I’m just as irritated with the terrible balance updates as you all, but it’s really creepy that you’re all glorifying warriors so much for no reason.

No offence guildmate, but the reasons are: double EHP, banners, mobility, and ease of execution

Besides, warriors will take a 5% shave on some skills, while receiving buffs to other!

Edit note: I really don’t mind that they nerf FGS, it was their easy way out, it was to be expected. I didn’t like it. They are still dodging the real massive problems though. But as far as my gameplay is concerned not much will change!

To be fair I was mostly addressing the situation from a PvE perspective, where none of the warrior’s weapons that are relevant are getting buffed.

You’re right about them dodging the real problems, which is what irks me. There’s little reason to feel hopeful when the makers of the game don’t care about improving it longterm and only shortterm.

Glyph of storms is useless as it has a 3-4 second casting time with a huge cooldown and tiny radius.

I toyed with it, thinking the earth with blindness would be useful, but by the time i’d cast it a thief could take me down to 10 percent hps from full.

It needs to be instant, bigger radius and lower cooldown to be vaguely useful.

Hmm sounds like we getting nerfed at different aspects, FGS nerf had it comming, again they could have just reworked some of their pve content which would fix alot more.

To bad we prolly wont have any usefull elite left.

They really do need to fire the current balance team and hire someone who has some experience in gaming. I’m not saying that to be mean, it’s just fact. The current balance team is THE worst that i have ever seen in all my years of playing online games. They really don’t have a clue. They alter things at a glacial pace and change things that more often than not make things worse than they previously were. Please anet, for the sake of the game, fire these fools and hire someone with a clue! We’re all sick of thier dartboard approach to balancing at this game.

And they need to get over wanting all skills to be the same in Pve/wvw/spvp/ IT DOESN’T WORK! Get over it Anet, it doesnt work. You need to start splitting skills between all game modes. You have tried your way, and failed miserably. Time to do what every other game does and split skills between game modes. Get of your high horse and frelling do it already for the sake of balance! Things that are OP in some game modes are terrible in other game modes and vice versa. You have to have a split between game modes for ALL skills and traits on every class!

If the control effect on glyph of storms is very powerful I can see myself swapping out something for it. Ideas of what it will be, Fire- cripple/burn, Air- weakness(reduce enemies endurance regen and damage), earth – blind, and water – chill. The control effects would have to be worth the glyph 60sec cooldown. Each hit from it should add 2-4s of their debuff. That is my idea of the buff. Glyphs and signets will be buffed arcane/cantrips looks fine as they are.

Nuithari.3728:

Please do not touch Elemental Surge
I love that trait!

It needs a serious buff.

we are at a point in which the best Elite we can think of would be to equip an utility instead….

Getting rid of Meteornado will be a pretty sad change. That’s the only reason there really is to use Tornado. It gives us stability when we really need it, but we’re squishy as hell, so unlike Plague form you really can’t tank hits in it while you try to get away. And it’s really noticeable, so you might as well be screaming “DROP AOEs HERE PLZ.” Better off just escaping with utilities >.>.

If they nerf that “unintended functionality,” they better buff the skill so it’s actually worth using outside of a single situation. If it stays as-is but without increasing the damage of MS, I’ll probably stop slotting it altogether.

The FGS rush is understandable but they still have to make that skill “elite” worthy. When I see the ice bow AoE doing more damage than the FGS AoE I’m baffled. How can a non-elite do something better than it’s elite version? It’s just not acceptable.

As for the Tornado they better rework it completely if they are to rempove the only reason why people were using it. At least give a huge buff in Thouhness if they insist on making it a melee skill. Logic 101. Ele does have very poor elite ATM they never truly felt elite at all.

Nikkinella.8254:

They really do need to fire the current balance team and hire someone who has some experience in gaming. I’m not saying that to be mean, it’s just fact. The current balance team is THE worst that i have ever seen in all my years of playing online games. They really don’t have a clue. They alter things at a glacial pace and change things that more often than not make things worse than they previously were. Please anet, for the sake of the game, fire these fools and hire someone with a clue! We’re all sick of thier dartboard approach to balancing at this game.

And they need to get over wanting all skills to be the same in Pve/wvw/spvp/ IT DOESN’T WORK! Get over it Anet, it doesnt work. You need to start splitting skills between all game modes. You have tried your way, and failed miserably. Time to do what every other game does and split skills between game modes. Get of your high horse and frelling do it already for the sake of balance! Things that are OP in some game modes are terrible in other game modes and vice versa. You have to have a split between game modes for ALL skills and traits on every class!

Amen.

To respond to the OP.
I use sometimes Glyph of Storms in Earth because it gives me that AoE Blind spam. But the whole trait glyph system and glyph of elemental power really sucks.
If they found a way to make it more character supporty rather then giving us some random conditions they would be more viable.
Also the casting time of them make them an easy target to interrupt so they need to work on that too. But I like what they’re doing so far.

Fixing FGS (I’m an Ele and it really bothers me when I get objectified by my FGS and not Attunement swaps. I’m an Ele after all show some respect.).

Tornado fix will be the same one as Engineer’s Tornado. We’ve seen that.

But I do hope they bring out some big guns here regarding all traits not just grandmasters. We need a trait fix-up for Glyphs and Focus. Also increased projectile speed for Staff since Rangers got their speed increased aswell.

Nuithari.3728:

Please do not touch Elemental Surge
I love that trait!

People actually use that?

first of all, i agree with fixing fgs’s firey rush + lightning flash combo, that is clearly “unintended”, but firey rush and firey whirl against a wall is NOT a bug, gs warriors can do a similar thing.
with gyphs of storm, they will most likely do fire: burning/ blindness, air: blindness/vulnerability, earth: bleeding/cripple, water: chill/vulnerability?/daze?
i’m happy that they’re buffing the other grandmaster traits (hopefully) because i actually try and go out of the norm (especially for roaming, i only use 2 points in arcana and 4 points in water, not going to say more :P) but i do use cantrips for raids (unlike my roaming d/d build) because as a staff ele, DPS is the way to go, and we NEED cantrips to stay alive.
also, one more thing i want to point out, why must they carry on nerfing eles when i almost never see any eles besides me in wvw nowadays, yet they still buff warrs who imo need some nerfs (but i’m happy about if they miss hamerstun, they lose their adrenaline, that should have been implemeted a LONG time ago), give eles more love anet. we need it.

forgot to say this: it seemed as though they accepted meteor tornado combo in the past, so it may not be an “unintended”, + they never mentioned anything about meteor shower, so MAYBE they might leave this combo alone

If they add burning to GoS’s fire storm, and if they improve the new fire grandmaster’s trait somehow… then there would be potential for a new synergy combo out of it.

And I believe some people here are reacting before even fully reading what was said. The description very clearly stated that tornado and FGS are getting “usability improvements” in addition to the nerfs to their unintended purposes. So it’s possible that tornado and FGS might actually be worth a kitten when used normally, even if meteornado and FGS stacking strategies are taken away (and, possibly, FGS mobility too).

Well meteornado was bound to receive a nerf.Even if it’s not stated precisely, we all know what tone down their unintended functionality means. I’ve read many posts on here and on other forums stating that this combination was op,an “exploit” or whatever. As an ele myself, i’ve used it several times and i can say that while it does significantly more damage, it has its drawbacks. Meteor shower itself has a long casting time,3 targets and is easily avoidable. Tornado is useful for knockbacks and blinds but as it was stated it makes you a giant target. Add enemy retaliation to the mix and you can be downed in seconds. Taking all of these into consideration I believe this “exploit” or “bug” or whatever you want to call it is balanced enough so that it doesn’t need “toning down”.
As for the rest, I really hope they do a good job reworking those traits and utility skills so that we can experiment with different builds a bit more.
Oh and keep your hands off ice bow,ok?