Guild Wars 2

I have logged over 600 hours on this class, mostly in Dungeons, WvW, and general PvE. Currently I am unhappy with my chosen profession, so much so that I have all but stopped playing it. My goal here is to point out what I feel to be the professions largest failings, why I feel these are major issues, and present some suggestions for solutions to these issues. My hope is that this sparks some re-evaluation and major changes to the class. I apologize for the length of this in advance, it is quite a read and was even longer before I found out there was a 5000 character limit on these forums. These are complex issues however, and I feel feedback on them requires a lot of elaboration.

Evasive Arcana

Before I move on to the larger scale issues, I want to get this bugbear out of the way. We need some communication about this change. Let’s be honest, this was not a bug fix, it was a nerf. If the blast finishers were intended or not is immaterial, it was a major part of a number of builds, and the foundation of PvE Staff Ele support. The impact on these builds had to have been considered before this change was made. I refuse to believe that this bug was simply fixed without thought towards the repercussions. The fact that it was advertised as a simple “bug fix”, without justification or acknowledgment of the implications is nothing short of a PR gaffe. In sPvP I can understand the change somewhat, bunker builds on this class are quite strong. That said, I feel that bunker builds themselves are a result of questionable mechanics in the format, but that is a discussion for another day. What is not as clear is why this change was extended to PvE and WvW as well. Players were not exactly frothing at the mouth to get us into dungeon groups, and the trait had very little to do with our effectiveness in WvW. At this point we can’t even be sure that the complete removal of blast finishers was intended. The trait was blasting before the cooldown was up, and the note about this change doesn’t make it clear what exactly is being addressed. Without the blast finisher the trait is hardly worth a grandmaster trait investment. Water is the only attunement where it is useful now, with the other attunements having little to no impact on a fight. Putting the blast finishers back but on a 10 second cooldown is a reasonable compromise in my opinion.

Damage

I have seen this discussion go back and forth in all directions since beta. Eles deal too much damage, too little damage, just enough damage. What I rarely see discussed in depth however is exactly how much damage we should do, why, what currently limits our damage, and if those limits are fair, practical, or needed.

The very first thing we need to determine is what archetype the class is supposed to be. According to the official website:

“Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”

What we need to have clarified from the developers here, is if the emphasis is on versatility, or damage. You cannot have both, it simply will not work, combining high damage with high versatility will result in a completely overpowered class. Anet is already be aware of this, there are several cases of this very combination turning up in the original Guild Wars, and they dominated the meta until they were eventually nerfed. It would seem to me that this time around they gave us a few high damage skills on our class, such as Dragon’s Tooth or Churning Earth, but they built a bunch of limitations into the skills and class to ensure that the damage was never too high. What are these limits?

1) Limitations on the skills themselves. The few high damage skills we do have require the opponent to stand still or be in melee range, and are often accompanied by a long cooldowns and cast times.
2) Splitting up of damage. On almost every weapon there are 1-2 attunements that are completely worthless for dealing meaningful damage.
3) Low health and armor. This forces us to spend at least some stats and traits on defense if we are going to be of any use in a difficult fight.
4) Weak damage traits. If you compare our damage traits to those of almost any other class, our damage traits are either not as effective, or are situational.

(Continued on next post)

All of these restrictions end up snowballing, and the end result is that emphasizing damage is a bad choice in every format. In PvP our damage is fairly easy to avoid, and in PvE burst damage is not as good as sustained outside of open world PvE. Our low survivability without the right gear and traits serve as a barrier in all formats. Burst damage is also only good if it is reliable, we have to work much harder to apply our bursts than say a Thief, and if we miss the cooldowns keep us from trying again anytime soon. Sure, on paper Dragon’s Tooth, Churning Earth, Phoenix etc. deal tons of damage, even more than the infamous Backstab, the problem is we have no way to buff the base damage to be in line with other classes. Our traits are too weak and spread between defense and ensuring our profession mechanic functions reasonably, more on the later in a bit. The damage skills are also stacked in certain attunements, Scepter for example has great burst damage in fire, moderate sustained damage in air, and almost nothing for damage in water or earth. If fire and air are on cooldown, we are essentially locked out from applying meaningful damage. With the limited amount of resources we can spend on increasing our damage, our non-burst skills do even less damage.

So how do we solve this problem? Some of these limitations need to be removed, and there needs to be an increased focus in either versatility or damage. We need to become either a Jack of all Trades class, or a damage class, we cannot be both. We cannot increase the classes damage to be in line with other classes without reducing our versatility. The solution I would like to see is a decrease in our burst damage, burst damage skills having their personal limitations removed or reduced, and a slight increase in the damage our non-burst damage skills do. This would make our damage reliable and consistant, but moderate. We would never have the damage output of high damage classes, but they would never have our incredible versatility. Dagger/Dagger is actually very close to this kind of setup, our other weapons should be brought in line with it. Our versatility is what makes this class so incredibly fun to play, and is what makes us unique.

Attunement Recharge Rate

Currently, playing with anything less than 20 points in arcana is painful. We end up stuck in attunements with only our first and second skills available, and lose a lot of our on the fly versatility. Our investment here directly determines how versatile our build is, and has a massive impact on how the build is played. I have yet to see any serious build that doesn’t have at least 20 points in here, the class simply does not function properly without it. This forces our hand and limits the way we can build the class. The attunement recharge rate needs to be dropped to 10-12 seconds at base. This would reduce the overall effectiveness of the trait line bonus, and allow us to function without a significant investment here.

Utility Skills

Signets and arcane skills are mostly fine, Signet of Air could be a bit stronger, and Arcane Power hasn’t worked since beta, but these are minor issues compared to some of the larger ones. Glyphs are overall fairly weak, with the exception of the heal an elite. Now on to cantrips, this is where the Elementalist community is going to hate me. Cantrips are a bit strong in my opinion. On their own they are already pretty good, fully traited and running three of them, things get a bit silly. That said, these should not be touched until the rest of the issues with our class are resolved. Cantrips are the only way we can currently get any survivability, and the cantrip traits are among the few traits we have that are actually worth going for.

The real subject I wanted to cover here is conjured weapons. Not only are the skills I get from these weapons not worth the sacrifice, they never can be. Lossing access to 20 skills and traits that are weapon or skill type specific is a high price to pay. In order for this to be worth it the conjures need to be as powerful as elite skills, which would of course be overpowered. Currently the only way these are used is to band-aid situations where someone is range locked, or for one or two skills on the weapon with the weapon being dumped immediately after the skill is used. I just do not see a way to leave these in their current forms, and make them useful for long periods of time. What I think would work is rolling them all up into an elite skill, and have the weapon we get be based on our attunement when it is cast. Replace the utility slots with some new type of utility skill, maybe based off the conjured weapons, but have it be just one skill. This is a lot of work granted, but I simply see no other way for these skills to be useful in a balanced and useful way.

Oh, this post again.

Highlet.8039:

Oh, this post again.

Your comment made me double check to see if I had stumbled into a CoD forum.

A well-thought-out post. I agree. Conjure Weapon is especially vexing: why would I want to waste a Utility slot so I can lock myself out of most of my profession’s power? If they worked more like the Engineer’s Kits, then they could at least function somewhat like weapon swaps for other other professions (taking, say, Lightning Hammer when in staff so you can switch to melee if you get rushed).

if what you are saying about cantrips is that they are the only good ones, shouldn’t the others be raised onto the lv of cantrips not cantrips lowered?

just wish they would actually make conjures into kits something like the engi has cuz honestly that little 60 seconds is nothing!!! and lower the CD on attunement swapping to atleast like 12 cuz eithier or we are still forced to put 15 points into arcana oh and FIX the air speed traits for the love of god.. x.x i like to explore alot and sure i use my swiftness but i would like to see sum of our traits actually work >.>. AND last but not least give us out of combat weapon swap lmao idk how many people suggested this but yea. come on im tired of opening my bag everytime i wanna switch back and forth between staff and D/D

Thumbs up for you Grant. I play Elementalist and i love the class. But iam always forced to choose between being a total glass canon or an off-tank mage, which has more sustain, but still burns a lot (no pon intended) if iam focused… My build is 30/0/10/10/20 and, even though i like my build, i could use with more damage and a little more utility in my skills… I love the game and the class and iam not giving up on it, but i hope they make some changes because, even with this build i just described, i do not dare to take daggers into a major fight, because i will just burn… By the way, i like your suggestion about the conjured weapons, i think it makes a lot of sense and the only cantrip i use is cleansing fire, so i have no problem with the cantrips being nerfed really… Hope the big man hears you and decides to do something about what you said, because i think the class could only benefit from it.

@DanielFS

if u really want to try again 0/10/0/30/30 bunker build and try it with zerker accessorys trust me ive done this i kno u loose alottttt of armor but that critical bonous and damage makes up for it ive killed people with the simple rotation that we have and then some. If ur good on ur dodges pick ur fights wisely cuz u can survive 2v1 but 3v1 yea not an option especially if one of them is a guardian or warrior.

Atomic Sharks.7250:

if what you are saying about cantrips is that they are the only good ones, shouldn’t the others be raised onto the lv of cantrips not cantrips lowered?

Cantrips on their own are already incredibly versatile and powerful in their own right. Mist Form and Armor of Earth go beyond their apparent defensive capabilities, allowing for uninterpretable rezzing, stomping, and casting of channel/cast skills. Lightning Flash gives incredible mobility on an instant cast for either offensive or defensive uses. Cleansing Fire, with a few Water traits, gives us some of the best condition removal in the game. On top of this, every single one is a stun breaker. They are the epitome of a “utility skill”. Very few utility skills in the game can reach this level of versatility. The only thing holding them back are their long cool downs and lack of raw offensive power.

On their own they are good, but you aren’t instantly stapling three of them to your bar. Arcane Wave/Shield, and the Water/Fire/Earth signets all offer some very nice abilities as well. Wave has reasonable AoE damage and a much coveted blast finisher. Shield offers defense that rivals Armor of Earth and Mist Form. Earth and Water signets have passives comparable to other classes, and offer good ranged snares that we lack on some weapon sets. Signet of Fire would be good, if condition damage were a more viable option, and no amount of buffing this skill is going to fix that unless you change it’s mechanic completely.

The traits are what end up making cantrips a better option. All three are very good, and require low investments and two are in one of the only lines that are worth going deeply into. If we had better trait and utility options then maybe going 3 of three on both the traits and cantrips wouldn’t look as good. Still you cannot deny the number of very useful boons this setup lets you have a high uptime on, on top of their already amazing effects, is very powerful. It is certainly debatable. In my opinion simply moving Soothing Disruption to a Master trait would be the perfect fix. Again I do want to emphasize that any change should only take place once some of our larger issues are sorted out.

Yeah the utilities are so good that I wish I could take a 4th instead of the elite.

the uninterrupted mistform is a bug or glitch, the armor of earth grants stability so that is believable, lightning flash is good yes but i find cleansing fire to be better, with cleansing wave removes 4 conditions. and the lack of raw offensive power and cooldowns are why they are where they are right now, all the other utilities are a bit lackluster, and all the cantrips are usually defensive(except cleansing fire) which can be used offensively, lightning flash is situational, i personally use mist form(always a nice oh no utility) cleansing fire(condition removal), and arcane wave( extra blast) i haven’t used the signets extensively so not a lot of comments on them, they seem ok, but like i said they should be raised to the cantrip lv of usage not cantrips lowered to the signets usage(note all utilites not just in elementalist should be like this) and the traits is really where the cantrips shine because of their awesome boon abilites water 25 is a must if you want to do damage(armor of earth grants about 6 boons if traited) meaning 12% more damage. but yeah i agree with what you say completely basically, just saying the utilites be buffed not cantrips nerfed