Guild Wars 2

I agree, but we still have not gotten the full update patch notes, so im expecting more to come since everything they said at the livestream is not all of it.

However I would like a change on flame wall (focus) it 3/4 the cast time does constant burning if target doesn’t move and 20sec cooldown compared to ring of fire which is an aoe 1/4 cast time does a lot more burning than flamewall hits 5 enemies causes direct damage and 15 sec cd and easier to fire combo field for might. Well focus fire 4 5 just suck so…I would like something to happen to it. Needs small tweaks

Pretty much every other class is funneled into one weapon set, and maybe a choice of like 3 builds anyway. Say a resounding HI to GW2.

Wait til the full patch preview is up for the (likely valid) criticism.

Frozen burst should have a larger radius and longer duration

I’m still excited to support my allies with Water Trident.

Wait for the full patch notes? What are we expecting from the full patch notes? An undiscovered pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Dec 10th should have taught us all a lesson. That preview is most of the meat we will get.

Feedback must be given now and not any later.

I already replied. It’s surprising how they are “boosting” (meh…) what’s already mainstream since day 1, and still not addressing the true cores of our problems (RTL, telegraphed nukes, scepter, focus, mist form, lightning flash and in general our lack of true sustain, true damage).

This changes doesn’t really buff d/d, you know. People who wants to win (nice joke, isn't it? People who wants to win & elementalist) will still play scepter.
So it is the same 8% kitten as always. We need at least 3 or 5 such buffs to make ONE ele build viable.
And staff will suck anyway.

These changes will probably push MH dagger to the level of scepter, which is fair, but scepter isn’t exactly viable either, so the class as a whole will probably remain underwhelmed.

You can probably, however, try to incorporate as many of the new buffs as possible in a single build, and see if it works. Lol.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I’m still excited to support my allies with Water Trident.

(i know it was sarcasm )

What is funny is that we can never ever ever heal someone with that skill in a fight because of the small aoe + travel time .

example1: you see someone needs heal so you press the skill at his position , but in the fight people move a lot and… you just missed …..

example2 : you know people move a lot in a fight , and you anticipate where your ally will move , and you press the skill and the anticipated position , but he suddenly move on different direction and you miss =))))) )

and let’s not forget that most time we need that heal more that any other ally =))

Leuca.5732:

Wait til the full patch preview is up for the (likely valid) criticism.

I agree…and I’m trying to be patient…but I have to say that twitch stream had me furious. I hope the final balance patch notes make sense, because patience is wearing thin.

It didn’t help that the entire stream was done in an incredibly unprofessional way, and the stream as a whole made it seem like ANet thinks balancing their game is one huge joke.

Grevender.9235:

telegraphed nukes

The “Fresh Air” (which is one of the most common ele builds in pvp) build has the least telegraphed – hardest to dodge burst.
All the scepter’s lightning skills are instant and have no travel time, so does the on-swap trait.
these skills are atleast 50% of an ele’s damage in a fight and they’re extremely hard to dodge because you can’t see them coming, there isn’t even a character animation to any of them.
the only telegraphed nuke is “Churning Earth”, even Pheonix is not very telegraphed, especially when used in short-range.

With a fresh air scepter/focus build ele’s have a pretty good damage/survivability ratio and it is one of the best 1v1 builds in-game (though mostly because of its ability to counter some OP builds like condi mesmer and condi warrior)

The fact that even Mr DiogoSilva is getting ticked off is cause for alarm…

All WAS Vain.

DanSH.6143:

Grevender.9235:

telegraphed nukes

The “Fresh Air” (which is one of the most common ele builds in pvp) build has the least telegraphed – hardest to dodge burst.
All the scepter’s lightning skills are instant and have no travel time, so does the on-swap trait.
these skills are atleast 50% of an ele’s damage in a fight and they’re extremely hard to dodge because you can’t see them coming, there isn’t even a character animation to any of them.
the only telegraphed nuke is “Churning Earth”, even Pheonix is not very telegraphed, especially when used in short-range.

With a fresh air scepter/focus build ele’s have a pretty good damage/survivability ratio and it is one of the best 1v1 builds in-game (though mostly because of its ability to counter some OP builds like condi mesmer and condi warrior)

That and dragon’s tooth.
You still sacrifice pretty much all teamfight ability, because you simply turn every xvx into an (x-1)v(x-1) if you pull off the only combo that reaches numbers unavailable to other classes, which makes it somewhat useless in sPvP. You are out of the fight for a pretty long time after blowing your combo, while the other guy can either die and be back in the fight within 20 seconds, or can just get revived.

The biggest argument against the fresh air burst is that mesmer, thief and, to a certain extent, warrior can do it better. All three of those can fulfill roughly the same function in a team (bursting down squishies and players low on life) on a lower cooldown, with fewer sacrifices to survivability.

I guess I’ll keep playing my boring mesmer in tPvP.

If you play against any half way decent team as a zerk staff ele they’ll assign a mes/thief to make you their kitten all game. If you go S/F you have a chance of handling yourself against the mes/thief but you lose a ton of aoe damage. I always want to take my ele, lets not lie here I’m not a good player, so I feel like too much of a liability to my team. I can’t see what the d/d buffs are going to do at all. Other classes will still out bunker and output more damage at the same time. I can see maybe a hard condi counter build thats not totally useless for anything else.

I still rock the ele and do great in yoloQ when I feel like dealing with the windowlickers.

Valtarius.8671:

I agree, but we still have not gotten the full update patch notes, so im expecting more to come since everything they said at the livestream is not all of it.

However I would like a change on flame wall (focus) it 3/4 the cast time does constant burning if target doesn’t move and 20sec cooldown compared to ring of fire which is an aoe 1/4 cast time does a lot more burning than flamewall hits 5 enemies causes direct damage and 15 sec cd and easier to fire combo field for might. Well focus fire 4 5 just suck so…I would like something to happen to it. Needs small tweaks

I’m sure this is everything ele is getting with this patch. When the devs say this is not all of it, they only mean on future patches there will more changes across all the professions of course.

They could have buffed all the useless traits instead and made something out of this patch that would have been appreciated by all elementalists instead of only those who do not use a staff.

DanSH.6143:

The “Fresh Air” (which is one of the most common ele builds in pvp) build has the least telegraphed – hardest to dodge burst.

you seems to be confusing bursts with nukes. As you quoted from my post, I was talking about the latter and not the former.

All the scepter’s lightning skills are instant and have no travel time, so does the on-swap trait.

they are barely tickling the enemy.Nukes are a different story and they are telegraphed for a reason: in our case they are
too much telegraphed and not enough nukes. I am attaching a picture of what a warrior can do, hitting my thief – which in case someone forget is MEDIUM armor character – for 16k using killshot, and still having 4k armor, 40.000 HP, awesome mobility and a required skill level to play effectively that I would define “basic”. Killshot doesn’t require any skill, positioning or preparation: you press one button and win.

these skills are atleast 50% of an ele’s damage in a fight and they’re extremely hard to dodge because you can’t see them coming, there isn’t even a character animation to any of them.

that’s one of the reasons our overall dps is so poor: our nukes are not efficient in skirmishes (d/d, s/d in particular) therefore people madly dance on the keyboard in a frenzy attempt to do what other classes can do with 80% less effort reaching 176% better results. I have been saying this since GW2 release: Elementalist lacks combat efficiency.

the only telegraphed nuke is “Churning Earth”, even Pheonix is not very telegraphed, especially when used in short-range.

aside the fact that you are forgetting Dragon’s Tooth, Firegrab and Meteor Shower, I would also like to underline how during a combat the key element is time. Churning Earth alone won’t kill anyone: to be effective you have to build stacks of might, and that requires time; time which, for Elementalist, runs faster than for other classes because we lack the sustain to stay alive to actually deliver proper nukes, therefore we are forced into crossing fingers and just unleashing what we can (instead of what we want ). So when you start the chronometer to measure the “telegraphed animation” you must include the whole process and not just it’s final, shorter, part.
Getting back to the two previous examples and still referring to the picture I attached:
- on my thief I just have to stay invisible as long as possible: that alone will provide me with at least 10 stacks of might, then I just have to press 2 (my best nuke, Backstab) and F to stomp.
- on my warrior (yep, I play warrior too), who cares about might, just press F1 and then F to stomp.

ah, and using Phoenix at close range is not efficient because you are wasting 50% of it’s power, during a skirmish every little thing counts, as there is no zerg to protect you from your own errors.

With a fresh air scepter/focus build ele’s have a pretty good damage/survivability ratio and it is one of the best 1v1 builds in-game (though mostly because of its ability to counter some OP builds like condi mesmer and condi warrior)

I would tone down that statement with a more fitting “one of the best 1v1 builds for Elementalists”, not that we have many others anyway but just to be accurate and to avoid to have this constructive discussion confused with marketing claims.
Yes it’s one of our best choices, sadly, although I usually deal with mesmers and thieves with s/d (have been using s/f for months in the past and especially focus is so underpowered that you really have to learn what you and foes are doing).
In my opinion d/d is still more powerful, but I rarely play mainstream/FOTM builds.

Don’t post that picture to the warrior forums. They’’ try and justify that damage with statements such as ’ Warrior needs to do that sort of burst because they are meant to be the best at damage’ Or ’ If they don’t have that many hps they can get trained down too easily!.’

The biggest problem I see with elementalists is the difficulty in templating due to the low base health and low base armour combined with very long timered utilities and lack of sustained dps.

Eles should be on the medium class tables. Or there should just be two tiers, 15k and 20k, remove the lower tier as there’s just too much of a gap between top and bottom.

All our utilities need their cooldowns cut in half atleast. They’re just ridiculous right now. That would go a long way to helping our sustainability. Other classes have much better versions of our utilities on much shorter cooldowns. People maining other classes try to justify that with"Oh but eles have more weapon skills!" Really? and most of them are useless with the few useful ones on very high cooldowns. Also, weapon skills/attunements have nothing to do with our utilities. Is a thief’s initiative tied to their utilities? No, so why should our attunements be justification for overly long cooldowns on our utilities?

I still think that mesmer and ele hp should be swapped. mesmer has tons of survivability through clones, teleports, invulnerability, blocks, and stealth that we don’t have. They don’t need higher hp as well. We also lack the ability to disengage since the rtl nerf, which needs to be reverted. There are other elite skills i’d prefer to take over FGS, but i just cant afford to because ele lacks the mobility without it. you HAVE to use that skill if you hope to survive getting jumped by a zerg. I cant just stealth and hide behind something while they swing away at the area they think i was standing at while i creep off in the other direction. I’d be fine with the crappy mobility if i could turn invisible and run away.

Also, i know i’m probably not the only one who’s thought this but, Arcane brilliance should be removed as a heal and become a utility skill. Would be a great replacement for the now ruined arcane wave and give us some sustain we’re severely lacking. The healing would need to be toned down probably to become a utility.

Nikkinella.8254:

ruined arcane wave

I agree with most of what you said except the quoted part. Current Arcane Wave is a very welcome change and has improved a lot my personal win/loss ratio, it just requires some time to adapt to a new gameplay.

Being an elementalist player has always been a kitten.

In any case you cannot fix our sustain without fixing our active defense, since we have almost none and most of them are on an unneccessarily long CD.

You cannot fix our sustain without bumping either our active defense or without a significant increase in toughness and HP.

Just play conjure might stacking (d/d) build or s/d fury stacking build, both pure burst and enjoy. You’re going to die on ele anyway you play it, so you might as well get some fun out of globaling some people too.

Grevender.9235:

Nikkinella.8254:

ruined arcane wave

I agree with most of what you said except the quoted part. Current Arcane Wave is a very welcome change and has improved a lot my personal win/loss ratio, it just requires some time to adapt to a new gameplay.

I guess it depends on playstyle. It no longer works underwater, and that split second more it takes to click on a spot on the ground killed it for my burst build. For me, the skill is totally useless now. Some people may like the change, I do not and would like the old version back or a new skill that does the same exact thing the old version did. That’s why Arcane brilliance would make a great utility. The people who like new arcane wave get to keep it, and those who like me, think it’s total trash now get the old version back plus some sustain that burst builds desperately need.

I hate the new Arcane Wave too

well tastes are tastes but for my fast paced combat style there couldn’t be any better change than the actual Arcane Wave, for example I can teleport out of the field just landed WHILE healing myself AND nuking said field from afar…. then RTL back and continue the slaughter: how epic can this be? it would not have been possible with the old version, which only encouraged a fixed pattern which soon become very easy to foresee for skilled and aware enemies.

Arcane Brilliance: meh, it saddens me to recognize it as a fail. While it’s true that using it you can charge the enemy group and deal damage while also healing yourself, seems like they didn’t notice we completely lack the mobility to get out of troubles immediately after doing so therefore being obliterated the very second later.

From whatever point we look at this class, and it’s cool that at least on this point everyone agree, we are in critical need of practical and effective solutions for our outrageous lack of sustain.

How can eles be complaining in this fashion?

D/D eles didn’t complain about the buffs and fixes staff eles received when they received them.. We never said “This patch is a fail, why give them this!”

How can people be so petulant about this topic.

You can put it into terms as “Well that’s great for D/D users, but I feel this patch could be better if not only mainhand dagger was buffed, but also X.”

Nobody has done that. All I’ve seen are people who I thought were respectable complain about this.

Did MH dagger need a buff as bad as focus did? No. Should ANYBODY complain about MG dagger’s buff? NO.

It helps all eles overall in the long run.

Vick, I completely agree with the unprofessional stream. I was going bananas.. They laughed about dire gear’s overpowered status, laughed about destroying classes.. And it doesn’t help that they don’t know their own skills. I’ve memorized each of my classes skills, traits, and I don’t even work for the company. If I were in charge of balancing, I’d know all the classes by heart, and I’d play each class daily..

Vick.6805:

I have to say that twitch stream had me furious. I hope the final balance patch notes make sense, because patience is wearing thin.

It didn’t help that the entire stream was done in an incredibly unprofessional way, and the stream as a whole made it seem like ANet thinks balancing their game is one huge joke.

What changed about arcane wave? Wasn’t it buffed?

The difference is staff users did need those buffs. Dagger skills are already strong on both main and offhand. There was no need to improve this weapon when there is clearly a need for the other ones. The way it would help all eles is by adjusting traits and utilities and not buffing dagger that is already balanced. I don’t give a kitten about what anyone think about me or against anyone that complaints about these changes directed to dagger users. When you criticize someone you haven’t even met in person you only are criticizing yourself..

I think we’re all a little disappointed in this patch. regardless of what our playstyle is and what weapons we choose to use. One thing we can all agree on is that ele is severely lacking right now and they didn’t even bother touching any of the core complaints about the class. If they ever decide to listen to the people who have actually played ele and start fixing our crappy traits and balancing the horrible cooldowns of our utilities and giving us back some of the sustain and mobility they gutted from us, that would be nice. I won’t hold my breath.

I’m still waiting for them to make focus not suck in fire attunement. Still havent fixed the fact that arcane abatement doesn’t work in water attunement, and i’m pretty sure i filed a bug report for that back in beta, and it STILL doesn’t work. I’m gonna stop there, cuz if i go on with the list of things wrong with the class and bugs that have never been fixed, this will turn into an essay.

Grevender.9235:

well tastes are tastes but for my fast paced combat style there couldn’t be any better change than the actual Arcane Wave, for example I can teleport out of the field just landed WHILE healing myself AND nuking said field from afar…. then RTL back and continue the slaughter: how epic can this be? it would not have been possible with the old version, which only encouraged a fixed pattern which soon become very easy to foresee for skilled and aware enemies.

Arcane Brilliance: meh, it saddens me to recognize it as a fail. While it’s true that using it you can charge the enemy group and deal damage while also healing yourself, seems like they didn’t notice we completely lack the mobility to get out of troubles immediately after doing so therefore being obliterated the very second later.

From whatever point we look at this class, and it’s cool that at least on this point everyone agree, we are in critical need of practical and effective solutions for our outrageous lack of sustain.

Hey, don’t hate on Brilliance! It’s my favorite heal by far (I’m not saying its viable, conditions are still a thing after all) and is certainly the most versatile.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The difference is staff users did need those buffs. Dagger skills are already strong on both main and offhand. There was no need to improve this weapon when there is clearly a need for the other ones. The way it would help all eles is by adjusting traits and utilities and not buffing dagger that is already balanced. I don’t give a kitten about what anyone think about me or against anyone that complaints about these changes directed to dagger users. When you criticize someone you haven’t even met in person you only are criticizing yourself..

I wasn’t directly referencing you. I said it isn’t respectable for anybody to criticize this change period when the official notes aren’t even out. Call me naive, but I want to think something else is coming.

I am also saying as a whole, dagger dagger has INHERENT issues fighting any class which can kite it. This will be incredibly useful in helping its sustainability. I think it wasn’t balanced if it dies to every condi engineer or terrormancer necro it faces. With zero range, D/D needed real help in this Meta. I’m stating that as a fact.

Furthermore, although this will be used to run a little, it will mainly be a gap closer. Why? In close proximity, I won’t risk this skill for getting stuck in combat when running away. The burning tail is a fair trade off.

Nikkinella.8254:

I think we’re all a little disappointed in this patch. regardless of what our playstyle is and what weapons we choose to use.

I definitely have some checkpoints I want to see hit. And I realize there’s disappointment, but it shouldn’t be taken out in this way. I’m happy to see any buff to elementalist.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Hey, don’t hate on Brilliance! It’s my favorite heal by far (I’m not saying its viable, conditions are still a thing after all) and is certainly the most versatile.

it’s not hate, just voicing my opinion. As it is now, Arcane Brilliance is somehow useful into extremely specific situations and builds (I’d say d/d superbunker Ele that dives into zergs dying immediately after) and honestly for the insane cost of 25 skill points one would rightly expect something a bit more versatile.

Brilliance isn’t that bad. It’s just not good enough for a 6 heal skill. It would be excellent as a utility though.

sorrychief.2563:

What changed about arcane wave? Wasn’t it buffed?

In the elementalist’s forum, if a skill is buffed for almost every single scenario, at the tiny cost of making it slightly less effective in some exceptional or niche situations, the community cries.

DiogoSilva.7089:

sorrychief.2563:

What changed about arcane wave? Wasn’t it buffed?

In the elementalist’s forum, if a skill is buffed for almost every single scenario, at the tiny cost of making it slightly less effective in some exceptional or niche situations, the community cries.

Yeah, I will never understand why people think that was a nerf. It makes the skill infinitely more versatile.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

DiogoSilva.7089:

sorrychief.2563:

What changed about arcane wave? Wasn’t it buffed?

In the elementalist’s forum, if a skill is buffed for almost every single scenario, at the tiny cost of making it slightly less effective in some exceptional or niche situations, the community cries.

Yeah, I will never understand why people think that was a nerf. It makes the skill infinitely more versatile.

As a d/d, the need of targeting is a waste of time. I understand that the new Arcane Wave is more versatile, but for me, it’s not always easy to land it correctly. For instance, during Burning Speed.

I suppose I need more training but I’m too lazy. So now, I’m using a third cantrip…

About sustain, am I the only one who find conditions a bit too powerful? I mean, I can build my character in PvP to have vigor, good thoughness and make up my lack of vitality with my heal, and yet have decent damage. I can say I’m fine with direct damage, but conditions? I do not have enough cleanse. It’s better in WvW but not easy (keep in mind I’m talking as a d/d). I have the feeling that each builds I make are (and have to be) around conditions removal…

What I mean by saying this, it’s that from my point of view, the conditions are the problem to our lack of sustain.

Condition builds are broken. That is pretty much it. It takes very little skill to spam conditions on someone until they die. The simple fact is even with all the added condition cleanses – it is not enough and it will never be enough due to the way Anet designed some classes that just have FAR to much access to conditions. Necromancer SHOULD be the kind of conditions and yet we get Mesmer, Engineer and i even saw a Ranger condition build today. Conditions are simply out of control, they should NOT be as strong as they are and they should not be as “burstable” as they are.

Pretty sure, the only classes that cant do condition builds are Eles and Guardians. Eles just dont have anywhere near enough access to conditions and they arent strong enough stat Toughness/health wise.

We lack sustain for ONE reason – Our low health and low armor forces us into taking defensive trait/gear to counter the fact that we are the lowest health and lowest armor in the game and yet our damage isnt anywhere near that of most other classes and they can go full zerker due to class mechanics or skills that make them immune to damage, conditions, have Invuls, Blocks as well as stealth and such.

Ele need to have their health bumped up so that players arent forced to take defensive traits/gear. I mean you can go full zerker but if just one of your skills is blocked or dodged and that ruins your burst chain you are simply going to die.

I would say our low health, low armor and average damage is the reason we lack sustain because we are forced to trait and build for defense which means we will live a little longer but still end up dying because we will be no threat damage wise as we have had to trait and build to counter the health and armor weakness we have.

The lowest health on a guardian might be a decent idea because of all the blocking, heavy armor, and healing.
The lowest health on a thief might be a decent idea because of all the stealth,blind, and evade span, and large unforeseeable damage, along with medium armor.
The lowest health on an ele, along with the lowest armor, might be a good idea because their buffs don’t help against conditions, their healing got nerfed, their mobility got nerfed, and because they have no choice but to invest everything into defense…oh wait…

Rather than trying to buff everything else which will lead to pidgenholing eles into specific OP builds, just to get nerfed again, simply bump the base health up. It will allow an ele to be able to use all sorts of builds instead of focusing 90% of the build on defense.

‘Eles need sustain’ is vague and unworkable.

The more insightful posts are already shifting to the term ‘breathing room’. Sustain would come naturally once we have it.

Breathing room to get a few extra ticks of regen.
Breathing room to cast a heal without getting hit.
Breathing room is why the new Unsteady Ground was such a good, elegant change.
Getting chain-stunned is the opposite of having breathing room.
Healing while invulnerable is having too much breathing room.
Cantrips give breathing room.
RTL nerf hit us so hard because it limits our…

I better stop here.

The funny thing is that they said that the changes to scepter water #3 would give eles more condi cleanse thanks to cleansing water.

Well they are totally wrong. They probably forgot that they had added an internal CD to cleansing water, and since you get regeneration when attuning to water, cleansing water won’t proc at all from water#3.

So guess what? You don’t get any condi cleanse.

Since they don’t really play the game, they won’t notice this flaw until the patch is released (in 4 months) and it will take another 4months for the next balance patch.

I think this example explains the current state of balance.

They are trying to give us the D/D bunker ele back in PvP, but in a far inferior version. Wasn’t this supposed to be the big PvP patch? While I like the changes they made, it will do little and certainly not improve build diversity. The new sigils/runes/amulets might help, buuut.. wait, no amulet changes next time… ? Ugh!

Making small changes at a time is fine, but only if they come often.

How about making an expansion? Fix a lot of things, restart the meta if you want, but do something. I would gladly pay $60 for new and interesting content. Take ma money!