Q:
My elementalist was my first 80. I played around with it but I noticed after leveling several toons other then how slow mesmers run. Elem was actually harder to level.
attunement swapping was a pain, conjures on 1 min cooldown make for any real say. weapon play style worthless if you have to at some point drop it to say heal yourself.
Then I noticed what the glaring problem is…
every 5 and 15 point traits are completely worthless… unless your in that attunement.
EVERY other class gets 100% bonus of their passive 5 and 15 point traits 100% of the time. Elementals only get the 5% in attunement and some crappy AOE on attunement for 15.
Now to prove a point say your on a new toon you have 25 points to spend, and want all passive 5 traits, any toon. Every 5 point trait in tier 1, every class excite elem get 100% benefit from them all the time. Elem get 5 points worth 25% of the time and 5 if put in arcane pretty much worthless.
if you focus your traits to say fire and earth, you only get 50% bonus from tier 1 passive, and on attunement, which you cant just swap back and forth instantly for that aoe that you might not want putting you in combat.
Fire 5 point makes melee have a chance to burn tho later you can buff that… you don’t have hp, but other classes on 5 point like engineer drop a bomb dodge, 5 points in firearm crits on that bomb 33% chance to bleed, nearly doubling the dmg if it crits not counting crit dmg alone.
And don’t even get me started on the gimmichy conjures. that trait that improves them should be moved to tier 1 for 10 points fire, and change conjures to elem only, no drop. shorten the cooldown to 9-15 secs, and unlimted use.
all attunement f1-f4, and skills 1-5 should share the cooldowns thru all attunement and be balanced by that, long kitten cast times should be adjusted to half that cast time, and cooldowns should be much more suited to 1-5 skills for balance nothing super long.
after all you cant cast water healing rain if they did that if you just cast meteor storm. healing and dmg of that type should be balanced would they do that.
Healing signet of renewal needs changed, as it is, its completely worthless to anyone who knows how bad it really is.
like the warrior signet they base on active skill is the same+healing power. elem is 25 sec war is 20, both have 20% cooldown traits.
where things are broken for elem is, its not passive, it does not benefit from any attunement. and its heal is completely worthless at 100 it will heal about 300 on cast. with cast times counting channeled, which btw do not add any ticks or anything. lower its value and unless you can get skills to actually cast every 1 sec, the passive heal is no good compared to other heals that active heal more, and provide some sort of buff/condition removal.
warriors got their healing signet buffed up cause it was a joke, elem need the same thing. you would be clueless to take anything over ether renewal, or glyph of elemental harmony. even tho earth can make signets passive never turn off its heal is so pathetically week, your better off with either other heals.
and if elems are not going to get a hp buff, they need a little better escape mechanic then just ether renewal. their mobility suffers greatly compared to most other classes. not all situations, but a lot. they don’t have clones, elem pets are long cooldown, and unless your heavy water traited have less survival verses cc’s ether renewal feels then more necessary then optional as its the best way to get away, but you can be interrupted and recc’d during its channel cause you have no real protection casting it.
I mean do other people agree at lest on the trait problem being the biggest glaring issue? I think this needs a lot of discussion here. I mean if passive traits 5, and 15 where to be brought up to more in line balance like other class and have you benefit 100% of the time instead of 50% or 25% of time I think elementalist would have a much smoother leveling process and pvp and wvw would be a bit more balanced. I mean really non of the on attunement trait passives are that powerful that they should be treated as such. if my engineer can get 2 passives that can inflict massive dmg and 2 more to prevent dmg to me.
And elem get either burn melee, OR 10% speed, OR some toughness, OR aoe healing. you get what I mean, that OR hits harder then you can really imagine when you start looking at other classes in the same light.
(edited by Storm Wrathe.9674)
