Since launch gimpisch mechanics that have been used by eles have been fixed by rudely nerfs instead of proper rebalance. I really hope arena net will not do this again with the current announced (possible) changes and put some care and love into ele so they do stay viable for anything that is not a walking water field.
I’m playing since launch, there is a pattern in the balance on elementals I don’t like at all.
I’m playing since launch, there is a pattern in the balance on elementals I don’t like at all.
It’s like this, if ele has something that is gimpisch it get nerfed rudely instead of giving a proper rework. To give some examples:
- Healing power: at the start of GW2 healing power on ele was really good, it seems it was too good, so healing power scaling on most ele skills went down, killing off allot of builds unnecessarily, e.g. staff healer in dungeons.
- Ride the Lighting: because running power of eles was too high, cd went up from 15 to 40, which does half when you hit a target.
- FGS rush: okay I admit, this was way to strong however the “fix” killed the whole elite instead of fixing it, since FGS was not very good to start with.
- Sharknado: killed off tornado, best of worse options in a raid atm.
Same kinds of mistakes will happen all over again now. Why do I think so?
- D/D movement will get killed as status of changes is now, so the only build in game that really cannot build in ranged options (I know there are other full melee builds, but theoretical they can place in a ranged weapon, e.g. scepter for medi guard or longbow for warrior). Due to this, it will be very important for d/d eles to stay close enough to the target, however by moving elemental attunement to GM tier, it will be very hard to get any proper amount of swiftness to keep moving fast enough (since zyphers boon will not give enough). With the coming changes I expect any d/d build will lack the speed needed to dekite any ranged opponent.
- Nerfing conjurd weapons: okay on first look this might be reasonable since damage on icebow and lightling hammer can be really high. So why is this a problem? Most likely this will end up pushing eles to cartrips only builds way more again. While since launch this is actually a thing that keeps coming back as a way of building that should be changed. However it seems as soon another utility gets viable gets nerfed.
- Elemental attunement: Okay it might be to strong for master, however the way it’s not it’s really subpar for GM, really since it does have to compete with evasive arcana. I would say either place it back in the master tier, without the party component, or give a serious improvement to is, since how it’s now it’s just a plain up might stacking nerf (btw did I mention phalanx warriors? they provide way more party might as ele can every upkeep in a fight and they actually get buffed).
Those are the things I did notice most about the (possible) changes to ele. There are also a few things like the air line which are not necessarily bad seeing you will have access to 3 traits lines after the patch, however there are a bunch of traits totally out of line with other professions.
I really hope ele will get the proper balance it needs instead of getting hit every time something gimpisch is found. I also did reframe to mention certain changes like lighting stow for example, because this was a broken and it did needs to be fixed. However in my opinion current position of elemental attunement, icebow and lighting hammer are not broken (to badly). Even though the elemental weapons do high damage something like IB has to be dropped about instantly after the use of #4 and #3 in most cases to prevent getting killed, which basely is a 60 sec cd on 2 skill use, not to mention both actually make you very vulnerable as an ele (lighting hammer force you to be in melee range, icebow #4 on a group with retaliation will put down allot of your own health and in my opinion if you want to nerf icebow #4 in pve there are better solution like doing something about hitbox size in combination with icebow #4).