Guild Wars 2

I think the overwhelming consensus is that ele’s are in need of some kind of buff. So what buffs do you think would fix them?

My opinion:

- Swap our second downed skill with our third, lets us have it instantly available. This one is obvious. We’re the only profession in the game that has no finisher interrupt available upon going down.

- Reduce the cooldown on Arcane Shield to 30 seconds. This would be an incredible buff to our survivability and would make casting much, much easier.

- Decrease or remove the cast time on most of our abilities. Our damage is currently as predictable as the sunrise. It’s already hard enough doing AoE based damage without a cast. You have to place it in the right spot so that it doesn’t miss and has the trailing edge behind your target. Adding a 1-3 second cast to the AoE just makes it useless. You can’t extrapolate someone’s position 3 seconds into the future. Let alone know where the optimal place to put the AoE will be.

The downstate could use a way to avoid the first stomp, but other than that ele is fine.

I run with 0 toughness and rarely die. Here’s a screenshot of the last hotjoin match I played. Not a single death in that match or the one before it.

I have no comment on tournament play but it seems the consensus is that the downstate is the only major issue.

Actually… the staff is pretty good already. I see videos and hear good things about scepter dagger. Talk to godmode about scepter focus, he seems to think he has a good build for that.

I think dagger mainhand is our only weapon that needs much tweeking.

That said, if i was going to buff, i would make weapons all dd or all condition damage, no more hybrid. Not stronger tho, just more streamlined.

Then i would give more amulet options. I think more point customization would be awesome. If i could have a valkaries with vitality in place of crit multiplier i think id be borderline op with a staff.

Oh and yea, downed states in general just need a total overhaul

downed state at first imo… add 0.5sec stun/daze to his immobilize so its working as now and works as interrupt…

I run with 0 toughness and rarely die. Here’s a screenshot of the last hotjoin match I played. Not a single death in that match or the one before it.
I have no comment on tournament play but it seems the consensus is that the downstate is the only major issue.

Running with 0 toughness isn’t a viable strategy. Also, being first in pick up games doesn’t mean anything. I’m usually first in my games, but I don’t do as well as I can on any other class. On my thief, I can just run around killing whatever I find. On my ele, I have to be very careful what fights I get into.

I’m not sure where people get the idea that ele’s have great support. We have lackluster support in everything but water attunement. And the only reason staff seems good is that people don’t target players at range yet. Once they learn how to counter kiting, they will.

Fundamentaly speaking the ele is just fine , i rip using d/d imo it does not really matter what weapon or wep combo you use on the ele , they can all do great damage. The downstate does need adjustment imo but outside of that if i were Anet i would first fix the bugs before trying to buff the class.

I would consider removing the bugs a buff all by itself and seeing how the class performs after the bug fixes would be very interesting since as it stands now i get killed more often because skills bug out then my own mistakes , i can compensate a lot better for my own screup then being stuck in position for 5 seconds like with RTL or being stuck and frozen in autoattack for 10 secondsat least twice per match.

zilcho.7624:

I run with 0 toughness and rarely die. Here’s a screenshot of the last hotjoin match I played. Not a single death in that match or the one before it.
I have no comment on tournament play but it seems the consensus is that the downstate is the only major issue.

Running with 0 toughness isn’t a viable strategy. Also, being first in pick up games doesn’t mean anything. I’m usually first in my games, but I don’t do as well as I can on any other class. On my thief, I can just run around killing whatever I find. On my ele, I have to be very careful what fights I get into.

I’m not sure where people get the idea that ele’s have great support. We have lackluster support in everything but water attunement. And the only reason staff seems good is that people don’t target players at range yet. Once they learn how to counter kiting, they will.

Being carefull what fights you get into is just strategy. It does not signify a flaw in a class. Most people just assume that when they see a fight or a opponent they have to engage but the reality is that in some cases you are just giving the other team free points.

If i notice a oponnent running a build that counters mine just a bit to well i will avoid a 1v1 with him. When im not at full health on my thief or any other squishy class/build i usually think twice before dropping in. If i decide to run off i ussualy cap a point or keep a couple of other players busy somewhere while the rest of my team fights or takes their point.

That in the end nets more points instead of losing them just because i feel compelled to engage every single fight.

Trying out a different class..i’d say BUFF OUR AUTO ATTACK, OH MY GOD. The difference is so massive.. If eles are forced to spend and waste so many cooldowns to do near-comparable burst and damage to other classes because of their crazy added auto attacking (or even worse, passively through phantasms or whatever), we’d need faaaar better defenses than what we have now. And a way better downed.

Here you have a class with the lowest amount of armor and hp and then dont even give it a real downed so that downing the weakest class means your entire team will easily rally. Ele plays amazingly twitchy as far as GW2 goes, which is why it will always be my favorite class, but it feels punished for it by being forced to both waste and use a lot of cooldowns for tiny effects.

The utility provided to ele’s doesnt make up for the base ‘power’ that other classes get at this point in the game. This is a great example.

Grandmaster arcane trait+ arcane blast (utility slot) + arcane cd trait = 1 sec immobilize every 16 seconds. If earth, otherwise 15 sec cd on current attune.
Engi Rifle 2 + rifle cd trait = 2 second immobilize every 8 seconds.

Insane long cast times on the most fragile class dont help either. Neither does forcing it into melee range to use its highest damaging but also ofcourse slowest abilities. Stupid forums cant edit.

when looking at the traits it seems the ele is designed around switching between all 4 attunments and this is the problem for me at least, as its a horrible way to play that requires so much effort and having to stare at your toolbar more than whats happening.

The good eles use all 4 attunments and so it works for a few people but personaly I would like a remake of the traits so that you have a primary attunment with a supportive second attunment and then 2 that are basicly null if not traited for.

And of course remake of skills.

On the elementalist, there is a buff in the fire trait that is supposed to add might for 5 seconds every time you use a fire spell. I ran tests and never once saw any might from it. Idk.

You don’t have to look at your skills when swapping attunements, most 2 and 3 skills have shorter or about as long cd as the attunement cd is so you know they are up every time you swap, 4 and 5 skills have longer cd and they wont be up on the first pass and after that you can glance at them quickly whenever you need some longer cd and decide if its close enough for waiting.

What annoys me is that the “short” cooldowns on each attu you “have” to spam on useless places because of the weakness of autoattack, so you will always want to be swapping attunements or you are losing dps, if autoattack was stronger you could actually save some attunement and use blind or knockdown there when NEEDED not just spamming somewhere because you are just about to swap away.

I also agree that cond/power weaponsets could be different, but then again that would force different builds to only use one weaponset, idk.

One idea for “fix” elementalist can be give it a “mentality” barr that allow us have more powerfull skills and lesser reuse. Each skill consume a part of these “mentality” and when we have 0 mentality we do lesser damage and have more reuse. This, allow have a great damage and allow us dont spam skills everytime.

Downed state needs work so eles are not free rallies for the enemy. Only reason why I refuse to play ele in tournaments

• Reduce Arcane Barrage and Arcane Blast nerfs from beta. Their cooldowns are so long and their damage so low that they’re completely worthless.

• Move Cleansing Water from tier 3 to tier 2 Water.

• Rework downed state 2 to be an interrupt.

That’s all the class needs to be on par in tPvP.

• Trait to increase dagger range

IMO the ele is actually better than previously thought. The only problem is that they are a high skill cap class. I’m starting to see more and more eles who actually do their job quite well and can do a large variety of jobs. If I had to ask for anything, it would be to raise all the other classes up to a similiar skill cap. I think all classes should be around that level of play.

Downed state: already been talked about

Atunement time reduction reworked. Too many eles have to go arcane to avoid being locked out of skills.

Elementalist on the whole is fine, but only because of Water Magic and Arcana. I’d like to see Fire, Air and Earth magic brought up to par.

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

The downstate could use a way to avoid the first stomp, but other than that ele is fine.

I run with 0 toughness and rarely die. Here’s a screenshot of the last hotjoin match I played. Not a single death in that match or the one before it.

I have no comment on tournament play but it seems the consensus is that the downstate is the only major issue.

all i do is crit your on henge of denrvi i bet my ele could kill yours my ele name is neil diamond i killed all i do is crit gs warrior.

dan.3618:

when looking at the traits it seems the ele is designed around switching between all 4 attunments and this is the problem for me at least, as its a horrible way to play that requires so much effort and having to stare at your toolbar more than whats happening.

The good eles use all 4 attunments and so it works for a few people but personaly I would like a remake of the traits so that you have a primary attunment with a supportive second attunment and then 2 that are basicly null if not traited for.

And of course remake of skills.

Switching between atunements on the fly is how the ele should be played. If you dont you only use 25% of your DPS (yes i pulled that number out of my aaa like everyone else : ) But it is true enough.

I dont have to ‘look’ at my skillbar anymore on the ele , mere glances will suffice. I switch blindly between any atunement and use its skill apropriatly it is what makes the class so very nice to play , its hard to master ,hard to play (i play D/D btw) but thats just me i do that in every mmo. I take the hardest class they have and stick to it until i get it.

I f they ever make it so the ele can be played with just one main atunement i will get bored with it very soon. I hope they never do that.

Healingz R Us.7240:

On the elementalist, there is a buff in the fire trait that is supposed to add might for 5 seconds every time you use a fire spell. I ran tests and never once saw any might from it. Idk.

That is a combo between the fire and earth atunement. The field is in fire and the finisher is in earth. I use this quite a lot. At least it is on my D/D ele.

It should be a single skill trigger on the staff i believe.

You can’t buff elementalists without making them absolutely insane in WvW. SPVP isn’t the only thing they have to balance around. Elementalists are great in WvW and their AoE lets them wreck faces. They’re not too great in sPVP because it’s more based on 1v1s or just smaller group battles, where the AoE isn’t at its greatest effectiveness.

1. Downed state. Either make 2 a knockback, or switch 2 and 3.
2. Autoattacks need buffs, pretty much all of them.
3. Most air damage skills need something extra because they are lackluster. Change dagger air 2 from weakness to blind for example
4. Somehow make it that we don’t have to fully spec into water and earth to be viable.

5. And of course make conjures viable. Either have them lose the charges, make them instantcast but not give a second weapon, or something like that. They are okayish for pve, but completely unviable in pvp.

1. Fix the fire line. Terrible Grandmaster traits.
2. Arcane shield should be a stun breaker
3. Downstate interrupt or mist form on #2
4. Ether Renewal reduced to 3 second channel but healing amount increased (total & /tick)
5. Cd reductions on cantrips AoE should not be 90s, mesmer blink is 30s lightning flash is 45s
6. Fix bugs

I think conjures need to be reworked to something like the engie’s kits. You cast it and it turns your utility skill into a kit that you can swap in and out of. But each time you use a spell you lose a charge (like it is now). You could drop them by using the swap weapon key, or the button on the left side of the skills. Once this happens the utility skill turns to a “destroy conjure” button which will cause the conjure, whether on the ground or in a friendlies hand to be destroyed causing the skill to start its cd.

I think the greatest issue here, which keeps real balance from being achievable (not just as far as Elementalist is concerned), is having fused the PvE and PvP skill sets.

One would think ArenaNet would have learned from GW1…

Just separate them, then each issue can be worked on separately without having a negative impact in the opposite game mode.

ryston.7640:

Actually… the staff is pretty good already. I see videos and hear good things about scepter dagger. Talk to godmode about scepter focus, he seems to think he has a good build for that.

I think dagger mainhand is our only weapon that needs much tweeking.

That said, if i was going to buff, i would make weapons all dd or all condition damage, no more hybrid. Not stronger tho, just more streamlined.

Then i would give more amulet options. I think more point customization would be awesome. If i could have a valkaries with vitality in place of crit multiplier i think id be borderline op with a staff.

I agree with the dagger main hand. All the 1 attacks have different ranges. water is the only one that has a range of 600, the rest are less than that.

Edit see image. The distances dont even match with others of the same distance when compared visually.

If they don’t want to give us any form of weapon swap how about a compromise with our conjured weapon becoming a weapon swap and only despawn when all charges are used? I’ve given my list of things to improve in all the other threads.

Honestly I think it needs more work than I can justify here.

Add a scaling cooldown reduction trait (equivalent to One with Air et al) that takes a long time to build up and resets whenever you swap attunements when one of them is on cooldown. This is to enable a playstyle that uses element swap to respond to situations as opposed to having a huge list of attacks to reel off.

Rescale the auto attacks so every attunement in every weapon set is a valid choice to stay in. Apply buffs/bug fixes to some of the dead skills.

Speed up the animation on our big hitters, at least to the point where avoiding them takes some kind of effort, or at least is worthwhile.

Underwater summons. Underwater glyph of storms (centered on player). An underwater elite that can be accessed without spending 50 points. Add some decent conditions and fields to our underwater skills and generally buff the hell out of underwater.

Add some kind of weapon swap or some kind of improvement to summoned weapons. Right now Elementalists are about the least flexible class.

Completely redesign the downed state. Maybe shift 2 to 3 and add a knockback skill to 2? Or maybe have 2 be a really big dragons tooth effect that forces badly wounded players to back off or risk being downed? Something so we don’t just automatically die to a crippled chilled immobilised enemy on 3hp.

There’s more, really its a lot of little fixes to mean our abilities work and we can leverage them consistently. As a band aid they could overbuff our downed state (really badly desperately needs work anyway) and then bring it back down when they fix everything else.

Simple: increase our overall damage by 30-50%

Outside of D/D air, which needs a huge buff, I think our damage is fine. The real problem comes down to two issues: (a) our damage is AoE-based and (b) our damage often includes very long casts and/or delays.

When I play someone who is not very good and who doesn’t move, I can down them as fast as any other class. But when I play someone who knows not to stand in the red circles, my damage drops by about 75%.

The two perfect examples are Eruption on the staff and Churning Earth on the dagger. Both of these are amazing abilities if they land. They both never land, though.

Eruption has a cast and a delay, giving your target about three seconds to get away. Even if your target has absolutely awful reaction time, the only way they could possibly fail at getting out of the way is if they made a conscious decision to eat the AoE.

Churning Earth doesn’t have a delay, but it does have a three second cast. So, again, the only way anyone gets hit by it is if they make a conscious decision to get hit. The other issue is that you have to stand still and cast for three seconds, during which we are incredibly vulnerable. Currently, the only way you can cast Churning Earth without losing half your health is if you put up Arcane Shield first. Which isn’t desirable because cantrips are preferable to arcane skills for many (most) ele builds.

I do agree that ele’s have a place in tPvP as a support class. But we have no place at all as anything outside of a niche water build focused completely on condition removal. This isn’t desirable because it’s hard to balance. If anyone becomes as good at condition removal as we are, then we’ll lose our place in tPvP. Why bring an ele who can only remove conditions when you can have another profession that does that and more? It also has a huge impact on condition-centered builds. I’m sure that water ele’s are having a significant negative impact on necro’s.

If you buff our defense and make our AoE’s more robust (ie. easier to land), then you can take away some of our condition-removal. You also make the class a much more enjoyable class to play for the vast majority of people who want to be more than a condition-removing robot.

@Elchulo: No. I’m not sure you realize how big of a change that would be.

Elementalist can be fixed just by doing some minor tweaks in key areas.
-Improving relevancy of certain traits that discourage attunement swapping.
-Reducing delay on high delay skills.
-Slightly reducing overly long cds.
-etc