I think I know whats wrong...
I just rolled an Ele so I’m quite green still, but it sounds like the same argument we have in the Engi forums about elixirs being the only reliable stun breakers and that our gadgets need some of that love too. Spread it around so we’re not forced into a certain build.
Flixx Gatebuster, Orwynn Lightgrave, Seras Snapdragon
[TTBH] [HATE], Yak’s Bend(NA)
[TTBH] [HATE], Yak’s Bend(NA)
I think Elementalists are not given enough incentive to put points into Fire/Air/Earth. Look at all the value you get for putting points into 30 Water and 30 Arcane. Stacking AoE Cleanses and Heals/Blast Finishers that proc off dodges. Those are both incredibly good deals that change the way the class functions.
Can you say there’s anything remotely as rewarding at 30 Fire/Air/Earth?
Also, you’re correct that Water/Arcane has a lot of build synergy with Cantrips (which are already strong). Cantrips grant Regen + Regen cleanses is just crazy good. Is there anything that has a much synergy for Glyphs? Conjures?
It’s an easy answer. No.
Water/Arcane is effective, but that isn’t why everyone uses it. Everyone uses it because the other trait lines need something that would be missed if we didn’t put points in it.
I think that the fire line needs more ways to significantly improve DPS. Its fine that water is the “bunker” line, Arcane is sort of the “mechanic changing” line, but the other 3 lines don’t really do much of anything. Would dumping 30 points in fire vastly improve my dps? no. So people don’t do that because the traits in the fire line aren’t worth their points.
Spreading out the bunker abilites would make the bunker build weaker because no one would be able to trait for all of the bunker abilities – it would take more than 70 points to get to all the traits if they were in different lines. But this isn’t a solution because it breaks the bunker build and doesn’t add anything. What we need are buffs to the fire earth and air lines to make people want to put 30 points into them, and once we have build versatility elementalists will be happy.
Right now it seems like ANet thinks “build versatility” means “make everything equally crappy”.
Just posted this in another thread, but it bears on this one as well:
I may have just thought of a fix for the unkillable bunker that wouldn’t break burst (a bit late, but oh well).
Replace the evasive arcana trait with a trait giving a 10-20% cooldown reduction on ALL weapon skills, then replace all the -20% cooldown traits with a trait giving the current evasive arcana effect of that element on dodge (and buff every roll but water slightly to make the trait worth taking). Maybe make the water roll effect a grandmaster so it’s not possible to take both that and cleansing water.
Currently evasive arcana is just too good, and I’m not sure another nerf to it’s functionality would help unless it was so drastic as to make the trait useless. I think my idea to replace it entirely and offer the current effects as separate traits would be more balanced than further nerfs. Having a GM trait in arcane reduce weapon skill cooldowns just makes sense as well, arcane is the spell-slinger-spammalot line but if you go full into that line your weapon skills won’t be ready most of the time so you’ll just be switching for the traited buffs and to proc weapon sigils.
Also if that got implemented it would be nice if the traited fire dodge blast was reverted to act as a blast finisher and have a decent bit of damage added. The traited air dodge should have the radius of the blind effect increased and/or add weakness/vulnerability. The water dodge is fine as is, if anything it could use a 3-5 sec CD before it becomes available after swapping into water (water swap>ea roll is currently the burst heal which is most annoying to fight against, if there was a small space between the heals it wouldn’t be so dramatic but would still be viable). Earth roll would benefit from a slight damage boost or more bleed under this system.
Hats off to all the ones who stood before me, and taught a fool to ride.
I disagree that Evasive Arcana is too good. It’s just good. Let’s have a look at our options.
Fire:
Persisting Flames
Pyromancer’s Puissance
- These are “nice.” Not great. Not even good. Nice.
Air:
Tempest Defense ( 90 second cooldown?!? )
Grounded (Hyper situational, cumbersome burst)
Earth:
Rock Solid
Written in Stone
– Again. Nice. One trait that requires we save Earth attunement to counter CC if we see it. Another trait that only works if we’re running a signet build.
Water:
Cleansing Water (Build Neutral. Even with the 5s cooldown it’s still an awesome trait)
Powerful Aura (Aura share builds are very good in a support role)
Arcane:
Evasive Arcana (Not Conditional. Not chained to one build.)
Elemental Surge (Pretty bad.)
So, unless you’re running a signet or aura sharing build, you really don’t have a lot of options for GM traits. The Fire traits are pretty bland, though can be handy at times. The Air traits have either a very long CD or are just a royal pain to actually use. The Earth traits are not terrible. The Water traits are incredible. And the other Arcane GM trait is garbage. So, what else would you take?
I disagree that Evasive Arcana is too good. It’s just good. Let’s have a look at our options.
Fire:
Persisting Flames
Pyromancer’s Puissance- These are “nice.” Not great. Not even good. Nice.
Air:
Tempest Defense ( 90 second cooldown?!? )
Grounded (Hyper situational, cumbersome burst)Earth:
Rock Solid
Written in Stone
– Again. Nice. One trait that requires we save Earth attunement to counter CC if we see it. Another trait that only works if we’re running a signet build.Water:
Cleansing Water (Build Neutral. Even with the 5s cooldown it’s still an awesome trait)
Powerful Aura (Aura share builds are very good in a support role)Arcane:
Evasive Arcana (Not Conditional. Not chained to one build.)
Elemental Surge (Pretty bad.)So, unless you’re running a signet or aura sharing build, you really don’t have a lot of options for GM traits. The Fire traits are pretty bland, though can be handy at times. The Air traits have either a very long CD or are just a royal pain to actually use. The Earth traits are not terrible. The Water traits are incredible. And the other Arcane GM trait is garbage. So, what else would you take?
I meant “just too good” in relation to other trait lines GM traits. What I actually suggested (I think anyway) would be just as good, and buff other trait lines by offering something useful. I didn’t really mean it is overpowered, more just that it’s power is unbalanced and should be spread around the trait trees while making a trait which better synergizes with reduced attunement cooldown.
Hats off to all the ones who stood before me, and taught a fool to ride.
I would say Pyromancer’s Puissance is a VERY GOOD trait. I’m able to add between 100 to 300 damage per auto-attack and that’s without precision and crit damage stats.
TL:DR 1. Air/Fire slot traits= weak | air/fire minor traits= very weak,
water/aracana=better basic stats. | stun breakers traits=water line
The real reason bunker is so strong is because there’s only conquest mode in pvp.
Now that our escape button was hurt, there’s even less of a case for going glass.
But as others said, it’s not that water/arcane is too good, it’s just that other lines are slightly weak. I always liked the idea of moving some defensive mechanics to offensive lines to even things out and make those specs more viable (condition removal in fire, damage prevention in air), as well as just giving them a direct buff as well.
As it is now, the ability to get some of that hp we’re desperately lacking seems far better than an extra 5 or so stacks of might, or movement speed that doesn’t stack, or things that only work in one attunement (which is a lot!). The offensive buffs are weak and don’t have much room for creative work. Air as bad, although the grandmaster level seem kind of weak. I count 4 traits I consider good out of 15, but I’d only use 2 of the fire traits and none of the master traits seem decent either. (earth 7.5/15, water 11/15).
Another reason though, is that all of our stun breakers are in cantrips. And since stun breakers are necessary, this means water traits to buff them are more of a reason to chose that line. If glyphs had a stun breaker, then I’m sure air magic would be more used (and so would earth if there was a signet stun breaker, but signets are already decent atm).
And lastly, the minor traits also need to be looked at. While going through the traits, I noticed that all of water’s minor traits are strong. Only the master one is decent in air, but it’s a little weak. The fire grandmaster one is okay as well, but it’s deep into the line. Adept and master minors are okay in earth and Arcana’s master and minor traits are both good. So water/arcana have better minor traits on top of the boosts in stats considered more important to our class.
I would say Pyromancer’s Puissance is a VERY GOOD trait. I’m able to add between 100 to 300 damage per auto-attack and that’s without precision and crit damage stats.
As for this, it would be good, but might stacking is already easy on an ele, and this trait requires time in a single attunement to build up, which offensive builds often don’t have much of.
(edited by Navzar.2938)
As for this, it would be good, but might stacking is already easy on an ele, and this trait requires time in a single attunement to build up, which offensive builds often don’t have much of.
That’s not quite true. While it does require staying in fire, I’ve used it while diving into a group of 6 to 8 risen and come out with 12 to 17 stacks of might 8 seconds later. Using auto-attacks alone will sustain 14 stacks and, on great days, I’ve gone up to 25. The beauty of it is you don’t have to rely on combos to gain might. That means your skill chains are less predictable.
Are you sure all of those stacks came from that trait? And just using auto attack actually makes look slightly better than it is, because dragon’s claw has a low cast time of 1/2 sec (although utilities do add to it, which I forgot about earlier).
I would say Pyromancer’s Puissance is a VERY GOOD trait. I’m able to add between 100 to 300 damage per auto-attack and that’s without precision and crit damage stats.
If you stay in fire attunement all the time sure; if not its terrible.
when im picking traits id like to strugle with them like: oh i want that one, but oh no if i take that one i cant take that one… now its just easy since some are just way better than others. for now i still enjoy playing my ele, i just use my DD build with a staff and its awesome. i hope there will be some changes to the traits in the future tho
I’m not arguing!
I’m simply explaining why I’m right.
I’m simply explaining why I’m right.
Just a random idea I just had for a possible trait:
Air|Elemental Infusion: Crowd Controls on you(fear, stun, daze, knockdown, pull, blowout) transfer to your elemental. (25sec cooldown).
But yeah, I really think they need to improve some of the trait lines, cut some of the fat, combine some weaker traits and add some viability to other skills.
(edited by Leo G.4501)
Because its not the ele….its the pvp game modes that are WRONG.
Impacting traits means impacting PvE and WWW……and this patch shows clearly how wrong is to do so.
Just do a killcount pvp mode and solve once and for all the bunker issue…
Unfortunately that would require some of their pet classes nerfs… i can see why they are not doing that
GW2 balance:
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
I’d like to say that earth has some traits that I’d like to use, but its simply not viable at all to go at least 15 deep in water (might as well be 20 to get a major trait). FYI, water 15 gives you a burst heal when switching to water, which combines well with the water V trait to remove a condition. The water 25 (grandmaster minor) trait synergizes so well with the arcana line that its also hard to give that up to try more toughness/condition damage. As an ele, I simply can’t survive if I don’t heal enough, and thus water is an absolute necessity. We don’t really have any other effective means of survival/damage mitigation than to just out-heal it. I am not really sure what the solution is, but as other have said, we need to heal-heal-heal to live – so that means water. Either add more blocks/evades to other skills, or put a trait in that can mitigate damage (perhaps air gives you a % chance of blinding opponents on attack or dodging attacks, ya know, being all fast and lightning-y and all).
Also, to reasonably output abilities, we need to be switching attunements often. Every other class is severely hampered by ignoring their class mechanic, and eles are as well. Trying to specialize in only one attunement means missing out on all of the potential of the other attunements. Also, no single attunement is good enough to stick around in forever. Thus, you have to go at least 20 deep in arcana to get a reasonable rate of swapping, and then you might as well grab EA – one of out best traits. If you want to remedy this situation, make the base attunement CD 12, and have arcana be half as effective in that regard. Still worth getting, but not absolutely necessary.
Another problem, as BlackBeard mentioned, is that we need to keep swapping attunements.
A lot of Fire and Earth traits only work in their respective attunements, which is not possible against players. Lightning, Water, and Arcane traits are better because they work across all attunements.
The standard D/D 0 10 0 30 30 build takes swiftness/fury on auras (works in 2 attunements), and makes cantrips more powerful (works in all attunements). Obviously the Arcane tree affects all attunements, and reduces the swapping cooldown too.
Solution (because why not)
1) 30 (or 25) point trait that reduces cooldown of that particular attunement so it can be used a lot more often. Pretty sure it’s been suggested before, somewhere.
or
2) Make traits non-attunement specific, which is what everyone else has said.
1st thing wrong we know since month…
Autoattacks….
Ele is the profession with weakest autoattacks thuse need to swap.
Then we could go with the thing everybody knows that most our skills does half the stuff for double the cooldown of other profession similar skill thus we need to swap.
Notice how removing boons and attunement would result in a light class with low hp and no class mechanic and defense mechanic….
GW2 balance:
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
Byron, removing the class mechanic from a class is ofcourse going to kitten the class, you could say the same for removing virtues and boons from guardians :p
Welcome to my world – http://emikochan13.wordpress.com
but is what people ask for elementalist ._.
They are still asking for nerfs….they have no shame at all….
Free kill is not enough ele should give double loot in www and obviously award server points….
We all know there is only 1 thing wrong:
PvP (and not profession but the game mode per se).
GW2 balance:
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
Whine whine whine…. you don’t need stunbreakers….
Whine whine whine…. you don’t need stunbreakers….
If you play in Queensdale and RP all day sure; you won’t need stunbreakers.
Whine whine whine…. you don’t need stunbreakers….
Have you been to the Cursed Shore lately? I’ve been stunned more in 5 minutes there than in 5 hours of wvw.
Whine whine whine…. you don’t need stunbreakers….
Have you been to the Cursed Shore lately? I’ve been stunned more in 5 minutes there than in 5 hours of wvw.
Or spvp or wvw (outside of the zerg:p), or fractals. Stunbreakers are pretty important, especially against other players, which is what most balanced is done around.
(edited by Navzar.2938)
When you boil it all down, I think it comes down to one thing: DPS vs. Defense/Support
The problem lies in the fact that the disparity between the efficiency and effectiveness of the DPS path vs the Defense/Support path is huge.
That is to say, you get a lot more bang for your buck by going the Defense/Support route than you do the DPS route. In fact, the benefits of the Defense/Support route FAR exceed the benefits of the DPS route. The disparity between the usefulness of the two routes is so great that not only do you gain less from going the DPS route, but you also have to give up a lot of very important benefits from the Defensive/Support traits.
When you look at it from a solo perspective, DPS is meaningless if you cannot survive long enough to make use of it. So the whole point of DPS is to take out the enemy before they can take you out. But it’s often just not high enough to achieve this goal, especially with mobs.
So then the entire game of the Elementalist, no matter which path you choose, inherently becomes about attrition and maintaining your own survival. So to be at all effective without the help of tanks and healers to back us up, we must put our resources towards our own defense and support. The exchange rate for putting 30 into Water is far better than the exchange rate for putting 30 into Fire.
With the current state of the purely offensive trait paths, putting points into them is just like throwing money away. The other two or three trait paths are simply better investments and the poor return from the offensive traits makes it almost necessary to spend on Defense/Support. And likewise, this all applies to armor and weapon stats as well.
You have to give up so much for so little offensive power that it leaves us with no other choice than to go defensive. The poor return is pigeonholing us. It’s not like in GW1, where we had henchmen and heroes to cover for our shortcomings. We don’t have that option now. And without being in a party 24/7, it makes those shortcomings all the more glaring.
We just can not be the same Elementalist in this game that we were in GW1. The stats and traits won’t allow it. So unless the offensive path gets buffed to the point where we no longer need to have high vitality and toughness, we can never be the nukes we’re supposed to be.
And frankly, from a genre standpoint the current state of things just does not make any sense. Forcing us to put so much into support and defense while still trying to force the trope of mages as cloth-armor only?
Think about it: What is Vitality and Toughness if not invisible armor? So we’re still forced to wear cloth armor, but then we just put on invisible plate armor over top of it?
Why not just let us wear medium or heavy armor? Then we wouldn’t have to pump so many stats & points into defense. They could buff us offensively and could afford to nerf us defensively. They could even add a caveat to wearing the “wrong” armor for our class that makes it slightly less effective, like in TES:Oblivion. Say, the higher your armor, the less effective your magic is.
Wouldn’t that open up a lot of freedom of choice? And not just in what armor we wear, but in how we spend our points.
(edited by bastien.7961)
I do pvp without stunbreakers after 40 some matches I have yet to be stunned.
I do pvp without stunbreakers after 40 some matches I have yet to be stunned.
Either you were very lucky or your opponents sucked hard. I’ve never done pvp but I’ve had duels in wvw where one stun made the difference between winning and losing.
I do pvp without stunbreakers after 40 some matches I have yet to be stunned.
Either you were very lucky or your opponents sucked hard. I’ve never done pvp but I’ve had duels in wvw where one stun made the difference between winning and losing.
Lucky, very very lucky :p Just tried to do the same thing today and got stunned a couple times but its only D/D eles, a few wariors and mesmers with swords that stun you. I wouldn’t want to base my intire build around stun breakers if there are only so few that use stuns in the first place.