Guild Wars 2

One per person? I’ll go ahead and assume that the Downed state is a known issue then.

I’d like our auto attack damage being increased. As it stands now, i feel like i can chain a few spells as intended of our class (even though its such short range thus very choreographed and easy to see coming) but then my damage just DROPS.

It doesnt feel intuitive either. The fire auto attack does horrible damage because it stacks a Burn instead (what doesnt), and the Water auto attack probably does highest damage of all, which is in turn our healing attune strangely enough. The earth one takes a long time to stack up, which is again counterintuitive with our class (changing attunes often). Air 1 is just..i dont even need to mention it. This is witjh S/D. But i imagine the other weapons have this problem too.

Fix these abilities a little and i think we’ll go a long way. Wouldnt mind some iteration on our comperatively weak traits either.

If you want burst, grab Arcane Wave and Arcane Power instead of those 3 cantrips or signets. Our burst isnt that bad, its just easy to see coming at times, but that our damage goes to practically 0 after we used it. Whereas others can do comparable burst and still do 2k auto attacks crits. In part because they can actually wear Berserker Amulets and rely more on their superior class-given stats and survivability thus retaining enough damage, amplified by far better auto attacks and higher damaging single abilities. Not to mention QUICKNESS.

I would love to have my Elemental / Lesser Elemental as a permanent “tank” pet. Nerf their damage if necessary for balance, but increase their HP and aggro.

This might work either as a complete overhaul of the Elemental / Lesser Elemental glyph, or as a Major Trait.

ideas thread with an admin post, this will be utterly massive in no time

dragons tooth in its current form is mechanically incorrect, it simply drops to slow and does not have a large enough AoE/burst damage to function the way it does and its animation is HUGE and noticeable

dragons tooth needs to drop much faster, fast enough that players cant walk out of it but slow enough that you can still dodge roll away, this would not be overpowered since it is restricted to a cooldown and the amount of dragons tooth you cast during a fight will not change

you cannot comprehend how angry i get when a slow moving pack dolyak only takes a glancing blow from a dragons tooth because it already walked too far ahead

I think we should be able to bind a weapon set to a specific attunement. Only changeable outside of combat.

It would help us be more adaptable to the changing nature of combat. Would help especially with D/D being pigeon-holed into melee combat when situations often demand ranged and vise-versa.

Some examples would be fire/staff for long range and AoE, air/S/D for fights requiring mobility, water/staff for healing, and earth/D/F for melee/defense.

I can foresee a few balancing issues like having access to multiple auras and weapon swapping sigils. But I think shared ICDs (I believe sigils already have it) would solve that problem.

And face it this change would actually give us a reason to use the focus. We all know that thing is for the most part useless.

Main problems are:

-30 point in arcana for a normal cd on attunement is too much.
-Too many gt spells ( example phoenix, ground target -.-’ ) Why im forced to aim 2 or 3 spells in every attunement. If i want aim i play an fps or another tipe of mmorpg designed for it…
-Our burst damage is very easy avoidable, animation is ridiculous, the enemy can avoid it easy. In adition to this the map design is full of obstacles…
- Traits element sinergy is just lol
-Last but not least, we are glass and its ok but where is the cannon ?

I’d love for the summoned weapons to be more versatile, either by being able to swap them or to merge them into one skill that alternates depending on the attunement.

The simple answer? I’m not sure there is an easy fix.

The complicated answer? There is no singular problem here, it is a myriad of issues all compounding into the effects we see. Lowest base HP and Toughness in-game, combined with lower damage dealing potential on average make up a decent chunk of it. If we’re supposed to be ‘glass cannons’ as our HP and Defense imply, then give us our ‘cannon’ part back. From there, other things can be adapted and/or fixed to better work overall.

As for me, if I had to complain about one thing that I want fixed ASAP, it’s our complete lack of underwater capabilities. It’s just ungodly, and I will willingly take the extra half hour + just to ensure that I can use Whirlpool for each big fight on story quests that are underwater. It’s that terrible.

And yes, if our attunements actually did what they advertised, it might make a bit more sense. Air is a particular cuplrit on this in regards to a Staff.

I want to note as well that my interpretation of the intentions of GW2 is so that there is no ‘best weapon’ for a class; it’s all about a matter of preference. If you prefer the AoE and support capabilities of the staff much like I do, then that should be equally as viable as a Sceptre/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger as far as damage output goes, balanced a bit for AoE and Combo Fields applied, but not to the horrific degree that they are now.

My ele isn’t 80 yet so i can’t see how much bigger the problem gets by endgame but I definitly feel more synergy is needed in the attunment system to make it feel less like a liability once you get into traits.

Maybe something along the lines of attunment specific traits retain their effects for 10-15 seconds after leaving the attunment. Maybe even give each attunment an innate passive effect not requiring traits, Like fire gives a passive boost to power, air makes endurance regenerate 25% faster, earth boosts toughness or condition damage, and water gives regeneration or something similar. Combine the two and this would also kind of brings a Risk v Reward option if the elementalist quickly shifts between all four elements to stack the buffs, but at the same time locking themselves into only one element by putting the other’s on cooldown.

But that’s just a casual ele observation, I’m sure there are more elementalist hardliners here that have a better understanding of what the class needs to make it accessible.

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

Diabolos.5493:

The problem with Elementalist is simple, the class requires a great deal of skill to play and enjoy properly. The Elementalist can be just as strong as any other class, you however are going to need to put in twice as much effort to be just as good as other classes.

This is the entire draw of the class for me. This, combined with the versatility of the class, gives a much higher “payoff” for perfecting your gameplay and mastering the class, at least in perception. I loves it. I don’t buy the underpowered complaints one bit- with my playstyle, my ele has the highest damage, longevity, and mobility of any class I’ve played so far. If I have to work 4x as hard as others to achieve that, that’s actually a plus. I love showing off.
_

Here’s my idea for the thread: Put a finisher of some kind in the Staff Air attunement. This may seem simple, but it would be a defining change for the staff as an Elementalist build and would make it a lot more attractive.

It doesn’t need to be a very powerful one, since we have several blasts already, but a utility finsher would be great. Currently, every single one of our weapon skill finishers is in Earth. I think this is because every other attunement has a combo field, and self-comboing should not be that easy or without cost (putting your attunements on cooldown). This is fine. As much as I love the Gust/Static Field combo when kiting, I would be willing to lose the combo field of #5 (static field) or even the entire skill to get a finisher in this attunement. This would make attunement hopping much more fluid and attractive for staff users. It’s really a pain that the entire weapon set is defined by it’s combos, but you can only combo in one element. It disrupts the flow while you wait for the earth attunement to recycle.

Specifically, I suggest a whirl finisher. Ele’s have plenty of blasts and projectiles already, and whirls are not very powerful offensively, so whirl would be ideal to use in water or light fields for group support. A ranged whirl, like summoning a tornado, would be even cooler, would be a unique ability to help define the Ele, and fit in the ranged support theme as well. Changing either Gust or Static field to a cyclone effect of some kind would be thematically consistent with the staff (ranged, aoe support) and shouldn’t be overpowered because air is already the weakest staff attunement (it’s support and offense are both poor. It’s only good for creating a gap, which can only be done once every 20 secs or so). Gust has aiming issues and is really just a weaker version of Shockwave, so it’s a good one to change. Static field is a candidate if you need to remove the combo field from the attunement in exchange for a finisher.

If that’s too powerful, a leap would be a good alternative to add some personal defense to the staff, which it lags behind in atm. As a third alternate, if that’s still too powerful (unlikely imo), build the finisher into Evasive Arcana, so it requires a 30-pt trait investment to get access to.

That’s a big wall of text for a simple change, but it has a lot of implications to staff gameplay and has the potential to singlehandedly address all the issues with the weapon. I play staff exclusively so I’m not qualified to comment on the other issues in this thread either, might as well focus on what I know

1) All the other classes spike damage needs to be toned down. Elementalist damage is OK for the health pool the GW2 classes got, while other classes dropping 70% of their opponents health in one hit is not.

2) Being survivable by speccing Earth should not be THE ONE way to be survivable. Each spec shold provide a different way to survive attacks. Earth provides “tankiness”, others should provide CC or similar. Even higher DPS (fire spec?) would work as tank, following the “gank is tank” doctrine.

3) Downed status lacks of an interrupt skill.

4) Elite skills and several cantrips are way too mediocre compared to other classes’.

5) Speccing for bleeds should actually yield similar effects than speccing for direct damage. The scaling is so poor that – also considering how many condition removal skills are in game – it’s not really competitive. To add insult to injury, the very low condition spec damage happens to be in the same spec we must go to have some basic survivability.

I just spent about 30 minutes monkeying with my traits. And then (since I have a baby thief) I monkeyed with theirs. And I gotta say, I feel incredibly shafted.

Just go through our trait list options… eh, eh, hmm not bad, eh, eh, eh, well guess that works…. but you go through a thief’s options and its like Wow, I can’t decide which one is best, they are all great.

That makes the class versatile. The attunement versatility is garbage. We have to spam 100 buttons to do enough damage to begin to match EVERYONE else’s damage that they do with 2-3.

So, if I had to pick 1 thing (and only 1), it would be the reward vs. effort approach. Give us more bang for our buck if we work for it (or make other classes work for more bang for their buck).

However, I agree with everything Vaerah said (especially #2). So… need more items, see that list.

I have a lot of suggestions but i will only state 2:

- Make something to conjured weapons please! (make them more OP, make more traits to them..) no one uses conjured weapons for a reason.

- Elementalist support is horrible because all water traits are horrible in my opinion. All I wanted was an elementalist water based support that can be versatile enough to be independent. Sadly I had to make a guardian to have 3234234 more dmg and much more support abilities/traits.

A second bar called “mentality” that allow us have more power and lesser reuser while we have “mentality”. Each skill consume a part of these “mentality”. When we have 0 “mentality” we have lesser power and more reuse. This could be the better buff for elementalist.

I’ve posted so much on the exact, minute issues I think would improve the elementalist if they were changed, and I’ve realized that the most concise way I can put it is this: there needs to be a significant buff or complete overhaul to a number of skill sets.

Primarily, this means mainhand daggers for air and earth and scepter for water, but I think mainhand dagger in water and the majority of staff skills for air could be part of that.

Having access to so many skills at once is a great advantage, theoretically. Right now I think it falls flat because not all the sets are equal. A lot of skill sets (as in skills assigned to a specific weapon in a specific attunement) obviously outperform others, and many, while effective, only incentivize swapping into an attunement, blowing cooldowns, and then leaving. For offhand daggers, this is exactly the case for air and earth and, frankly, water as well. Fire, for basically all weapons, seems to be the only attunement that can stand on it’s own. If all skills were more meaningful and comparable, we’d likely see significantly more effective elementalists as well as greater variety in playstyles.

And while that was my one thing, it’s obvious that traits need a look at. Just wanted to, like, keep that on the table.

I’m waiting to play elementalist until they make another pass on their traits. Why are we the only profession that does not have a falling damage trait?

Let’s put it this way…

When I see an elementalist in WvW and I down them, I feel guilty. I know what they are probably thinking and further, there’s nothing they can do now that they are on the ground. In the back of my mind I have that nagging feeling that the table could have been reverse and it could be me laying there. I know what they feel when they enter a WvW area only to be targeted by everyone immediately because they will die fast and its a quick kill number on the board… and heck, not like you’re gonna get stopped while trying to kill them. I feel bad knowing that I just have to endure a few stuns or blinds and then they die instantly. I feel bad seeing a staff elementalist alone in a field.

This doesn’t happen some of the time or part of the time, it happens EVERY time I down an ele… which happens a lot cuz I’m pretty good at killing em. When I kill a warrior? Nothing but smoldering vengeance. A thief, the quicker they die the better. In fact, I’d like to revive them just to kill them a second time. They deserve it because they purchased GW2 Easy Mode. (alt is a thief)

Until that nagging feeling goes away, the elementalist is not balanced. I want to be able to fight an ele and think to myself “that was a good fight” or something similar. Heck, I’d love it if the thieves or the warriors or the mesmers or any other class for that matter, gave the elementalist a shread of respect.

1. Attunment cooldowns are too long.We’re forced to go 30 in arcane or the class falls apart.

2.The following skills take way to long to land after you cast them dragon tooth,shatterstone,comet and eruption.I’m fine with people being able to see and dodge our skills.But the problem is you can avoid them by just walking out of the way.Players should at least have to dodge if they want to avoid our attacks.

3.Our elites are really weak.Tornado needs to do more damage and knock back more often.Our elementals need to do more damage.

4.Our downstate needs a way to stop a stomp.Every other class gets a way to stop stomps except us.If we get downed in a group fight we die unless somone stuns/knocksback the player stomping us.

@ Seraskus
Most def. I believe the Mesmer actually has an ability that does just that. An aoe pushback.

Nerf AoE fire damage a bit, at least in PvE.

Oh, you said underpowered. LOL.

I kind of have to wonder if the people who say elementalists are underpowered have actually played other classes, because when I play elementalist, I feel godly…

That said, if I was going to change something, I maybe would let you set a different weapon for each attunement, but I don’t know if that would completely wreck balance somehow.

There needs to be a trait in each tree that allows quicker swapping to a companion element. This would give synergy between some of the elements, and encourage attunement swapping, as a large problem is that people want to spec in to a single attunement, and sit in that attunement. When in reality you should be speccing into (and using) two different attunements, and still relying on the utility of the other two, even if you don’t rely on them for damage.

Examples:
Earth trait: Magmaflow- if you attune to fire from earth, the attunement cooldown is reduced by 25%
Earth trait: Mireflow- if you attune to water from earth, the attunement cooldown is reduced by 25%
Fire trait: Emberflow – if you attune to earth from fire, the attunement cooldown is reduced by 25%
Fire Trait: Sparkflow – if you attune to air from fire, the attunement cooldown is reduced by 25%

And so on, each attunement can get this bonus for up to two other elements, those available being its companion element, as opposed to its opposite (fire and water are opposites, air and earth are opposites…)

In this manner it would look like this.

Earth attunement may go on smaller CD if you you attune to Fire or Water
Fire attunement may go on smaller CD if you attune to Earth or Air
Water attunement may go on smaller CD if you attune to Earth or Air
Air attunement may go on smaller CD if you attune to Fire or Water

And honestly, it’s not a ‘small’ change, but I would recommend a complete overhaul of the arcane tree and skills. They don’t make sense, fulfill no desirable archetype, and having two trees that rely on RNG crit will always either be overpowered or useless. Make the air tree the crit tree. But that’s just my opinion, a lot of people like the arcane tree (though that may be because it’s currently one of our two viable PvP builds…)

Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

Staff, two-handed:

Frozen Ground (chill)
Lightning Surge (blind)
Gust (push)
Static Field (stun)
Unsteady Ground (cripple)
Shockwave (immobilize)

Scepter, main hand:

Blinding Flash (blind)
Dust Devil (blind)

(So obviously the scepter is not much of a control weapon.)

Dagger, main hand:

Frozen Burst (chill)
Shocking Aura (stun)
Magnetic Grasp (immobilize)

Dagger, offhand:

Frost Aura (chill)
Updraft (launch)
Earthquake (knockdown)
Churning Earth (cripple)

Focus, offhand:

Freezing Gust (chill)
Comet (daze)
Gale (knockdown)

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

Signet of Forums.4397:

Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

He’s right though, at least according to the developers. In beta they were challenged several times on the Elementalists damage output, the developers claimed that the elementalists control abilities were factored in to their overall output and that players weren’t factoring this in. Design-wise, this is the right decision, as CC is both damage prevented and damage dealt. But, your post got me thinking, and I started poking around the other classes. ALL of the heavy and medium armor classes have just as much, (or more) control available to them as the elementalist does, excepting maybe the engineer, who like the elementalist is stuck with a single weapon. The warrior, for example, can have more damage than us, be tankier, and yet have EIGHT hard CCs on his bar at one time!

Conncept.7638:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

He’s right though, at least according to the developers. In beta they were challenged several times on the Elementalists damage output, the developers claimed that the elementalists control abilities were factored in to their overall output and that players weren’t factoring this in. Design-wise, this is the right decision, as CC is both damage prevented and damage dealt. But, your post got me thinking, and I started poking around the other classes. ALL of the heavy and medium armor classes have just as much, (or more) control available to them as the elementalist does, excepting maybe the engineer, who like the elementalist is stuck with a single weapon. The warrior, for example, can have more damage than us, be tankier, and yet have EIGHT hard CCs on his bar at one time!

It is true that a warrior gets quite a few control abilities with the hammer that require them to get into melee range.

And of course another common complaint I see on these forums is that melee is too hard.

That said, the argument that was put forth was that elementalists should get more control, not that warriors should get less. How much is too much? A game is not balanced by just piling more and more stuff onto classes.

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Conncept.7638:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

He’s right though, at least according to the developers. In beta they were challenged several times on the Elementalists damage output, the developers claimed that the elementalists control abilities were factored in to their overall output and that players weren’t factoring this in. Design-wise, this is the right decision, as CC is both damage prevented and damage dealt. But, your post got me thinking, and I started poking around the other classes. ALL of the heavy and medium armor classes have just as much, (or more) control available to them as the elementalist does, excepting maybe the engineer, who like the elementalist is stuck with a single weapon. The warrior, for example, can have more damage than us, be tankier, and yet have EIGHT hard CCs on his bar at one time!

It is true that a warrior gets quite a few control abilities with the hammer that require them to get into melee range.

And of course another common complaint I see on these forums is that melee is too hard.

That said, the argument that was put forth was that elementalists should get more control, not that warriors should get less. How much is too much?

I never said warriors should get less, our lower damage is supposed to be supplemented by more control, but it’s just not. We have no more control than any other class, the warrior doesn’t just have the hammer’s four control effects, he also has three with maces, and two with each ranged weapon. And the Warrior ALWAYS has a secondary weapon to rely on, which can be greatly divergent in purpose and output to the first, or supplement the similar output and purpose of the first. Whereas attunements have a similar output across the board, and yet rarely supplement each others utility.

And honestly, at this point, I don’t think we’re in danger of getting too much control by a longshot as we have… what… 5 hard CC abilites? With no weapon swap a maximum of two on our attunement bar at a time. Almost all of our control is in slows, frozen, immobilizes, and cripples. These soft CCs barely change damage output against a melee class and don’t change output at all against ranged classes.

Look at air for example, air attunement blatantly states “Attune to air, gaining heavy damage and control abilities”… really? Air has TWO hard CCs, earth has two, fire and water have none. And, not counting elites, there are two hard CCs in utility (I count blinds as hard CC, as it does greatly reduce damage output) What does it matter if our control is ranged or melee when we have almost none?

Conncept.7638:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Conncept.7638:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

He’s right though, at least according to the developers. In beta they were challenged several times on the Elementalists damage output, the developers claimed that the elementalists control abilities were factored in to their overall output and that players weren’t factoring this in. Design-wise, this is the right decision, as CC is both damage prevented and damage dealt. But, your post got me thinking, and I started poking around the other classes. ALL of the heavy and medium armor classes have just as much, (or more) control available to them as the elementalist does, excepting maybe the engineer, who like the elementalist is stuck with a single weapon. The warrior, for example, can have more damage than us, be tankier, and yet have EIGHT hard CCs on his bar at one time!

It is true that a warrior gets quite a few control abilities with the hammer that require them to get into melee range.

And of course another common complaint I see on these forums is that melee is too hard.

That said, the argument that was put forth was that elementalists should get more control, not that warriors should get less. How much is too much?

I never said warriors should get less, our lower damage is supposed to be supplemented by more control, but it’s just not. We have no more control than any other class, the warrior doesn’t just have the hammer’s four control effects, he also has three with maces, and two with each ranged weapon.

And honestly, at this point, I don’t think we’re in danger of getting too much control by a longshot as we have… what… 3 hard CC abilites? Almost of our control is slows, frozen, immobilizes, and cripples. These soft CCs barely change damage output against a melee class and don’t change output at all against ranged classes.

Look at air for example, air attunement blatantly states “Attune to air, gaining heavy damage and control abilities”… really? Air has TWO hard CCs, earth has two, fire and water have none.

I know you didn’t say the warrior should get less. I question why, if the issue that you have is warrior CC versus elementalist CC.

As for ranged versus ranged, I know you can’t seriously be saying that the elementalist is at a disadvantage there…

If elementalists need as much “hard” CC as, say, mesmers, then I guess mesmer ranged DPS needs bumped up…like WAY up.

So I wonder if the issue here (if there indeed is one) is really with elementalists, or is it with warriors?

Anyway, when all is said and done, ArenaNet has basically said that melee is supposed to be more powerful than ranged, because it is harder to hit with melee, just in general, and furthermore, once in melee range, on average, you take more of a beating yourself.

Can’t do it with just 1 IMO.

1. Drop spells all need to drop faster. Mouthbreathers shouldn’t be able to backpeddle out of them by accident. Relying on 1 or 2 45 second cooldown abilities just to make your 4-6 sec cooldown sloooooow drop spells land is just dumb.

2. Dagger mainhand needs a damage buff. The difference between a D/D thief and a D/D ele is laughable.

3. Downstate #2 needs to be quicker and start off with a small knockback then the current immobilize + damage.

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Conncept.7638:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Conncept.7638:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

He’s right though, at least according to the developers. In beta they were challenged several times on the Elementalists damage output, the developers claimed that the elementalists control abilities were factored in to their overall output and that players weren’t factoring this in. Design-wise, this is the right decision, as CC is both damage prevented and damage dealt. But, your post got me thinking, and I started poking around the other classes. ALL of the heavy and medium armor classes have just as much, (or more) control available to them as the elementalist does, excepting maybe the engineer, who like the elementalist is stuck with a single weapon. The warrior, for example, can have more damage than us, be tankier, and yet have EIGHT hard CCs on his bar at one time!

It is true that a warrior gets quite a few control abilities with the hammer that require them to get into melee range.

And of course another common complaint I see on these forums is that melee is too hard.

That said, the argument that was put forth was that elementalists should get more control, not that warriors should get less. How much is too much?

I never said warriors should get less, our lower damage is supposed to be supplemented by more control, but it’s just not. We have no more control than any other class, the warrior doesn’t just have the hammer’s four control effects, he also has three with maces, and two with each ranged weapon.

And honestly, at this point, I don’t think we’re in danger of getting too much control by a longshot as we have… what… 3 hard CC abilites? Almost of our control is slows, frozen, immobilizes, and cripples. These soft CCs barely change damage output against a melee class and don’t change output at all against ranged classes.

Look at air for example, air attunement blatantly states “Attune to air, gaining heavy damage and control abilities”… really? Air has TWO hard CCs, earth has two, fire and water have none.

I know you didn’t say the warrior should get less. I question why, if the issue that you have is warrior CC versus elementalist CC.

As for ranged versus ranged, I know you can’t seriously be saying that the elementalist is at a disadvantage there…

If the elementalist got as much “hard” CC as, say, mesmers, then I guess mesmer ranged DPS needs bumped up…like WAY up.

So I wonder if the issue here (if there indeed is one) is really with elementalists, or is it with warriors?

Do you seriously not know what a comparison is or are you just being facetious ?

I use the warrior as an example of how the elementalist is kittened. I don’t think that the warrior has too much control, and I never said so. But if the elementalist is supposed to have less damage because it has more control; and the warrior has both more damage and more control… then… logically… the designer’s justification for the elementalists low damage is nil. Or, on the other hand, the elementalist was not given as much control as the designers believed they gave it, and it still needs more.

EDIT: Kittened? What? How is the word g’imped offensive? Does arenanet have something against cripples?

Conncept.7638:

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Conncept.7638:

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Conncept.7638:

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Moonpuncher.7250:

Give me more control. Mages should be powerful and tricky, and reward a smart player. Right now they’re harder to play than other classes and maybe JUST as powerful (if played VERY well).

In every MMO game, the “mage/wizard/elementalist/magicfaceuser” just casts a bunch of fire and element damage spells, some of which have a little utility. Except that big MMO everyone talks about: they had the best mage class I’ve ever seen. It was tricky, and you could really control your opponent if you wanted to.

So please, give us more ways to control fights instead of simply dealing earth damage or condition damage or direct fire damage. I want a reason not to button-mash.

How much control do you want? Perma-immobilize? I didn’t even list the things that reflect projectiles and stuff like that.

He’s right though, at least according to the developers. In beta they were challenged several times on the Elementalists damage output, the developers claimed that the elementalists control abilities were factored in to their overall output and that players weren’t factoring this in. Design-wise, this is the right decision, as CC is both damage prevented and damage dealt. But, your post got me thinking, and I started poking around the other classes. ALL of the heavy and medium armor classes have just as much, (or more) control available to them as the elementalist does, excepting maybe the engineer, who like the elementalist is stuck with a single weapon. The warrior, for example, can have more damage than us, be tankier, and yet have EIGHT hard CCs on his bar at one time!

It is true that a warrior gets quite a few control abilities with the hammer that require them to get into melee range.

And of course another common complaint I see on these forums is that melee is too hard.

That said, the argument that was put forth was that elementalists should get more control, not that warriors should get less. How much is too much?

I never said warriors should get less, our lower damage is supposed to be supplemented by more control, but it’s just not. We have no more control than any other class, the warrior doesn’t just have the hammer’s four control effects, he also has three with maces, and two with each ranged weapon.

And honestly, at this point, I don’t think we’re in danger of getting too much control by a longshot as we have… what… 3 hard CC abilites? Almost of our control is slows, frozen, immobilizes, and cripples. These soft CCs barely change damage output against a melee class and don’t change output at all against ranged classes.

Look at air for example, air attunement blatantly states “Attune to air, gaining heavy damage and control abilities”… really? Air has TWO hard CCs, earth has two, fire and water have none.

I know you didn’t say the warrior should get less. I question why, if the issue that you have is warrior CC versus elementalist CC.

As for ranged versus ranged, I know you can’t seriously be saying that the elementalist is at a disadvantage there…

If the elementalist got as much “hard” CC as, say, mesmers, then I guess mesmer ranged DPS needs bumped up…like WAY up.

So I wonder if the issue here (if there indeed is one) is really with elementalists, or is it with warriors?

Do you seriously not know what a comparison is or are you just being facetious ?

I use the warrior as an example of how the elementalist is kittened. I don’t think that the warrior has too much control, and I never said so. But if the elementalist is supposed to have less damage because it has more control; and the warrior has both more damage and more control… then… logically… the designer’s justification for the elementalists low damage is nil. Or, on the other hand, the elementalist was not given as much control as the designers believed they gave it.

EDIT: Kittened? What? How is the word g’imped offensive? Does arenanet have something against cripples?

Right. We have established that you did not say that warriors should have less CC, but again, I ask why. Having too much CC in a game is just bad. Again, I ask how much is too much?

When everyone spends every entire battle crippled, chilled, stunned, knocked down, or dazed, is it enough, then?

I just want the ability to quickswitch between weapons out of combat. =(

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Right. We have established that you did not say that warriors should have less CC, but again, I ask why. Having too much CC in a game is just bad. Again, I ask how much is too much?

When everyone spends every entire battle crippled, chilled, stunned, knocked down, or dazed, is it enough, then?

I don’t know what game you’re playing, but in the one I’ve been playing, we are very far from having too much CC. The only time I’ve been CC stacked for more than 2-3 seconds is when I’ve accidentally stumbled solo in to a 1v5. Personally, I don’t know how much is too much, I’d imagine if you had a 5-team of warriors with 8 CCs, that would be too much. But honestly, that’s a crapshoot strategy and wouldn’t likely win you a single game with the damage output it would have.

Assuming everyone already posted about attunements and skills..

I’d like it if you didn’t auto attack when you switch attunements.

Conncept.7638:

I don’t know what game you’re playing, but in the one I’ve been playing, we are very far from having too much CC. The only time I’ve been CC stacked for more than 2-3 seconds is when I’ve accidentally stumbled solo in to a 1v5. Personally, I don’t know how much is too much, I’d imagine if you had a 5-team of warriors with 8 CCs, that would be too much. But honestly, that’s a crapshoot strategy and wouldn’t likely win you a single game.

So what is the precise amount and type of CC that you could like to add to elementalists, including duration and cooldowns? And at what range can they be used? Because the range at which something can be used is more significant than some people seem to like to imagine. Also, what are they replacing or being tacked onto?

Bug fixes, trait issues and tweaks aside, I’d like to see the (utility) Conjured Weapons be revised.

It has come up in a few threads that when using a Conjured Weapon, you lose a lot of versatility and rarely does one use all 15 charges, let alone the possible 25 before tossing it away.

I believe that if they were combined into a single Glyph-like skill whereby changing from one attunement to another would change the Conjured Weapon in your hand, we would see more Elementalists using Conjured Weapons in all tiers of play.

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I don’t know what game you’re playing, but in the one I’ve been playing, we are very far from having too much CC. The only time I’ve been CC stacked for more than 2-3 seconds is when I’ve accidentally stumbled solo in to a 1v5. Personally, I don’t know how much is too much, I’d imagine if you had a 5-team of warriors with 8 CCs, that would be too much. But honestly, that’s a crapshoot strategy and wouldn’t likely win you a single game.

Now you are just being facetious and derisive. I’ve made my suggestion, and last I checked, I’m not a game designer, and as much as I would love to (really I would) I don’t have time to play one on the internet. I’m not going to redesign the entire class in this little thread just to quaff your vampiric tendencies.

In my opinion, and so far as my knowledge goes, adding more control to the Elementalist is an entirely viable design strategy for rebalancing the class. Don’t think so? Good for you, say so, prove it if you have the time, because I’m just trying to enjoy my free time before i head off to work again, and I don’t.

Had to repost, mod didn’t like my verbage apparently.

Did you guys seriously just take half a page of a suggestion thread running a flame war?

Quote is broken like this class so I’ll cut and paste from another poster:

“There are 4 main points the ele needs some love
The downed state, 2 needs a CC that interrupts stomps
We need more damage/burst on many skills (nearly every class’s auto and burst skills do waaaaay more damage, while not having to be coordinated as perfectly); mainly talking about scepter as a whole and dagger lightning skills – also more fields outside of staff
Also D/D needs more forms of survivability/mobility/CC to be comparable to other classes weaponsets – as of now its go in and never come out
Many traits need work, many Grandmaster traits are utter trash, also we need more encouragement to attunementswap, since traiting a certain way makes some attunements WAY more attractive to stay in than swapping to others (even more so without lingering elements). "

Not that the developer cares as they haven’t given any feedback after dozens of these threads. All I want for Christmas is a working ele.

the 20% less cd on cantrips does not work on mist form that is all

Evade would greatly help the class. In other games Evade (or dodge) was trained by using skill points. In GW2, Evade can be part of the air attunement. Similar to how putting 5 skill points in earth gives better toughness.

I’m all in support for the out-of-combat weapon swap.

There are two things I don’t really like about the class.
First isn’t just about the class I guess but we got way less hp than for example warriors.

I got around 13k hp without any extra vit while warriors have almost 20k.
I find it kind of weird considering we don’t have any more damage than them. We got weaker base defense too.
Warriors have even got ranged spells that match our ranged spells.

The second thing is that we have to choose between short range(300 w/ dagger), medium (900w/ scepter) or long range (1200 with staff).
While other classes can pick one long range weapon and then one short range one.

I would like to be able to swap weapon, at least in pve/wvw. But perhaps with 60sec cd or something like that. So we for example can start with attacking people on the wall while we’re attacking a keep and then swap when we get inside the keep.

Perhaps even an out of combat swap would work. I know we can equip other set of weapons ourselves while we are out of combat. But a button to do that for us would be much easier and better.

I guess the downside with combat swap w/ long cd would be that we could spam all spells from staff and then change to dagger and spam 16 more spells.
A solution for that could be that the spells share cd, unlike for the other classes.
If I use #3 spell with staff and swap to scepter afterwards, the #3 spell on scepter would be on cd.

I know a lot of people already asked about weapon swapping but here’s my two cents

tl;dr:
Weapon swap with 60sec cd or out of combat weapon swap.

Remove all traits that only work while in a specific element and replace them with ones that have synergy across all elements.

Bad: Deal 10% extra damage while attuned to fire.
Good: Deal 5% extra damage to burning foes.

Get rid of the RNG element to Meteor Shower.

It takes like 5 years to cast a spell that may or may not hit the stuff you want it to, hell it’s not even a finisher or a field. All it does is damage.
Make it work like the old MS, guaranteed damage every couple of intervals. The old one hit every 3 seconds, maybe this one could hit every 1.5 or something. Lower the damage to makeup for the fact that it would be more reliable, and maybe add the KDs back.

I’m only going to address issues I feel are completely out of whack as opposed to saying "increase dmg on [x] or lower the cd on [y]
- Downed state: complete overhaul needed
- RtL: fix RNG pathing
- Staff Air 2: complete overhaul needed. As is, it’s completely useless. You’re either a) taking more damage due to casting it than the ability would prevent in the first place or b) losing out on a whole lot of DPS. I think this is hands down the biggest fail ability we have next to:
- Staff Water 1: LOL….

Replace the Glyph of Elementals with a real elite skill.

My suggestions for such skill – Temporary access to Arcane attunement. This could be a really powerful dmg-wise state (with arcane blast as your autoattack probably), but with a 50% dmg taken penalty. This penalty should linger for 5 seconds after swapping to any other attunement as well, so we won’t be able to go arcane, fire 3-4 really powerful spells and go back to a more secure element. Using this elite skill should be a commitment, you have to be sure you are quite safe, otherwise you’ll drop in a matter of split seconds, however the amount of damage you can dish out during this time should very solid.

Gonna drop my opinion on traits here- I don’t think adding synergy into the trait lines is a good thing. That just means that you can pick a full set of traits with the intention of buffing one attunement as much as possible. Sure, it lets the bnouses apply to a wider range of skills, but it still punishes you when you leave your primary attunement. The core aspect of the class is attunement swapping, and I don’t think we should enable builds that discourage that.

Instead, replace the 25 point passive in each trait line with one that reduces the cooldown on that attunement only. This would encourage people that want to specialize to still attunement dance, without feeling like they are abandoning their core because they can hop right back to it. Say you have a Fire Ele, and he starts taking some heavy hits in a dungeon run. He pops Earth, uses the shields etc there to stay alive, then goes back to fire a couple seconds later.

This lets a player specialize in a trait or two without giving up the utility of the other attunements. Say it was a 5 sec reduction- even with 30 in arcane and 30 in Fire, that’s a 5 second cooldown on fire attunement. Considering it’s a 60 (or 55, I guess) point investment, that sounds just fine to me. It’s basically removing the punishment for leaving your core attunement- this means you can specialize guilt free, knowing you won’t be locked out of all your trait abilities for 15 seconds if you switch. And for those that want versatility, Arcana is still a great way to go. I think this would promote build diversity more then adding synergy would.
__________
edit: thinking a bit, I think something like a 50% cooldown reduction -taken after Arcana- would do the trick. That’d be 7.5 secs without arcana, and 5 seconds with 30 Arcana. Otherwise Arcana might end up being one of those required trait lines for every build, and thats no fun.

Well when I first bought GW2 I made an Elementalist…I actualy enjoyed playing it. Despite the fact I was really sweating in both PVE and PVP to actually get by. I rolled a Thief cause I heard they were OP..and after about an hour on the Thief in some SPvP and PvE I came to that conclusion…very simple to play, very powerful, very squishy. I went back to my Ele and continued to SPVP mostly..I made it to about level 14 or so in PVE and just got tired of that..so I settled for using GW2 as a PVP device only. So I played about another week or so and enjoyed it mostly due to the fact that succeeding as an Ele felt good…and losing as an Ele felt excusable. I haven’t logged into GW2 in the past 2.5 weeks..mainly because of a slew of other games coming out that drew my attention…and the overall feeling that playing Ele was more about enjoying masochism than actual fun.

Elementalist has a ton of potential to be a great and enjoyable class, I keep checking up on these forums to see if anything has been addressed balance wise..and nothing really notable has changed for the class. My suggestion to fix the class has and always will be simple…either up the damage, or up the survivability…or up both a small degree. It doesn’t make alot of sense for a other classes that have much more options to survive and sustain to be able to equally burst/sustain DPS better than an Elementalist. Every profession seems to be able to do a similiar amount of burst DPS when specced for it…except the Thief appears to pull ahead a bit, and the Ele falls behind a little bit more. As far as squishiness goes…Ele and Thief are by far the most vulnerable, while the plate wearers generally are quite resilient.

ArenaNet has put themselves in a bad position when it comes to balance…they can’t make big changes because it will upset the playerbase, but they can’t make small changes either because some professions need alot more work than others…yes a skilled Ele can certainly do well for themselves, and a team…any of the professions can claim this ability. GW2 just feels communist at times…in the sense that the Doctors (Eles) get rewarded the same as the Fast Food Employee (Warriors), or the Used Car Salesman (Thief)…not saying Docs should always get paid more, but maybe get some kind of benefit for undertaking a daunting profession.

Observation: The Arcana Trait “Blasting Staff” feels required in WvW and hence its prerequisite of 20 Arcana trait points prevents diversity of Traits in a late game, WvW focused elementalist build.

Suggestion: Relocate “Blasting Staff” to an Adept tier Arcana trait, potentially switching it with another, less utilized talent.

One suggestion, hmmm…

How about more ‘completeness’ within single attunements?
IMO every attunement (and every weapon combo across all professions) should provide a skill rotation without too much downtime (example for downtime: Mesmer Sword+Pistol) and with nice synergy between skills. Currently, I only see this happening in Dagger/Dagger Fire. Another good example of good synergy and cooldowns that allow for a good rotation would be Mesmer Staff, which was the weapon that got me hooked to the class in the first place, because it is so fun to play.

PS: I’m not saying each attunement should do it all, but I’d like to be able to pick a favorite attunement and play in that for a little longer without kittening my damage too much or making myself a free kill because I have no defensive skills.

It does feel like warriors earn as much as elementalist, but we have a much larger overhead charge then they do. The constant teleport to revive and repair of armor is what makes the frailmentalist the poorest profession. With the exception of the Mesmer, no other class has this many complaints in their forum. Just skills that don’t work, but they can play just fine one way or the other.

Plus in all the events I’m usually the only one going down and having to be revived. Rarely is there another elementalist around these days.

The biggest problem I see for the Elementalist is the “versability” re-imagined with removing the trinity.
Btw: Removing trinity was a great idea. I love versability in general.

But the elementalist is hindered at many points.
The problem is rooted in almost every aspect of the class, so I have to take a big sweep.
Here’s how I experienced it.

Weapons define your role.
Dagger main: Short-range high damage.
Dagger off: Mobility+short-range-damage.
Staff: Ranged attack, large AoE, very supportive with many fields.
Scepter: Medium-Range staff.
Focus: Mostly defensive, passive effects.
The weapon-sets define your role.

The attunements define your role.
Fire: Damage+amplify your allies damage.
Earth: Damage(bleeding), Crowd-Control(cripple, knock-down), defense.
Water: Crowd-Control(chill), vulnerability, heal.
Air: A bit blinding, much swiftness, some interrupts, vulnerability.
In order to be most effective, you have to switch fast for a lot of combo’s.
Attunements define your role.

Traits define your role.
BUT: Traits counteract with the attunement-combos.
If you place a lot of points in an attunement that embodies your favourite play-style, you lose a huge load of combo-strength.
The only choice to be very combo-effective is arcane. If you place 30 points in arcane, you might be able to cycle your attunements fast, but you can’t really put much into the attunements. It’s more rewarding to focus on certain skill-types(cantrips, auras) than look at the attunements themselves.
Traits define your role(and limit it).

When I look at a Warrior I see powerful swords and impressive shields.
The Guardian embodies a powerful knight, protecting it’s allies with blue, gleaming fields and the sound of bells.
The Ranger carries powerful bows and has a trusty pet.
The Necro summons undead creatures and dips the landscape in scary fields with conditions.
The Thief attacks swiftly from the shadows.
The Mesmer creates clones and projections.
And when I look at the Elementalist, I don’t see fire, earth, air and water.
The Elementalist doesn’t deserve it’s name. I don’t think about waging the elements as a weapon, I see combos, fields and being limited in builds, in order to be effective.
Rename the Elementalist into Combolist.

While the Elementalist has a powerful array of defensive skills, it’s low def and hp don’t allow for pressing the wrong skill once. And god have mercy, if the skill you need is on an attunement that is in cooldown.

In order to fix this, I think it’s best to revamp the traits.
As mentioned from a previous poster, bind the attunement-cooldown to the trait-line of the attunement. Don’t neccessarily remove the current secondary effects.
If you put a lot of points into an attunement, you will be able to use it more often without losing the versability of the combos.

Now this is some idea I had. Could be nice to tinker with.
Arcane could get a new secondary stat, that improves certain new arcane-traits.
Let’s call the new secondary stat “arcane focus”. For each point in arcane, you get one points in “arcane focus”.
For example we put 10 points into arcane, now we got 10 points in “arcane focus”.
This value could be used as x in new arcane-traits like “Elementals stay active for 2*x seconds longer” or “Fields remain x % longer” or “All attunements recharge x % faster”.
Of course it would need balancing, but these are just some ideas.