Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a lot of discouraged players posting about various issues Elementalists have. Putting in too much effort for too little reward, dying a lot faster than they can kill other classes, etc.

So I’d like to start a thread emphasizing what you think should be done to improve the class, without making it overpowered. Keep in mind that even slight tweaks can turn the Elementalist into a monster killing machine in the hands of a great player, while minimally affecting the average player.

I’ll start.

• Elementalists need a baseline buff to survivability more than anything, in my opinion. We wear cloth, so we’re going to be squishier— but we are the class with both the least amount of HP and the least amount of armor available. Here’s a list of the HP/armor of each class, baseline:

• Elementalist- HP: 10805 / Armor: 1836
• Warrior- HP: 18372 / Armor: 2127
• Ranger- HP: 15082 / Armor: 1980
• Necromancer- HP: 18372 / Armor: 1836
• Guardian- HP: 10805 / Armor: 2127
• Thief- HP: 10805 / Armor: 1980
• Engineer- HP: 15082 / Armor: 1980
• Mesmer- HP: 15082 / Armor: 1836

As you can see, the cloth classes get 1836 armor, leather gets 1980, and mail gets 2127. But the HP varies quite a bit between classes. The lowest HP is 10805, but in the case of Guardian/Thief, is made up for by their class abilities (thief naturally has a high focus on not being hit in the first place, while guardian focuses on bubbles and heals that make it much tankier).

The Elementalist doesn’t have as many ways to survive as Thief/Guardian do, and even in our utility skills, we are limited compared to them (hence we need higher survivability, while they are fine). We die faster than any other class, regardless of weapon — which would be fine, if skillful play could prevent that. But as it is, there are only a few viable builds out there for structured PvP, and they are forced into water/earth, and gear with high toughness. This indicates there is a problem.

In an effort to make “dps” builds more viable and tanky builds more like a tank compared to other classes, I think a baseline increase of our HP would be beneficial.

• More options being available via jewelry would be great. Allowing us to tweak it would be better. For Elementalists in particular, it would go far in making them more survivable, and it would promote more diversity in builds for every class. [For example, in one of my favorite staff builds, which focuses on criticals and boons, I don’t want TOO high vitality because I want my regeneration and heals to heal for a decent amount of HP — for this, toughness would be ideal. But there is no amulet with Precision/Toughness that doesn’t force me into condition damage, or another stat I’m not keen on. Instead I have to take the Knight’s Amulet, which forces me into vitality.]

• We could use just a few tweaks to our talents to promote attunement swapping more. Rather than “you gain X while you’re in Y attunement but lose it when you leave the attunement,” those buffs and utilities should remain for a time after you leave the attunement, or should promote attunement swapping into and out of it.

Fire in particular has a lot of traits that emphasize staying in fire (Pyromancer’s Puissance, Flame Barrier, etc). This discourages attunement swapping, and as a result, fire isn’t as attractive.

• Arcane is such a good trait line to go into… because the cooldown on attunement swapping seems so long. I can’t play without at least 20 points into Arcane (my builds usually have 30), otherwise I feel like I’m losing out on getting to my abilities RIGHT when I need them. Most builds put points into Arcane.

It might be in our best interest to eventually lower the cooldown of attunement swapping baseline — to ~9-10 seconds — and change Intelligence to something else. Perhaps a damage or survivability buff that we can stack by swapping attunements, to further promote it, or the current effects of Elemental Attunement since that is such an attractive trait.

These are just my thoughts on possible changes to make us better as a class and promote skillful play. Personally, I do not think that we need damage buffs — in terms of damage, I think PvP should be slowed down to the point where Elementalists are about at right now, and other class’ damage should be tuned down to that point. It has been a big issue with MMOs in the past (World of Warcraft) when players get killed way too fast, and as Guild Wars promotes skill, being killed in 2 seconds flat should not happen. A slower-paced PvP environment is better for everyone.

We really need a little more survivability, and I feel that our class should promote attunement swapping rather than having traits that promote staying in one attunement. I think small changes like this would add to the class without making it overpowered whatsoever, and without stripping it of the skillful play that makes it so very attractive.

Post your thoughts, please, and comment if you have any new things to add! Thanks for reading! :]

Great thread.

In PvE I’m forced into fire. I was hoping to be able to do more with Lighting (hence the name). I don’t bother with PvP, honestly I don’t want to go up against another player as a frailmentalist.

Ele has good survivability, utility and support, and to balance that a comparable low damage output; while this isn’t a problem as long as you’re in a party it becomes a bother when you solo PvE. Because of the low damage output an Ele has to make use of their utility to bring down a foe but other classes with a higher damage output can simply face-tank it and bring it down before they bring them down.

Therefor the Ele needs to be able to trade it’s utility with a higher damage output, but due to balance reasons it cannot be able to switch frequently between these two. The conjure weapon skills fill this gap pretty much perfectly, but other than the Lightning Hammer they may not give enough benefit to make them worthwhile.

The other conjure weapon skills, especially shield and axe, needs to be looked at.

In PvP I run 30/x/20/x/10. 10 points in arcane lowers the CD of Attunes to around 12/13 secs which is more than enough. Not enough ways to survive? Ride the Light, Updraft, Earths Embrace, Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire the list goes on and on and it’s there’s even more Utility for Staff users in PvE and PvP. I run a Power/Condition build with some Vit mixed in and I sit around 17k HP and can take a whooping and still dish out great damage. Burning Speed > Ring of Fire > Drakes Breath. With condition I think the damage on Drake is 4.3k over 6s? Remove condition? That’s fine, it’s on such a low CD that it doesn’t matter. Follow that up with Flame Touch and switch to Air etc etc.

There’s nothing that forces you to go water/earth. I do just fine with my Fire/Earth/Arcane build and average around 12 kills. Wish I could see my assists because that would be awesome. Squishy? Somewhat. But that’s why you have all that utility to choose from. I was wrecking Guardians and Mesmers and Thieves (when I could the jump on them). I do get owned by good Thieves and earlier I got absolutely destroyed by this Engineer. No idea what build he was good mines, kb’s/kd’s. Anyway if you aren’t Attunement Swapping in Dungeons, WvWvW or PvP, you’re playing the class wrong. This class isn’t for the faint of heart who just like to spam one thing. It requires knowing what skills to use in what Attunement and when to use them. I mean there is so much utility for this class it’s amazing. Ranged bothering you and you’re staff? Wait till that sucker pops off rapid fire and pop Magnetic Aura, CC them and Attune switch to lay down damage.

I’ll agree in PvE I find my self using D/D or Staff and rarely being out of fire except for few circumstances but it doesn’t bother me.

I feel the class is fine except for our underwater skills which, for the most part, are atrocious.

@DesertRose:

I think every class should be brought down to about the point we’re at, honestly. If PvE is going to be a long-standing and somewhat more difficult adventure, just eating through everything without paying attention to what you’re doing isn’t fun.

And for PvP, the elementalist is at a pretty good point damage-wise, if other classes were brought down to about that level. It would slow down the amount of time it takes to kill and be killed, which is good — no one likes to be killed in 2 seconds flat. It’s not fun and it doesn’t feel like your skill matters at that point. That’s why so many elementalists in particular have been complaining; they have to spec/gear to be as survivable as possible to live for any length of time, in the higher levels of sPvP.

I don’t agree that elementalists have good survivability, as that is our main issue, but you did bring up a good point — conjure spells aren’t good, and hardly anyone uses them. Even our elite conjure is hardly used except for messing around.

i summon things in hopes that they tank enough for me to do what i need to do for damage. they do okay, but then after 60 seconds, they die off, so i have to waiting to charge up for the next battle while the Risen i just killed respawn.

as for weapon skills, not until i talked with another ele about skill point tips, that the hammer is actually pretty fun. i bought all the skills but never used the conjures before.

I agree with many points. Something I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet is that a lot of our cooldowns seem excessively high. This perhaps made some sense before the beta damage nerf when we were a lot burstier, but now I think it should be revisited.

I think it would go a long way if, each point put in fire/air/water/earth trait would reduced their respective attunement recharge rate by 1%.

Even with max acrana, 10s is a long time to wait to go back to a attunement.

@hakurface: I don’t personally feel 12/13 seconds per attunement swap is enough either — it’s not like you should be going in and pressing all the buttons then switching attunements. You need an ability when you need it, and if you’re, say, going into water and using the AoE frost effect just because you know that you can’t go back into water again for a while, there’s a problem. About 9-10 seconds feels right, considering normal weapon swaps are on a 9-second cooldown. I feel attunements should be brought down to about there baseline, with Intelligence changed to something else in Arcane.

In structured PvP, it does feel very forced to go into water/earth, because if you’re going glass cannon, you’re just going to get stomped after they figure it out. It feels like the elementalist is forced into a support build (or just water/earth in general) in order to survive, for staff especially, since staff doesn’t have as much condition removal and focuses on AoE and making combo fields.

Yes, you can get by without going into a water/earth build, but the point is that it feels like you are forced into a build like that because of the lack of survivability. There are abilities we always take to survive, such as Mist Form, but the point is it still lacks survivability even after that. Hence why a lot of people go for water/earth builds, and builds that go into fire or air are sparse in sPvP.

Mind you, I don’t think the class needs that much to be balanced. I just think a base HP increase and a few tweaks to our talents (including attunement swapping) would really help out the class without making it too much. Thanks for the feedback. :]

We have cooldowns on our skills no? So why the double penalty?

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that with 30 Arcane we should be sitting on a 3 second attunement cooldown. Will stop people from needlessly switching and pressing 1,2,3,4,5 and allow us to get to the skill we need for the situation on hand and go a long way to giving us back this “versatility” other classes love throwing in our faces.

If you’re worried about something like Elemental Attunement becoming OP then put each attunement boon on an internal cooldown.

Master Arcane Trait: Arcanist’s Vital Armor…each time you swap attunements you gain 500 HP and 50 Armor for 10 seconds up to a maximum of 4 stacks.

I wrote in the other thread, I’d like the Ele to remain a complex class to play (and in fact, be more so.)

One idea I like is to give most of our skills/traits an additional effect if some condition is met. I listed some examples in the other thread, but stuff similar to how Fire Grab does more damage if the enemy is burning.

eg. Meteor Shower: If enemy has Weakness, they are knocked down.

@MarzAttakz: That’s an interesting idea — even with a, say, 9-second cooldown, sometimes it feels like you need to get something out before you leave because you won’t be able to go back for a while, which isn’t how it should ever play out in reality.

I don’t like that the cooldown is like a penalty that keeps us from using our abilities — however, I think that without a cooldown (or a very minimal one, at 3 seconds) it might be overpowered. While our abilities are all on cooldowns, you can argue the same for other weapon swaps — Warrior abilities are on cooldown regardless of when they swap too.

It could potentially turn very overpowered if we had a minimal cooldown like that, even with internal cooldowns to limit buffs and such. Though it would be really nice to not feel so limited in ability usage, it’s probably best stuck at around 9 seconds like every other weapon swap. I really hope they make it baseline and make the arcane trait line do something different.

Increasing the damage will do. Simple as that. The options there are to slow, immobilize etc. is there, if you combine it well. No need to add extra skills in that direction, as it doesn’t really improve the class. Apparently they nerfed the damage in the late betas, but way too much it seems. Now they are little more than a support class wearing cloth.

A mere damage boost is in place. They just need to make it balanced in comparison to the class and other classes.

@ Malcastus: Isn’t it better to nerf others’ damage to about the level we’re at though? Consider this: other classes do so much damage that someone can literally die in seconds (it reminds me of WoW, really). While dodging extends the period it takes to kill someone, I still think it’s way too fast, personally.

I think the damage level we’re at would be good, if it was applied to other classes too. Of course it would be more to balance that way, but a slower PvP environment is much better than one in which you can die in seconds.

Just my two cents on the issue — of course if they decide not to go the route of lowering other classes’ damage, our damage will need a buff. But I really think it would be better to lower overall damage. The Elementalist is at a good point where it takes a bit longer to kill someone, but you can definitely still kill people in a decent amount of time.

Honestly, I wish Elemental attunements had more of a purpose to them than just a glorified weapon swap. Each one should feel like a different mode or stance. Instead of just a different set of particle effects. They should all confer some sort of permanent mode bonus while you’re in them. Extra power in Fire, extra precision in Air, extra toughness in Earth, extra healing power in Water.

They become rather meaningless the more the class leans towards just flicking through them as fast as possible in a cycle. I’d rather we swap attunements based on the tactical situation at hand. Not just peel through them as fast as possible as a default approach.

The root of the problem is everything about the class mechanics basically encourages you to rotate through them as fast as you can. Nothing really encourages using them adaptively or specializing in any given element. But everything about our traits encourages you to do the opposite, staying in one or two of them.

Its completely contrary.

|Better trait synergy| Elementalists rely on attunement swapping yet their traits encourage into sitting in one attunement, Arcana being the only exception.

|Faster Dragon’s tooth, Shatterstone, Ice Spike, Eruption| NPCs and players alike walk out of these with ease. Elementalists don’t have a snare to land every 6, 4 or 2 seconds. The water “bomb” skills are barely viable for scaring little children. Making Dragon’s Tooth ground-targetable might be an OK solution too. Eruption is less of a problem exactly because of it’s ground-targetability.

|Fix Arc Lightning, Ice Storm, Persisting Flames, Ride the Lightning, Magnetic Grasp, Lightning Whip, Obsidian Focus| Arc lightning gets stuck in animation if target dies while it’s still channeling. Ice Storm shoots the arrows to the side, and not to the heavens like it’s supposed to. Persisting Flames trait simply does not give 30% longer fire fields, unless this means something other than the Combo Fields. Ride the Lightning fails to comply with moving targets, kittening the user into a state of helplessness. Lightning Whip misses Alot. Obsidian Focus only works with Meteor Shower and Churning Earth, pretty useless trait overall anyway, since the toughness disappears immediately after channeling ends, not sure if anyone ever uses this.

|Lower cooldown on Cleansing wave, Fire Grab, Gale| 40 second cooldown on a condition removal skill just seems wrong. Nerf the heal or whatever if you must, but make it a more useful condition remover, like “Shake it Off!” which has a 25 second cooldown. Or you could keep Cleansing Wave as is and lower cooldown on Cleansing Fire. Fire Grab, a weapon damage skill on a 45 second cooldown. Sure, it does good damage but by the time you go through all your other attunements, it’ll still be in cooldown. It’s a melee attack and hard to land, so I’m not sure why it has such a huge cooldown. It isn’t Churning Earth, for Grenth’s sake! Healing Rain and Earthquake are the only other weapon skills that have 45 second cooldown, Fire Grab pales in comparison. Which brings me to Gale, with a 50 second cooldown. A single target 2 second stun. Also pales in comparison to the usefulness of the other similarly cooldowned skill Obsidian Flesh. I’m not sure if lowering the cooldown on Gale is a good idea or if some other solution would be better. Earthquake is also a knockdown, but it’s also AoE, damage and a Blast Finisher, only downside being that it’s not ranged, but that’s not really a downside. Gale on the other hand, a heavy damage attunement skill, ranged, deals 0 damage, has longer cooldown, is not a finisher and is single target.
I understand that many skills have big cooldowns because Elementalists have a huge (20) arsenal of weapon skills, but these three skills’ cooldowns are the only ones that boggle my mind. Perhaps something else is missing from these skills.

|Longer cripple from Unsteady Ground| I very rarely find myself using this skill on anything other than mobs that stand still. Odd. Maybe it should be turned into a damaging skill? Or a Combo Field, unless Earth is purely finisher based? Removing the channeling doesn’t sound too bad either, make it tick cripple immediately.

|Lightning Strike and Blinding Flash merged into one skill| These cast instantly while using Arc Lightning, which is amazing, but, the blind is single target, range and the damage are lower than that of Blinding Surge, so why can’t it be a single skill like Lightning Surge? As I recall, air is supposed to be a heavy damage attunement. That single-target blind with 0 damage sure is doing its job representing just that, isn’t it? Throw that blind into Lightning Strike and make a new, possibly damaging, skill for scepter’s air attunement.

|Tougher Elementals| I’m using the elite Glyph of Elementals, mainly Fire and Earth. Fire one seems to die before it even gets to land its big bang, at least during bosses. Earth is tougher but I feel it’s lacking as well, being Earth, it would be fitting for it to cause bleed or cripple. All elementals should last until killed. I’ve not used Water or Air elementals much.
I love Fiery Greatsword by the way. It’s great for dungeon bosses. Looks epic too.

|Weapon swapping out-of-combat| We Elementalists can already do it manually from the inventory, but I only do that when I’m changing my build entirely. I’d love to be able to switch from melee to range from time to time with ease. Weapon sets, anyone?

|More base HP| I should be able to dish out instant kill damage instantly with the HP I currently have. Okay just kidding there. But everything else seems to be able to do that to me, while having more HP. I’m probably just missing the cannon from my glass.

That’s all my thoughts on the matter as of right now.
Thanks for reading.

Air in general lacks the Direct Damage punch that its suppose to have according to its description.

Air Staff 1 We’ve already got Fire for AoE, why is this lightning bouncing around targets for crappy damage when this is my Direct Damage attunement? Drop the AoE/chaining effect (as cool as it looks), double the damage, and speed up the animation as its too slow. Now we got something worthy. Add a Trait to Air to enable the chaining effect for those who still want it, but it might do say 3/4 damage with every bounce (ie it gets less and less each bounce).

Air Staff 2 Yeah, too slow to cast, and we all know its rubbish now the infinite range bug is gone. From reading the description: how about we make it into a 1st click-Charge, 2nd click Release power. The longer it charges the more damage it does, obviously with a max limit/full charge, and a quick double-click makes it instant for quick dps. Perhaps it can be charged up out of combat for some opening/sudden DPS spike when needed? Alternatively but similiar “charging concept” following the theme of its description – this power is always on cooldown when you first swap to Air. Once the cooldown is up, its “charged”, and can be released for a worthwhile damage spike. If its not released (ie not on cooldown), it could even have some other passive benefit – perhaps something defensive to make the decision to fire it meaningful.

Air Scepter 1 & 2 Ok so 2 just does damage and its on a very low cooldown, and doesnt interrupt 1’s channelling. So basically, its really just boils down to Ele having to click an extra button for their standard auto attack dps? What we aren’t clicking enough already? Throw away 2 entirely and replace it with something better. If the replacement power for 2 does no damage, consider rolling the old 2’s damage into 1.

Air Scepter 3 the blind alone is rubbish. Add some damage to it or maybe add Confusion? it needs something extra

Air Scepter 1, 2 and 3 – make them combo better Put a short duration Vulnerability effect at the end of 1, then 2 & 3 get bonus damage/effect if the target has Vulnerability – yay for synergy!