Guild Wars 2

While many builds for other classes are getting more powerful due to the additional traits they will be able to take, it seems like D/F builds are getting nerfed.

What we’re losing:
1. Air Training (10% dmg air trait)
2. Stone Splinters (10% dmg earth trait)
3. Bolt to the Heart (you can’t take it together with Fresh Air)

That’s a massive dps reduction and I doubt the extra ~220 ferocity from the adept/master air traits will make up even for the Air Training loss (not to mention you’re now using 2 traits to compensate the loss of 1). The only somewhat reliable damage boost from water is the grandmaster damage increase per boon, which will hardly compensate, and on top of that, you can’t take Renewing Stamina (very useful in harder content) anymore unless you’re happy with doing far less damage than before this update.

Edit: I should also mention that the damage bonuses we had from air training/stone splinters/btth were nearly condition free (they always applied, as you’re in air attunement almost all of the time, when attacking you’re always within 600 range, etc), so even if the water damage traits somehow stack up to a reasonable amount, they are not condition free bonuses, so it is still a nerf. And now in order to take Renewing Stamina you need to take a massive dps hit from not having water, whereas before you could take only a 10% damage loss.

There are people running fresh air in pve?

Laraley.7695:

There are people running fresh air in pve?

Yes.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F

These changes do, on their face, appear to spell a reduction to our DPS via traits. As with previous major updates, I’ll reserve judgment till we have a more complete picture of both the ele’s future state and those of other professions as well.

As for possibly losing the option to run Renewing Stamina in such a DPS build, I think we’ll find new and perhaps even more survivable options in Water/Earth. However, I can’t deny that compared to the changes I saw for other professions, and considering the impending nerf to Ice Bow/LH, elementalist really seems to have gotten the short end today. I’m trying to remain hopeful, and time will tell.

Interesting. Anyways, fresh air ele in pvp did get nerfed, so I suppose the same but less severe nerf will show in pve, too.

Alphard.6529:

While many builds for other classes are getting more powerful due to the additional traits they will be able to take, it seems like D/F builds are getting nerfed.

What we’re losing:
1. Air Training (10% dmg air trait)
2. Stone Splinters (10% dmg earth trait)
3. Bolt to the Heart (you can’t take it together with Fresh Air)

That’s a massive dps reduction and I doubt the extra ~210 ferocity from the adept/master air traits will make up even for the Air Training loss. The only reliable damage boost from water is the grandmaster damage increase per boon, which will hardly compensate, and on top of that, you can’t take Renewing Stamina (very useful in harder content) anymore unless you’re happy with doing far less damage than before this update.

Well since they made it all or nothing for a tree, you will just replace what you put in earth into water, assuming they don’t nuke conjures you would be able to use the new water damage trait for those along side Vital Striking for a 30% damage modifier if you used the conjure only there. Couple that with the ability to take a 2% boon trait from the water tree, which will be a base 4% modifier through might and fury, combo this with and boons thrown around by party members and it could easily become a 10% modifier. Couple this with the extra 10% crit damage from the new air trait, and the fact that you can now take all of the fire traits now instead of choosing between internal fire and burning precision, the only place you’d really see a difference is in long fights where the boss will be below 33% for a decent amount of time, though I have to say the air adept traits are complete trash in their current form.

Yes, it is being nerfed.

I wouldn’t just say nerfed I’d say run into the ground. I didn’t notice how hard hit D/F was until I started looking at the air traits again.

I think there’s not even a “spirit” of that build left when so much damage has been stripped from it.

Devildoc.6721:

I wouldn’t just say nerfed I’d say run into the ground. I didn’t notice how hard hit D/F was until I started looking at the air traits again.

I think there’s not even a “spirit” of that build left when so much damage has been stripped from it.

Yeah I was like “hey it’s not that bad, we got the water tree instead of earth and BttH” but losing Air Training too!? Ugh. And is vital striking gone as well? If so we’re losing like 26-27% in modifiers and gaining 2% per boon, which could add up to a bit, but not 26%!

don’t worry guys warrior is looking in top shape.

Jerus.4350:

Devildoc.6721:

I wouldn’t just say nerfed I’d say run into the ground. I didn’t notice how hard hit D/F was until I started looking at the air traits again.

I think there’s not even a “spirit” of that build left when so much damage has been stripped from it.

Yeah I was like “hey it’s not that bad, we got the water tree instead of earth and BttH” but losing Air Training too!? Ugh. And is vital striking gone as well? If so we’re losing like 26-27% in modifiers and gaining 2% per boon, which could add up to a bit, but not 26%!

Well Vital striking is there it’s in the Aquamancer trait that reduces water skill cooldowns..

But the loss of Bolt to the Heart and Aeromancer Training is pretty huge, Bountiful Power will not make up 30% damage.

I’m honestly shocked (bad pun, I know) that air training’s 10% modifier didn’t get merged into fresh air. In my opinion, Ferocious Winds needs to be removed (this trait just won’t ever be worth bringing in any game mode, ferocity is just too weak of a stat and healing power has no synergy with it), Bolt to the Heart should be moved down to adept tier, add 10% modifier while in air to fresh air, and then find a new grandmaster trait as an alternative. Otherwise I can’t see fresh air specs ever being worthwhile to run in pve or pvp.

Quin Marino.6384:

I’m honestly shocked (bad pun, I know) that air training’s 10% modifier didn’t get merged into fresh air. In my opinion, Ferocious Winds needs to be removed (this trait just won’t ever be worth bringing in any game mode, ferocity is just too weak of a stat and healing power has no synergy with it), Bolt to the Heart should be moved down to adept tier, add 10% modifier while in air to fresh air, and then find a new grandmaster trait as an alternative. Otherwise I can’t see fresh air specs ever being worthwhile to run in pve or pvp.

Yeah I don’t see many fresh air eles having a substantial amount of healing power anywhere.

Just shows the devs don’t play eles.

Devildoc.6721:

Jerus.4350:

Devildoc.6721:

I wouldn’t just say nerfed I’d say run into the ground. I didn’t notice how hard hit D/F was until I started looking at the air traits again.

I think there’s not even a “spirit” of that build left when so much damage has been stripped from it.

Yeah I was like “hey it’s not that bad, we got the water tree instead of earth and BttH” but losing Air Training too!? Ugh. And is vital striking gone as well? If so we’re losing like 26-27% in modifiers and gaining 2% per boon, which could add up to a bit, but not 26%!

Well Vital striking is there it’s in the Aquamancer trait that reduces water skill cooldowns..

But the loss of Bolt to the Heart and Aeromancer Training is pretty huge, Bountiful Power will not make up 30% damage.

Nice on Vital Striking, and while BttH is 20% when active, it’s only active 1/3 of the time, so we’re looking at an average of like 6-7%, so it’s only 16% we’re losing or there abouts, you’d need 8 boons to match that. If they gave us Air Training back, we’d only be having to make up 6-7% which wouldn’t be all that bad needing just 4 boons.

It comes out to more like 5-10% when you look at it closer (depending on how much the water gm gives per boon), so its not exactly running the spec into the ground. It still sucks though, especially when you cant grab renewing stamina anymore, so you have to grab an energy sigil or go without extra dodges.

Also please get rid of whoever thought of a ferocity from healing power trait. Like seriously. Healing from precision is mostly useless, but that one is even worse.

Jerus.4350:

Nice on Vital Striking, and while BttH is 20% when active, it’s only active 1/3 of the time, so we’re looking at an average of like 6-7%, so it’s only 16% we’re losing or there abouts, you’d need 8 boons to match that. If they gave us Air Training back, we’d only be having to make up 6-7% which wouldn’t be all that bad needing just 4 boons.

They said they would likely modify the threshold to match the effectiveness of close to death and executioner. That will make staff damage even higher than daggers builds.

Overall, staff builds will probably have very similar traits as dagger except FA → BttH.

anyone know piercing shards’ vuln duration increase? 100%? 50%? 10%?

also they should remove water attunement requirement for damage increase for piercing shards. its stupid as hell, imagine bolt to the heart only worked while you’re in air attunement, burning precision only worked in fire attunement.

If anyone is wondering, I did some quick math and this comes out to about an 8% damage nerf for D/F compared to where they are right now assuming ~4% damage from bountiful power. Making bolt to the heart an adept would bring it down to a 2% nerf. Making fresh air do 10% more damage in air would instead make this update a ~2% buff for d/f. Giving fresh air 10% damage AND allowing them to bring bolt to the heart as an adept would make this roughly an 8% dps buff for d/f. However, even with this buff I think it would still be inferior to staff dps wise. Staff on the other hand will not lose any DPS aside from the ice bow changes.

Thanks for the math Quin, though I would point out that while we will almost always have Might/Fury, it is quite likely we’ll have retal/regen/swift as well potentially taking 6% more off that 8% loss for a total 2% loss. If we got air training back there is a good potential that alone could lead to an actual increase in damage… which DF needed anyways as you said staff is going to still blow it out of the water.

I got around the same numbers than Quin. I end up with a 10% nerf for direct damage only. But condition will change a lot guys, a lot so we can’t really check how much condition damage we will do. The adept trait in fire could give us condition power based on our power (which is pretty high).

Yes it look like a nerf right now. But we’ll have to see, maybe that condition damage will make up for the difference in direct damage and I just can’t believe that they won’t change the Ferocious Winds trait. Gain ferocity based on a percent of Healing Power??? That’s stupid, most build that would take that have zero healing power. Maybe the nerf isn’t as high as it seem, even if they don’t give us back 10% dmg while attune to air. We’ll have to see what they gonna do with condition.

Quin Marino.6384:

In my opinion, Ferocious Winds needs to be removed (this trait just won’t ever be worth bringing in any game mode, ferocity is just too weak of a stat and healing power has no synergy with it)

Yes, Ferocious Winds is extremely bad. We have 0 Healing Power unless it’s on our gear, so it’s going to do nothing for most players. I wonder how many will take it by mistake.

I would like Ferocious Winds to be reworked as:

- Gain Ferocity bonus when being under effect of Regeneration.

Even more so, I’d be thrilled to see it swapping place with Renewing Stamina.

Also, if One With Air to grant Quickness (2s duration, 10s cd) instead of Super Speed (3s duration), it would be fantastic. Thief has Critical Haste for free so this is not OP at all :x

Quin Marino.6384:

assuming ~4% damage from bountiful power

Just a note: the bountiful power that was shown had a 2% increase for every boon. 4% damage sounds like a very low assumption in a normal situation, both single player and in a group.

I don’t get why people are so quick to scream nerf seemingly without considering all of the changes. I would say the D/F damage is close to unchanged.
Let’s compare the coming D/F to the current one to come to a conclusion.

The builds I will compare are 66060 to the current 66200.

Fire:
66060: Additional trait, VI or V, whichever 66200 didn’t use.
66200: -
Air:
66060: 220 Ferocity from Ferocious winds and Aeromancer’s training
66200: VI and X, resulting in 16.67% dmg.
Earth:
66060: -
66200: 10% from Stone Splinters
Water:
66060: 10% when >90% hp and 2% / boon, resulting in 16-18% dmg. Frost aura when hit.
66200: -

Result:
66060: 220 ferocity + 10% when >90% + 6-8%
66200: 6.67% + 10% + 10%
——————————————
This becomes 220 ferocity vs 8-10% dmg, depending on number of boons, critical chance and how good you can keep above 90% hp. In any way, with current meta builds are 220 ferocity stronger than 10% damage. We also get a random free frost aura for -10% damage taken as a bonus

Snowball.3497:

66060: 220 Ferocity from Ferocious winds and Aeromancer’s training

Where are you getting the extra 70 Ferocity From? Aeromance’s Training is only 150 Ferocity, and Furious Winds is 7% of your healing power of which you will have 0 unless you gear for it. It seems like your math is assuming you have 1,000 Healing Power.

I was assuming all stats would be put to 1000 from the current 926. I just logged in and realised healing power is not part of these base stats, wrong me

If I remember correctly did Jon say that the stat the 7% was based of was subject to change, so let’s hope for that

I am so disappointed at the changes to the air trait line that I cannot bring myself to think about how to save DF

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I am so disappointed at the changes to the air trait line that I cannot bring myself to think about how to save DF

It’s basically unsalvageable. Staff is simply better.

Snowball.3497:

I was assuming all stats would be put to 1000 from the current 926. I just logged in and realised healing power is not part of these base stats, wrong me

If I remember correctly did Jon say that the stat the 7% was based of was subject to change, so let’s hope for that

Hopefully. Because only celestial eles will ever have any healing power.

If it was from a stat that we normally would have 1000 of base, 70 ferocity is better than nothing. Really though as a staff ele, what the hell adept trait will I take? None of them are that useful because I don’t attune to air often so the super speed is .. well, minimal benefit, staff only has 1 reliable aura, I suppose you could be dumb and take the fire aura on signet use adept trait in fire instead of burning on crit .. but otherwise, you’d have to blast finish your chill field, or take tempest defense and get stunned to have an aura for the aura trait.

Snowball.3497:

Result:
66060: 220 ferocity + 10% when >90% + 6-8%
66200: 6.67% + 10% + 10%

For the vast majority of players, 10% when >90% is nowhere near as good as 10% in air or 10% within 600 range.

Snowball.3497:

I don’t get why people are so quick to scream nerf seemingly without considering all of the changes. I would say the D/F damage is close to unchanged.
Let’s compare the coming D/F to the current one to come to a conclusion.

The builds I will compare are 66060 to the current 66200.

Fire:
66060: Additional trait, VI or V, whichever 66200 didn’t use.
66200: -
Air:
66060: 220 Ferocity from Ferocious winds and Aeromancer’s training
66200: VI and X, resulting in 16.67% dmg.
Earth:
66060: -
66200: 10% from Stone Splinters
Water:
66060: 10% when >90% hp and 2% / boon, resulting in 16-18% dmg. Frost aura when hit.
66200: -

Result:
66060: 220 ferocity + 10% when >90% + 6-8%
66200: 6.67% + 10% + 10%
——————————————
This becomes 220 ferocity vs 8-10% dmg, depending on number of boons, critical chance and how good you can keep above 90% hp. In any way, with current meta builds are 220 ferocity stronger than 10% damage. We also get a random free frost aura for -10% damage taken as a bonus

If you do the same comparisson for Staff

Current 6-4-2-2-0
New 6-6-0-6-0

Fire – unchanged except the new build gets Burning Precision for a small boost

Air – Current 150 Ferocity and Bolt to the Heart for 6.67%
New – Tempest Defense (varies from really good to mostly useless), 6.67% from Bolt to the Heart and Weak Spot (4%).

Earth Current 10% Damage
New nothing

Water Current 10% Damage > 90
New 10% Damage > 90 + Bountiful Power (8% assuming 2% per boon).

So the new build loses 10% from Earth and 150 Ferocity from Air in return it gains 4% from Weak Spot, 8% from Bountiful Power, Burning Precision, Tempest Defense and Blasting Staff. Alternatively you can trade Arcane Lightning for Blasting Staff on the current build and then the New build is only losing a single 10% mod and gaining more than 10%. Either way staff gets a boost to its DPS.

If D/F is breaking even while Staff is doing more damage then D/F just falls further behind. Especially since staff should gain more from the moving of the traitline granted stats since it invested more points into non-offense stat traitlines than D/F did. That just makes it even harder to argue for using D/F over staff (other than its more fun).

Aldarn.4650:

Air – Current 150 Ferocity and Bolt to the Heart for 6.67%

Bolt to the Heart will probably get boosted to 10%, same as Executioner. Bountiful Power should give 2% per boon.

Alphard.6529:

Aldarn.4650:

Air – Current 150 Ferocity and Bolt to the Heart for 6.67%

Bolt to the Heart will probably get boosted to 10%, same as Executioner. Bountiful Power should give 2% per boon.

Which would only favor staff even more if so

I think what our friend is trying to get at is that D/F Ele either comes out even or only slightly nerfed, while Staff Ele simply got way more buffed. This just makes it harder to justify using D/F in relation to the existence of Fire Staff builds, which is fine if you just used D/F for the fun of it. But the D/F build in the future relative to its past self, with the information we have, isn’t that far behind.

Neko.9021:

I think what our friend is trying to get at is that D/F Ele either comes out even or only slightly nerfed, while Staff Ele simply got way more buffed. This just makes it harder to justify using D/F in relation to the existence of Fire Staff builds, which is fine if you just used D/F for the fun of it. But the D/F build in the future relative to its past self, with the information we have, isn’t that far behind.

That’s true, but relative power shouldn’t be ignored. Certain weapons shouldn’t be seen as “just for fun” they should all be powerful and worthwhile to use.

Let’s compare the D/F build to the new phalanx warrior. After this update, D/F will only have somewhere around 75-85% of the damage that warrior will have (if anyone has any better math on this, please feel free to correct me.) D/F generates probably 12-15 stacks of might on average, phalanx warrior generates 25 might stacks average. Additionally, phalanx warrior gives the team 320 power, 170 condition damage, 170 precision, and 170 ferocity. Phalanx warrior also has 7k or something more hp and more armor. The D/F ele gives 100% fury uptime whereas warrior only gives 33% fury uptime. Soooooo basically for the most part d/f eles will be squisher versions of warriors with less damage and less party support. But they’ll have swirling winds, so there’s that I guess.

Quin Marino.6384:

Let’s compare the D/F build to the new phalanx warrior. After this update, D/F will only have somewhere around 75-85% of the damage that warrior will have (if anyone has any better math on this, please feel free to correct me.) D/F generates probably 12-15 stacks of might on average, phalanx warrior generates 25 might stacks average. Additionally, phalanx warrior gives the team 320 power, 170 condition damage, 170 precision, and 170 ferocity. Phalanx warrior also has 7k or something more hp and more armor. The D/F ele gives 100% fury uptime whereas warrior only gives 33% fury uptime. Soooooo basically for the most part d/f eles will be squisher versions of warriors with less damage and less party support. But they’ll have swirling winds, so there’s that I guess.

I very much believe this is intentional. I think that ANet wants to push Warrior support (making Shout Heals and Phalanx Strength much stronger builds in the PvP and PvE game modes respectively) and this is their way of doing it. They want Ele to either be full dps or a healing sort of role. I think they’re trying to gently nudge Ele out of the offensive-support role – it’s something they see that belongs more to Warriors than to Eles. Mind you, when you look at the game as a whole (including PvE, WvW, and PvP), what with the rise of Cele Ele in PvP, I think I can understand why they are taking this stance.

Neko.9021:

I very much believe this is intentional. I think that ANet wants to push Warrior support (making Shout Heals and Phalanx Strength much stronger builds in the PvP and PvE game modes respectively) and this is their way of doing it. They want Ele to either be full dps or a healing sort of role. I think they’re trying to gently nudge Ele out of the offensive-support role – it’s something they see that belongs more to Warriors than to Eles. Mind you, when you look at the game as a whole (including PvE, WvW, and PvP), what with the rise of Cele Ele in PvP, I think I can understand why they are taking this stance.

A profession whose profession’s mechanic makes it a literal jack-of-all-trades should be polarised? That would be extremely shortsighted.

The class has the advantage of always having all those skills. I think that after letting them take advantage of all of them all the time, they want to see what happens when you push the class to more dedicated roles instead.

That’s a disadvantage because they punish eles for it with longer cooldowns.

Anet is probably only loosely aware that Fresh Air is a PvE concern. All of the balance changes in this regard probably were done out of concern of some PvP burst spec that they were worried about. I don’t think it’s a PvEspiracy just yet.

Aren’t these changes only temporary at the moment? I mean they aren’t guaranteed and considering we probably got at least 2-3 months for the xpac, a lot can change. I wonder how sword/X will work. Also I look at it like DPS isn’t everything since if you die in the first 5 secs of a fight, you do less DPS than the D/F ele who lives through the whole fight. But anyways, I’ve got the mats to make a minstrel but I’m leary about doing it until I see exactly what changes are guaranteed to happen to D/F or S/F.

Sauzo.6821:

Also I look at it like DPS isn’t everything since if you die in the first 5 secs of a fight, you do less DPS than the D/F ele who lives through the whole fight.

Most experienced staff eles can live through the whole fight too.