Guild Wars 2

Spectre.6452:

If this was up to me, eles should have alot of skills, really high skillcap, but high reward._

that’s how everything in the world is supposed to work, but yup looks like they want Ele to be weak and stay weak. The question is: who will continue to play a weak class?

Spectre.6452:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRo6W22FfTI

In this video about pve builds for elementalist, Isaiah answers some questions from the ele forum(WHAT? So they know we exist??). At around 28:12, he brings up the fact that eles are forced into arcana and water traitlines. He says that the balancing team are wanting eles to move away from those traitlines, and mentions fresh air as an example.

This means they are actually paying attention to us, right? There is still hope for us elementalists?

PS: Oh and another thing. In the very end he says that eles are supposed to be weak, but with the advantage of having all kinds of skills. Are we doomed to be forever weak? If this was up to me, eles should have alot of skills, really high skillcap, but high reward.

“eles are supposed to be weak, but with the advantage of having all kinds of skills” Well i suppose he has the first bit right.

Didn’t we already outrage to this sufficiently a few months ago?

I agree kodiak, that said I do think the dev was gravely uninformed about the class and just watched some GW2 fan video for class overlook.

Honestly I think he was informed pretty well based on game usage data.

I think it’s the general perception on the state of the Elementalist that is largely misinformed. It’s not very surprising when this forum is basically full of people who either hate the Elementalist but don’t want to seem to move on or the other group of guys who if you don’t play their way then you’re wrong.

How do they consider game usage data for balance anyway?
I really hope it’s not x% of people play class y when they’re deciding which professions are too strong as a whole. After all, eles have a popularity boost because of their flashy skills.

I suppose a similar system would a show some indications for which builds are OP/UP.

Navzar.2938:

How do they consider game usage data for balance anyway?
I really hope it’s not x% of people play class y when they’re deciding which professions are too strong as a whole. After all, eles have a popularity boost because of their flashy skills.

I suppose a similar system would a show some indications for which builds are OP/UP.

It’s all about game metrics. Everything you do in game is logged and tracked. That includes everything you aren’t doing, such as not using certain skills.

All that information can then be pulled into a variety of reports as needed. For example lets say they want to take a look at all the Elementalist Utility skills over the last 120 days. They might pull a report for Utility usage for all Elementalists 1-40, 41-79, and 80. This will list what utilities are equipped the most, how often they get used, what content they are used in (dungeon, fractal, farm pve, spvp, wvw, etc) and so on and so forth.

Based on this information they make an analysis. They see Conjures aren’t getting used much. So now they have to try to figure out why aren’t Conjures getting used. Is it because Cantrips are so strong that Cantrips feel inferior? Is it because Conjures are weaker than all the other options? I’m sure they have a discussion, pull more reports, and look at the data of what’s happening in game to start with a solid, factual base for a course of action.

At this point they decide on a course of action and test it out. For example in the upcoming patch they are going to buff up Conjures because they presumably found in their analysis that Conjures were weak and didn’t present a compelling reason to equip them other than LH or FGS. This is why you see a lot of forums are full of complaints about, “You buffed what? But no one uses that! Why are you buffing things no one uses!?!” and again it’s entirely based on usage data and them trying to drive skill usage.

So when they give a presentation and inform people that there is more than one attunement and using attunement swapping it’s likely because the metrics told them that a certain % of the player base sticks to one attunement. That’s what the game play is telling them we’re doing so that is what they react to. People tend to forget that the forums and people who visit the forums only reflect a small % of the over all user base so even if they are informed about the Elementalist it’s not representative of the whole (which is what the game devs are concerned about).

Kodiak.3281:

Navzar.2938:

How do they consider game usage data for balance anyway?
I really hope it’s not x% of people play class y when they’re deciding which professions are too strong as a whole. After all, eles have a popularity boost because of their flashy skills.

I suppose a similar system would a show some indications for which builds are OP/UP.

It’s all about game metrics. Everything you do in game is logged and tracked. That includes everything you aren’t doing, such as not using certain skills.

All that information can then be pulled into a variety of reports as needed. For example lets say they want to take a look at all the Elementalist Utility skills over the last 120 days. They might pull a report for Utility usage for all Elementalists 1-40, 41-79, and 80. This will list what utilities are equipped the most, how often they get used, what content they are used in (dungeon, fractal, farm pve, spvp, wvw, etc) and so on and so forth.

Based on this information they make an analysis. They see Conjures aren’t getting used much. So now they have to try to figure out why aren’t Conjures getting used. Is it because Cantrips are so strong that Cantrips feel inferior? Is it because Conjures are weaker than all the other options? I’m sure they have a discussion, pull more reports, and look at the data of what’s happening in game to start with a solid, factual base for a course of action.

At this point they decide on a course of action and test it out. For example in the upcoming patch they are going to buff up Conjures because they presumably found in their analysis that Conjures were weak and didn’t present a compelling reason to equip them other than LH or FGS. This is why you see a lot of forums are full of complaints about, “You buffed what? But no one uses that! Why are you buffing things no one uses!?!” and again it’s entirely based on usage data and them trying to drive skill usage.

So when they give a presentation and inform people that there is more than one attunement and using attunement swapping it’s likely because the metrics told them that a certain % of the player base sticks to one attunement. That’s what the game play is telling them we’re doing so that is what they react to. People tend to forget that the forums and people who visit the forums only reflect a small % of the over all user base so even if they are informed about the Elementalist it’s not representative of the whole (which is what the game devs are concerned about).

+1

Isaiah is just wrong. I’m not gonna give my view on balance (if they really want they can check my metric data haha and nerf my favorite professions), but either way what i will give away is this: ele was supposed to be my favorite profession in gw2, and i played it non stop in beta and loved it. Current state? I can say with FULL confidance: underpowered. You don’t have to take my word for it, but this is the truth.

The prob is ‘ele has more, but weaker version of individual skills’. Half of the skill become USELESS because of this. this is a fact. The rest must be spammed super fast, in a super combo chain or are useless also. This leaves very little room for mistakes, and still cause the same problems, ‘more skills’ aint better. Especially at this rate. Like ele’s can spam heals (D/D 3x 1500 heal). While true, in essence this is a joke. Lowest hp/armor in game offset this so much that in my opinion it can be stated that these heals are NECESSARY to survive. They don’t bring anything to ele as a bonus. If ele had med armor/hp, and then we look at current skillset, then the ‘more but weaker’ skills might be viable. But as of now? pure trash. I gave up long ago on ele, and after that they still nerfed it. Anet may believe they are balanced now but they arent. Even the popular TPVP, ele’s are getting fewer by the day. If that doenst say you overnerfed profession Anet then you aren’t really smart.

And this is coming from somebody who has no interest in Ele anymore. I don’t think i can ever return to it, even with boosts. The current Anet vision is completely wrong on Ele (and many other professions). I’m not an ele and yet I dare say this: Ele need badly boosts, and not to stupid skills like summon weapons, those are a joke anyway (to unreliable, short, no special utility in them or barely, just same old ‘damage enemy’ stuff).

I have well over 1000g invested in my ele but I rarely log onto to her anymore. The final straw was the regen/stun warrs getting popular in WvW. I just got tired of having to work 4 times as hard for 60% of what another profession can do.

When I do log into GW2, which is becoming increasing rare, its on my thief roaming around WvW for an hour. The game is fast losing its appeal.