Guild Wars 2

Balancing isn’t easy, Ele’s need a lot of work, get ready to read

No matter what profession you choose to play, it’s easy to point out it’s flaws and imbalances. Personally, I’ve leveled, tPvP’ed, and WvW’ed my Warrior, Thief, Ele, and Guardian and only brushed over some of the other classes, so I have a good, but not complete understanding of how Elementalists are balanced within the game. I wanted to have a serious discussion, not a rant, so the community can, in a mature manner, express to ArenaNet what we think should be done.

This thread is specifically talking about Ele’s in WvW. I personally have no issues in PvE, or playing my burst ele in tPvP

Feel free to skip this, but let’s break down the core aspects of the Ele

-Low armor, low health pool (usually made up with potentialy great healing)
-Jack-of-all-trades (raw dps, condi, heals, aoe, condi-removal, movement, boons, CC )
-Potential for amazing burst, yet standard 30 water 30 arcane builds severely lack DPS
-One of the most if not the most predictable classes in-game. All of the attacks are well telegraphed and because they only wield one weapon, experienced players can deduce what’s coming next based on their attunement.
-Great support class (Staff has loads of great utility)
-Great bunker (massive condi. remov. and heals, but again, abyssmal dps)

I think that sums it up quite nicely, let’s get on with the program
——————————————————————————————————————

My biggest issue with Elementalists is how Anet chooses to balance the class. In my personal opinion, they seem to nerf what’s OP to ground instead of “balancing”.

Example
Because Ele’s have low armor and low health pools (lower than thief), they rely on other methods to survive. Primarily, movement, cantrips, and heals. A solid D/D Bunker Ele build is 0/10/0/30/30. I will say myself, for a good amount of time after launch, Ele’s were overpowered. They could take on several players and always reset the battle if need be. Now what did Anet do to “balance” them? RTL nerf. Lightning Flash nerf. Mist Form + Utilities (Primarily Ether Renewal) nerf, Cleansing Fire nerf.

They severely nerfed RTL, removed 2 stun-breakers, moving them to unviable skills, and nerfed one of the Ele’s main sources of healing and condi. removal. I don’t understand why Anet has to make drastic changes like these. Does a warrior’s bull’s charge have double the CD if they miss? Does the thief’s infiltrator’s arrow cost double the initiative if they don’t hit a target? Why did Anet make Ele’s have less escape than Thief when they have lower armor and lower health pools? Wouldn’t simply nerfing the heals be smarter? Surely it wasn’t because Ele’s could restart fights, because thieves have reset fights since launch. I would like, not to have the nerfs reverted, but simply dumbed down. Make RTL a static 30s CD, make Lightning Flash a stunbreaker and remove all damage. Revert Mistform to the way it was, or reduce the CD on it, etc. Anet severely nerfed an Ele’s bunker capabilities. If that’s the direction they wanted to go, why didn’t they buff it’s offensive capabilites? Some say fresh-air was an attempt at doing so. However, the only viable weapon set is S/D with some, if not all zerker gear, making the low armor, low health pool class, even squishier.

Now this isn’t a thread to bash Anet for the decisions they made. Again, balancing isn’t easy, but I just hate to see my favorite profession get nerfs like these.

They’ve done some good though, although people generally don’t like playing support, in WvW staff ele’s have great utility, combo fields, heals, etc. Static fields and two water fields can turn the tide of the battle. Again, I’d like to see a viable offensive staff build though.

Lastly, I want to talk about what I think is the biggest issue of them all. Traits

Anet stated themselves that they don’t want people to stay in one attunement. However, you’ll find yourself doing so autoattacking if you don’t put a minimum of 20 points in Arcane. Personally, I feel Anet needs to reduce the CD of Attunement Swaps. This would open up the tree and allow for more viable builds.

Second, I don’t think the trait tree should be split into attunements. It’s counter-intuitive to want to use all your skills, but only spec into one attunement. It would make more sense to have trees based on the role you wanted to fufill. Offensive tree, defensive tree, etc.

If you’re still reading this, my god you have a lot of free time, but these are my thoughts on the Ele. I could type on and on, but I think I made my point somewhere in that sea of words. Thoughts?

Our traits need work. We need cantrips reverted and better utilities all around. Healing is fine as it is they need cleansing wave in offhand dagger to cure 3 conditions again. RTL back to 20s is debatable.

“Second, I don’t think the trait tree should be split into attunements. It’s counter-intuitive to want to use all your skills, but only spec into one attunement. It would make more sense to have trees based on the role you wanted to fufill. Offensive tree, defensive tree, etc.”

This I agree with. I’m ultra new to this game and even I was like “that’s weird I thought the whole point was attunement swapping but those trees specialized you in one attunement.”

Agreed. The class’ design does not fit how the Devs have stated we’re “supposed” to play it.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

There really is no “jack of all trades” class you can’t call us that because we simply aren’t. Anet really messed up on this whole profession. However the closest thing to one is a mesmer, more of an “all in one” class than an ele.

And i ESPECIALLY agree with your rtl suggestion btw and everything you said to back it up.

I want to see nerfs all accross the board to all other gap closers if used to run away, or buff rtl from its current state alittle bit.

RtL needs to be 900 range on 15s, no conditionals. It is not an instant-get away, but is still useful offensively and as a gap-closer.

Also, we aren’t a real jack-of-all trades, we are a master of rotations and that is it. We need decent auto-attacks to really have the ability to respond. In fact, engineers are WAY better jack of all trades than we ever could be b/c they can swap to whatever kit they want for whatever available skill at any time. That is real flexibility.

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

ARM.3912:

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

I agree that cleansing fire needs to a stun-break. Healing in mist-form isn’t necessary, as I believe it was the thing that mostly made us too hard to kill. RtL 1550 range on 15s is too strong, although it is enjoyable. While we are in a bad place, we don’t have to go back to where we were to be good again. Just a few tweaks along with nerfs to other classes.

I have a small suspicion that the reason ele’s have fewer weapons is that some weapons were turned into conjures to save time and money.

BlackBeard.2873:

ARM.3912:

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

I agree that cleansing fire needs to a stun-break. Healing in mist-form isn’t necessary, as I believe it was the thing that mostly made us too hard to kill. RtL 1550 range on 15s is too strong, although it is enjoyable. While we are in a bad place, we don’t have to go back to where we were to be good again. Just a few tweaks along with nerfs to other classes.

You are still able to heal in mist form if you have evasive arcana.

Halcyon.3140:

You are still able to heal in mist form if you have evasive arcana.

This is very true. It was the mistform—>ether renewal that was too much. It healed back up to like 70% and removed all condis. A reset like that is just too much.

BlackBeard.2873:

Halcyon.3140:

You are still able to heal in mist form if you have evasive arcana.

This is very true. It was the mistform—>ether renewal that was too much. It healed back up to like 70% and removed all condis. A reset like that is just too much.

and then there are thieves…

ARM.3912:

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

This is not going to happen nor do I think it should happen.
Stunbreakers need to be split out but spread out properly. I hate having to rely on cantrips they are so boring except for mist form.

And Arenanet needs to fix our weapons, traits and elites. I mean Arenanet has a lot of skills from Guild wars 1 that are just begging to be updated and brought over to this game, I see no reason for any class that existed in guild wars 1 to have BAD skills when there is a whole game with skills to steal from.

silvermember.8941:

ARM.3912:

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

This is not going to happen nor do I think it should happen.
Stunbreakers need to be split out but spread out properly. I hate having to rely on cantrips they are so boring except for mist form.

And Arenanet needs to fix our weapons, traits and elites. I mean Arenanet has a lot of skills from Guild wars 1 that are just begging to be updated and brought over to this game, I see no reason for any class that existed in guild wars 1 to have BAD skills when there is a whole game with skills to steal from.

He’s clearly kidding. It worries me that Anet thought moving a stun-breaker to Signet of Air was a good idea. Both Staff and D/D can achieve perma-swiftness and it renders that utility useless.

One more thing I’d like to say is about Staff Ele. My one and only quarrel with it is the lack of DPS. I think it’d be a great idea if they made it similar to Thief weapons or Ranger Shortbow, where the main source of DPS is from the auto-attack and the other skills are used as utilities. One can only hope though

To the one that said rtl revert was debatable, it definitely does need doing.
D/D ele is the only profession stuck as melee only, every other class can do melee/range with press of a button.
You get immob`d, stunned, knocked back etc soon as you use rtl to get to the enemy, you are kittened. Yeah yeah, some will say don`t use rtl to get to them, but if you`re being hit from 900-1500 range & walk over, you are dead before you get to hit them once…

Same goes for the one saying 900 range rtl is fine.
Nope.
You use rtl to get to someone & it is 900 range, you still have to run 300-600 range to get to them plus whatever space they`ve backpeddled/strafed/dodged away from your huge rtl telegraph.
Same goes for escaping, 900 range makes it pointless, yet rangers get GS escape 1100 range on 12sec cd, warriors insane escape, scum…I mean thieves even more so.

All of that & I`ve not even mentioned aegis, pebbles, grass kittening up your rtl & leaving you at 40sec cd despite anet shrugging & saying it shouldn`t, possibly…..

Stealth is now on rangers, thief & mesmers, again making the huge rtl telegraph a waste of another 40 sec cd.

Makes me wish my ele was norn, elite with 1600 range. Much more use then all the kittenty ele elites ;p

Fishbait.6723:

To the one that said rtl revert was debatable, it definitely does need doing.
D/D ele is the only profession stuck as melee only, every other class can do melee/range with press of a button.
You get immob`d, stunned, knocked back etc soon as you use rtl to get to the enemy, you are kittened. Yeah yeah, some will say don`t use rtl to get to them, but if you`re being hit from 900-1500 range & walk over, you are dead before you get to hit them once…

This…this… so much this.

I just cannot understand how the profession less suitable for melee (hp-def) is denied a source of engaging/disengaging fights. You either get heavy damage and conditions while walking straight to your target, or you RTL into your foe and hope that he will die fast because you’ve just burned your escape skill.

Seriously, screw the 20 skills. I’d rather have half of them if it means they are useful. If i can fight range with range, and switch to melee when i need it.

I know i could simply reroll (and probably should) but im stupid enough to think i should play what i like and not what Anet forces me to. Deep down i still like ele, but its wrong, so wrong in so many things that i have almost lost any hope for it.

EchenSketch.9142:

He’s clearly kidding. It worries me that Anet thought moving a stun-breaker to Signet of Air was a good idea.

At least it makes more sense with the blind active than putting stun break on Glyph of Elemental Power… stun-break on a skill that’s meant to be refreshed on cool-down is stupid.

Side note: I really like GoEP, it can maintain perma-weakness on a target if you always activate it while in Air. Side side note: The effect of GoEP is whatever attunement you were in at the time and doesn’t change when you switch attunements.

EchenSketch.9142:

silvermember.8941:

ARM.3912:

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

This is not going to happen nor do I think it should happen.
Stunbreakers need to be split out but spread out properly. I hate having to rely on cantrips they are so boring except for mist form.

And Arenanet needs to fix our weapons, traits and elites. I mean Arenanet has a lot of skills from Guild wars 1 that are just begging to be updated and brought over to this game, I see no reason for any class that existed in guild wars 1 to have BAD skills when there is a whole game with skills to steal from.

He’s clearly kidding. It worries me that Anet thought moving a stun-breaker to Signet of Air was a good idea. Both Staff and D/D can achieve perma-swiftness and it renders that utility useless.

One more thing I’d like to say is about Staff Ele. My one and only quarrel with it is the lack of DPS. I think it’d be a great idea if they made it similar to Thief weapons or Ranger Shortbow, where the main source of DPS is from the auto-attack and the other skills are used as utilities. One can only hope though

No, I’m not kidding. I think other players just needed to learn to use CC to fight ele’s, and instead our class was nerfed into the ground, then nerfed again. Now the other classes have been buffed AND they finally figured out how to CC. So I think all our nerfs should be undone.

I feel you guys and arenanet are looking at this the wrong way. The problem is every elementalist is expected to constantly swap attunements. That severely limits builds and promotes common combos that might as well be telegraphed on loudspeakers. Then there’s the weapon range limitations. Almost all staff skills are ranged so staff users have to stay at range to be effective. Almost all dagger skills are melee so all dagger users have to stay in melee to be effective. Combine this with traits that are only work when in certain attunements and the long attunement cooldowns and you have a profession that’s pulling players in many directions but not allowing them to stand where they want. In essence, we can’t play our way.

In my opinion, the way to fix this is to stop insisting all elementalists rotate through all attunements. While it is nice to have the option of swapping, it shouldn’t be mandatory just to be effective. Some of us want to focus on one or two elements and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The second thing is to allow in-combat weapon swapping at the expense of attunement swapping. One way would be allowing elementalists to disable 2 attunements to gain the ability to weapon swap. This will limit their available weapon skills to 20 but improve their combat adaptability greatly. Another is to create a new grandmaster trait for each elemental line that allows weapon swapping while in that attunement. Since there’s only enough points for 2 grandmaster traits, it will limit itself plus obtaining these traits will mean giving up on traits that benefit from constant swapping. I’m also willing to bet players whom choose them are likely to stay in the attunements with them so, even though they technically have access to 30 weapon skills, they will limit themselves to 20. The third option is to create a signet with a passive that increases the current attunement’s effectiveness with time (like stacking might per second while in fire) and swaps weapons when active at the cost of the passive buff. The cooldown and the desire to keep the passive up will make players think hard about using the active.

The third thing that is needed is either more active defensive powers with longer effects or more hp. The reason why few eles go with a full berzerker build is because they simply don’t last long enough to get the damage out. I would suggest EVERY aura lasting 8 to 10 seconds and providing 10% damage reduction on top of their usual effects.

Last but not least, eles need skills with faster casting times. This is a game with twitch-based combat yet several skills are so slow that opponents can casually walk out of an aoe’s target reticule. There is something seriously wrong with that. No cast time should be longer than 1 second and I’d gladly take a reduction in damage if a recharge reduction comes with it.

I’ll have to discuss other opinions later as I really need to sleep.

Thanks to this thread I actually caved and changed my spec to include evasive arcana, and that did make things a lot more fun as an ele. I’m rolling all over the place anyway, might as well get some utility out of it.
I just have never understood the idea we run this glass profession into melee with skills like RTL and burning speed. I mean I love being up there as opposed to playing Simon Says rolling through my skills with staff.
But we are definitely the poorest scholars. Necros have nearly all conditions and a second health bar. Mesmers can stealth and multiply. And I die a little each time I see the 7k backstab from thiefs. That’s about half of the lifepool right there.
Anyway, my opinion shared a thousand times over this forum, but maybe here’s a novel thought.
Why don’t eles have conditions on their autoattacks? Dragon’s Claw. No Burning. Water 2 – Cone of Cold – No Freezing. I know you could add some with that one glyph, and it went from NU to sometimes since it got stun break, but I’d rather have another skill than this one that gives the skills the conditions they should already have. Too OP – See Necro Scepter.
There, yours to enjoy. I now share in your beliefs we need to spread the Arcana trait wealth over at least 2 more traits, and to see some patches that give the ele some new threats.

Crossplay.2067:

I feel you guys and arenanet are looking at this the wrong way. The problem is every elementalist is expected to constantly swap attunements. That severely limits builds and promotes common combos that might as well be telegraphed on loudspeakers. Then there’s the weapon range limitations. Almost all staff skills are ranged so staff users have to stay at range to be effective. Almost all dagger skills are melee so all dagger users have to stay in melee to be effective. Combine this with traits that are only work when in certain attunements and the long attunement cooldowns and you have a profession that’s pulling players in many directions but not allowing them to stand where they want. In essence, we can’t play our way.

In my opinion, the way to fix this is to stop insisting all elementalists rotate through all attunements. While it is nice to have the option of swapping, it shouldn’t be mandatory just to be effective. Some of us want to focus on one or two elements and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The second thing is to allow in-combat weapon swapping at the expense of attunement swapping. One way would be allowing elementalists to disable 2 attunements to gain the ability to weapon swap. This will limit their available weapon skills to 20 but improve their combat adaptability greatly. Another is to create a new grandmaster trait for each elemental line that allows weapon swapping while in that attunement. Since there’s only enough points for 2 grandmaster traits, it will limit itself plus obtaining these traits will mean giving up on traits that benefit from constant swapping. I’m also willing to bet players whom choose them are likely to stay in the attunements with them so, even though they technically have access to 50 weapon skills, they will limit themselves to 20. The third option is to create a signet with a passive that increases the current attunement’s effectiveness with time (like stacking might per second while in fire) and swaps weapons when active at the cost of the passive buff. The cooldown and the desire to keep the passive up will make players think hard about using the active.

The third thing that is needed is either more active defensive powers with longer effects or more hp. The reason why few eles go with a full berzerker build is because they simply don’t last long enough to get the damage out. I would suggest EVERY aura lasting 8 to 10 seconds and providing 10% damage reduction on top of their usual effects.

Last but not least, eles need skills with faster casting times. This is a game with twitch-based combat yet several skills are so slow that opponents can casually walk out of an aoe’s target reticule. There is something seriously wrong with that. No cast time should be longer than 1 second and I’d gladly take a reduction in damage if a recharge reduction comes with it.

I’ll have to discuss other opinions later as I really need to sleep.

This is actually a very interesting suggestion.

I’m still against weapon swap. That is what attunement is basically. I think it’s the offhand weapons that needs fixing. Necro dagger and focus have great utility and Mesmer Phantasmal Duelist (and to a lesser extent, warden) are great to drop on foes while staying out of arms reach. I don’t see the synergy with our scepter/dagger combo, and as much as I like focus it’s got no damage.

stale.9785:

This is actually a very interesting suggestion.

Interesting, but extremely impractical due to it multiplying the number of balancing factors eles will possess by a large amount.

BlackBeard.2873:

Halcyon.3140:

You are still able to heal in mist form if you have evasive arcana.

This is very true. It was the mistform—>ether renewal that was too much. It healed back up to like 70% and removed all condis. A reset like that is just too much.

Tell that to thieves.

How was that too much it was only possible once every 75 sec when traited once every 60 sec. Most of the other classes have a reset on a way shorter cooldown

The main benefit that an Ele loses when trading the weapon swap is the fact that they can’t change their combat range at all. A secondary benefit of weapon swap is that you can drastically change what skills you have as combos for some very interesting effects. Ele only gets 4 weapons, one of which can go in main-hand or off-hand, and that’s it. Despite having a vast array of skills, they’re very predictable. Anyone that’s played an Ele and gotten decent at it knows that there’s a few combos that work and work comparatively well; things such as RTL and Updraft followed by Burning Speed, as well as basic stuff like Eruption and Lava Font, and the standard Might stacking in Sceptre/Dagger.

Any other class, even Engineers, to an extent, can drastically change their combat style with weapon swap, they can change range, they can change from a heavy damage setup to something like Mace/Shield for Warriors, so they can tank up and heal, they have loads of options. And they can also spec their utilities around one or both of their weapon sets. Necromancer has a great setup with Sceptre/Dagger as well as Corruption utilities, but they can still do well with Staff. In the meantime, an Ele has no great combos to use with weapon skills aside from maybe Lightning Flash with things such as Churning Earth and maybe Fire Grab if you add Cleansing Fire into the mix. Most of an Ele’s utilities are spent just on trying to stay alive. There’s no room to use something like Glyph of Storms or Signet of Water, because all you have must be spent on skills like Armour of Earth and Arcane Shield so you can actually stay alive.

Ele does indeed have a lot of problems, and there are several ways that ANet could go about it. One way could be to just add in weapon swapping, another could be to put in better traits that encourage staying in an attunement so that a player can choose to swap around or stick in one or two of their favourites. Another thing the could do might be to lower base CD on attunement swapping to 10-12 seconds, possibly lowering the boost from the Arcana line. A final thing they could do if they really must insist that Ele players rely on swapping around a lot could be to tweak the traits that are attunement specific. Make them short in duration, but VERY powerful while they’re active. Something like “Attacks against you for 5 secs after swapping to Earth inflict Bleeding onto the foe” or “Next 5 skills after shifting into Air attunement inflict Weakness or Vulnerability”. Traits like that would encourage you to get into the attunement, fire off your skills, and then leave it ASAP so you could get it on cooldown and get back into the attunement to get your boost going again.

stale.9785:

BlackBeard.2873:

Halcyon.3140:

You are still able to heal in mist form if you have evasive arcana.

This is very true. It was the mistform—>ether renewal that was too much. It healed back up to like 70% and removed all condis. A reset like that is just too much.

Tell that to thieves.

& paladi… I mean guardian bubble &/or invuln` heal, or warriors regen build, or rangers rrr build, mesers/ranger pop stealth heal or…..

Others can do that, just ele aren`t allowed :$

tbh it is quite clear ele is still in beta. I played for months before seeing someone fall in MK instance & live, I fell & died. They said I should trait for fall damage.
I knew traits & knew no such thing existed, they were shocked, but not as much as me when I found out every class had something needed at times, except for us poor third class ele`s.
That combined with I`ve seen the devs play an ele, they were terribad & he even said he dies lots & that he could just roll alts & faceroll mobs.

Don`t expect a fix any time soon, or possibly at all…

Matt H.6142:

I’m still against weapon swap. That is what attunement is basically. I think it’s the offhand weapons that needs fixing. Necro dagger and focus have great utility and Mesmer Phantasmal Duelist (and to a lesser extent, warden) are great to drop on foes while staying out of arms reach. I don’t see the synergy with our scepter/dagger combo, and as much as I like focus it’s got no damage.

Attunement swap isn`t the same as weapon swap though.
I can swap from one to another & I`m still a pure melee only classs.
Weapon swap allows players to hit someone from range & swap to melee weapons when they`re being trained down in melee range.

EDIT: Just gained a leved on my bank alt warrior.
I can now weapon swap every four seconds.

What the hell is that doing in the game!?

No matter what I do, I’ve been near useless as a staff wielder in melee and a dagger user at range. If I get caught offguard by even a decent opponent while holding the wrong weapon, the fight is over before it began. Add to this the pitiful active defense and low HP and my only realistic option is to run. For a profession that supposed to be a jack of all trades, that’s beyond shameful. The true beauty of said term is adaptability but eles don’t have that. Instead we have skills that do the same thing with a minor side effect that differs depending on attunement.

In my opinion, drastically changing weapon skills after a year of operation is only going to kitten players off more. Either proliferate more weapons that have different ranges for different attunements or allow eles to swap weapons in combat. The second option is a lot easier to implement as well as faster.

I also wonder, what would be overpowering if eles had access to 40 weapons skills? I imagine most would find it daunting trying to figure out which of those skills is the best for the current situation. My guess is most players would only swap to adapt to combat with only a handful of pros breaking out spreadsheets to optimize boons and dps. Both are preferred behaviors.

Worst case scenario is someone finds a way to keep 25 stacks of might going infinitely. This can be fixed easily by tinkering with how weapon swaps are implemented. Also, If arenanet would open their test servers to the public or even limit access to everyone with at least 5 level 80 characters, scenarios like this can be found early and fixed before even reaching the live servers. It also means they wont have to patch 5 times after every update to fix bugs and exploits that players find within minutes.

Oh, almost forgot.
Just try swapping weapons & tidying.
Done that, got hit by random flying aoe/spells etc & been stuck with one dagger equipped.
Just try doing anything with that

Fishbait.6723:

Attunement swap isn`t the same as weapon swap though.
I can swap from one to another & I`m still a pure melee only classs.
Weapon swap allows players to hit someone from range & swap to melee weapons when they`re being trained down in melee range.

You’re not melee when wielding daggers, you’re short-ranged.

Crossplay.2067:

No matter what I do, I’ve been near useless as a staff wielder in melee and a dagger user at range.

You can get by with staff in melee range by using Evasive Arcana dodges effectively, or make your opponent back-off by casting a Meteor Shower/Eruption where you’re both fighting. Granted, it’s not optimal, but you shouldn’t be defenseless when fighting in melee with a staff.

I also wonder, what would be overpowering if eles had access to 40 weapons skills?

For one thing, all eles regardless of build could use an ice field combined with blast finishers could give a whole party perma fury, protection and swiftness for little to no effort.

Or consider several blast finishers in a water field…mass healing, for any ele build. At the moment, that at least requires a partner or a (very) specialized build. With weapon swaps, all eles would have acces to that all the time.

oh, here we go again /facepalm
well let’s get along with it as always: Elementalist is not rewarding. We just have to do twice the effort for the same results of any other class (in the best scenario, that is).
Things got even worse after the severe nerf that affected our mobility: currently we are stuck as staff supporter (bye bye “play as YOU want to play”) or have to struggle for any other role, with also being slapped with the understanding that any other class can fit in our role way better than we can even speccing fully to accomplish a single purpose.
The whole class needs a complete revamp.

So let me ask you then, Grevender:

How much damage does a damage dealer need to do in Guild Wars 2 in order for them to be effective?

ThiBash.5634:

So let me ask you then, Grevender:

How much damage does a damage dealer need to do in Guild Wars 2 in order for them to be effective?

More than now if you don’t use conjures.

haviz.1340:

ThiBash.5634:

So let me ask you then, Grevender:

How much damage does a damage dealer need to do in Guild Wars 2 in order for them to be effective?

More than now if you don’t use conjures.

That’s exactly what I mean. Do you feel the elementalist deals less damage than other professions with similar roles? How much dps does a rifle warrior have? Does he have the same utility skills? Can he hit multiple targets? Are his fields combo attacks?

ThiBash.5634:

So let me ask you then, Grevender:

How much damage does a damage dealer need to do in Guild Wars 2 in order for them to be effective?

you probably already forgot about this:
[img]http://s9.postimg.org/s0c8mgc7z/gw083.jpg[/img]

and I wasn’t even full buffed.

BUT…. you missed my main point, which is never the amount of raw damage, as I am not talking of numbers: it’s the amount of effort to get the results that makes the difference, especially when fighting against other players.
If another class can press a single key and make 15.000 damage, and I have to press four to get there, I am 1/4 as efficient as it.
If another class can fully disengage from combat and get back to full health pressing two buttons, and I have to press eight keys to do the same (providing I can, which is not the case as we have been totally stripped of our mobility), that means I am 1/8 as efficient as it.
Why our 2% attack boost per running boon was overpowered and the 3% boost per active illusion on my Mesmer isn’t? (Ele has been nerfed to 1%, Mesmer is still there: why?)
Why our Elite skills are so crappy that I even forget to use them? (at most, you will be stuck with Fire Elemental, all the rest is meh, the flaming sword got slightly boosted but it still is far from being “oooooooh….”)
Why Mist Form shares cooldown with Vapour Form?
What about RTL? seriously, 40 seconds?
Flame Wall on focus? Flame Aura? with that cooldown? lol.
Want to talk about conjured weapons?
Of our utility skills, how many are REALLY useful? and how many you NEVER equip?

On my mesmer it’s always a pain to select the utilities, because they are all great. Same for my guardian, the thief and let’s not even talk about my warrior.

My love for the Elementalist doesn’t prevent me to see and acknowledge the poor state that afflicts it.

ThiBash.5634:

That’s exactly what I mean. Do you feel the elementalist deals less damage than other professions with similar roles? How much dps does a rifle warrior have? Does he have the same utility skills? Can he hit multiple targets? Are his fields combo attacks?

Elementalist doesn’t have a role.

Grevender.9235:

you probably already forgot about this:
[img]http://s9.postimg.org/s0c8mgc7z/gw083.jpg[/img]

and I wasn’t even full buffed.

Impressive, I’ll grant you that. However, I have little doubt that the cumulative damage Meteor Shower can be even higher than that.

BUT…. you missed my main point, which is never the amount of raw damage, as I am not talking of numbers: it’s the amount of effort to get the results that makes the difference, especially when fighting against other players.

If another class can press a single key and make 15.000 damage, and I have to press four to get there, I am 1/4 as efficient as it.
If another class can fully disengage from combat and get back to full health pressing two buttons, and I have to press eight keys to do the same (providing I can, which is not the case as we have been totally stripped of our mobility), that means I am 1/8 as efficient as it.

You have a point there, however usually the elementalist does more than the aforementioned action in those extra button presses. Not only do a lot of our skills affect multiple targets, they can also (when involving attunement swap) grant partywide boons or (when involving combos) combine damage with an effect. Wheter that little extra damage or boon is worth having is another discussion of course.

Why our 2% attack boost per running boon was overpowered and the 3% boost per active illusion on my Mesmer isn’t? (Ele has been nerfed to 1%, Mesmer is still there: why?)

Not sure, but I’m guessing because bunker mesmers base damage is less than bunker eles?

Why our Elite skills are so crappy that I even forget to use them? (at most, you will be stuck with Fire Elemental, all the rest is meh, the flaming sword got slightly boosted but it still is far from being “oooooooh….”)

Those elemental summons are awesome! Fire’s actually the worst of them in my opinion. Air’s got spamming ranged stun, Ice has healing and an Combo Field: Ice, and earth is a great tank in both survivability and aggro.

Why Mist Form shares cooldown with Vapour Form?

I don’t know.

What about RTL? seriously, 40 seconds?

Agree, seemed like a crude fix.

Flame Wall on focus? Flame Aura? with that cooldown? lol.

Agree with you on that too, it should be less to a focus-aura build would become viable.

Want to talk about conjured weapons?
Of our utility skills, how many are REALLY useful? and how many you NEVER equip? On my mesmer it’s always a pain to select the utilities, because they are all great. Same for my guardian, the thief and let’s not even talk about my warrior.

To be honest, when comparing it to the Ranger or Engineer, we have a great selection. Cantrips are most common, but signet and glyph builds are perfectly viable, and I’ve tried Arcane-based builds in the past: works well, if traited correctly (I just like the Evasive Arcane playstyle too much).

My love for the Elementalist doesn’t prevent me to see and acknowledge the poor state that afflicts it.

But your mood seems to affect your judgment somewhat. The last patch that buffed eles changed a lot of the most pressing quality of life issues and for the most part, we have stuff to work with now.

Is it perfect? No. Is it all gloom and doom…sorry, but I just don’t see it that way.

Grevender.9235:

ThiBash.5634:

So let me ask you then, Grevender:

How much damage does a damage dealer need to do in Guild Wars 2 in order for them to be effective?

you probably already forgot about this:
[img]http://s9.postimg.org/s0c8mgc7z/gw083.jpg[/img]

and I wasn’t even full buffed.

In fact if you consider channeling and CD its horribad as dps.
May be compared to autoattack of some other professions.

One thing about that CE cast/damage.
NPCs don`t dodge, they don`t walk out of the huuuuuuuge telegraphed spell or the red aoe markers. They also don`t think, hmm, I`d better stun that 3.5second cast & stick that ele with a full cd

Players do (well, the average-good ones ;p )

As for meteor shower. It can in theory do damage, but it can also drop every meteor blob & not hit a thing., due to it being random & most players & mobs can stand in it & not give a crap.
Hell, I`ve ressed players from dead to full whilst been rubbing in meteor shower & not been hit at all plenty of times.
Just fought some guardian, ranger & staff ele. I completely ignored the ele as they aren`t a threat in any form.

P.S.

@Crossplay.2067: I like the concept for this idea, but I think it should come WITH some QoL changes to the skills of the staff, focus and to reduction of nearly all out attunement and ultities. Seriously, I mean how can Arenanet justify how high our cd but comparable classes have higher. (personally, I think all control skills should be on the CD level of elementalist to make them something players cherish and not spam for damage).

Matt H.6142:

I’m still against weapon swap. That is what attunement is basically. I think it’s the offhand weapons that needs fixing. Necro dagger and focus have great utility and Mesmer Phantasmal Duelist (and to a lesser extent, warden) are great to drop on foes while staying out of arms reach. I don’t see the synergy with our scepter/dagger combo, and as much as I like focus it’s got no damage.

I used to be like you but attunement swap is not even on the same area as weapon swap, maybe in PvE well it doesn’t really matter but in WvW and PvP it does matter. With the way attunement swap works, except for Water they aint a lot of differences between earth, air and fire EXCEPT at the initial swap where you get the attunement bonuses which comes as the result of a trait.

The reality is that attunements swap doesn’t provide the enough (IF ANY) to justify how predictable the elementalist is. When you see an elementalist in WvW or PvP you pretty much have an idea of what they can and cannot do. While other classes can switch at well.

Experienced players, regardless of whether they are in the AoE of Churning Earth or not, will always dodge before it’s activated. This is because, like I said, Ele’s are extremely predictable and people expect the Lightning Flash combo. I never use CE in 1v1’s because you’ll never pull it off against experienced players.

Staff Ele’s excell in Zerg vs. Zerg combat. Shutting down their movement with a Static Field is amazing. However, I do agree that it lacks 1v1 capabilities. There is simply not enough dps do leave a dent. Yes, meteor shower has potentially crazy amounts of damage. However, becaue of the AoE radius (even larger if traited, which you should be), you’ll most likely miss most, if not all of the attacks. I would be satisfied if they buffed the Staff’s auto-attack damage by 100%. It does seem like a lot on paper, but it’s really not that big of a difference from it’s current state.

If any one you haven’t tried S/D Fresh Air , it’s extremely fun, challenging and rewarding. However, having a 10K starting health pool makes you even squishier than thieves and because of that, useless in WvW. I honestly think Thieves and Ele’s should switch health pools. It makes sense when you compare their potential dps and movement capabilities.

EchenSketch.9142:

Experienced players, regardless of whether they are in the AoE of Churning Earth or not, will always dodge before it’s activated. This is because, like I said, Ele’s are extremely predictable and people expect the Lightning Flash combo. I never use CE in 1v1’s because you’ll never pull it off against experienced players.

Staff Ele’s excell in Zerg vs. Zerg combat. Shutting down their movement with a Static Field is amazing. However, I do agree that it lacks 1v1 capabilities. There is simply not enough dps do leave a dent. Yes, meteor shower has potentially crazy amounts of damage. However, becaue of the AoE radius (even larger if traited, which you should be), you’ll most likely miss most, if not all of the attacks. I would be satisfied if they buffed the Staff’s auto-attack damage by 100%. It does seem like a lot on paper, but it’s really not that big of a difference from it’s current state.

If any one you haven’t tried S/D Fresh Air , it’s extremely fun, challenging and rewarding. However, having a 10K starting health pool makes you even squishier than thieves and because of that, useless in WvW. I honestly think Thieves and Ele’s should switch health pools. It makes sense when you compare their potential dps and movement capabilities.

Fresh air is cheap band aid to a more complex problem. Also it doesn’t change the fact that fresh air is only useful with 1 weapon (scepter). Instead of attempting to fix the bigger issues with the class they instead (unsurprisingly) went for the cheap cop-out.

There is a way to almost always guarantee a CE burst in a 1v1 against all but a couple builds. Even if they manage to get out of it, it leaves them completely open to an air->fire->air burst if you are running S/D fresh air. I’m totally surprised more people don’t do it.

In pvp, Ele can be built to be a very effective burster on the level of a thief.

ThiBash.5634:

Impressive, I’ll grant you that. However, I have little doubt that the cumulative damage Meteor Shower can be even higher than that.

if a target does his best to catch all the meteors, maybe yes

You have a point there, however usually the elementalist does more than the aforementioned action in those extra button presses. Not only do a lot of our skills affect multiple targets, they can also (when involving attunement swap) grant partywide boons or (when involving combos) combine damage with an effect. Wheter that little extra damage or boon is worth having is another discussion of course.

….only traiting specifically for that. All other classes don’t have that limit, they are effective in their roles to begin with. So, again, it’s just a matter of efficiency…

Not sure, but I’m guessing because bunker mesmers base damage is less than bunker eles?

yeah but you see, they are punishing other builds just to nerf one, actually reducing the viable options.

Those elemental summons are awesome! Fire’s actually the worst of them in my opinion. Air’s got spamming ranged stun, Ice has healing and an Combo Field: Ice, and earth is a great tank in both survivability and aggro.

I almost never leave the Mists so how reliable they are in PvE means nothing to me, I can just assure they are almost completely useless (aside, in very rare cases, the Fire Elemental)

I don’t know.

me neither, but I hope you agree that is sad.

Agree, seemed like a crude fix.

it should be a War Crime: the responsible should be condemned to play only this version of the Elementalist 12 hours a day for the rest of his life in WvWvW.
Roaming, of course.

Agree with you on that too, it should be less to a focus-aura build would become viable.

sometimes I use a focus-aura build and it still lacks the punch you would expect by sacrificing all that mobility and survival.

To be honest, when comparing it to the Ranger or Engineer, we have a great selection.

so what? “our stuff sux less because that stuff sux more?”. Nah, this logic is faulty and will never bring balance.

Cantrips are most common, but signet and glyph builds are perfectly viable, and I’ve tried Arcane-based builds in the past: works well, if traited correctly (I just like the Evasive Arcane playstyle too much).

yeah but still subpar.

But your mood seems to affect your judgment somewhat.

only because it makes me more honest? I take that as a compliment

The last patch that buffed eles changed a lot of the most pressing quality of life issues and for the most part, we have stuff to work with now.

fresh air is nice, but it is one good thing against a truckload of stuff that is being ignored, understimated and that is kitten ing off the loyal -and paying- playerbase with the aggravating of not staying in touch with the community that for one year is saying the same stuff over and over again despite all their “meta”, “numbers” and whatever: WE are the ones that play daily the Elementalist in all possible scenarios and are the most entitled to know what would improve OUR gaming experience.

Is it perfect? No. Is it all gloom and doom…sorry, but I just don’t see it that way.

I like your optimism, but sooner or later you will join the Dark Side….

LordByron.8369:

In fact if you consider channeling and CD its horribad as dps.

yup, but it is extremely effective to send to waypoint multiple downed enemies

Fishbait.6723:

One thing about that CE cast/damage.
NPCs don`t dodge, they don`t walk out of the huuuuuuuge telegraphed spell or the red aoe markers. They also don`t think, hmm, I`d better stun that 3.5second cast & stick that ele with a full cd

Players do (well, the average-good ones ;p )

but average players fight average players: that means they know when foe is out of dodges, add a nice cripple and voilà CH done.
Or just make a Churning Bomb: dodge that…if you can

nice damage =0

Grevender.9235:

LordByron.8369:

In fact if you consider channeling and CD its horribad as dps.

yup, but it is extremely effective to send to waypoint multiple downed enemies

so is every staff skill. Those are the best downers.

BlackBeard.2873:

ARM.3912:

RTL should be 1550 range with a 15 second cooldown and no conditional. All healing should work in mist form. Every cantrip should be a stunbreaker.

I agree that cleansing fire needs to a stun-break. Healing in mist-form isn’t necessary, as I believe it was the thing that mostly made us too hard to kill. RtL 1550 range on 15s is too strong, although it is enjoyable. While we are in a bad place, we don’t have to go back to where we were to be good again. Just a few tweaks along with nerfs to other classes.

Or, cleansing fire could have a small healing component tied to it-something like 600-800 hp healed per condition removed. Just saying, there’s more than one way to make something useful aside from making them stunbreakers.