Guild Wars 2

silvermember.8941:

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.

I disagree, they are too slow. But Staff AoE with a bursty Ele build can be pretty annoying for foes trying to get into a tower/keep.

Grevender.9235:

silvermember.8941:

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.

I disagree, they are too slow. But Staff AoE with a bursty Ele build can be pretty annoying for foes trying to get into a tower/keep.

I get the feeling we are talking about 2 different things. I was talking about enemies in downed state.

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.

it’s not a 1vs1 skill (although as already said you can always have your foe ran out of dodges, cripple, immobilize and such), and it is extremely effective roaming with small parties. I use it as feint (cancel at the end = one dodge wasted )

silvermember.8941:

Grevender.9235:

silvermember.8941:

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.

I disagree, they are too slow. But Staff AoE with a bursty Ele build can be pretty annoying for foes trying to get into a tower/keep.

I get the feeling we are talking about 2 different things. I was talking about enemies in downed state.

me too. But nvm, you continue to finish multiple foes with your staff, I will continue with CE and everyone is happy

No, healing on Elementalists is fine the way it is, if not over-powered. The issue is Anet nerfed our abilities to the ground instead of balancing. Our movement skills and stunbreakers got hit hard.

Grevender.9235:

silvermember.8941:

Grevender.9235:

silvermember.8941:

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.

I disagree, they are too slow. But Staff AoE with a bursty Ele build can be pretty annoying for foes trying to get into a tower/keep.

I get the feeling we are talking about 2 different things. I was talking about enemies in downed state.

me too. But nvm, you continue to finish multiple foes with your staff, I will continue with CE and everyone is happy

I am already in staff in WvW because you know free bags (ZvZ), why would I walk up to enemy and risk any unnecessary damage?

Fishbait.6723:

………….
Just fought some guardian, ranger & staff ele. I completely ignored the ele as they aren`t a threat in any form……………..

Lol. Not a very good staff ele then. If he was you would have been chilled, stunned, crippled, immobilized, knocked down, weakened, blinded, burned, and bleed. If the guardian and ranger couldn’t take advantage of that, you must have been up against some upleveled newcomers to the game.

Personally, running with staff in groups, I find the 1200 range and the duration of just the one skill effect Immobilized, from Shockwave, gives just about any group of players enough time to down almost anyone.

Nettle.9025:

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

Erm, what?
Show me an ele doing 7-`13k hits like thief can with press of one button.
Sure, fresh air isn`t too bad, but it also is a one trick pony.
You blow those cds, you`re done.
Thief blows its cds, it can just stealth & come right back at you.

Fishbait.6723:

Nettle.9025:

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

Erm, what?
Show me an ele doing 7-`13k hits like thief can with press of one button.
Sure, fresh air isn`t too bad, but it also is a one trick pony.
You blow those cds, you`re done.
Thief blows its cds, it can just stealth & come right back at you.

He’s right. Yes Ele’s can’t land single crits like that, but it’s the compliation of a combo chain.

S/D Burst Chain
Air 1, Air 2, Lightning Flash, Updraft, Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Ring of Fire, Fire Grab, Back to Air, Air 1, Air 2, and Arcane Wave. This is decimate any class that’s not built to bunker, and is easier to pull off than you think. Right now in tPvP, burst Ele is the meta.

His point is we have crazy burst, and we do. Sure it’s a one trick pony, but aren’t most classes? Basically every class ingame has a standard rotation that people will do unless they’re interrupted, including thieves.

Fishbait.6723:

Nettle.9025:

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

Erm, what?
Show me an ele doing 7-`13k hits like thief can with press of one button.
Sure, fresh air isn`t too bad, but it also is a one trick pony.
You blow those cds, you`re done.
Thief blows its cds, it can just stealth & come right back at you.

Never said an ele could do it in one button. To be fair, a thief burst is about 4-5 buttons (BV→BP→HS→steal or inf sig→BS). I know, I mained thief for over 1k tourney games.

The thing with ele is that against all but a few builds, its not hard to bait out dodges and stunbreaks. Sure you blow your CDs, but it doesn’t matter because your target is probably dead. And with the right build, you actually have 2 burst rotations as there is a way to fairly reliably land CE in a 1v1 that most standard fresh air builds do not use.

It has a weakness to builds with multiple stunbreaks (particularly s/d thief) or lots of stability uptime, but any balanced build is going to have a weakness.

I have come up with a great idea. (Just came to me, don’t judge!)

Why not remove conjured weapons out of utility slots, and put them into your trait tree?

For example, in fire, you put in 10 points, and your fire attunement skills would be switched with the fire axe’s. Put 10 into water, and you’re water would be switched with the Ice Bow’s. (These being optional of course)

Again, there are issues with useless skills/reskins of skills, but that can be worked around.

A D/D ele could now have ranged in water attunement, and a Staff Ele’s could have melee-ranged options, etc. We could take it even further and allow players to choose what attunements are swapped with which weapons, allowing people to “switch attunements” yet specialize in what role they want to play.

Imagine an Ele with D/D Fire attunement skills, and Water + Earth Attunements were swapped with Fire Axe and Fiery Greatsword.

Just an idea, I think it’s great

Currently, many players are of the opinion that to balance the elementalist, the base cooldown of attunements should be reduced in order to alleviate the elementalist’s dependence on the arcane trait line. I believe that this would be a poor change to, and it would irrevocably damage elementalists as a profession. Here is why:

In the current meta, elementalists are required to substantially invest in the water and arcana trait lines for two reasons. 1. Only the water trait line contains the sustain to compensate for their low base defensive stats. 2. They need to continually switch between attunements in order to access the cooldowns that allow them to match other classes in term of damage and sustain, causing the arcana trait line to become a prerequisite for competent elementalist play. These two factors contribute to what has become known as the “dance” of the elementalist. This “dance” exists because once the elementalist has expended at least the short cooldowns in an attunement, they no longer benefit from that attunement, and regardless of their situation, it is normally in their best interest to swap.

If base attunement cooldown is reduced, it may in the short term allow elementalists to reach slightly deeper into other trait lines. However, the core issues of the profession would remain unresolved. 10 to 15 points into the water trait line as well as arcana V (Elemental Attunement) would continue to be staples of the class, particularly in tpvp. Instead of strengthening the other trait lines to make them more appealing and allow for greater specialization, we would essentially be making all other trait lines into “arcana by another name”. Diversity in elementalist playstyles would be stifled, and the profession as a whole would stagnate.

I believe that balancing elementalists as a profession does not require the alteration of any of their core mechanics. A series of changes to elementalist trait lines would accomplish the same thing while simultaneously expanding the profession rather than constricting it. To save space, I will link my full proposal here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/The-Diversification-of-Elementalist-Builds.

As appealing as the idea may appear at first glance, please do not encourage the developers to reduce the base cooldown of attunements. Once made, a change like that would be difficult to undo, and it would not lead to the betterment of the class.

EchenSketch.9142:

I have come up with a great idea. (Just came to me, don’t judge!)

Why not remove conjured weapons out of utility slots, and put them into your trait tree?

For example, in fire, you put in 10 points, and your fire attunement skills would be switched with the fire axe’s. Put 10 into water, and you’re water would be switched with the Ice Bow’s. (These being optional of course)

Again, there are issues with useless skills/reskins of skills, but that can be worked around.

A D/D ele could now have ranged in water attunement, and a Staff Ele’s could have melee-ranged options, etc. We could take it even further and allow players to choose what attunements are swapped with which weapons, allowing people to “switch attunements” yet specialize in what role they want to play.

Imagine an Ele with D/D Fire attunement skills, and Water + Earth Attunements were swapped with Fire Axe and Fiery Greatsword.

Just an idea, I think it’s great

Are you suggesting it overwrite existing skills? If so, that would be even worse as people could only invest in Arcane traits if they wanted to keep any of the standard skills. 10 in Air and they would loose access to RTL, Swirling Winds, Updraft, etc. That would result in even less variation than currently.

Currently, Eles are dependent almost entirely on their traits for survivability.

LordEarle.9754:

Currently, many players are of the opinion that to balance the elementalist, the base cooldown of attunements should be reduced in order to alleviate the elementalist’s dependence on the arcane trait line. I believe that this would be a poor change to, and it would irrevocably damage elementalists as a profession. Here is why…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/The-Diversification-of-Elementalist-Builds

As appealing as the idea may appear at first glance, please do not encourage the developers to reduce the base cooldown of attunements. Once made, a change like that would be difficult to undo, and it would not lead to the betterment of the class.

I read your thread, and it has many solid points, but I stand by what I said and disagree (Anyone who hasn’t go read it). The original intent of the Elementalist, at least for Guild Wars 2, was simply to be the master of the elements. Anet has stated multiple times that they want players to do the dance you spoke of (Very poetic ). They want players to cycle through attunements, and do not support staying in one attunement. I do agree with your point that we should be able to stay in the role we want to fulfull, not have to switch from DPS to heals because of extended cooldowns, but Anet has stated that is not their intent.

And so, I stand by my thoughts:
1. Reduce base attunement swap CD’s.
2. Raise base health so traiting into water isn’t a must.
3. Reduce CD’s of weapon skills.
4. Rearrange Arcana traits so Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana are easily accessible, allowing for more varied builds. (5 points and 20 points respectively?)

You stated the proposals, listed above, would “treat a symptom, but isn’t a cure”, as it would homogenize our playstyle. Anet is content with out playstyle, and based on what you said, should go ahead and make these changes.

I think much of the class’ difficulty is that the class’ implementation opposes the stated design intent of the Devs. Trying to come up with a fix without changing either is near impossible.

The skill mirrors in each attunement, trait lines layout, and starting attunement CD all indicate that attunement specialization was supposed to be viable by investing in specific element trait lines, with attunement “dancing” a variant supported by the Arcane line.

However, with each patch the Devs have “balanced” the skills to “encourage” you into a juggling playstyle that they have now stating is the way the class is meant to be played, forcing everyone into the Arcane traits just to play the class as it was “intended”.

I did not follow the state of the company all through the development of the game, but does anyone know if they swapped directors at some point? It feels like whoever initially made the class is not the same person who’s deciding the direction of the class now.

Solkard.5136:

I did not follow the state of the company all through the development of the game, but does anyone know if they swapped directors at some point? It feels like whoever initially made the class is not the same person who’s deciding the direction of the class now.

Colin became director a few months right before release but I don’t think that is what happen.

What happen was that Arenanet throught it’s iterative process changed a lot of things between the time the elementalist was unveiled and release. The current trait system was added AFTER the elementalist. Also between those 2 years a lot of the core mechanics were gotten rid off like potions and stats (before it was just intelligence, defense power etc), conditional damage was non existent.

If you search the wiki you will see a lot of skills that were announce that were later thrown away.

Anyways, this later iterative process probably lead to the current elementalist. Unfortunately, they do not have many balance developers so they could not go back and reiterate the elementalist. But when the elementalist was announced it
Fire:aoe
water:support
air:high damage single target
earth: I don’t remember.

I just think that the elementalist a a relic of the past that needs to be updated to the future or elementalist is a model that other classes to follow to avoid power creep and the fact that in PvP damage is way too high (disregarding all the horrible elementalist traits, bad skills, crappy staff etc just looking at CD and damage).

Has Anet ever responded to why the Elementalist has a lower starting health pool than a thief, when a thief has more movement, dps, and escape? If they say because Ele’s have good healing, I’d prefer to have a higher health pool and nerf the heals.

I Rolled my ele after the nerf. Did a little reading but not much I just heard that it was a hard class to lvl. So I struggled on doing the starter zones and events and made my way to 80.Now I am screwed.I love the prof. I love the powers and atunement switching and all the things that make it hard to play.But It truly is unrealistically unbalanced for the same reasons everyone has said again and again.Which is sad because I love the prof more than any other.But it is not fun to be so shortchanged in every department that the game stops being fun.I am in full exotics, tried all the builds, been a gamer sense the days of pong and ele’s are just broken.If all classes were this bad no one would be playing any more.Please fix them anet I really don’t like playing any of the other prof’s ele’s are fun to play but the reward is death and repair bills.

I think if there’s one thing Anet should take away from this, which there are many, is that we criticize them, and QQ (kinda) because we care. We do it because the idea behind the Elementalist is a great one and it’s a blast to play, and we hate to see it in this over-nerfed state.

EchenSketch.9142:

Has Anet ever responded to why the Elementalist has a lower starting health pool than a thief, when a thief has more movement, dps, and escape? If they say because Ele’s have good healing, I’d prefer to have a higher health pool and nerf the heals.

Actually thief shares the same health pool with the ele together with the guardian. Not that it justifies their insane dps and escape abilities…

My number one buff thus far is AoE tagging for elementalists.
What’s with the elementalists limited AoE range for each meteor in meteor shower and number one staff skills, it’s ridiculously hard to tag in wvw. Also why does meteor show still require the caster to stand still in casting, its a death sentence in most WvW scenarios if they they’re not on the move.

What I also find unacceptable is the fact how unbalanced staff skills are, seriously fire is the only dps option? seriously!? Earth does nothing, water is so weak its not even funny and air is also severly lack luster. Staff isn’t close to being DPS-ish unless you manage to fire of a meteor shower and even that has severe weaknesses. Staff Elementalists should have burst damage on CC skills, frozen ground should do damage and the elements other then fire should have their damage boosted significantly, at least +35%. In PvE I have to depend on arcane wave and the elementals to do decent DPS, plus flushing through all my traits for the burst damage skills which chain so slowly.Not only that the fact that staff skills don’t even combo well, there are almost no blast finishers in the staff set to chain off our combos for effect, we only have earth number two staff and arcane wave, even that’s far from easy to use in zerg to zerg fights.

My last beef is the fact that glyph of storms will kill me in WvW because retaliation is so over powered. Usage of that skill in a zerg fight, I’m guaranteed to lose 50-90% of my health in three seconds. There’s no damage cap on retaliation so even tossing a meteor shower into a zerg with retaliation will half my health.

There’s so much that doesn’t work for the staff elementalist, feels like Anet doesn’t understand what to do with it or how to make it fun. Being an elementalist is a lot of work, its not fun like a warrior, that is by far the greatest distinction of the class to date.

EchenSketch.9142:

Has Anet ever responded to why the Elementalist has a lower starting health pool than a thief, when a thief has more movement, dps, and escape? If they say because Ele’s have good healing, I’d prefer to have a higher health pool and nerf the heals.

Prior to the nerfs to heals & mist & heal nerf, they said on SotG that ele heals were too strong, that they could heal from almost zero to full in 8-10 seconds.
I said in chat that we can heal well over 8-10 seconds, but a thief can kill us in 1-2 seconds.

Most in chat agreed, devs & ones reading chat for them ignored it & rushed onto the next subject.
Don`t ever expect a decent reply from a dev, most of us have learnt that…

about ele burst:

Its not spammable and Leaves ele dead if it fails…also in pvp section everyone says its easy to avoid.

While in PvE-www is useless

p.S. in sotg they said lot of things….mostly on mobility.
They said also in pve ele is not good so where are the buffs?
We got huge nerfs instead.

Mechanically, it is a weapon swap. It’s just we can’t swap to ranged skills with daggers. So my point is why we couldn’t have ranged skills and melee skills in dagger like necro, or focus skills with damage like necro. Or how about off hand scepter. If eles could dual wield scepters it would be a unique flavour for eles. The off hand skills we have are pretty poor besides earthquake and churning earth. Or a ranged attunement.
Say we just wrote off offhand, eles really only have 12 weapons skills, up from 10 for other classes. I’m liking the phrase going around we do double the work for the same (or less) reward.

The only weapon swap I want is a QoL swap (so I can leave my staff sitting in the wings) that requires a 3-5s rooted cast to actually swap weapons (so I can duck behind a corner and not run 1/2 mile away to get OOC).

I don’t think Ele burst is easy to avoid. I always use unconventional methods of starting the chain. Not RTL, but Earth 4+Lightning Flash, to Air, start combo, or Lightning Flash to Updraft.

Timed well, they won’t be able to dodge it. Also, in tpvp, it’s all about choosing the right target. Ele’s should be focusing Necros, Thieves, and Mesmers, classes with low stability and stunbreaks that are also squisher. Catch a thief without a stunbreak and your burst will easily kill him.

Fishbait.6723:

EchenSketch.9142:

Has Anet ever responded to why the Elementalist has a lower starting health pool than a thief, when a thief has more movement, dps, and escape? If they say because Ele’s have good healing, I’d prefer to have a higher health pool and nerf the heals.

Prior to the nerfs to heals & mist & heal nerf, they said on SotG that ele heals were too strong, that they could heal from almost zero to full in 8-10 seconds.
I said in chat that we can heal well over 8-10 seconds, but a thief can kill us in 1-2 seconds.

Most in chat agreed, devs & ones reading chat for them ignored it & rushed onto the next subject.
Don`t ever expect a decent reply from a dev, most of us have learnt that…

I still don’t understand this indirect nerfing, it doesn’t make any sense. We have too many heals, ok. Then nerf the heals, and not our mobility, stunbreaks, and damage.

Maybe they did read what Fish said and realized they couldn’t nerf heals. But then were still set on nerfing something so did all that other stuff? Thanks Fish. :P

Solkard.5136:

Maybe they did read what Fish said and realized they couldn’t nerf heals. But then were still set on nerfing something so did all that other stuff? Thanks Fish. :P

Alas, our heals were still nerfed :$

That’s because then they remembered that they just don’t like us.

I have a theory that somewhere out there is a build and means of playing the elementalist that is viable, but those guys aren’t talking.

I believe this is why we have had the nerfs we have had so far. The nerfs affected eles who can’t die ( we were at one time as good or better than guardians), eles who can escape at will, eles who can cleanse any and all conditions at will (made other classes condition builds un-useable, there was a time you would never see a necro in sPvP.) The list goes on.

All those nerfs were made against ways of playing the class that had become commonplace. I can certainly understand other classes frustrations and objections which no doubt prompted the nerfs. Kind of like the objections everyone has today towards theives, except those who can stay stealthed according to general wisdom really have no good way to kill anybody, so they are more an irritant than an actual threat. Eles back in the day could kill everybody.

So, my theory is that either 1) there is a way to play the ele so it is competitive and we don’t know it 2) they are waiting for the upcoming tourneys to end before changing our class so there is a radical difference, so as not it interrupt the flow of sPvP.

If that is not it, well, then they need to totally separate sPvP skills from the rest if they can’t find a way to balance sPvP, Pve, and WvW. That was always a tall order to begin with.

I like your theory about there being a new “meta build”, but I just don’t believe it. Having just 4 weapons, along with janky traits severely limits our build possibilites. I am working on a new staff build though, but I don’t expect it to be anything revolutionary.

Fishbait.6723:

EchenSketch.9142:

Has Anet ever responded to why the Elementalist has a lower starting health pool than a thief, when a thief has more movement, dps, and escape? If they say because Ele’s have good healing, I’d prefer to have a higher health pool and nerf the heals.

Prior to the nerfs to heals & mist & heal nerf, they said on SotG that ele heals were too strong, that they could heal from almost zero to full in 8-10 seconds.
I said in chat that we can heal well over 8-10 seconds, but a thief can kill us in 1-2 seconds.

Most in chat agreed, devs & ones reading chat for them ignored it & rushed onto the next subject.
Don`t ever expect a decent reply from a dev, most of us have learnt that…

amazing how they forget that having a smaller health pool would obviously get filled up quicker

SilverUniverse.7103:

Fishbait.6723:

EchenSketch.9142:

Has Anet ever responded to why the Elementalist has a lower starting health pool than a thief, when a thief has more movement, dps, and escape? If they say because Ele’s have good healing, I’d prefer to have a higher health pool and nerf the heals.

Prior to the nerfs to heals & mist & heal nerf, they said on SotG that ele heals were too strong, that they could heal from almost zero to full in 8-10 seconds.
I said in chat that we can heal well over 8-10 seconds, but a thief can kill us in 1-2 seconds.

Most in chat agreed, devs & ones reading chat for them ignored it & rushed onto the next subject.
Don`t ever expect a decent reply from a dev, most of us have learnt that…

amazing how they forget that having a smaller health pool would obviously get filled up quicker

TBH I’ve never thought of it that way either…which makes me even more sad.