Guild Wars 2

Given that whatever devs worked on the ele patch obviously have 0 experience trying to play any ele build besides cele at a competitive level, how about we give them some suggestions that would make a glass burst setup more playable?

Current problems with glass ele include:

Worst mitigation and the lowest hp and armor in the game. You’re looking at 50% vigor uptime maximum and a single blind every 8 seconds, only while you are hitting targets. That just doesn’t cut it when mesmers and thieves are throwing aegis/stealth/blind out of every orifice, with better base stats to boot.

So what should we do to solve these issues?

I’ll start off with a few (ok alot of) ideas I’ve had floating around. Obviously you wouldn’t want to implement all of them at the same time, so consider each one on its own.

So what are some suggestions that you guys have? I hope we can get some good ideas going and get some dev attention on non-cele builds.

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Did you read the thread at all. I’m not looking for a build bro.

Linnael.1069:

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Did you read the thread at all. I’m not looking for a build bro.

Oh I did, I just thought it’d be better to dispel the notion that things like blinding ashes are of even any use to a burst ele, which indirectly supports your reasoning.

If you want my actual suggestions, I just think that elementalist needs lower cooldowns on active defenses, especially through utilities. Lowering obsidian flesh’s CD from 50 to 45 or even 40 seconds would help a lot, as would lowering arcane shield’s ridicoulous CD to like 30 seconds or so.

Its kind of bullkitten that cleansing fire and the kittenty water signet are our only sources of condition removal from utilites, so we have to rely on overly traiting synergies to get that. Yeah we could trait cantrips on ele to get enough cleanse, but those skills don’t help burst builds at all in the way that say… traited quickening zephyr, entangle, troll unugent, and lightning relex help a power survival ranger well… survive, while also being able to burst people down. Water signet should remove 3 conditions on active instead of the kitten chill. One of the tempest shouts needs to remove a few condis as well, and I’d even wager to say I’d LOVE it if cleansing water got removed entirely to compensate for us getting much better personal cleanse in different areas that aren’t dependent on water/cantrips/arcane, which is one of the reasons why building tempest builds is difficult. You need to drop either or both of water/arcane to make tempest aura builds worth it, but building for cleanse that way is almost impossible.

Your negate invulnerability idea is interesting, but I’d rather they just change the vamp rune mist proc into, “you gain the vampiric aura effect on yourself” so theives/mesmers cease to be carried by them.

nearlight.3064:

Linnael.1069:

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Did you read the thread at all. I’m not looking for a build bro.

Oh I did, I just thought it’d be better to dispel the notion that things like blinding ashes are of even any use to a burst ele, which indirectly supports your reasoning.

If you want my actual suggestions, I just think that elementalist needs lower cooldowns on active defenses, especially through utilities. Lowering obsidian flesh’s CD from 50 to 45 or even 40 seconds would help a lot, as would lowering arcane shield’s ridicoulous CD to like 30 seconds or so.

Its kind of bullkitten that cleansing fire and the kittenty water signet are our only sources of condition removal from utilites, so we have to rely on overly traiting synergies to get that. Yeah we could trait cantrips on ele to get enough cleanse, but those skills don’t help burst builds at all in the way that say… traited quickening zephyr, entangle, troll unugent, and lightning relex help a power survival ranger well… survive, while also being able to burst people down. Water signet should remove 3 conditions on active instead of the kitten chill. One of the tempest shouts needs to remove a few condis as well, and I’d even wager to say I’d LOVE it if cleansing water got removed entirely to compensate for us getting much better personal cleanse in different areas that aren’t dependent on water/cantrips/arcane, which is one of the reasons why building tempest builds is difficult. You need to drop either or both of water/arcane to make tempest aura builds worth it, but building for cleanse that way is almost impossible.

Your negate invulnerability idea is interesting, but I’d rather they just change the vamp rune mist proc into, “you gain the vampiric aura effect on yourself” so theives/mesmers cease to be carried by them.

I like the idea of moving cleanses off of water line and into baseline functionality, but unfortunately I think that’s just too large of a change for ANet to make.

Cutting CDs on active defense is absolutely a good idea. I’d go a step further and say we need more active defense that isn’t tied to focus. Focus should be the defensive group support weapon, but as it is we’re so strapped for active mitigation that everybody runs it for personal protection. Something like: Frost Aura now removes 3 conditions when you cast the skill and Churning Earth gives you invuln while you channel could go a long way to reducing ele’s dependency on focus to play glass.

Linnael.1069:

nearlight.3064:

Linnael.1069:

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Did you read the thread at all. I’m not looking for a build bro.

Oh I did, I just thought it’d be better to dispel the notion that things like blinding ashes are of even any use to a burst ele, which indirectly supports your reasoning.

If you want my actual suggestions, I just think that elementalist needs lower cooldowns on active defenses, especially through utilities. Lowering obsidian flesh’s CD from 50 to 45 or even 40 seconds would help a lot, as would lowering arcane shield’s ridicoulous CD to like 30 seconds or so.

Its kind of bullkitten that cleansing fire and the kittenty water signet are our only sources of condition removal from utilites, so we have to rely on overly traiting synergies to get that. Yeah we could trait cantrips on ele to get enough cleanse, but those skills don’t help burst builds at all in the way that say… traited quickening zephyr, entangle, troll unugent, and lightning relex help a power survival ranger well… survive, while also being able to burst people down. Water signet should remove 3 conditions on active instead of the kitten chill. One of the tempest shouts needs to remove a few condis as well, and I’d even wager to say I’d LOVE it if cleansing water got removed entirely to compensate for us getting much better personal cleanse in different areas that aren’t dependent on water/cantrips/arcane, which is one of the reasons why building tempest builds is difficult. You need to drop either or both of water/arcane to make tempest aura builds worth it, but building for cleanse that way is almost impossible.

Your negate invulnerability idea is interesting, but I’d rather they just change the vamp rune mist proc into, “you gain the vampiric aura effect on yourself” so theives/mesmers cease to be carried by them.

I like the idea of moving cleanses off of water line and into baseline functionality, but unfortunately I think that’s just too large of a change for ANet to make.

Cutting CDs on active defense is absolutely a good idea. I’d go a step further and say we need more active defense that isn’t tied to focus. Focus should be the defensive group support weapon, but as it is we’re so strapped for active mitigation that everybody runs it for personal protection. Something like: Frost Aura now removes 3 conditions when you cast the skill and Churning Earth gives you invuln while you channel could go a long way to reducing ele’s dependency on focus to play glass.

Yeah definitely. Things like sand squall provide both magnetic aura and other effects, so I could see the aura skills on other weapons being particular highlights to add more active defense too, pending trait-sustain nerfs to compensate of course.

Wasn’t ele in GW1 a glassy burst spec?

My advice: stop trying to play burst ele.

The class honestly has very little hard mitigation and too long CD’s on its burst to keep up with other burst builds.

Classes that have working burst builds have lots of hard mitigation in the form of invulns, stealths, blocks, blinds, evades etc. – any defense that results in 0 damage. Eles defenses come mostly from boons and healing. There is no way to keep up with all the hard mitigation of other classes.

Also, scepter has good burst, but it relies mostly on landing phoenix, which is terrible when not used in melee range, meaning it often needs to be combo’d with lightning flash for a proper burst. The CD on that burst is WAY higher than other classes can do, and air-swap procs don’t even help the auto-attack damage keep up.

IF they wanted to make burst ele a thing, you have some good suggestions. Particularly arcane shield being a 20s ICD – it would greatly help, but then you run the risk of d/d using it.

Another suggestion: arcane wave no provides revealed to stealthed targets. Putting more instant damage isn’t great for the game, but providing some of the necessary tools to deal with burst ele’s bane is good. Another option is to provide a trait in fire at GM that applies revealed when you burn a target, 10s ICD. Heck, just add this to blinding ashes, as 1 blind on 1 target every 8s is just an unusable trait. Alternatively, make fire shield (focus 5 in fire) apply revealed, as it is currently a useless skill outside of maybe confusing enemies into thinking its an arcane shield.

Earth shield: make it instant cast and stunbreak. Put all conjures on a 30s ICD but last for 30s.

Fix scepter as many have pointed out: decrease flamestrike’s cast time, decrease dragon’s tooth cast time but keep the delay on drop (so it can be offensive anti-melee counter-pressure when dropped on self). Make shatterstone do something. Make water autos actually hit their targets, and decrease the cast/after cast on earth and air autos to be more fluid.

Finally, make FGS have a 60s ICD. It is just a mobility tool, and a 90-120s CD allows burst ele to have the necessary map mobility to compete as a roamer.

Imagining combat log with ~310% crit dmg.

Linnael.1069:

Given that whatever devs worked on the ele patch obviously have 0 experience trying to play any ele build besides cele at a competitive level, how about we give them some suggestions that would make a glass burst setup more playable?

Current problems with glass ele include:

Worst mitigation and the lowest hp and armor in the game. You’re looking at 50% vigor uptime maximum and a single blind every 8 seconds, only while you are hitting targets. That just doesn’t cut it when mesmers and thieves are throwing aegis/stealth/blind out of every orifice, with better base stats to boot.

So what should we do to solve these issues?

I’ll start off with a few (ok alot of) ideas I’ve had floating around. Obviously you wouldn’t want to implement all of them at the same time, so consider each one on its own.

Suggestions!

hide spoiler

-Buff Arcane skills. They’re supposed to be the support for instant damage burst builds, but they just don’t do enough. Arcane mastery should go to 300 ferocity and it should stack with multiple arcane skills.

-Cantrip might given back, on the arcane skills. Each arcane skill granting 5 might for 10 seconds could actually give ele nukes enough punch to justify the risks.

-Arcane shield becoming spammable. 20s cd, lasts only 2 seconds and blocks 2 attacks, does half the damage it currently does. Spammable access to stunbreakers would be a unique way to mitigate how squishy zerk ele can be.

-A trait that grants a unique effect that says “enemies cannot become immune to your damage” when you hit a target under 50% HP. The biggest barrier to nukes is the prevalence of “become immune at 25% hp” traits, and this counter would even allow zerk eles to maybe fill a niche role in pvp teams by nuking through people trying to bunker with endure pain/signet of stone. Still probably not worth bring over anotehr thief but owell.

So what are some suggestions that you guys have? I hope we can get some good ideas going and get some dev attention on non-cele builds.

So you look at a class you can’t play well at the level you want to be and, instead of moving on or practicing, complain it wasn’t built right?

Kay then. This is obviously what is wrong here. The class.

Tempest already actually does a lot of what you’re looking for, as it gives you more access to auras than any other traitline, and all of them are strong defensively. You could consider running F/A/T trait lines hehehehe for a combo that gives mass blinding, protective auras, and damage, rebound even gives you a last minute protection net for yourself and allies, which gives you even more defense.

You also get a lot more access to blind than once every 8 seconds, especially if you run a fresh air scepter build and possibly even evasive arcana.

@blackbeard: a blind every 8 seconds is nothing to scoff at, especially when utilizing blinds from other sources.

I did 1.4 million direct damage with a fresh air glass tempest in BWE3. Addmittedly, it was in a fairly long Stronghold match so some of that is NPC damage. But if you don’t get interrupted it’s definitely a ele build capable of huge burst.

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Let me make something clear. When I play I solo-roam and wvw/os duel. I’ve been doing this since launch, and I do these things in a full berserker d/d lightning rod build. If you’re coming here to tell me to just change my playstyle until things start working out, save it. 3 or 4 v 1 are not unusual engagements for me. Things work for me just fine.

I’m not posting this to stroke kitten or whatever, but rather because alot of people are trying to derail the thread by turning it into a personal problem. If you aren’t good enough to look at the mechanics of the class as a whole and identify where it’s objectively lacking, that’s on you, not me.

Let me make it a little simpler: when’s the last time you’ve seen an ele in competitive play wearing anything squishier than cele? Not running water/arcane? This thread assumes you’re intelligent enough to know why the answers to those questions are what they are and is asking for good feedback in response.

They could start by doing some QoL changes to staff to the offensive casts. The changes are thought to not influence the current PvE staff builds, and will not buff them in the direction they are known to be excelling at.

Lava Font. First tick of damage instant.

Healing Rain Cast time is slow, and does not feel like the proper clear mechanic it should be. It would be more rewarding if the regeneration was removed (in my opinion) to increase the condition clear mechanic.
Duration 6 seconds —--> 4 seconds
Pulses number 3——>4
Clears one condition per pulse.
Add a minor heal per pulse. 350 × 0,25 healing power
Cast time 1,25 seconds —-> 0,75 seconds
(It could even apply soothing mist to the targets in the area at the end of the water field to increase the number of affected targets by Soothing mist. #Soothing Power Synergy)

Lightning Surge. Reduce cooldown to 5 seconds to synergize more with Fresh Air builds. Reduce cast time to 1 second from 1 1/4 seconds.

Gust. Either add a minor damage, make it more reliable, or reduce cast time. Something is just plain wrong when someone can jump without dodging to evade it.

Shockwave Increase velocity, increase bleed stack and reduce the duration of the bleed.
Bleed stack 1 —-> 3
Bleed duration 20 seconds —-> 8 seconds

Magnetic Aura Reduce cooldown, make it apply 5 seconds of cripple in a 240 radius around the caster. (Bonus: And clear 1 condition.)
Cooldown 30 seconds —-> 25 seconds

Trait:
Earthen Blast The cripple when attuning to earth when traited. Add a short but intense bleed to it. Like 3 stacks of bleeding for 3 seconds.

Serrated Stones Actually it’s 20% bleed duration, deal 5% more damage to bleeding foes.

Change it to: Increase Bleed and Cripple duration by 25 % Crippling a foe applies 1 stack of bleeding for 3 seconds. Deal 5% more damage to bleeding foes; Increase critical hit chance against crippled foes by 10%.

Alekt.5803:

They could start by doing some QoL changes to staff to the offensive casts. The changes are thought to not influence the current PvE staff builds, and will not buff them in the direction they are known to be excelling at.

Lava Font. First tick of damage instant.

Healing Rain Cast time is slow, and does not feel like the proper clear mechanic it should be. It would be more rewarding if the regeneration was removed (in my opinion) to increase the condition clear mechanic.
Duration 6 seconds —--> 4 seconds
Pulses number 3——>4
Clears one condition per pulse.
Add a minor heal per pulse. 350 × 0,25 healing power
Cast time 1,25 seconds —-> 0,75 seconds
(It could even apply soothing mist to the targets in the area at the end of the water field to increase the number of affected targets by Soothing mist. #Soothing Power Synergy)

Lightning Surge. Reduce cooldown to 5 seconds to synergize more with Fresh Air builds. Reduce cast time to 1 second from 1 1/4 seconds.

Gust. Either add a minor damage, make it more reliable, or reduce cast time. Something is just plain wrong when someone can jump without dodging to evade it.

Shockwave Increase velocity, increase bleed stack and reduce the duration of the bleed.
Bleed stack 1 —-> 3
Bleed duration 20 seconds —-> 8 seconds

Magnetic Aura Reduce cooldown, make it apply 5 seconds of cripple in a 240 radius around the caster. (Bonus: And clear 1 condition.)
Cooldown 30 seconds —-> 25 seconds

Trait:
Earthen Blast The cripple when attuning to earth when traited. Add a short but intense bleed to it. Like 3 stacks of bleeding for 3 seconds.

Serrated Stones Actually it’s 20% bleed duration, deal 5% more damage to bleeding foes.

Change it to: Increase Bleed and Cripple duration by 25 % Crippling a foe applies 1 stack of bleeding for 3 seconds. Deal 5% more damage to bleeding foes; Increase critical hit chance against crippled foes by 10%.

Thanks for the staff perspective. I haven’t actually touched staff in pvp for a long time, so it’s interesting to see your take on what needs improving. Soothing mist being applied by weapon skills is particularly interesting.

Arcane skills got nerfed really hard 2 to 3 years ago. Not sure if they will un -nerf them

Let’s not forget about Inscription giving 3 stacks of might instead of 1 stack!

BlackBeard.2873:

Fix scepter as many have pointed out: decrease flamestrike’s cast time, decrease dragon’s tooth cast time but keep the delay on drop (so it can be offensive anti-melee counter-pressure when dropped on self). Make shatterstone do something. Make water autos actually hit their targets, and decrease the cast/after cast on earth and air autos to be more fluid.

Finally, make FGS have a 60s ICD. It is just a mobility tool, and a 90-120s CD allows burst ele to have the necessary map mobility to compete as a roamer.

+1
This is basically what is needed to build scepter ele which includes burst.