Guild Wars 2

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

Divinity.8041:

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

Yes at 15th october conjures are getting buffed everyone will be using them

and the healing spell geyser get incr radius and we get some kind of line of warding like guardian has

i mean they fixed ele this was our problem the whole time

More radius of geyser and line of warding and conjures bom we are fixed

I think we don’t know all the details. We might be delightfuly surprised. Hope keeps us playing, so let’s just wait and see. Well, i’ll stick to my ele forever anyway, no matter how many nerfs. As long as I can have nice fights against good players.

Some buffs are coming, but they’re mostly for staff. We don’t know everything though, so there’s hope.

inb4 buff is actually a nerf to lightning hammer

design.6057:

inb4 buff is actually a nerf to lightning hammer

“Comrades! Be of rejoicing now! We have removed the AoE Blind from 3rd hammer AA! In it’s place hammer will now have a 5% chance on critical to summon single target lightning bolt! Is DPS increase da?”

Massive is such a strong word.

There is nothing coming. The devs are just baiting you with the cutesy “wait and see smiley-face” and what the smiley really means is hahaha suckers.

Lostwingman.5034:

design.6057:

inb4 buff is actually a nerf to lightning hammer

“Comrades! Be of rejoicing now! We have removed the AoE Blind from 3rd hammer AA! In it’s place hammer will now have a 5% chance on critical to summon single target lightning bolt! Is DPS increase da?”

would be the best day for me on GW2 if it happened…
Finally the “ele is fine due to LH” excuse would disappear….

ARM.3912:

There is nothing coming. The devs are just baiting you with the cutesy “wait and see smiley-face”.

Now i imagine devs like penguins from Madagascar u.u

Elementalists have great pvp builds, they just don’t work in this meta very well.

Bunker eles are decent even after all the nerfs, but the problem is, a s/d thief can just steal all their boons and completely disable them without effort. A bunker ele relies way too much on boons, so that’s a huge counter. Fortunately, the boon-stealing skill will be nerfed to steal 1 boon instead of 2.

Another problem with eles in the current pvp meta, is that most of their party support revolves around protection (anti-burst) and regeneration over-time (healing power + toughness), which is invalidated by the current condition spamming and condition bursting, with too much poison going around disabling ele’s heals, too much condition spam rendering protection and toughness useless, too much burst even from conditions, etc. Also, since the buffs to spirit rangers, they can usually offer better party support for little to no effort at all.

So as you can see, it’s not only a profession’s power that determines how good it is or not, but the meta as well. To give a clearer example, there are eles who currently run builds with Focus. Now, we all know that focus is generally weaker than oh dagger, and that’s true. But in this meta, focus is great. It gives enough defense for an ele to survive while bursting someone down with fresh air and arcanes, it gives good condition removal, and it gives absolutely excellent anti-projectiles to fight and disable rangers, engineers and some other meta builds.

So as you can see, one of the current best builds for an elementalist in pvp is not even one of their strongest in theory.

For that reason, the solution to fix eles is not to buff them, but to nerf some overpowered options and skills that became too strong since the last big balancing patch. Those options include the extreme boon-stealing of s/d thieves, which it’s confirmed to be nerfed, the ability to burst down with conditions, which devs have expressed their will to tone it down over-time, the crazy stun-lock warriors with massive perma-regen, and the completely skilless spirit-ranger “my AI destroys you and buffs my party to crazy proportions while I watch tv spamming evade skills” cheese build.

With the nerf to thieves, hopefully, a triple-cantrip bunker ele will be back to play. They can have plenty of condition removal to face the meta, up to two-three options to avoid bursts, plenty of dodging, etc. But it’s hard to say, because it depends on what anet decides to do, with necros and rangers especially.

For pve, elementalists are some of the best dps professions with LH, and it seems like one of the warrior’s key traits for dps (+ power to all allies) is going to be moved from adept to master tier for the sake of stronger healing shouts. This will increase the dps gap between LH eles and warriors, making eles even more favorable. Of course, LH is going to be buffed itself, but considering how it’s all about spamming 1 in pve, the changes are going to be conditional and only have a stronger impact in wvw/ pvp, imo.

Solo eles will also be able to gain 25 stacks of might with s/d + conjure axe, based on the leaked notes. Most of that is aoe. This is awesome for pug teams in dungeons, awesome for solo playing, awesome to free up a sigil (no longer will you need sigil of battle, which you can trade for more damage like force/ bloodlust, or more survivial with energy, etc), and if rune of strength gets fixed, it’ll only get better.

Condition eles might become viable in pvp if conjure shield’s changes end up being effective. a d/d or d/f ele that can apply a good amount of burning, and then have bleeding, pulls and invulnerability whenever they need. One of the problems with condi-ele is the conditional bleeding, and one of the problems with mh dagger is survival. This can potentially fix both, and with shaman’s amulet (recently renamed), you can go for high condition damage while still having nice healing support and defense.

The changes to conjure shield/ hammer and the staff, when it comes to pulls and knockbacks, are also pretty cool to make eles viable in some pvp maps (skyhammer), to make them better at point-denial, or in wvw, to instant-kill some players in a few specific locations.

EDIT: The sarcastic buff to LH mentioned in a few posts above is actually a real buff. Blind almost never works on bosses, and LH is used against bosses, for its high damage and spammable blast finishers. If you remove blind for a 5% chance-on-critical to deal extra 2-5k damage, it’s a pve buff.

Divinity.8041:

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

We need there to be a few GW2 tournaments with no Elementalists for a while before they finally break down and come to terms with the fact there’s a problem.

ANet does 100% of their balancing based on metrics and game play. If people aren’t playing the class, that’s a huge statement louder than any forum whine post. If you want to see changes, simply play something else and show the developers that the situation on the Elementalist is simply unacceptable.

Oh sure they’re going to fumble around in the dark for a while and make changes to things like Conjures to try to fix the situation but the more less and less we are represented and the less and less we play the class the quicker they will come to the realization that the Elementalist class design doesn’t work.

I still estimate this will take at least a year for them to finally come to grips with why the class design doesn’t work and actually works in the opposite direction as the rest of the game and the way other classes are balanced.

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT: The sarcastic buff to LH mentioned in a few posts above is actually a real buff. Blind almost never works on bosses, and LH is used against bosses, for its high damage and spammable blast finishers. If you remove blind for a 5% chance-on-critical to deal extra 2-5k damage, it’s a pve buff.

LH is also used for farming/leveling/trash mobs because their attack speeds are often times slower than the 3rd hit goes off meaning you as a group will take almost no damage.

The blind is huge.

LordByron.8369:

would be the best day for me on GW2 if it happened…
Finally the “ele is fine due to LH” excuse would disappear….

The LH does at least work as an excuse for the people that complain that “the ele is too hard!”.

Kodiak.3281:

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT: The sarcastic buff to LH mentioned in a few posts above is actually a real buff. Blind almost never works on bosses, and LH is used against bosses, for its high damage and spammable blast finishers. If you remove blind for a 5% chance-on-critical to deal extra 2-5k damage, it’s a pve buff.

LH is also used for farming/leveling/trash mobs because their attack speeds are often times slower than the 3rd hit goes off meaning you as a group will take almost no damage.

The blind is huge.

This. The LH makes leveling and taking on multiple veterans viable BECAUSE of the blind. It effectively allows us to level with ease instead of having to drop keyboard contortionist might stacks for every. single. mob. we. need. to. kill.

If you want to dps a boss with a conjure you’re much better off using fgs and dropping might stacks inbetween.

Kuruptz.4782:

Divinity.8041:

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

Yes at 15th october conjures are getting buffed everyone will be using them

and the healing spell geyser get incr radius and we get some kind of line of warding like guardian has

i mean they fixed ele this was our problem the whole time

More radius of geyser and line of warding and conjures bom we are fixed

This HAS to be sarcastic.

Conncept.7638:

Kuruptz.4782:

Divinity.8041:

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

Yes at 15th october conjures are getting buffed everyone will be using them

and the healing spell geyser get incr radius and we get some kind of line of warding like guardian has

i mean they fixed ele this was our problem the whole time

More radius of geyser and line of warding and conjures bom we are fixed

This HAS to be sarcastic.

What are you talking about? Seems pretty legit to me.

Conncept.7638:

Kuruptz.4782:

Divinity.8041:

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

Yes at 15th october conjures are getting buffed everyone will be using them

and the healing spell geyser get incr radius and we get some kind of line of warding like guardian has

i mean they fixed ele this was our problem the whole time

More radius of geyser and line of warding and conjures bom we are fixed

This HAS to be sarcastic.

He only posts sarcasm.

I’m pretty sure Anet has this idea that turning Staff into a support weapon and buffing conjures, that Ele staff bunker with conjures is gonna be the “big thing” and Ele will be “viable”.

Completely disregarding the fact that some people don’t want to play bunker on Ele, and may not want Staff to be only good for support, or don’t want to have to use conjures, or the fact that the base class design is still borked.

Here’s more likely the incoming buffs:

“Fiery Greatsword: Removed unintentional bug resulting in too many stacks of damage when used against a blocking surface such as a well.

Lightning Hammer: Reduced damage on Lightning Swing and Static Swing but increased damage on Thunderclap to maintain near equal DPS. Damage on Thunderclap damage reduced 75% but given a 25% buff against foes not suffering a condition.

Lava Font: Reduced Lava Font damage 18%."

I bet you frost bow “buff” will end up being a nerf when they inevitably neglect to add more arrows/comets to the frost volley when they increase the radius. So you won’t be able to hit your target because all the arrows are too thinly spread.

Jabberwock.9014:

I bet you frost bow “buff” will end up being a nerf when they inevitably neglect to add more arrows/comets to the frost volley when they increase the radius. So you won’t be able to hit your target because all the arrows are too thinly spread.

Oh god I haven’t thought about this possibility!!! O_O DEVS PLEASE, READ HIS COMMENT!!!
Oh and I think by the way, the frost volley could leave an aftershower frozen ground (you said more support didn’t you?), and each and every hit out of the 5 skills should inflict chill (isn’t what a Frost weapon supposed to do?). And if you allow me to dream a little bit more, an extra elite skill to conjures weapon (maybe an elemental)

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT: The sarcastic buff to LH mentioned in a few posts above is actually a real buff. Blind almost never works on bosses, and LH is used against bosses, for its high damage and spammable blast finishers. If you remove blind for a 5% chance-on-critical to deal extra 2-5k damage, it’s a pve buff.

nice post. Personally, I would never trade a blind for crit chance, but I am curious to see which changes will be implemented for conjured weapons (especially the underdog magnetic shield). It wouldn’t bother me to see some condition build running either, but the mechanic of Elementalist’s gameplay favor direct damage (unless they want to completely rework staff and/or give us another ranged weapon to avoid contact…).
And yes, I agree that in pvp the biggest problem is to tone down other classes/build rather than merely boost Elementalist.
WvW is even worse to balance, cause of a widest variety of gear combinations and – more than can be believed – food. Still, it shouldn’t be too hard to create in a test environment “extreme cases” (i.e: the burstiest Ele vs tankiest Warr, burst warr vs bunker Ele ecc for all classes) and start balancing from there.
Also, let’s see if they can free the class from being stuck in water/arcana to be viable.
Lastly, what about some love for glyphs?

They did put Stunbreak on GoEP… wicked love i guess…

Buffing conjures in any other way than to change their mechanic completely (duration, charges) won’t make them more viable in any way.

Because f.e. LH turns Elementalist into one-button-Warrior, which totally denies the purpose of the class and the reason why most of us are still playing it.

MyPuppy.8970:

Hope keeps us playing, so let’s just wait and see.

As you can see (small amount of eles in sPvP and zero eles in tPvP) this won’t work forever. I quit playing PvP (and also PvE since the living world updates start to annoy me). I will come back on 15th October and take a look at the patch notes … but I don’t really have any hope left. Anet completely ignores the ele-forums, has no idea how to balance our class and wants to force those conjures on us … horrible. Most likely I’m going to quit PvP entirely unless I read something like “reverted RTL-changes” or “reduced Attunenment-CD” …

Although I think conjure’s mechanics are clunky and unfun, LH proves that 1) conjures can be still be viable as long as they’re strong enough, and 2) LH is an auto-attack spamfest because it has a crazy strong skill #1 and is mediocre at everything else.

So, regardless of conjure’s clunky mechanics, buffs to conjure’s skills can potentially make them viable.

Based on the leaked notes, here’s some observations on conjure axe’s:
- Leap finishers, gap-closers and fire auras coming more often. That means more burning, more might and more anti-kitting in longer battles.
- The leap will now always be available to use alongside retreat, if you last used them at the same time. This smooths the gameplay flow, as it always allows you to get back to melee range after evading.
- The retreat’s burning duration lasts long enough to cast a blast finisher skill on it. This means that you have two reliable fire fields for the buff to #2 skill. In ~5s seconds, you can get 6 stacks of might for your party, excluding which ever one you also get for yourself through the aura or auto-attack. That’s 9 stacks after 15s, and with might duration, 12 after 20s.
- Auto-attacking is 1/2 cast time, so excluding any aftercast delays, that’s about 2 stacks each second? You’ll be able to maintain between 8-12 stacks on yourself before they start disappearing, which is a lot of direct damage and burning damage, especially while playing solo. It will probably compensate for the “weak” auto-attack’s damage.

But I’m unsure if it’ll be better than LH for pve. Enemies can’t kite in pve, which is one of the strengths of axe’s auto-attacks and one of the weaknesses of hammer’s auto-attack. Until there’s better AI, LH will always be a #1 spamfest. I wouldn’t actually mind if the blind was removed from the auto-attacked, and added into the leap. A pve nerf? Yes, but it would make it more skillful to play without taking the viability out of it.

EDIT: @Gorny, elementalist’s viability in pvp will depend on the nerfs some of the other classes will receive on the 15th. Elementalists at their current state were one of the best pvp professions before the last big balancing path.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Although I think conjure’s mechanics are clunky and unfun, LH proves that 1) conjures can be still be viable as long as they’re strong enough, and 2) LH is an auto-attack spamfest because it has a crazy strong skill #1 and is mediocre at everything else.

So, regardless of conjure’s clunky mechanics, buffs to conjure’s skills can potentially make them viable.

Based on the leaked notes, here’s some observations on conjure axe’s:
- Leap finishers, gap-closers and fire auras coming more often. That means more burning, more might and more anti-kitting in longer battles.
- The leap will now always be available to use alongside retreat, if you last used them at the same time. This smooths the gameplay flow, as it always allows you to get back to melee range after evading.
- The retreat’s burning duration lasts long enough to cast a blast finisher skill on it. This means that you have two reliable fire fields for the buff to #2 skill. In ~5s seconds, you can get 6 stacks of might for your party, excluding which ever one you also get for yourself through the aura or auto-attack. That’s 9 stacks after 15s, and with might duration, 12 after 20s.
- Auto-attacking is 1/2 cast time, so excluding any aftercast delays, that’s about 2 stacks each second? You’ll be able to maintain between 8-12 stacks on yourself before they start disappearing, which is a lot of direct damage and burning damage, especially while playing solo. It will probably compensate for the “weak” auto-attack’s damage.

But I’m unsure if it’ll be better than LH for pve. Enemies can’t kite in pve, which is one of the strengths of axe’s auto-attacks and one of the weaknesses of hammer’s auto-attack. Until there’s better AI, LH will always be a #1 spamfest. I wouldn’t actually mind if the blind was removed from the auto-attacked, and added into the leap. A pve nerf? Yes, but it would make it more skillful to play without taking the viability out of it.

EDIT: @Gorny, elementalist’s viability in pvp will depend on the nerfs some of the other classes will receive on the 15th. Elementalists at their current state were one of the best pvp professions before the last big balancing path.

Simply put, you believe that making your whole weapon set unavailable to gain 5 skills and practically denying the whole class mechanic by it can be viable while it’s strong enough?

Sorry, but you’re not an Elementalist player if you think this way.

I’ve been using staff most of the time running full celestial and 10/10/5/15/30 and it has been great specially in a WvW. Only thing is that its a support build but once you make use of might from guardians the build becomes a triple threat for support.

Condition Damage runes and condition damage and duration food along with bloodlust sigil is nice. Staff uses geomancy.

I’m glad we might be getting buffs. Also, I love the Conjured weapons…I use them all the time.

STRanger.5120:

Simply put, you believe that making your whole weapon set unavailable to gain 5 skills and practically denying the whole class mechanic by it can be viable while it’s strong enough?

Sorry, but you’re not an Elementalist player if you think this way.

I think you misunderstood me. I was not defending conjure’s mechanics. Even if they go against the profession’s design, that has nothing to do with how viable or not they might be. The only thing that determines is something is viable or not, is how effective it is.

LH is viable. It’s an auto-attack spamfest, and that’s wrong. It goes a little bit against the class’s design, and that’s probably wrong as well. But it’s strong, it’s used by the community, and thus it’s a viable tool in our skillset for pve.

DiogoSilva.7089:

STRanger.5120:

Simply put, you believe that making your whole weapon set unavailable to gain 5 skills and practically denying the whole class mechanic by it can be viable while it’s strong enough?

Sorry, but you’re not an Elementalist player if you think this way.

I think you misunderstood me. I was not defending conjure’s mechanics. Even if they go against the profession’s design, that has nothing to do with how viable or not they might be. The only thing that determines is something is viable or not, is how effective it is.

LH is viable. It’s an auto-attack spamfest, and that’s wrong. It goes a little bit against the class’s design, and that’s probably wrong as well. But it’s strong, it’s used by the community, and thus it’s a viable tool in our skillset for pve.

Yeah, I probably misunderstood you a little, but viability depends not just on effectiveness of a skill/ability, but also on every players opinion. If something goes against the core mechanic of my class, it’s not a viable option for me, not mentioning that it’s much more boring that a 100B warrior in PvE (LH)

In short: I think that the most of remaining Ele players doesn’t started this class to just hack&slash one skill in PvE

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT: @Gorny, elementalist’s viability in pvp will depend on the nerfs some of the other classes will receive on the 15th. Elementalists at their current state were one of the best pvp professions before the last big balancing path.

I agree that Eles are a fairly good balanced class when it comes to weapon-spells, damage and CC (wrote exactly that in another thread). But I don’t expect Anet to nerf for example those stupid stunlock-warriors (no, they’re even going to buff warriors again). The problem with conditions since the last balance-patch are the new conditions available to Nekros, not that they can spam them permanently or stack them (they could do that before) – I doubt that they’ll remove the new conditions. Condi-Engis for example were hard enemies even before the patch.

But I think the real problem are the core-mechanics of the game. No wonder eles suffer the most due to their low base-HP. Even mesmers are getting destroyed by conditions though they have more HP. Like I stated in another thread: How do you want to seriously balance a game when some classes have only about half the HP of other classes that even have more armor and can deal more damage? I’ve never seen anything like that in another MMORPG. Classes usually have about the same amount of HP to create a base equality between all classes on that you can build on. Little differences in armor and HP (mostly defined through gear) define the playstyle of the class: low armor = usually ranged with either good CC/support or high dps; high armor = melee combat/support, quite good damage if in melee range or good CC. Magical damage (and not conditions that every class has access to) is usually not affected by armor to have more options to balance different classes. That’s how you balance a game. No wonder that Anet fails on PvP in GW – it’s not only difficult but impossible to create balance with the given mechanics. I know that it’s easy to say “do this and do that and everything will be fine”, I know that it’s not that easy – but it’s your job and you’re getting paid for it, so maybe you could try a little harder and at least sometimes listen to what the community has to say.
In every game you have underdog-classes and stronger ones, but in GW since realease we always had one or two classes which were totally OP and one or two that are just plain bad compared to others. That’s what we get from those weird mechanics in Guild Wars: Warriors with best CC, insane damage, most HP, most armor, best 5-heal, better ranged-DPS than an ele, insane mobility and stability. And what’s on the bottom of the food-chain? – Eles with lowest HP, lowest armor, nerfed mobility, nerfed healing, mediocre damage (due to spells missing half of the time) but at least fairly good CC (though nothing compared to warriors or fear-necros).
This game is half-baked when it comes to pvp and ill-conceived in so many aspects. I doubt that there will ever be true balance.

TL:DR: It’s impossible to create balance in GW unless some of the core mechanics are beeing changed.

Gorni.1764:

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT: @Gorny, elementalist’s viability in pvp will depend on the nerfs some of the other classes will receive on the 15th. Elementalists at their current state were one of the best pvp professions before the last big balancing path.

I agree that Eles are a fairly good balanced class when it comes to weapon-spells, damage and CC (wrote exactly that in another thread). But I don’t expect Anet to nerf for example those stupid stunlock-warriors (no, they’re even going to buff warriors again). The problem with conditions since the last balance-patch are the new conditions available to Nekros, not that they can spam them permanently or stack them (they could do that before) – I doubt that they’ll remove the new conditions. Condi-Engis for example were hard enemies even before the patch.

But I think the real problem are the core-mechanics of the game. No wonder eles suffer the most due to their low base-HP. Even mesmers are getting destroyed by conditions though they have more HP. Like I stated in another thread: How do you want to seriously balance a game when some classes have only about half the HP of other classes that even have more armor and can deal more damage? I’ve never seen anything like that in another MMORPG. Classes usually have about the same amount of HP to create a base equality between all classes on that you can build on. Little differences in armor and HP (mostly defined through gear) define the playstyle of the class: low armor = usually ranged with either good CC/support or high dps; high armor = melee combat/support, quite good damage if in melee range or good CC. Magical damage (and not conditions that every class has access to) is usually not affected by armor to have more options to balance different classes. That’s how you balance a game. No wonder that Anet fails on PvP in GW – it’s not only difficult but impossible to create balance with the given mechanics. I know that it’s easy to say “do this and do that and everything will be fine”, I know that it’s not that easy – but it’s your job and you’re getting paid for it, so maybe you could try a little harder and at least sometimes listen to what the community has to say.
In every game you have underdog-classes and stronger ones, but in GW since realease we always had one or two classes which were totally OP and one or two that are just plain bad compared to others. That’s what we get from those weird mechanics in Guild Wars: Warriors with best CC, insane damage, most HP, most armor, best 5-heal, better ranged-DPS than an ele, insane mobility and stability. And what’s on the bottom of the food-chain? – Eles with lowest HP, lowest armor, nerfed mobility, nerfed healing, mediocre damage (due to spells missing half of the time) but at least fairly good CC (though nothing compared to warriors or fear-necros).
This game is half-baked when it comes to pvp and ill-conceived in so many aspects. I doubt that there will ever be true balance.

TL:DR: It’s impossible to create balance in GW unless some of the core mechanics are beeing changed.

Mass has been said.

The kittening out of range bug with Static Field is still there, along with https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Slaying-Potions-the-double-edged-sword/

a mjor thing that kills us is immobilse.. a were so weak in health n armor soon as rooted we die.. ive us a trait to make us immune would make us strong again like everyone else!

STRanger.5120:

Simply put, you believe that making your whole weapon set unavailable to gain 5 skills and practically denying the whole class mechanic by it can be viable while it’s strong enough?

Sorry, but you’re not an Elementalist player if you think this way.

my pov is this: considering Elementalist should be the jack of all trades, conjured weapons should be our only way to gain high specialization into something (want ultimate mobility? FGS. Want ultimate healing? frost bow. Want ultimate defense? magnetic shield ecc).
I don’t know yet details about 15 october changes on conjured weapons, but should they match this line of thought I would be ok with it, because trading 75% of my skills in order to obtain ultimate power is an expensive but somehow fair trade.
Something tells me ’tho that it will not be “ultimate”, it will have charges AND it will have a duration, and generally they will probably handicap us even more than we already are. Of course, hope to be epically wrong.

I really hope they over buff conjures. Especially earth shield and frost bow. We already know lava axe will be awesome.

Suggestion on fire trait: conjures have 10 more uses, reduce cool-down on conjure skills by 20%.

I currently make a pretty mess with FB and FGS; should they be buffed, the more the better.

(I never use all charges; I usually drop them and return to burst rotation – or defense depending on situation, and pick the second one for the next opening when the fight is over. By the time that happens, FB is already up. So I feel like more charges is useless)

charges must be removed to begin with…

STRanger.5120:

Simply put, you believe that making your whole weapon set unavailable to gain 5 skills and practically denying the whole class mechanic by it can be viable while it’s strong enough?

Sorry, but you’re not an Elementalist player if you think this way.

You have to be creative and use whatever you can get. It’s not a matter of OR, it’s a matter of AND. You can still use your attunement swaps to gain boons and you’re limited only in the sense that you can’t do both at the same time. You’ve still got all the options of you attunements available the moment you drop the axe.

What the conjured weapons give you is the ability to turn into a ‘insert profession name here’ for a couple of seconds.

ThiBash.5634:

You have to be creative and use whatever you can get. It’s not a matter of OR, it’s a matter of AND. You can still use your attunement swaps to gain boons and you’re limited only in the sense that you can’t do both at the same time. You’ve still got all the options of you attunements available the moment you drop the axe.

What the conjured weapons give you is the ability to turn into a ‘insert profession name here’ for a couple of seconds.

You haven’t seen the hammer build, right? Because that way you’d know that there are no arcana points in there, so no buffs for attunement change, you stick to water attunement because of passive heal and damage bonuses to vulnerable opponents…

I guess it’s similar to the axe (full fire traits takes 30 points and other would be probably distributed somewhere else than arcana, because you stick to fire attunement with that build)

Grevender.9235:

my pov is this: considering Elementalist should be the jack of all trades,

If you decide to play it that way, that was the main motto of the proffesions introduction, so presuming that that class should be something or something else is totally wrong, period.

STRanger.5120:

Grevender.9235:

my pov is this: considering Elementalist should be the jack of all trades,

If you decide to play it that way, that was the main motto of the proffesions introduction, so presuming that that class should be something or something else is totally wrong, period.

well it’s not like we can do much else, can we?

Grevender.9235:

STRanger.5120:

Grevender.9235:

my pov is this: considering Elementalist should be the jack of all trades,

If you decide to play it that way, that was the main motto of the proffesions introduction, so presuming that that class should be something or something else is totally wrong, period.

well it’s not like we can do much else, can we?

Exactly, and that is the thing ppl are complaining about, we are nerfed into oblivion, which forces us to play some gimmick build (LH – I rather take my Axe warrior than this, more buttons to press ) or play a support role, but there are classes which are better even in the support manner when they want.
So this is the main problem and logically, players want to have this fixed. This class mechanic is great idea, but its design is quite poor and we are now in this position due to this problem

STRanger.5120:

You haven’t seen the hammer build, right? Because that way you’d know that there are no arcana points in there, so no buffs for attunement change, you stick to water attunement because of passive heal and damage bonuses to vulnerable opponents…

I guess it’s similar to the axe (full fire traits takes 30 points and other would be probably distributed somewhere else than arcana, because you stick to fire attunement with that build)

I didn’t have a particular build in mind when I wrote that post. For that particular hammer build, swapping attunements isn’t an option. However, the point I was trying to make is that you don’t have to focus on your conjure. You can also use it as ‘just another option’.

Let me make this simple, if there is buffing list, elementalist is definitely at #1 atm.

Also I am always a bit confused of what people meant by balancing, since some people are bring aspects from PVE.
BUT, balancing is ALL ABOUT PvP (maybe also WvW). If the devs are making buffs, they should mainly, seriouly mainly focus on PvP. No one cares about balancing in PvE.

At this point, I am really worried about how the devs think about balancing. If they thought PvP and PvE balancing can be done simultaneously, then PvP mode in this game is DONE.

ThiBash.5634:

STRanger.5120:

You haven’t seen the hammer build, right? Because that way you’d know that there are no arcana points in there, so no buffs for attunement change, you stick to water attunement because of passive heal and damage bonuses to vulnerable opponents…

I guess it’s similar to the axe (full fire traits takes 30 points and other would be probably distributed somewhere else than arcana, because you stick to fire attunement with that build)

I didn’t have a particular build in mind when I wrote that post. For that particular hammer build, swapping attunements isn’t an option. However, the point I was trying to make is that you don’t have to focus on your conjure. You can also use it as ‘just another option’.

I get that, however conjure builds are centered and builded around conjures, and if you want to do reliable damage in group setting, there’s little to no possibilities you have, with the conjure build (either axe or hammer) as a most valid option. But that basically is not an elementalist class you’re playing with that build, and there’s the problem. Anet buffing conjures to be more “suport” can be easily translated as “we take your ability to do damage with conjures away and give those weapons more supportive options”, therefore you could build in a support class or the support class with conjures, not much of a choice, right?

I can see your point, but I don’t understand why you’d focus completely on conjures and then complain about it being too focused around the conjures. You can also use conjures as just another part of your build, like for example the staff nuker that also brings an Ice Bow for the 4th skill. That player has the options of both his regular set and the conjure weapon, and isn’t forced into using only a small set of skills for extended periods of time.

ThiBash.5634:

I can see your point, but I don’t understand why you’d focus completely on conjures and then complain about it being too focused around the conjures. You can also use conjures as just another part of your build, like for example the staff nuker that also brings an Ice Bow for the 4th skill. That player has the options of both his regular set and the conjure weapon, and isn’t forced into using only a small set of skills for extended periods of time.

I’m personally not playing this conjure build (although I was testing it), but If you play conjure build, it’s a specialized build of course. And it’s Eles most reliable damage build available, but you deny any mechanic of your class, which is wrong way to do it imho. If you use it as an standard utility skill, it’s not nearly as effective to be worth the utility slot. Yes, there are situations which favors some skills from the conjured weapons, like that bow #4. But that doesn’t make the bow a good utility skill that you take permanently, you just switch to it when needed (I don’t know of much places where it is really a contribution, AC comes to my mind) and then switch to another, much useful skill for your build.
When talking about that player you mentioned, what build is he using? Most probably a support one, may it be a staff or dagger/scepter + dagger, doesn’t matter, still it’s most probably a support build because damage builds which are not centered around a conjure are extremely weak in survivability if you want to do DPS which is at least comparable with other classes.

Scepter is still slow as b***s, so no … no real improvements.

I still can’t believe that they changed RTL 3 times because they said that amount of mobility was just wrong … but Warriors and Thieves being able to do with with their weapon skills is just fine.

ANet is just chalk full of hypocrisy.

Good news, this patch was intentionally meant to buff up support for each class, there still hope yet…from November to may 2015.

It did say “with a focus on support builds,” not exclusively. I remain cautiously optimistic.