Guild Wars 2

I was watching NA games, it seems Abjured has found a cure to Shoutbow.

I always find the ring from Guardian Hammer and Slick Shoes from Engi weak skills but boy, they use those creatively.

Ringed and Slick Shoed Shoutbow Warrior, dead Shoutbow Warrior. An Ele can blink out of that but not the Shoutbow Warrior.

Men I love this game action/reaction. Lets see what will be the reaction now.

I think on EU side. Both TCG and Orng were able to take out the shoutbows from the other team constantly as well.

Shoutbows can get out of this by using “fear me” with their current setup, or they will just take endure pain if they really have to.

Eles still aren’t worthless, but they are really only useful if someone on your team doesn’t want to play shoutbow.

As long as warriors have banner and eles continue to have no real elite, they won’t be able to compete for that tanky/support role.

While shoutbow cannot get out of it, ele is a bit more vulnerable to burst than shoutbow due to low base hp poor and armour. You can get spiked up easily. However, if such team decides to focus you, there is a high chance you will be dying no matter what you play.

The thing is ele is losing its support and answer me this: Why would you take a support spec on your team, when it lacks…you know, support?

Laraley.7695:

While shoutbow cannot get out of it, ele is a bit more vulnerable to burst than shoutbow due to low base hp poor and armour. You can get spiked up easily. However, if such team decides to focus you, there is a high chance you will be dying no matter what you play.

The thing is ele is losing its support and answer me this: Why would you take a support spec on your team, when it lacks…you know, support?

D/D ele is far from being a support spec my friend. What a D/D ele is designed to do is be able to brawl in teamfights and take a beating and not die instantly. It does that job insanely well. You can also use a D/D ele to go far or bunker home so that you can +1 them if they need help. If you want a support build for ele in pvp then play celestial staff, sure your damage will suck, but in teamfights you can throw around all the support you want with water fields, statics, immobs, etc.

KaiDarius.8723:

Laraley.7695:

While shoutbow cannot get out of it, ele is a bit more vulnerable to burst than shoutbow due to low base hp poor and armour. You can get spiked up easily. However, if such team decides to focus you, there is a high chance you will be dying no matter what you play.

The thing is ele is losing its support and answer me this: Why would you take a support spec on your team, when it lacks…you know, support?

D/D ele is far from being a support spec my friend. What a D/D ele is designed to do is be able to brawl in teamfights and take a beating and not die instantly. It does that job insanely well. You can also use a D/D ele to go far or bunker home so that you can +1 them if they need help. If you want a support build for ele in pvp then play celestial staff, sure your damage will suck, but in teamfights you can throw around all the support you want with water fields, statics, immobs, etc.

Yeah, d/d ele is not an entirely support spec, however it’ supposed to do those things AND support teammates. No one wants a super tanky spec that doesn’t offer anything to the team and this is why d/d ele is being replaced by shoutbows. They have better support along with banner. And there’s no reason to play staff either, no one wants full support spec that does no damage, that’s why staff ele or support guard aren’t in the meta.

Between access to the aura sharing GM, the aura when crit water trait, 2 strong auras from dd and the protection on aura (earth) you can keep juggling protection all you want, which shoutbow does not have for the entire team and still keep evasive arcana or you can go into another line for a more offensive option….

Ans since Powerfull aura only work with aura from weapon skills … it does work

Well they were talking about changing that in order to make it viable …. but that would imply to buff ele which they seems to hate doing ….

Sadrien.3470:

Between access to the aura sharing GM, the aura when crit water trait, 2 strong auras from dd and the protection on aura (earth) you can keep juggling protection all you want, which shoutbow does not have for the entire team and still keep evasive arcana or you can go into another line for a more offensive option….

Hm, yeah 3 sec non selfish protection on 25 sec cd (Shocking Aura) and 40 sec cd (Frost Aura) is something that will make dd ele more desirable than shoutbow.

Laraley.7695:

Sadrien.3470:

Between access to the aura sharing GM, the aura when crit water trait, 2 strong auras from dd and the protection on aura (earth) you can keep juggling protection all you want, which shoutbow does not have for the entire team and still keep evasive arcana or you can go into another line for a more offensive option….

Hm, yeah 3 sec non selfish protection on 25 sec cd (Shocking Aura) and 40 sec cd (Frost Aura) is something that will make dd ele more desirable than shoutbow.

Again was taking about their proposed buff

Sadrien.3470:

Laraley.7695:

Sadrien.3470:

Between access to the aura sharing GM, the aura when crit water trait, 2 strong auras from dd and the protection on aura (earth) you can keep juggling protection all you want, which shoutbow does not have for the entire team and still keep evasive arcana or you can go into another line for a more offensive option….

Hm, yeah 3 sec non selfish protection on 25 sec cd (Shocking Aura) and 40 sec cd (Frost Aura) is something that will make dd ele more desirable than shoutbow.

Again was taking about their proposed buff

Here is the problem with aura builds (even after the change):

1. If you are going to share those boons, you have to take “powerful aura” AND aquatic benevolence (at the GM minor) which does exactly 0 for you. Nothing. No other class has to take support traits that do nothing for themselves. Also, by taking “powerful aura” you now have no condi clear…with the lowest vitality in the game…when everyone and their mother farts out condis on every random attack… All of this on a class with no base defensive mechanic…

2. As Laraley hinted at, you have only 1 aura on a 25s CD, and 1 on a 40s CD that you control. You other aura comes from a random proc, so you can’t make sure you get it when you need it, or make sure you are close enough to your allies so that it even gets shared. If you want more auras, you have to go into fire (a terrible trait-line for pvp), and take a bunch of signets (terrible utilities besides signet of air). This leaves you with very little defense, as you have no “oh crap” buttons and nothing besides protection to protect you when focused. You don’t even have on-demand condi cleanse to get out of an immob. You also don’t have the benefit of vigor for high evasion, and you don’t have the healing from water-swaps AND dodge-rolls, which are necessary when your base defense if “tank everything and rely on protection.”

3. You are giving up so much to get a bunch of fire auras…the weakest of all auras by far. For fire aura to work, you need to be quite tanky, which for eles means protection (which you will have a decent amount of) and healing (which you won’t have that much of).

Honestly, aura builds are going to be the same as now: strictly worse than d/d ele and terrible outside of 1v1’s. The developers balancing this class haven’t a clue of what they are doing.

No base defensive mechanics ???? 5s invuln, 3 cleanses on a 20s cd with focus offhand) lots of healing abilities ( all weapons have atleast one heal while in water attunement), strong defensive utilities ( armor of earth, arcane shield, and a lot more). Also, I never said you were not going into arcana just that you didn’t have to if the auras changed ( and with earth runes, yes I would use those, you will have perma protection for your entire team, extremely valuable in a power based meta ( a lot stronger than shoutbow) elementalists have roughly 17k hp on the current meta spec in spvp ( not as meager as you say, and numerous condi cleanses, just because your used to traiting for as many condition cleanses as possible ( that is basically what the current dd spec does) doesn’t mean you have no cleanse with that) and as numerous people keep reminding eachother on the mesmer forums condi cleanses are spammed by shoutbow as well as other specs, you don’t necessarily need all those condi cleanses, and don’t tell me your only taking one shoutbow or ele ( most teams run atleast one shoutbow and ele tank at mid alone) the weakness spam from lightning rod could be a potent defensive tool in 1v1s also. In the end Im finding that more and more people are absolutely dismissing most builds before the changes are even finalized ( let alone us allowed to test them), I wrote a large improvements post because the changes do not look promising, but that does not mean that nothing is going to change. The amount of close mindedness of the elementalist community is like that of lots of meta battle devs who refuse to even consider other specs unless they personally enjoy that spec more. Also self survivability vs condis would be greatly increased by the fact that you can go for diamond skin ( atleast at the start of the fight vs any condi class you are invincible, and even more so after stats are removed from traitlines making things liek a staff sc/d necro unable to even hurt you) with my suggested build and a shoutbow you would be able to likely tank a 3v2 with little effort (again don’t tell me any teams only have one bunker).

So basically your first point is null ( that you have to take traits that give you no self support for gm – minor and gm is kinda sad but that can be fixed if you put a real designer in charge)
Your 2nd point is closer too entirely true but standard dd ele will not be giving any protection at all if they take the on dodgeroll heal either so that point is basically null also ( because you can obtain perma protection and everything in the game is cele so is spamming out AoE crit pulses proccing that trait and the majority of successful builds are CC heavy so the lightning aura would be able to be activated also the majority of the time) and lots of builds survive without being able to escape an air immob ( lots of glassier builds too like thief …)
your 3rd point isn’t even relative to my argument but my suggested trait changes (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elementalist-Changes-Devs-must-read/first#post5122833 ) remedy that anyways.

I am however not defending the balance team here. They made a horrible mistake in what they have done to the ele traits which is why i’m making that other thread in the first place. I just wanted to point out that you are extremely exagerating the issue.

Let’s follow ANY aura-build to its logical conclusion.

1. You have to build D/X b/c otherwise you only have 1 aura every 40s, and a whole lot of traits for that 1. Because you are dagger, you are going to have build a tanky build b/c you have no high-damage skills that aren’t super-easy to evade.
2. You have to take fire and signets, b/c otherwise you still have too few auras justify making your build based on it. Maybe you only take the 3 good/decent signets (restoration, air, and earth, which is the decent one), leaving you room for lightning flash-the best ele util.
3. You have to take earth to get any access to prot on your auras, otherwise all those fire auras you have are worthless. While you are in this line and taking signets anyway, you are going to take the GM signet trait so that you at least maintain passive healing and move-speed from your signets when you randomly activate them to get that fire aura.
4. You have to go water b/c the minor trait that gives frost aura is your best option. If you want to be supportive at ALL, you take powerful aura. This means you only have room for 1 condi clear from cleansing wave. If you don’t go with water, then you end up with a completely selfish tank build, which we know has no place.
5. You might think about taking air over earth, so you can go tempest defense + lighting rod, but that will leave you with exactly 0 protection and not much burst, so your build wouldn’t really be viable. If you really think about it, any AURA-dedicated build semi-viable in pvp MUST go fire-earth-water.
6. B/c condi clear is so low, you have to take focus, which is fine for a tanky build. You might have some trouble getting kited, but earth traits and signet of air might help.
7. You are forced to take cele or soldiers amulet b/c you need SOME hp (and won’t be getting any from water), and your build HAS to be able to take a beating and keep ticking, so probably cele. Because you will have high burn uptime, you might think about a condi amulet, but unless dire comes along to give you some toughness AND vitality (both of which will be sorely needed), your build will be hard-countered by either burst or condis.

So you have your build now. You probably take blind-spam to go along with all that burning and help your tankiness. And you are pretty tanky. You can handle pressure from 1 person quite well, and win a war of attrition with most classes. However, b/c your defense comes from just tanking and healing, your build just dies in team-fights (much like current signet-aura builds). Your 1 utility to survive focus-fire requires you to be in earth, so its not reliable in group fights.

So the problem here, is you have a tanky bruiser-build that wins through attrition. Does this offer more than d/d? You share a lot of worthless fire-auras with your team, and an occasional shocking and frost aura, which are great. You share some protection to go with those auras, and have 1 condi clear every ~13s in a 240 radius.

D/D offers more team protection (because it WILL take elemental attunement b/c the protection alone is better than EVERYTHING evasive arcana offers. They both offer the same cleanse potential thanks to cleansing water. Even tourney eles like phanta will admit as much), and has more self-protection. D/D offers WAY more group cleanse, and has far better map mobility.

Because both specs fulfill the same role, one is STRICTLY BETTER, and as it is with traits as proposed, D/D tank ele is still better. Now, we could take it a step further and compare to bruiser builds of other classes (esp hambow) and see that D/D is also no longer even in the same ball-park, but we won’t go there.

When you break it down, the BIGGEST problems with an auramancer ele are:
1. There are not enough access to auras from weapon/utility skills to justify 8 traits being centered around them.
2. The aura traits are spread out in ALL 5 lines (2 in fire, 2 air, 1 earth, 2 water, 1 arcana).

BlackBeard.2873:

Let’s follow ANY aura-build to its logical conclusion.

1. You have to build D/X b/c otherwise you only have 1 aura every 40s, and a whole lot of traits for that 1. Because you are dagger, you are going to have build a tanky build b/c you have no high-damage skills that aren’t super-easy to evade.
2. You have to take fire and signets, b/c otherwise you still have too few auras justify making your build based on it. Maybe you only take the 3 good/decent signets (restoration, air, and earth, which is the decent one), leaving you room for lightning flash-the best ele util.
3. You have to take earth to get any access to prot on your auras, otherwise all those fire auras you have are worthless. While you are in this line and taking signets anyway, you are going to take the GM signet trait so that you at least maintain passive healing and move-speed from your signets when you randomly activate them to get that fire aura.
4. You have to go water b/c the minor trait that gives frost aura is your best option. If you want to be supportive at ALL, you take powerful aura. This means you only have room for 1 condi clear from cleansing wave. If you don’t go with water, then you end up with a completely selfish tank build, which we know has no place.
5. You might think about taking air over earth, so you can go tempest defense + lighting rod, but that will leave you with exactly 0 protection and not much burst, so your build wouldn’t really be viable. If you really think about it, any AURA-dedicated build semi-viable in pvp MUST go fire-earth-water.
6. B/c condi clear is so low, you have to take focus, which is fine for a tanky build. You might have some trouble getting kited, but earth traits and signet of air might help.
7. You are forced to take cele or soldiers amulet b/c you need SOME hp (and won’t be getting any from water), and your build HAS to be able to take a beating and keep ticking, so probably cele. Because you will have high burn uptime, you might think about a condi amulet, but unless dire comes along to give you some toughness AND vitality (both of which will be sorely needed), your build will be hard-countered by either burst or condis.

So you have your build now. You probably take blind-spam to go along with all that burning and help your tankiness. And you are pretty tanky. You can handle pressure from 1 person quite well, and win a war of attrition with most classes. However, b/c your defense comes from just tanking and healing, your build just dies in team-fights (much like current signet-aura builds). Your 1 utility to survive focus-fire requires you to be in earth, so its not reliable in group fights.

So the problem here, is you have a tanky bruiser-build that wins through attrition. Does this offer more than d/d? You share a lot of worthless fire-auras with your team, and an occasional shocking and frost aura, which are great. You share some protection to go with those auras, and have 1 condi clear every ~13s in a 240 radius.

D/D offers more team protection (because it WILL take elemental attunement b/c the protection alone is better than EVERYTHING evasive arcana offers. They both offer the same cleanse potential thanks to cleansing water. Even tourney eles like phanta will admit as much), and has more self-protection. D/D offers WAY more group cleanse, and has far better map mobility.

Because both specs fulfill the same role, one is STRICTLY BETTER, and as it is with traits as proposed, D/D tank ele is still better. Now, we could take it a step further and compare to bruiser builds of other classes (esp hambow) and see that D/D is also no longer even in the same ball-park, but we won’t go there.

When you break it down, the BIGGEST problems with an auramancer ele are:
1. There are not enough access to auras from weapon/utility skills to justify 8 traits being centered around them.
2. The aura traits are spread out in ALL 5 lines (2 in fire, 2 air, 1 earth, 2 water, 1 arcana).

I’m prepared to disagree with you on the point of taking fire, an aura build does not have to take signets. A glassier lightning rod + lightning aura sharing build ( which would be rather niche) could be potentially stronger than a tank spec using signets. Regardless signet eles lack cleanses, which is their biggest flaw. No, one build is not always strictly better even though they perform the same role. A d/f signet build like you suggested would be great vs low condition comps compared to dd tank builds.

Laraley.7695:

While shoutbow cannot get out of it, ele is a bit more vulnerable to burst than shoutbow due to low base hp poor and armour. You can get spiked up easily. However, if such team decides to focus you, there is a high chance you will be dying no matter what you play.

The thing is ele is losing its support and answer me this: Why would you take a support spec on your team, when it lacks…you know, support?

Actually, I think shoutbows are more susceptible to burst than D/D eles. Shocking aura, protection, LF, stability, Frost Aura. Those all make an ele pretty hard to kill.

A shoutbow, if he’s running 3 shouts, doesn’t have stability, endure pain (invuln), or any form of escape.

The thief/mesmer burst can kill a shoutbow almost instantly if you get procs. And as you hinted at: if you’re getting hit for 25k.. Having 18k hp compared to 22k doesn’t matter.

Also, add in a DPS guard which will a) ring the shoutbow, so he/she can’t escape it, and if it’s a first engagement, should provide stability to allies so the Fear Me from the warrior won’t help.

Also, D/D is an off-support role, not a support role. The shoutbow is the main support, and then D/D provides secondary support, but more damage and mobility.

Ele got dropped in favour of triple zerker comps. Engis are just too important (CC, condis), shoutbow is better support/sustain, and banner is super valuable, so that stayed.

Eles are not out of the meta (arguable) because shoutbow is better, but because the role a D/D ele fulfils is no longer there.

Auldon.1972:

Laraley.7695:

While shoutbow cannot get out of it, ele is a bit more vulnerable to burst than shoutbow due to low base hp poor and armour. You can get spiked up easily. However, if such team decides to focus you, there is a high chance you will be dying no matter what you play.

The thing is ele is losing its support and answer me this: Why would you take a support spec on your team, when it lacks…you know, support?

Actually, I think shoutbows are more susceptible to burst than D/D eles. Shocking aura, protection, LF, stability, Frost Aura. Those all make an ele pretty hard to kill.

A shoutbow, if he’s running 3 shouts, doesn’t have stability, endure pain (invuln), or any form of escape.

The thief/mesmer burst can kill a shoutbow almost instantly if you get procs. And as you hinted at: if you’re getting hit for 25k.. Having 18k hp compared to 22k doesn’t matter.

Also, add in a DPS guard which will a) ring the shoutbow, so he/she can’t escape it, and if it’s a first engagement, should provide stability to allies so the Fear Me from the warrior won’t help.

Also, D/D is an off-support role, not a support role. The shoutbow is the main support, and then D/D provides secondary support, but more damage and mobility.

Ele got dropped in favour of triple zerker comps. Engis are just too important (CC, condis), shoutbow is better support/sustain, and banner is super valuable, so that stayed.

Eles are not out of the meta (arguable) because shoutbow is better, but because the role a D/D ele fulfils is no longer there.

Your planning on hitting for 25k in spvp as a mesmer or thief??? Tis much higher than anything you can reasonably obtain against a celestial warrior…. especially because they can dodge.

Auldon.1972:

Laraley.7695:

While shoutbow cannot get out of it, ele is a bit more vulnerable to burst than shoutbow due to low base hp poor and armour. You can get spiked up easily. However, if such team decides to focus you, there is a high chance you will be dying no matter what you play.

The thing is ele is losing its support and answer me this: Why would you take a support spec on your team, when it lacks…you know, support?

Actually, I think shoutbows are more susceptible to burst than D/D eles. Shocking aura, protection, LF, stability, Frost Aura. Those all make an ele pretty hard to kill.

A shoutbow, if he’s running 3 shouts, doesn’t have stability, endure pain (invuln), or any form of escape.

The thief/mesmer burst can kill a shoutbow almost instantly if you get procs. And as you hinted at: if you’re getting hit for 25k.. Having 18k hp compared to 22k doesn’t matter.

Also, add in a DPS guard which will a) ring the shoutbow, so he/she can’t escape it, and if it’s a first engagement, should provide stability to allies so the Fear Me from the warrior won’t help.

Also, D/D is an off-support role, not a support role. The shoutbow is the main support, and then D/D provides secondary support, but more damage and mobility.

Ele got dropped in favour of triple zerker comps. Engis are just too important (CC, condis), shoutbow is better support/sustain, and banner is super valuable, so that stayed.

Eles are not out of the meta (arguable) because shoutbow is better, but because the role a D/D ele fulfils is no longer there.

Well, we’ll have to disagree. The difference between hp’s is not correct. Go to any build editor, put shoutbow and dd ele there and you’ll see that it’s higher. I did that for you:

D/D ele hp: 18285
D/D ele armour: 2352

Shoutbow hp: 27602
Shoutbow armour: 2931

As you can see the difference in hp’s is almost 10K! That’s quite a lot, considering shoutbow has even 500 more armour. The problem with ele is the fact protection can be easily removed. I do agree auras are good, but look at their cooldowns. Frost aura is on 40 sec and Shocking aura is on 25 sec, which can save you but you cannot rely on it as your defensive mechanisms at all times while shoutbow has higher hp and armour all the time.