Guild Wars 2

This thread is based on the premise that DD ele will receive nerfs sooner rather than later. Please do not discuss if you think this is justified or not. The point of this thread is to propose some intelligent ways to nerf it, since there has been a history of far-fetched ways to nerf obvious problems from Anet’s side.

Numero uno:
Nerf ring of fire. This skill is the main source of burning, and consequently the main culprit when it comes to catching out players that are not fully aware of how ele works. This skill is not fun to use, since you completely rely on your opponent to not know/pay attention, and not fun to play against, since it’s counterintuitive for this one mediocre particle effect to apply more burning than an entire channel of drake’s breath for example.

This skill is way out of line, and I don’t understand the reason why they chose this one out of the entire ele skillset to buff so hard when the burning changes hit. Proposed change: Change burn stacks to 1 and/or add a 0.5s icd on getting burned by this skill.

Number 2:
Nerf cleanse on cantrips. This one might seem a bit far-fetched, but let me explain.

There used to be a lot of play to watching an eles attunements with regard to condi application. You’d time your condis (particularly chill), until after the ele left water, screw up his rotation and thus gain the upper hand by intelligent decision making. However ever since we got the new water line, the amount of cleanse ele has outside of water attunement is incredibly high, which has more or less led to this depth being lost. We’re talking cleansing fire+traited cleansing fire+armor+lightning flash for a total of 10 cleanses not tied to water. 1 more if you count regen+frost aura when critically hit.

Number 3:
Nerf shocking aura

This one is specifically aimed at WvW, where running -33% air cooldowns with lightning rod turns shocking aura into a monster. Especially since it goes on cooldown when used, not when it ends, which means shocking aura uptime when traited is nearly 25%. Same reasoning as with ring of fire, it’s not a lot of fun to have so much of your damage rely on your opponent making a mistake (in this case hitting you with shocking aura up)

Number 4:
Revert attunement cd reduction.

I would be sad to see it go, but I don’t think it was ever justified. Rotations are slightly awkward now, especially if not running an alacrity trait.

Someone who knows how to do it. I agree.
An then i would buff other things a bit but i guess this is to much got that tread :-)

Please do not discuss if you think this is justified or not

So why open a thread in the first place?

Point 2: the ele cleanses are basically the same at 98%, they only moved cleansing fire from master to adept and that’s 3 random condis every 32s at most, an ele who goes fire becomes even more susceptible to ranged direct damage and amount of CC, loss of protection from shielding and so on….I can cleanse more condis on a ranger np

Point 4 : the whole point of reducing the CD was to allow people to use other lines over arcana, a similar buff has been given to all other profession, their 6th line has been “infused” into the profession at 50%…so your nerf request here is absurd

Point 3: where the defense would come now for an air ele that doesn’t have either the blind from burning and protection from earth? There should be a clean advantage for going into a trait line…again an overnerf request…and lightning rod a monster? really?
Each lightning rod hit for like 2k dmg at 50% crit chance and 197% crit dmg with over 2k power, and they’re all mele range……

Basically the only point valid is the number 1, the rest is just overkill that would put the whole profession in a horrible spot, I personally always watch at the top end of skill…never the lower end where your proposed nerfs may seem to be a minor thing.

When you face necros like Nos, Forsaker, leeto or some decent ranger..suddenly that condi cleanse is not that much anymore..on the contrary.

Reducing the burning onele would already kill like 70% of current eles who can’t land a single burning speed and simply rely on burning to do all the work on a point, no need to go on a rampage and butcher a profession that already rely on few gimmicks to stay alive and do any sort of damage

I am only against Nr.1, what you describe is l2p issue.

If you want to be good player, you have to learn what other class does. You can not expect to run around get over every AOE and rofl stomp things.

If there is a bad kitten fire ring on the ground don’t cross it.

For the auto cleansing fire it should only cleans one condition like Guardian Smite on heal and it should not give 3 stacks of might on cantrip use. Every DD Ele with fire line is running with 25 stacks of might without even thinking about it.

Gokil.2543:

This thread is based on the premise that DD ele will receive nerfs sooner rather than later.

I want d/d to be nerfed as much as the next guy (for spvp anyway), but I honestly don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. I believe they aren’t going to balance anything until after HoT comes out because they need a stable balance to build their specializations off of. And when HoT comes out the balance will get shifted again so it seems almost redundant to tune them now.

I don’t think you have to worry about what would be the best way to nerf them just yet.

the auto cleanse would be good enough without the might stacks. Just remove it….
While 1 has a L2P component 3 stacks are an overbuff. ICD is kitten, but going to 1 stack is good.

posthumecaver.6473:

I am only against Nr.1, what you describe is l2p issue.

If you want to be good player, you have to learn what other class does. You can not expect to run around get over every AOE and rofl stomp things.

If there is a bad kitten fire ring on the ground don’t cross it.

For the auto cleansing fire it should only cleans one condition like Guardian Smite on heal and it should not give 3 stacks of might on cantrip use. Every DD Ele with fire line is running with 25 stacks of might without even thinking about it.

Like I said, there’s 10 different aoe effects on the ground on mid for example, wells, meteor showers, symbols, mortar field,… Don’t you agree it doesn’t make much sense for the ring of puny flames to be the most dangerous of them all. I mean of course you shouldn’t cross it, but getting oneshot by this skill is unnecessary and out of line.

Supreme.3164:

Please do not discuss if you think this is justified or not

So why open a thread in the first place?

To discuss how they should be nerfed, not whether they should be. Feel free to open another thread on that subject.

Gokil.2543:

posthumecaver.6473:

I am only against Nr.1, what you describe is l2p issue.

If you want to be good player, you have to learn what other class does. You can not expect to run around get over every AOE and rofl stomp things.

If there is a bad kitten fire ring on the ground don’t cross it.

For the auto cleansing fire it should only cleans one condition like Guardian Smite on heal and it should not give 3 stacks of might on cantrip use. Every DD Ele with fire line is running with 25 stacks of might without even thinking about it.

Like I said, there’s 10 different aoe effects on the ground on mid for example, wells, meteor showers, symbols, mortar field,… Don’t you agree it doesn’t make much sense for the ring of puny flames to be the most dangerous of them all. I mean of course you shouldn’t cross it, but getting oneshot by this skill is unnecessary and out of line.

One shot, lets not exaggerate please and if there are tons of AOE in place, you should not be there also, don’t you think?

How about just toning back Burning damage? Everyone knows it’s out of hand at the moment. D/D Eles would be back to hitting like wet noodles if Burning weren’t so crazy right now.

Unless you play almost every classes you shouldn’t talk about balance. Life is much easier on a medi-guard or a dps warrior than on a d/d ele or thief.

DD does not need nerfing, burning does, and bleeding needs the buffs that should have gone through in the same patch as the burning changes, were it not for completely uninformed gun-jumping forum feedback.

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

Buff bleeding up to (0.09*CD) + (1*lvl) + 2.5
Nerf burning down to (0.13*CD) + (1.25*lvl) + 4.5
Buff Amplified wrath up to 20% to compensate guardians

For those that don’t want to do the math, that’s about a 50% buff on bleeding and about a 20% nerf on burning. And on a per-stack basis burning will maintain about a 1/3rd damage advantage over bleeding as opposed to the current 2/3rds advantage. However with how bleeding is applied in more stacks than burning, they should be about equal with bleeding overtaking burning at max stacks.

Similarly, cantrips do not need nerfing, at least not without major changes elsewhere. They are just our only option for reasonable defense like camping fire is our only option for reasonable condition damage. So its obvious people are going to take them and many, if not most, do so because they feel they have no other option. Same goes for the water tree and the pre-nerfed arcane tree.

The elementalist needs the innate defense all other classes either get from stat advantage or their class mechanic. We have needed this from launch, its been proven a hundred times over with every nerf, buff, nudge, redesign, and QoL change; beyond anyone with a modicum of common sense’s ability to deny.

The developers had the chance to give it to us what we need in the trait revamps and chose not to, because it didn’t match their ‘design goals’. Meanwhile every change they have made in three years that is within their design goals, has left us in the same or an even worse state of build diversity. We are all sick of having one rigid group of traits and abilities we have to take if we’re to expect to not die to anything that gets within range. Its about time they admitted their design goals concerning the elementalist were fatally flawed from the start, pull their heads out their butts, and make some new design goals for the elementalist.

Conncept.7638:

DD does not need nerfing, burning does, and bleeding needs the buffs that should have gone through in the same patch as the burning changes, were it not for completely uninformed gun-jumping forum feedback.

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

And yet we only have a single, useless, bleeding trait and no real support for bleeding anywhere else

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Conncept.7638:

DD does not need nerfing, burning does, and bleeding needs the buffs that should have gone through in the same patch as the burning changes, were it not for completely uninformed gun-jumping forum feedback.

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

And yet we only have a single, useless, bleeding trait and no real support for bleeding anywhere else

This just makes me wonder why our elite spec wasn’t focused on conditions. This is an area where the ele was sorely lacking before the burn buff and let’s be serious, burn will be nerfed anyway.

Conncept.7638:

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

Ok, but it’s basically impossible for Eles to apply both heavy Bleeds and Burns at the same time. Each condition is pretty heavily restricted to a different Attunement and neither can apply stacks with long-enough durations to stay up with we switch.

It makes a lot of sense to balance Condi Eles around stacking up both Bleeds and Burns (so that they have to use as much of the profession as possible), but they don’t have to tools to pull that off at the moment.

Conncept.7638:

Similarly, cantrips do not need nerfing, at least not without major changes elsewhere. They are just our only option for reasonable defense like camping fire is our only option for reasonable condition damage. So its obvious people are going to take them and many, if not most, do so because they feel they have no other option. Same goes for the water tree and the pre-nerfed arcane tree.

I couldn’t agree more. Cantrips are very strong, but they’re the crutch that allows us to get by. You can’t just nerf them without buffing our base defenses because then we’d be on the ground.

Xillllix.3485:

Unless you play almost every classes you shouldn’t talk about balance. Life is much easier on a medi-guard or a dps warrior than on a d/d ele or thief.

Ppl can talk about balance whenever they feel like, theres no restrictions.

and please, let me know when medi-gaurd/dps warrior can sustain enough in 2v1s or even 3v1s long enough for a team mate to rotate over.

While it does take high skill to play d/d ele, its still incredibly strong and its bad for build diveristy with our class

I have not seen an ele in pvp that wasn’t D/D in god knows how long…. occasionally i’ll see a cele staff but thats it.

cele D/D ele has KILLED build diversity for this class in PvP.

When ONE build is FAR AND AWAY the best build for its class, there is a problem.

Thats a fact, noother build in pvp for our class comes even remotely close to cele ele d/d

SkiTz.4590:

While it does take high skill to play d/d ele, its still incredibly strong and its bad for build diveristy with our class

The problem isn’t that the D/D Ele is strong. The problem is that other specs are too weak.

SkiTz.4590:

I have not seen an ele in pvp that wasn’t D/D in god knows how long…. occasionally i’ll see a cele staff but thats it.

So roll up a Scepter/Focus Berzerker Ele with Fire, Air, and Earth specializations and a bunch of Glyphs as slot skills and queue up for some sPvP matches. Let us know when you find a build that can compete not just with the Celestial D/D Ele but with the top specs from the other professions as well.

SkiTz.4590:

cele D/D ele has KILLED build diversity for this class in PvP.

No, the Elementalist’s terrible baseline defenses killed our spec diversity. We run Celestial D/D with Water, Arcana, and Fire/Air and a bunch of Cantrips because nothing else really works all that well.

SkiTz.4590:

When ONE build is FAR AND AWAY the best build for its class, there is a problem.

And the solution is to give us more builds that are viable, not to remove the one build that currently works.

Tone back burning damage and leave the rest. Problem solved without touching other builds except for condi ele and that cheesy “build” shouldn’t be strong to begin with.

While it does take high skill to play d/d ele, its still incredibly strong and its bad for build diveristy with our class

So you think having 3-4 builds that are all “meh” would fix the class?

Cleansing Fire – Nerf burning stacks from 3 to 1.

Soothing Ice – No longer grants regeneration for no reason. Gain frost aura when attuning to water.

Elemental Attunement – Boon durations granted normalized (nerfed) to be 5s for all boons. Why should might be 15s long while other boons are way shorter? Balance plz. Very overpowered compared to other classes abilities. Guardian might share says hi.

Ring of Fire – Burn nerfed from 3 stacks to 1. What is an opponent going to do? Sit inside the fire due to fear of being instantly killed from burning, only to be killed by the elementalists other skills by remaining inside a tiny 240 radius for 5s? This skill is unbalanced as kitten. You have 2 options: stay inside the circle and eat damage from other skills or leave the circle and eat thousands of damage from an ele being “skillful”. Why not make it so when someone leaves a well skill they eat 4k damage for no reason. Ya, that’d be good.

inb4 use condi clears. You’ll have eaten thousands of damage before even clearing the burn anyway.

These nerfs won’t kill your class btw. You’ll still be unbalanced.

PS. Removing sigils of skill like doom sigil would be a step in the right direction.

Why should might be 15s long while other boons are way shorter? Balance plz.

Are you seriously asking why +30 power and condition damage isn’t equal to -33% damage taken?

Blaine Tog.8304:

It makes a lot of sense to balance Condi Eles around stacking up both Bleeds and Burns (so that they have to use as much of the profession as possible), but they don’t have to tools to pull that off at the moment.

There is a way to stack both Bleeds and Burns at the same time as a Condition Elementalist. There is a conjure condition build out there. You may PM me.

Blaine Tog.8304:

SkiTz.4590:

While it does take high skill to play d/d ele, its still incredibly strong and its bad for build diveristy with our class

The problem isn’t that the D/D Ele is strong. The problem is that other specs are too weak.

SkiTz.4590:

I have not seen an ele in pvp that wasn’t D/D in god knows how long…. occasionally i’ll see a cele staff but thats it.

So roll up a Scepter/Focus Berzerker Ele with Fire, Air, and Earth specializations and a bunch of Glyphs as slot skills and queue up for some sPvP matches. Let us know when you find a build that can compete not just with the Celestial D/D Ele but with the top specs from the other professions as well.

SkiTz.4590:

cele D/D ele has KILLED build diversity for this class in PvP.

No, the Elementalist’s terrible baseline defenses killed our spec diversity. We run Celestial D/D with Water, Arcana, and Fire/Air and a bunch of Cantrips because nothing else really works all that well.

SkiTz.4590:

When ONE build is FAR AND AWAY the best build for its class, there is a problem.

And the solution is to give us more builds that are viable, not to remove the one build that currently works.

LOL @ the notion of asking anet to give you more viable builds… anet is bad when it comes to balancing and PvP in general.. their pvp balance team is too tiny. I appluad their effort, those guys work their butts off, but they definietly could use some resources allocated to the team.. This is the same team that took 2 years to realize healing signet on warrior was OP.

Obviously I WOULD LOVE to see more builds be as competitve as Cele Ele DD…I don’t want cele ele DD to go away, I never once directly said “destroy cele ele DD” but guess what dude, that bar is SET TOO HIGH if you think anet can bring other ele builds on par with cele ele dd.

Every player’s response would of course be “buff weaker specs” but that’s not realistic from anet’s point of view.

Cele ele won’t remain this strong forever, but i don’t believe other specs will be made to be on PAR with such a powerful build.

My entire post was about lack of build diversity because Cele Ele is too strong.
I took the realistic solution by looking at it from anets point of view, that is, it would probably get toned down because buffing other specs to such a powerful level would just be a power creep to the entire class in general. There has to be some kind of balance.
What you are asking for is BUFFING other specs to cele ele DD level, that, I cannot see happening from this dev team. Obviously everyone would love to see that happen, but it’s not realistic

i dont agree with anything you suggest sorry, your suggestions are designed for people that don’t use their brain and nothing else.

ring of fire? what’s so hard about it, you don’t eat a single burn if you just stand in it or dodge out of it. the only thing that needs to be fixed is the bug with uneven ground where this skill applies 6-12 stacks for no reason.

cleanse on cantrips? cleanses have been randomized. i could understand it if it was the way it used to be, cleanses remove the newest condition, how many times have i cleansed those 10 bleeds that ranger apply just by cleansing with it after an auto attack of shortbow. that’s not the case anymore, cleanses remove one random condition. no need to nerf this.

shocking aura, seriously? who cares about WvW, there is no balance anyway and if you don’t attack you don’t get stunned…

8.5s attunement cooldowns, i don’t really see a problem with those either.

things that need to be addressed are:

- instant burns from cleansing fire, they need reduction in stacks
- might from cantrips, need reduction in stacks
- blinding ashes blind, needs to proc on X stacks of burning
- drake’s breath damage is applied too fast, less stacks, longer duration or -1s per pulse

Alekt.5803:

There is a way to stack both Bleeds and Burns at the same time as a Condition Elementalist. There is a conjure condition build out there. You may PM me.

Thanks, but I hate Conjures with a passion.

SkiTz.4590:

Obviously I WOULD LOVE to see more builds be as competitve as Cele Ele DD…I don’t want cele ele DD to go away, I never once directly said “destroy cele ele DD” but guess what dude, that bar is SET TOO HIGH if you think anet can bring other ele builds on par with cele ele dd.

Every player’s response would of course be “buff weaker specs” but that’s not realistic from anet’s point of view.

Then the problem is unfixable and the only thing nerfing D/D Ele will do is push Eles out of PvP.

As I already mentioned above, I think it’s pretty clear that Burning needs to be nerfed across the board, and if that happens it’ll take away the abusive damage that’s pushing D/D Ele a bit too high. Directly nerfing the D/D Ele, though, is a mistake right now.

SkiTz.4590:

What you are asking for is BUFFING other specs to cele ele DD level, that, I cannot see happening from this dev team. Obviously everyone would love to see that happen, but it’s not realistic

They don’t strictly need to be buffed to the Celestial D/D level. They just need need to work reasonably well compared to the top specs of the other professions. As long as they work a bit differently from D/D, then they’ll see some use in niche teams even if they aren’t quite as strong overall. From there, you could further stabilize the situation, but you need that baseline of a couple of workable builds.

Dropping from one workable build to 0, however, is a step backward.

I agree a burn nerf is probably warranted…our might stacking ability is top tier and those mights really amp up the burn damage… anet will most likely tone down this part of the build. not the sustain because if they nerf the sustain (our cantrips and cleanses), than this class will be a sitting duck in PvP..

This is the number 1 most complained about build, even on forums… every day I get PMs about playing a cheesy build from salty kids in pvp games

So long as they don’t nerf it to extinction im OK with it… and HOPEFULLY they make other builds a bit more competitive IF they drop this build down a notch

SkiTz.4590:

I agree a burn nerf is probably warranted…our might stacking ability is top tier and those mights really amp up the burn damage… anet will most likely tone down this part of the build. not the sustain because if they nerf the sustain (our cantrips and cleanses), than this class will be a sitting duck in PvP..

You seem to have missed my point: Burning itself needs a nerf. It’s too strong on Elementalists, it’s too strong on Engis, and it’s too strong on Guardians (and probably for others as well). The Might generation can stay — reliance on boons is the sort of thing that helps keep the meta destabilized (which is a good thing) as Mesmers and Necros will be able to see real benefits from boon stripping/corruption. ANet could fix a whole swath of balance issues across multiple professions at once if they just reduce Burning damage a little bit.

And maybe when the chips finish falling we’ll find that Cele D/D Ele is still a little too strong. But right now, Burning appears to be the real culprit, so the nerfing should start there (and other specs should be brought up to code in the meantime).

SkiTz.4590:

So long as they don’t nerf it to extinction im OK with it… and HOPEFULLY they make other builds a bit more competitive IF they drop this build down a notch

There’s no link between nerfing D/D and buffing other specs. You can’t run Celestial D/D and Zerker S/F at the same time, so it doesn’t matter to the former if the latter is buffed. As long as you don’t accidentally buff D/D on the way, you can buff S/F with impunity because each Ele’s power is capped by what they actually have equipped, not by an aggregate of all the specs they could possibly equip.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Conncept.7638:

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

Ok, but it’s basically impossible for Eles to apply both heavy Bleeds and Burns at the same time. Each condition is pretty heavily restricted to a different Attunement and neither can apply stacks with long-enough durations to stay up with we switch.

It makes a lot of sense to balance Condi Eles around stacking up both Bleeds and Burns (so that they have to use as much of the profession as possible), but they don’t have to tools to pull that off at the moment.

They do though, have the tools that is.

Lower and spread out the number of bleed and burn stacks we apply per ability, particularly off of auto-attacks, heavily increase their durations, (and I mean really heavily) then give us multipliers for burning and bleeding similar to (but significantly lesser than) guardians Amplified Wrath. Our conditions will last well through some degree of attunement swapping, last through more with condition duration and attunement recharge, and because of the damage multipliers we’ll still output good DPS with less stacks. Plus, our conditions will be less of a problem in hybrid builds because of their reliance on the multiplier traits.

Of course this would also have to go along with my previously stated nerfs to burning and buffs to bleeding, because so long as burning is almost 3x more effective than bleeding per stack, and stacks more easily while maintaining our might, nothing else has any chance of edging its way in to our condition builds.

The only thing that should change is burning damage. Burning should still deal the same high damage per tick it currently does, but the duration of each stack should be slightly reduced and in some places the number of stacks should be reduced. This way there is still a difference between bleeding and burning — similar to GW1.

Edit: Adding the Deep Wound condition from GW1 could also be a counter to eles. It reduced the maximum health by 20% and healing by 20%. The healing part is already covered by poison in GW2, but a reduction of maximum health can hurt quite a bit because you cannot heal beyond that point. It does not necessarily need to be a condition, it could also be an effect. Say 10% less maximum health for 4s. This would fit necro quite well.

I think ring of fire should be changed so that it gives a spike of 4K damage every time you cross it. Doesn’t that seem much more balanced?

/sarcasm

If they are to be nerf, and as an ele main myself I think they should, the first step would be to reduce the ridiculous amount of burning they can stack. Just that would be a good step in the right direction.

That being said I’m strongly against the reduction of condi cleanse. The problem is not there. The real issue with that build is that it can do too much damage for the sustain it has. Hence the reduction of burning on the build or even on burn period (that condi is OP ATM).

Don’t touch the water and arcane trait at all, and now let’s work on fire. Right now the synergy of cantrips and fire is way too strong. Cantrips grant might, and also grants regeneration, and burning fire removes 3 condis as well as apply burns and do damage.
The problem that most people complain are sustain and burning. Well eles do need sustain because we can’t go tanky due to having the lowest healthpool and lowest toughness, and that lies in our water and arcane trait line.

Now if we nerf drake’s breath a kittenange burning fire’s burning stacks to 1 or 2, and change ring of fire burning stack to 1 or 2, then people can’t say much about it. After that it becomes l2p issue. That would bring d/d eles down a bit, but not so much.

1) Nerfing cantrips is not about nerfing the celes d/d meta build but nerfing the class as a whole (the same for attunement cd, idk what the OP is thinking)

People that complain about sustain dont understand that being the class with lowest health-pool and armor means that sustain is the only thing that keeps you alive. (and it can be countered by interrupting the sustain or surpassed by heavy burst)

2) Our problem is with the burning damage post patch, so I would reduce its applications:

- Cleansing Fire 3 to 1 stack (instant spell = less stacks)
- Ring of Fire 3 to 2 stacks (you can fight IN or OUT of it + you can evade trough it… its normally a LTP thing, but to make newbies happy)
- Drakes Breath 4 to 3 stacks (a channeled skill that can be evaded -you HAVE time to do it- or interrupted)

3) Remove Cantrips Might

The class doesn’t really need it and its not skill related. (opposed to using combos)

That will lower our damage output in a good amount while maintaining the totally needed survivability.

I’d just like to put out there that d/d ele is pretty much all I play to this day, keep this in mind while I give you my perspective on Gokil’s changes,

1.) I can see the debate on ring of fire going both ways, while its fairly easy to avoid the burns, usually… This skill can at times seemingly bug out and stack 6 burns from crossing it once which isn’t very cool imo. While I think toning the burn stacks down to something like 2 stacks is fine, I also wouldn’t mind if they perhaps toned it down to 1 stack and allowed the ring to basically “explode” upon crossing it, dealing direct damage, making it a solid dps method for d/d eles who prefer running more bursty/squishy builds. If ring of fire blew up and disappeared after someone cross it this would also prevent a lot of easy might stacking.

2.) I think we could start by nerfing some of the auto cleanses like soothing ice, I don’t think that trait needs the regen proc, I’m pretty against anything RNG trait wise and wouldn’t mind seeing every single RNG trait from every class completely removed. The game should not be balanced around RNG.

3.) I do think shocking aura is pretty OP with lightning rod+Aeromancer’s out in WvW (because you can run hoelbrak + food for condition reduction while doing great damage since stats can be tweaked to very optimal levels). Lets not focus on balance around WvW though because WvW is a joke to begin with. The air trait line imo could use a buff when considering SPvP. I wouldn’t mind seeing shocking aura reworked to only last ~ 1/2 – 1 second while also not stunning vs auto attacks if it meant a 1.5 – 2 second stun. This would render the skill fairly useless when just spamming it, making it require more skill. IMO it would be wonderful if shocking aura lasted 1/2 a second, blocked/stunned one attack excluding autos and worked up to a ~450 range.

4.) I’d rather see the game balance the Elementalist around the idea of very low attunement cooldowns. Although this would probably never happen, it would be nice to see Anet balance Ele around the idea of 1 second attunement cooldowns, this would mean severely nerfing/removing attunement swap traits and some weapon abilties but it would also open the class up to a lot more interesting complex combos opposed to feeling forced to rotate the same old boring strats.

Alright, it seems I wasn’t very clear. I didn’t mean for all these changes to be pushed to live, was just throwing ideas out there.

That said, looks like the consensus is to nerf burning and cantrip might.

I don’t particularly dislike these ideas, and I do agree that fire as a single line investment gives a LOT of damage. Between two 10% modifiers, 150 power and might stacking, it pushes ele damage really high.

On the topic of nerfing burn as a whole though, I feel like ring of fire and purging flames are in a huge way responsible for how burning as a whole seems to come off overpowered. Most times, if not every time someone gets vocal about burning (along the lines of ‘wtf that’s broken’) it’s connected to ring/purging putting at least 6 burns on them, while they feel they’re doing fairly okay avoiding most recognizable sources of burning (torch throw, drake’s breath,…).

What I’m trying to say is, I believe these two skills and their quirky mechanics are in a large way responsible for how ridiculous burn comes across sometimes, and so nerfing them is way more important to me than nerfing every other skill that inflicts burning, but is more interesting in its functionality. It’s got to a point where competent necros intentionally stack burns on themselves to transfer them back for ridiculous burst.

(fwiw, I’ve managed to stack upwards of 60 burns on myself with a single ring. Ofcourse that’s extreme, but still.)

I agree taking a stack off cleansing fire wouldn’t hurt, although I kind of like the depth that using this skill for damage vs saving it for when you need it brings.

If too much dmg is taken by reducing the stacks of burning (I proposed taking out 4 + 2 from the auto cleansing, that is quite a number without considering bugs or RoF mistakes) it can be balanced by increasing the skills normal dmg or better: giving condi eles more forms/stacks of bleeding to apply.

Jekkt.6045:

i dont agree with anything you suggest sorry, your suggestions are designed for people that don’t use their brain and nothing else.

ring of fire? what’s so hard about it, you don’t eat a single burn if you just stand in it or dodge out of it. the only thing that needs to be fixed is the bug with uneven ground where this skill applies 6-12 stacks for no reason.

cleanse on cantrips? cleanses have been randomized. i could understand it if it was the way it used to be, cleanses remove the newest condition, how many times have i cleansed those 10 bleeds that ranger apply just by cleansing with it after an auto attack of shortbow. that’s not the case anymore, cleanses remove one random condition. no need to nerf this.

shocking aura, seriously? who cares about WvW, there is no balance anyway and if you don’t attack you don’t get stunned…

8.5s attunement cooldowns, i don’t really see a problem with those either.

things that need to be addressed are:

- instant burns from cleansing fire, they need reduction in stacks
- might from cantrips, need reduction in stacks
- blinding ashes blind, needs to proc on X stacks of burning
- drake’s breath damage is applied too fast, less stacks, longer duration or -1s per pulse

I totally agree with Jekkt. Nerf burning, not the ele. Those slights changes will not destroy the class because of mama kids crying.

i don´t agree to nerfing cleansing flame or blinding ashes, both are good but far from OP. It won´t help in build diversity.
There are two problems. First is burning and second is the all mightiness of cantrips bound to water that force water spec.
The might for cantrips on the auto cleanse should be removed.
Soothing disruption reworked not to give regeneration and vigor add 50% direct endurance refill.
Ring of fire burning down to 1 stack.

I also would cange earth minor geomancers defence to +20% condition duration not damage absorb. But thats a bit another story.

nerf the survivability

My suggested nerfing soothing disruption will break the cantrip synergy for maximum survivability ;-). You get one bonus dodge for a cantrip. Not vigor, regen, cleanse, might …

God, its like reading a thread full of self loathing masochists.

The fact that D/D is so dominate is because Staff and Scepter suck for sPvP and non-zerg WvW. And please, don’t bother linking an exception to this rule video … everyone knows this is true for the overwhelming majority of players. We are forced into D/D just to have decent weapons and then pigeon holed into a spec that offers the best synergy to those weapons.

Then there is the fact that we have already received round after round of D/D nerfs over the years that have now made the class almost completely dependent on having the spec lines that we have been pigeon holed into which is one of the reasons that Tempest has been such a large disappointment.

The last thing we need are any more nerfs that are going to just end up pigeon holing us ever further and do the exact opposite of what you are claiming to be trying to accomplish.

So here are my suggestions to the theme of this thread:
1. Nerf the suck of Scepter and Staff.
2. Nerf the lack of a decent condition spec that doesn’t turn us into a glass squirt gun.
a. The lack of bleed application that would make Earth useful.
b. The lack of burning on anything other than Dagger (see 1 above)

… more seriously …

3. Remove Evasive Arcana and put each of the effects of Evasive Arcana in each of the corresponding lines Minor Grandmaster. (See, not a nerf, nothing gets lost)
4. Remove Elemental Attunement and put each of the effects of Elemental Attunement in each of the corresponding lines Minor Master. (Also not losing anything)
5. Move Conjured Weapon stuff out of Fire and into Arcane where it actually makes more sense.
6. Fill fire with stuff that would actually make fire more diverse … like Cause burning on interrupt, fire skills burn off one boon from enemies, ect. (See ADDing things to the class … not taking away)

While this is all correct how does it help other classes getting outperformed by d/d eles ?
I played water/cantrips and the sustain is gigantic for a low healt class. Never felt conditions as a threat, disengaged with flash to come back seconds later healed …
the cantrip domination washes away all build diversity. water + cantrips is nailed if you want stable competative play, and D/D fire/water/arcane just outperforms annything when played well. Of course you can say skill should be rewarded but soemwhere the fun (especially for others) ends. It also allows for nerly no counterplay/build and that makes it even worse.

Wolfric.9380:

i don´t agree to nerfing cleansing flame or blinding ashes, both are good but far from OP. It won´t help in build diversity.
There are two problems. First is burning and second is the all mightiness of cantrips bound to water that force water spec.
The might for cantrips on the auto cleanse should be removed.
Soothing disruption reworked not to give regeneration and vigor add 50% direct endurance refill.
Ring of fire burning down to 1 stack.

I also would cange earth minor geomancers defence to +20% condition duration not damage absorb. But thats a bit another story.

Blinding Ashes is such OP trait for bunker build that has already so much sustain. It is quite Ok for a Zerker build that it need defense but for a bunker build it is OP like hell.

Either it should get higher ICD but another trait in another zerker branch, like air should reduce it. So if you have only fire line ICD 10s and if you Air line, a trait will make it again 5s. So the build that are using Fire/Air (zerker will have defense) and bunker builds will have less defense.

Or there must be a trait in Water or Arcana that increase the ICD.

I would always look on water and cantrips and not other OK traits. If you say its to strong on bunker then look at water first. But my text already showed that the cantrip/water combination is a core problem impeding build diversity. There are a lot of things that should be made more worth (scepter, glyphs, arcane, elite) But cantrips/water combination is just overshadowing it all.

There is a difference between nerfing something and completely wrecking it, and you chose the latter. What a whole lot of people on this forum fail to understand is that seemingly minor reductions often make huge differences, see the entirety of League of Legends patch history for examples (where base health nerfs of about 50 out of 500 have completely pushed a character out of the meta).
So making such huge changes as nerfing ring of fire by 2/3 is kitten stupid, especially on a skill that counters exactly one tactic (range dancing) and whose power is completely based on your opponent screwing up.

Shocking Aura in this case is pretty kitten similar. It’s a single stun unless your opponent is obscene levels of bad (it lasts four seconds and has a 2 second icd on a 1 second stun, so best case scenario there’s about two seconds where you can get a second 1 second stun off), which can not only be avoided completely, but ends up having a huge tell, because they first switch to lightning, then start glowing white, and if your reaction time isn’t good enough to determine whether you should immediately stunbreak or not you need to do fewer drugs. Not to mention the sheer number of stuns that are instant and don’t require your opponent to screw up (half the fears in the game, MoD, shatter daze, and a number of knockbacks), make this seem a little bit odd to me.

I’m not saying that celementalists don’t need nerfs, they do, but people need to figure out that asking for massive nerfs is purely stupid on any build.

posthumecaver.6473:

I am only against Nr.1, what you describe is l2p issue.

If you want to be good player, you have to learn what other class does. You can not expect to run around get over every AOE and rofl stomp things.

If there is a bad kitten fire ring on the ground don’t cross it.

For the auto cleansing fire it should only cleans one condition like Guardian Smite on heal and it should not give 3 stacks of might on cantrip use. Every DD Ele with fire line is running with 25 stacks of might without even thinking about it.

Ring of Fire does need nerfed. As much as you could say it’s a L2P for other players, nerfing RoF would require Elementalists to have to “l2p” just as well. I don’t think people really think about how strong RoF really is. With a Celestial build and just a few stacks of might, you’re looking at 4-4.5k damage (some of which is up-front) with 3 stacks of burning over 5 seconds. Now, consider with a standard FWA build, you can have this ring up close-to 50% of the time, and can out-range most melee fighters (130 versus 300 typically). People just don’t have the infinite dodges Elementalists think people have, or cleanses that can forget to remove burning and removes something stupid instead. 50% of the time this haphazard damage ring is up. It’s a crutch for Elementalists in Conquest more than it is a L2P issue for other players. No one should have that kind of fire-and-forget haphazard damage to their advantage. And I’m not even talking about walking back and forth, 1 application can do up to 4.5k damage…

If you damage started to hurt (which is silly anyways… You’re celestial for god’s sake and still able to literally melt people), I’d much rather it go somewhere a bit more involved.

+1 to what Wolfric.9380 said.

Two things a change to Ele for balancing (like that better than nerfing) should adress:
1. global mechanic problems => might and power of burning
2. Elementalist specific problems => Cantrip dominance/dependence over other skills

about 1:
>> shaving off a few percent from the basic burning formula would help, balancing other professions like Guardian as well.
>> now that Might buffs condi damage as well, perhaps it would also be helpful to reduce the power/condi gain from 25 to 20 per stack, so builds/runes/sigils outside might boon stacking would be promoted for more use.

about 2:
>> addressing the “Cantrip being too good problem” can be solved by making adjustments to Soothing Disruption and/or Burning Fire (although the dependence on SD and the water line is a bit more problematic IMO) or buffing the other traits like Inscription, Elemental Surge or Written in Stone. You could also mix the two measures.
>> For buffing less powerful specs I would like to see better condi options (perhaps a +10% Condi duration) or a Fear/Taunt/Resistance option for Glyphs to break some combos we fall prey upon if we don’t “bunker spec”.

If Anet tweaks the Ele anywhere outside adjusting Cantrips (and synergy with it) next, they are on the wrong boat and won’t help the profession at all.

There is one thing i would do for the ele. Without water and with low life, eles are doomed to be smited by conditions. I use focus + cleansing flame and speced out of water. Even when i spec geomancers defence the two good cleaners (16s + 40s) is not enough to survive. Necro, condi mesmer and somtimes condi rangers mean death.
There shoule be one more condi defence option outside of water. The new elite could have done it or a tempest trait. (ah i forgot one. But that won´t help much without water. Diamond skin)

I am against virtually every suggestion that has been made in this thread. Every single idea on how to “check” ele’s sustain brings me back to the dhuumfire patch in 2013, when ele went from having a good spvp d/d build to being literally unplayable in pvp for over a year. The sustain nerfs that are being suggested here remind me a lot of the nerfs that happened then, and trust me no one should want ele to be back in that sad state. And i think it bears mention, again, that cele d/d is a bunker/sustain build. It is suppose to be able to manage and survive 2v1s until help can show up. Not getting destroyed doesn’t mean its OP, but its doing the job its suppose to do.

As for the fire skill suggestions, again, hold your horses people. Everyone agrees that burning is too strong, but that is case singularly of the damage formula rework that happened in June. It is a noted problem on every profession, on every board and will see a balance hit soon. Until we see the affects of burnings reduced damage calling for nerfs to fire skills is too much too soon.

I don´t think a global burn nerf by reducing damage would have much impact on d/d eles. Especially in higer tier play. Maybe its enough. but it won´t solve any build diversity problems and still only leave d/d meta with water + cantrips left. It would also have a slight negative impact on many other ele builds where burn is secondary damage.

Wolfric.9380:

I don´t think a global burn nerf by reducing damage would have much impact on d/d eles. Especially in higer tier play. Maybe its enough. but it won´t solve any build diversity problems and still only leave d/d meta with water + cantrips left. It would also have a slight negative impact on many other ele builds where burn is secondary damage.

The Ele’s build diversity problems cannot be solved by nerfing D/D. The problem isn’t that D/D is so much stronger than them but that other builds are so much weaker than they need to be for sPvP’s capture-and-hold game mode.

You might also be able to solve the problem by introducing different PvP game modes, in which case different builds could become more useful there. I’m not holding my breath, though.