Guild Wars 2

“Overload Earth: Fixed a bug that caused this overload to deliver extra protection per pulse rather than the intended 1 second per pulse. Fixed a bug that caused the lingering damage to follow the elementalist around after the overload had completed.”

This change was sold as a bug fix, but it was probably the greatest nerf in the entire patch to an individual class (not counting the removal of celestial amulet). Here is a quantitative overview of the nerf.

Hardy Conduit: 3 seconds of protection initially.
The Overload Earth is 9 ticks of damage; the fifth tick, the explosion does not grant protection. On self, it used granted 1 second pulse for 4 seconds. Considering that the 5th tick never granted that 1 second pulse, the Tempest has 4 seconds of protection to self.

Bug The Tempest would keep pulsing 1 second of protection to self for a total of 4 pulses (4 extra seconds). Additionnally, the Overload left an AoE pulsing 3 seconds of protection every seconds for a total of 16 seconds of protection if the elementalist stayed.

So, in absolute protection duration, you had: 23 seconds of protection to self. (26 seconds with elemental shielding). For 15 or 18 seconds of protection once overload is over.

Allies received (8×1) seconds of protection + (8×3) for 32 seconds of protection (35 with shielding), for 24 or 27 seconds of protection once overload is over.

Currently, the absolute protection duration is 11 seconds from Overload Earth if fully completed and remaining in the dust storm. (14 seconds with elemental shielding). For 3 seconds of protection once overload is over, up to 6 with shielding. For allies, it grants 8 seconds of protection; 0 or 3 seconds of protection once overload is over.

Nota Bene. Once must also consider that the Tempest will swap out of Earth once the Overload is completed. At best, the cooldown of Overload Earth is 26 seconds (need to stay 6 seconds in an attunement to overload).

In percentage, the protection uptime reduction was.
For self: 23 seconds; down to 11 seconds. (52% nerf.)
For allies: 32 seconds; down to 8 seconds. (75% nerf.)
And, this was sold as a bug fix.

SOLUTIONS:
-Increase protection duration from Hardy Conduit to 5 seconds, up fro 3 seconds.
-Reduce Overload Recharge time to 15 seconds, down from 20.

Good, now another overload is complete trash. Overloads are still a terrible mechanic, and maybe this “bug-fix” will make them realize the costs are still too astronomically high to be used outside of:

- Air overload with fresh air (which negates the half the cost)
- Fire overload in PvE fire-camping staff, which doesn’t swap anyway

Of course, it is optimistic to think they would actually FIX the underlying issues. Instead, expect them to tack on some more (mostly useless) effects eventually, hoping to make it useful. For earth overload, they will probably add something like:
- 20% chance to reflect projectiles while overloading
- toughness increased by 100 during earth overload
- movement impeding conditions reduced by 20% during overload (ignoring that this conflicts with a supposed GM trait, which is garbage)

Literally, think of the most useless effects you can tack onto a bad skill, and that is probably what will be added.

BlackBeard.2873:

Good, now another overload is complete trash. Overloads are still a terrible mechanic, and maybe this “bug-fix” will make them realize the costs are still too astronomically high to be used outside of:

- Air overload with fresh air (which negates the half the cost)
- Fire overload in PvE fire-camping staff, which doesn’t swap anyway

Of course, it is optimistic to think they would actually FIX the underlying issues. Instead, expect them to tack on some more (mostly useless) effects eventually, hoping to make it useful. For earth overload, they will probably add something like:
- 20% chance to reflect projectiles while overloading
- toughness increased by 100 during earth overload
- movement impeding conditions reduced by 20% during overload (ignoring that this conflicts with a supposed GM trait, which is garbage)

Literally, think of the most useless effects you can tack onto a bad skill, and that is probably what will be added.

Lucid Singularity is indeed garbage.

It is a bug fix, no one should deny that. The problem is that not only did we receive this bugfix which reduced our effectiveness, we also got plenty of other nerfs.

It’s the same issue as always. Anet nerfs, doesn’t give back in other ways.

I need to agree, PvP wise the overloads to go were earth and air, because of the limited use of fire and almost 0 use of water. This + the auras nerf made me return to core ele.

I think the class was really trashed in this patch, and has now more limited builds for specific situations (full aura share for WvW while not OK still can work for example)

To Anet, it makes perfect sense to have ele overloading and force them unable to perform any other actions or switching to other elements for a good 4 to 5sec while having negligible damage/protection/heal at the end. Pretty much sums up everything right?

EvilHero.1248:

To Anet, it makes perfect sense to have ele overloading and force them unable to perform any other actions or switching to other elements for a good 4 to 5sec while having negligible damage/protection/heal at the end. Pretty much sums up everything right?

AAAANNNNDDDDD…we have come full circle. Prior to release of HoT, beta feedback pretty much pointed out the flaws in overloads/tempest. Nothing was done, and they put a bandaid on it by giving aura healing that was a little over the top. Now they are nerfing some of the stronger effects and it comes back up…“Hey, why the hell do overloads have such unreasonable costs for so little?!?”

Bugfixes are not nerfs

Nope, but the problem lies when a bug makes you game better (by making it more fun, balanced or whatever) In those situations:

Do you simple fix it and let your game be worse?

Or do you wait to fix it when you redesign/change the balance/whatever to make the game feel the same or better than with the unintended bug?

Ghotistyx.6942:

Bugfixes are not nerfs

why do people think this?
non-rhetorical question
I don’t understand. How does the fact that something wasn’t part of the developer’s intent negate the fact that power level was indeed decreased?

It is a bug fix. and it is a nerf. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Bugfixes are not nerfs

The bug was there since BW1, or BW2. Honestly, it seemed to be legit. Of course, the numbers were big, but standing on a a 240 radius after an overload was risky by itself.

Currently, there is no gains in standing inside it. All you get is a a protection that only covers the duration of your stay inside the AoE, where you absolutely don’t want to stay with a glassy dps build. (Get protection in melee, but die in melee: trade-off!)

Though, 8 seconds of protection may look long, but one must consider that this protection is not exactly reactive like swapping to earth with arcana. With Tempest, the protection is much harder to control and cannot be timed with the oponent’s burst.

This and fire aura also reduced was unneccessary ele grieving and not balance. DS and cele was more then enough for ele needing to reorient…
Now give us some trait love … One with fire 100% Fire aura duration and give 5s prot on elemental shielding …

Wolfric.9380:

This and fire aura also reduced was unneccessary ele grieving and not balance. DS and cele was more then enough for ele needing to reorient…
Now give us some trait love … One with fire 100% Fire aura duration and give 5s prot on elemental shielding …

Oh please no. No buffs to elemental shielding. Fire Aura duration is meaningless.

You want the duration improvement on Hardy Conduit because any tempest has it and only affect the elementalist itself.
You want One With Fire combined with Conjurer.

They nerf stuff and justify as a bug fix. I find it pathetic.

Valento.9852:

They nerf stuff and justify as a bug fix. I find it pathetic.

About this discussion: I know it isn’t much but Powerful Auras has more use than said in this thread. You can’t just use it with your weapon auras, it works with combos and traits too. So you can share combo fire shield, chaos armor, frost aura and the auras from the traits Tempest Defense, Soothing Ice, Unstable Conduit.

And to complain about a bug fix …
It’s not like this was intended and anet just wanted to remove it by calling it a bug. It actually was a bug, because the skill didn’t work like said in the description. So it should be fixed.

Anyone remembers that there were a few hours when engineer Med-Kit AA healed for 7k per tick? It was clearly a bug, but no one would ever say it was a nerf to reduce it to its intended level. Bug fixes are not nerfs, accept this pls.

Alekt.5803:

Wolfric.9380:

This and fire aura also reduced was unneccessary ele grieving and not balance. DS and cele was more then enough for ele needing to reorient…
Now give us some trait love … One with fire 100% Fire aura duration and give 5s prot on elemental shielding …

Oh please no. No buffs to elemental shielding. Fire Aura duration is meaningless.

You want the duration improvement on Hardy Conduit because any tempest has it and only affect the elementalist itself.
You want One With Fire combined with Conjurer.

Maybe buffing elemental shielding is not such a good idea and buffing prot on overloads is way better, but fire aura could use a buff. It was not an issue and got nerfed. The already weak one with fire trait got another hit. Merging would be an option, but if its not merged it should be buffed.

Kodama.6453:

Anyone remembers that there were a few hours when engineer Med-Kit AA healed for 7k per tick? It was clearly a bug, but no one would ever say it was a nerf to reduce it to its intended level. Bug fixes are not nerfs, accept this pls.

only because of its short duration
but if something is around long enough to become part of how people play the class (it was around for months and was a big part of why ele was part of the meta), changing it is then a nerf

if med kit auto healed for 7k from launch until now, and then finally got fixed, people would indeed call it a (very justified) nerf. The all of 5 people who would still be playing pvp