Guild Wars 2

Why exactly is the Elementalist Vigor on Crit trait being normalized but still being inferior to other traits?

They are “normalizing” it to be equal to Guard’s Vigorous Precision and Mesmer’s Critical Infusion (both Minor Adept traits). If they are going to normalize, actually normalize it and make it a minor for us too. We have to opt to choose this trait out of 3 adepts: it should be stronger than a minor. Don’t claim you’re “normalizing” the skill when you’re clearly just nerfing it, call it a nerf. Normalize it all the way or don’t use such a sketchy word that doesn’t really need to be used to justify nerfs to d/d cele ele.

All other on crit vigor are 10 sec cd for other classes so it dose fit the ideal of normalized. Though its not that big of a deal for ele with all of its other vigor generation.

Jski.6180:

All other on crit vigor are 10 sec cd for other classes so it dose fit the ideal of normalized. Though its not that big of a deal for ele with all of its other vigor generation.

Except other class vigor on crit trait is a adapt minor trait while Ele is adapt major trait and have to trade something to get it…

Avadore.4196:

Jski.6180:

All other on crit vigor are 10 sec cd for other classes so it dose fit the ideal of normalized. Though its not that big of a deal for ele with all of its other vigor generation.

Except other class vigor on crit trait is a adapt minor trait while Ele is adapt major trait and have to trade something to get it…

I would take 2 sec of fury on ever swap over a vigor on crit for adapt. Keep in mind ele can get vigor on cantrips use and getting hit when in water soon on water swap if they chose to use the tempest line.
You do have a point some what but becuse its only one step up from an adapt cutting its cd to 5 sec over the stander 10 seems a bit much as in there simply nothing else on ele trait even the GM that gives you 100% of up time vigor or realty any buff on its own.

Jski.6180:

Avadore.4196:

Jski.6180:

All other on crit vigor are 10 sec cd for other classes so it dose fit the ideal of normalized. Though its not that big of a deal for ele with all of its other vigor generation.

Except other class vigor on crit trait is a adapt minor trait while Ele is adapt major trait and have to trade something to get it…

I would take 2 sec of fury on ever swap over a vigor on crit for adapt. Keep in mind ele can get vigor on cantrips use and getting hit when in water soon on water swap if they chose to use the tempest line.
You do have a point some what but becuse its only one step up from an adapt cutting its cd to 5 sec over the stander 10 seems a bit much as in there simply nothing else on ele trait even the GM that gives you 100% of up time vigor or realty any buff on its own.

Same thing could be said for fury. There is many other places to gain fury instead of the 2 sec on swap. Zepyr’s Boon, Blasting Fire with Persisting Flames, Elemental Contingency. It depends on how you specialized.

The point I was making is that Anet claim they are “Normalizing” the trait when they clearly are not.

Avadore.4196:

Jski.6180:

Avadore.4196:

Jski.6180:

All other on crit vigor are 10 sec cd for other classes so it dose fit the ideal of normalized. Though its not that big of a deal for ele with all of its other vigor generation.

Except other class vigor on crit trait is a adapt minor trait while Ele is adapt major trait and have to trade something to get it…

I would take 2 sec of fury on ever swap over a vigor on crit for adapt. Keep in mind ele can get vigor on cantrips use and getting hit when in water soon on water swap if they chose to use the tempest line.
You do have a point some what but becuse its only one step up from an adapt cutting its cd to 5 sec over the stander 10 seems a bit much as in there simply nothing else on ele trait even the GM that gives you 100% of up time vigor or realty any buff on its own.

Same thing could be said for fury. There is many other places to gain fury instead of the 2 sec on swap. Zepyr’s Boon, Blasting Fire with Persisting Flames, Elemental Contingency. It depends on how you specialized.

The point I was making is that Anet claim they are “Normalizing” the trait when they clearly are not.

Its normalizing as in other like effects in the game have the same cd it dose not realty have to do where these effects come from.

Jski.6180:

Avadore.4196:

Jski.6180:

Avadore.4196:

Jski.6180:

All other on crit vigor are 10 sec cd for other classes so it dose fit the ideal of normalized. Though its not that big of a deal for ele with all of its other vigor generation.

Except other class vigor on crit trait is a adapt minor trait while Ele is adapt major trait and have to trade something to get it…

I would take 2 sec of fury on ever swap over a vigor on crit for adapt. Keep in mind ele can get vigor on cantrips use and getting hit when in water soon on water swap if they chose to use the tempest line.
You do have a point some what but becuse its only one step up from an adapt cutting its cd to 5 sec over the stander 10 seems a bit much as in there simply nothing else on ele trait even the GM that gives you 100% of up time vigor or realty any buff on its own.

Same thing could be said for fury. There is many other places to gain fury instead of the 2 sec on swap. Zepyr’s Boon, Blasting Fire with Persisting Flames, Elemental Contingency. It depends on how you specialized.

The point I was making is that Anet claim they are “Normalizing” the trait when they clearly are not.

Its normalizing as in other like effects in the game have the same cd it dose not realty have to do where these effects come from.

We will have to disagree on the degree of what “normalizing” should be. What is interesting is that Anet wanted to do this like a year ago but pulled back once the Ele community complained and pointed out the difference.

Because of the difference of Renewing Stamina being a major trait (unlike the Guard & Mes one) I would have liked to see the Vigor duration on Soothing Disruption being reduced by 2 seconds – and not the “normalize” on Renewing Stamina. That would have also helped getting the dominance of Cantrips in line on the utility bar.

I would agree since it is a Major trait. I have to pick it unlike guard and mesmer so it is a straight up nerf. And honestly it feels like they are double dipping into nerfs instead of nerfing bits at a time. 3 seconds is a lot of time, if you really didn’t want 100% uptime make it 6 seconds CD.

Burning too much? They covered that but then they removed might from cantrips making that trait pretty useless.

In all honesty I don’t like sPvP balancing as it makes absolutely no sense to me since it doesn’t apply to two of the three game modes which I am sure make up more of the playerbase than PvP. PvE, WvW, and PvP. While a dagger dagger ele is really good in sPvP it is not as great except in roaming on WvW. And in PvE as well as WvW, staff is already favored heavily. In general it feels like less builds are viable/Ok to use in two of the three game modes for the sake of PvP. And lets be honest, I know anet wants to push esports for PvP and I will say right now it won’t work. An MMO is not structured in a way to promote esports on a grand scale. Most esport games are in an arcade style fashion with predictable and repeatable gameplay. Changes can be made because EVERYBODY in the community is equally affected as there is only one real game mode. However an MMO has multiple game modes which are all valid and balancing around one of those game modes not only feels irresponsible to the rest of the playerbase but the balancing is probably going to be shoddy with all the other projects an MMO team has to work on (HoT expansion and all the little features anybody?)

Not to mention the double/triple dipping into nerfs rather than making them slowly over time. It is totally a knee jerk reaction and really sucks for players like me who bought the game and like playing Dagger Dagger. No, I don’t want to play fresh air, and no I don’t particularly have the most FUN playing staff. Unfortunately I may be forced to play something I don’t find fun due to PvP nerfs even though I only play WvW and PvE.

Icebow change is fine, burning changes are fine, but changing that and the blind then going further to nerf the vigor (which is not a minor but major trait) is just a bit too much all at once.

Edit: before you say “QQ Elementalist fan” I have talked to several of my friends and guild mates about the balancing and in general it seems pretty shoddy. Engineer needed a nerf but it was driven straight into the ground and left there. It remains to be seen if Scrapper would really fix it but even if it did only Scrapper would be in an OK spot. Not a diverse range of engineer setups.

Fair question. They could also have just switched Arcane Fury and Renewing Stamina and then “normalized” Renewing Stamina. It’s not like anyone would really pick Arcane Precision or Arcane Abatement over Arcane Fury anyway, much like how most people pick Renewing Stamina now.

This just pushes us more into Water/Cantrips.

As a ele main, this is the only nerf I found unfair due to their explanation. If they wanted to “normalize”, either buff the other traits and put them as major traits, or nerf ours and put it to minor.

Hmm, what happened to the Vigorous Scepter trait?

I seem to recall elementalist not having to rely on Water/Cantrips quite so much. This “normalization” reinforces the reliance upon Water Cantrips.

WhimsicalPacifist.2943:

Hmm, what happened to the Vigorous Scepter trait?

I seem to recall elementalist not having to rely on Water/Cantrips quite so much. This “normalization” reinforces the reliance upon Water Cantrips.

They scrapped all weapon-specific traits with the specialization update. Yet there’s a warhorn trait in the Tempest line, go figure…

Glenstorm.4059:

WhimsicalPacifist.2943:

Hmm, what happened to the Vigorous Scepter trait?

I seem to recall elementalist not having to rely on Water/Cantrips quite so much. This “normalization” reinforces the reliance upon Water Cantrips.

They scrapped all weapon-specific traits with the specialization update. Yet there’s a warhorn trait in the Tempest line, go figure…

It’s because of the bad idea that we should be forced to take the new line to equip the new weapon. It reduces build diversity even more but we’ve had all the indication that diversity isn’t their priority when they merged trait, instead they said they wanted to make each trait more impactful. It’s just seeing them break merged traits (like the might on cantrip/cleansing fire) is really confusing: now we have less diversity AND bad traits.

This feels like the most painful nerf. I was hoping they wouldn’t mess with Arcana.

Cecilia.5179:

This feels like the most painful nerf. I was hoping they wouldn’t mess with Arcana.

It’s by far the most painful one. It affects every single ele build that takes arcana for PvP (most of them!), not just D/D cele ele. It kind of forces you more to take Cantrip Mastery for that missed vigor. They should have removed the Vigor from Cantrip Mastery instead. Then, they should have buffed other utilities and their related traits to make them more attractive, but nope.

This was a pretty harsh nerf, but the fact is, Arcana is crazy bloated strong right now. Their decision to move Elemental Attunement to Minor and allow Eles to take a new trait in the Master Major slot, plus being able to keep Evasive Arcana (AND un-nerfing Evasive Arcana in PvP) were huge buffs to Ele. In that light, nerfing the Vigor trait to 10 sec ICD makes sense.

Neko.9021:

This was a pretty harsh nerf, but the fact is, Arcana is crazy bloated strong right now. Their decision to move Elemental Attunement to Minor and allow Eles to take a new trait in the Master Major slot, plus being able to keep Evasive Arcana (AND un-nerfing Evasive Arcana in PvP) were huge buffs to Ele. In that light, nerfing the Vigor trait to 10 sec ICD makes sense.

Had they gone through the initial decision to put Elemental Attunement to GM along with Evasive Arcana would have put the class in a very odd position. Have you ever tried a build without Elemental Attunement and without Cantrips in sPvP?

I tried it myself. It does not work very well, and when it does work a little bit, you’re off wondering where is your swiftness, where is the heal… et cetera.

Alekt.5803:

Neko.9021:

This was a pretty harsh nerf, but the fact is, Arcana is crazy bloated strong right now. Their decision to move Elemental Attunement to Minor and allow Eles to take a new trait in the Master Major slot, plus being able to keep Evasive Arcana (AND un-nerfing Evasive Arcana in PvP) were huge buffs to Ele. In that light, nerfing the Vigor trait to 10 sec ICD makes sense.

Had they gone through the initial decision to put Elemental Attunement to GM along with Evasive Arcana would have put the class in a very odd position. Have you ever tried a build without Elemental Attunement and without Cantrips in sPvP?

I tried it myself. It does not work very well, and when it does work a little bit, you’re off wondering where is your swiftness, where is the heal… et cetera.

Maybe, but they didn’t simply keep Elemental Attunement where it was – they changed it to a Minor trait, and allowed Eles to take a whole new trait in its place – either Elemental Contingency or Final Shielding. This, plus getting a 3rd GM trait, put Ele so far ahead in PvP. They had to put some cuts somewhere, and nerfing damage and Vigor seems like a sensible way to go about it.

It’s only one build that’s consistently on top of the others. Glyph, signet as subpar builds get hit pretty hard with the collateral damage.

WhimsicalPacifist.2943:

It’s only one build that’s consistently on top of the others. Glyph, signet as subpar builds get hit pretty hard with the collateral damage.

Nobody even use signets or glymph in pvp anymore because of the lost of condi-duration and auras on the fire now, now Anet is hitting cantrips might also on the fire line, as if they can’t learn from their mistakes. They should have buffed signets and glymphs, not nerfed cantrips.

And nerfing vigor just forces us more into bunker, it’s been the main problem for 3 years now.

The difference between perma vigor and 50% vigor uptime is having one less dodge every 40 seconds.
But with elemental contingency and soothing disruption cele eles will still be able to maintain 100% vigor uptime if the vigor doesn’t get removed.
This nerf really isn’t that big.