Guild Wars 2

This is it! The moment of truth is upon us, will ele prevail?…or suffer defeat?
One thing is certain, the forums will be on fire, many will be delight, many others will cry; at this point nothing is well known but it’d still be interesting to see what other people think may change for the ele, what are their hopes ..or fears, predictions or more.

Do you fear for nerfs on d/d? sustain in general?..condi removal?

Are you praying for possible buffs on scepter? glyphs? elites and traits?

focus buffs pls

focus doesn’t need a buff. focus is like the best ele weapon in the game lol.

on topic: i just hope that if some changes would be bad that we can complain about them again and give feedback so that they take enough time to read that before they release it.

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

What I’m hoping are are some buffs to glyphs, conjures (instant cast), scepter buffs (earth 3, water 2), some changes to focus (fire aura, fire wall, reduce cooldown on air 5 and water 4).

I’m also expecting some conjure nerfs, because youknow… I just hope elementalist’s are still fun and competitive. It already feels like one of the harder classes.

If they continue to nerf d/d, I’ll cry….well maybe not, but it would suck. I’m playing a zerker d/d build right now in pvp, so much fun. They better not trash my new build.

I’m excited xD. Mad Monday is coming.

Jekkt.6045:

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

Air is getting nerfed to the ground, so Scepter is not getting a buff at all.

Hopes:
- Improve the baseline sustain capabilities of the class, reduce the high-end sustain capabilities (so that the class doesn’t need OP defensive options that become silly when stacked to the max).
- Fix some of the terrible weapon-skills and utilities (looking at you scepter auto-attacks, shatterstone, staff air 2 + 3, staff earth 5, focus fire skills, glyphs besides GoEP, conjures, signets of water and fire, arcane power)
- Introduce real diversity by solving the issues of pigeon-holing the class into certain traits/weapons
- Introduce some way for ele to apply revealed so that I can play s/d ele in pvp without having to completely outplay thieves 100% of the time.
- Give me back RtL b/c it is fun

Fears:
- Pigeon-hole the class into a tank only role for pvp
- Make the class rely on OP passives while reducing active game-play
- That they overbuff the class, and then follow dart-board balancing

Xillllix.3485:

Jekkt.6045:

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

Air is getting nerfed to the ground, so Scepter is not getting a buff at all.

scepter is scepter, air is air. damage gets traded for utility, wether that’s good or not is something we’ll soon see.

I’m just hoping that we are adequately compensated for the loss of Vitality/Healing Power from Water Magic and Boon Duration from Arcana.

Also hoping for a buff to Shatterstone.

And Chill not affecting Attunement swap.

Oh, and a powerful Elite would be nice.

Jekkt.6045:

focus doesn’t need a buff. focus is like the best ele weapon in the game lol.

on topic: i just hope that if some changes would be bad that we can complain about them again and give feedback so that they take enough time to read that before they release it.

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

I can’t agree with the fact focus is fine. Fire shield and freezing gust are close to being useless. Fire shield is on freaking 40 sec cd and all you get is fire aura, how is that good lol? Freezing gust is a 3 sec of chill on 25 second cooldown and the damage is not super awesome either. Focus has some great skills, but some should really be revamped.

The earth and air skills of the focus are fine, even maybe good by ele standards
The fire and water skills however are terrible.
- The damage of comet should be increased drastically and its animation should be made more obvious => force the opponent to dodge, reward clever use.
- Freezing gust has a bugged casting animation, and it is extremely weak.
- Firewall needs a strong buff in mechanics and damage: it is clunky to use and it has little effect on the battle field with its 1s burn per tick (compared to 5s per tick for ring of fire… a skill that has 5s less cooldown, faster cast time, more damage, and a larger area of effect!!)
- Fire shield does not even do what it claims to do (no condi duration reduction), and it is extremely weak.

Inner Ele-Profession Hopes (going from more likely to less likely):
>> Better balance between the way too strong Cantrips (both in functionality & synergy with traits/might) and other Utility lines like Arcana and Signets – especially Glyphs
>> A concept for Conjures that can find finally find a sweet spot between complete uselessness (Shield ?) and OP in certain game types (Icebow #4)
>> The reveal of what skill class will be Ether Renewal and Tornado
>> a speed up to some sup par weapon skills (Sc/Fire #1; St/Water #2 etc.)
>> The reveal of what baseline buffs Scepter & Dagger users get after Staff will get a free “Blasting Staff” (if ever?)
>> Chill not affecting Attunement swap any more (dreamy face)
>> Off-Combat-Weapon swap (more dreamy face)

Laraley.7695:

Jekkt.6045:

focus doesn’t need a buff. focus is like the best ele weapon in the game lol.

on topic: i just hope that if some changes would be bad that we can complain about them again and give feedback so that they take enough time to read that before they release it.

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

I can’t agree with the fact focus is fine. Fire shield and freezing gust are close to being useless. Fire shield is on freaking 40 sec cd and all you get is fire aura, how is that good lol? Freezing gust is a 3 sec of chill on 25 second cooldown and the damage is not super awesome either. Focus has some great skills, but some should really be revamped.

freezing gust is an amazing skill to kite players with chill, no idea why people don’t appreciate this skill. fire aura is well.. an aura skill.. sadly the worst one of them all but not too bad if you run elemental shielding and it also provides a -20% condi duration.

i don’t think they will ever change flame shield to something else so my guess is focus will just stay the way it is.

it’s pretty perfect for focus and the ranged combat. the only attunement that can be a bit weak is fire.. flame barrier can be used under dragon’s tooth to give yourself might. many enemies will dodge dragon’s tooth anyway so it’s just to waste their dodges and give you might. least utility and not offensive at all sadly.

water is nice for poking and kiting and interrupting banners or smoke field leaps.

air is perfect

earth is perfect

Jekkt.6045:

Laraley.7695:

Jekkt.6045:

focus doesn’t need a buff. focus is like the best ele weapon in the game lol.

on topic: i just hope that if some changes would be bad that we can complain about them again and give feedback so that they take enough time to read that before they release it.

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

I can’t agree with the fact focus is fine. Fire shield and freezing gust are close to being useless. Fire shield is on freaking 40 sec cd and all you get is fire aura, how is that good lol? Freezing gust is a 3 sec of chill on 25 second cooldown and the damage is not super awesome either. Focus has some great skills, but some should really be revamped.

freezing gust is an amazing skill to kite players with chill, no idea why people don’t appreciate this skill. fire aura is well.. an aura skill.. sadly the worst one of them all but not too bad if you run elemental shielding and it also provides a -20% condi duration.

i don’t think they will ever change flame shield to something else so my guess is focus will just stay the way it is.

it’s pretty perfect for focus and the ranged combat. the only attunement that can be a bit weak is fire.. flame barrier can be used under dragon’s tooth to give yourself might. many enemies will dodge dragon’s tooth anyway so it’s just to waste their dodges and give you might. least utility and not offensive at all sadly.

water is nice for poking and kiting and interrupting banners or smoke field leaps.

air is perfect

earth is perfect

Freezing gust is good? How is it good? You can’t even cast it if you’re not exactly facing your target. It’s THREE second of chill on 25 second cooldown. What’s good about it? Sigil of hydromancy is 2 sec of chill on 9 sec cd and it also does decent damage.

Fire aura does not provide -20% condi duration. It says it does, but it doesn’t.

Fire is horrible, water is bad…really. Compare it to some good skills and you realize how weak these skills are.

The main thing I hope for is that sword (if it will be a sword) is given enough uniqueness over scepter and dagger to justify the existence of 3 different t main hand weapons with very different roles and playstyles.

Personally I hope that it has decent movement on its air or fire skills, so that it will synergize relatively well with focus. I also hope it will fulfill a high DPS role in someway, so that a sword/focus ele would be comparative in role to a scepter/focus one, but with ideally a more melee oriented playstyle and hopefully more mobility, so that it wouldn’t have the weaknesses of the current zerker S/F build.

Like others said I hope that scepter will be buffed a bit so it’s still a viable weapon, but we’ll have to wait and see I guess.

already getting ready to be disappointed. Then make threats about how I will quit this game but not actually follow through with those threats.

PlatinumMember.5274:

already getting ready to be disappointed. Then make threats about how I will quit this game but not actually follow through with those threats.

This is me too, pretty much. Doubly so for Tempest. :/

Water Focus skill need some love please!

Freezing Gust need major improvement! I don’t expect the past gw1 freezing gust glory to be reincarnated. But at least make it AoE on target and nearby enemies? (A bit of longer chill duration would help, Ele in general deal terribly short Chill duration).

Comet isn’t very strong and still hard to use, I would like to see Maelstrom type of skill (again from GW1) replacing Comet.

Earth Focus skills are lovely Very useful. So does Air Focus skill.

No comment on Fire focus skills.

Gust needs a serious buff on Staff, that skill like never hit target. it needs to be like focus 5.

was thinking about the focus skills a but… tbh i was never really disappointed by them.. i guess i just accepted them for what they are. so i thought about what vould be changed because i do understand what other players dislike about them.

freezing gust could be turned into a cone skill, like necro’s warhorn interrupt that aoe chills 5 enemies (bypassing the aoe limit like maul) and chilling them for 5 seconds, leaving the cooldown on 25. the damage.. well it’s not a damage skill so i guess that would be fine.

comet, the problem of this skill is the delay and that it doesn’t hit a target when they use a movement skill. remove the delay and/or speed the whole skill up, maybe make the affected landing spot an aoe daze.

flame barrier could be made bigger, the size of the revenant fire field.

fire aura.. tbh.. no idea.. maybe just fix the condi duration..?

My 2 cents:
- Dragon’s Tooth gotta be targeted, period. Right now it seems like the hardest version of a targeted spell.
- Drake’s Breath: while that may just be me, I highly dislike that skill being part of Dagger weapon because to be used effectively, it seriously hinders your movements, more specifically dodges. Make it not break on dodge and it will be mostly fine.

yhvh.8703:

My 2 cents:
- Dragon’s Tooth gotta be targeted, period. Right now it seems like the hardest version of a targeted spell.
- Drake’s Breath: while that may just be me, I highly dislike that skill being part of Dagger weapon because to be used effectively, it seriously hinders your movements, more specifically dodges. Make it not break on dodge and it will be mostly fine.

Wat. Drake’s Breath is like one of the best skills on mainhand dagger.

With Conjors getting gutted i hope scepter gets a buff on the PVE side. That auto need to get looked at or scepter is usless for PVE without LH.

RTL need teh CD brough way down back to the 25s-20s lvl. It was dumb nerf before and it even more so now that all skill are like it.

I think for all classes we will see old skill that hand no line will get one and be changes some what but still fill the roll. So both renwal and nado will be updated to an existing ele ability type and have slightly different effects but still fill the heal that removes constion and an big ability that knocks ppl back.

Other then that its hard to say beyond what info they giving out.

Here my list

Fears

1)our condi removal get negatively tweaked in a way or another ( ether renewal) water or arcana traits….I’m kitten scared for today stream

2) Dagger MH nerfed somehow…I feel uneasy

3) Self-sustain (soothing wave) because of the added frost aura, I fear they may increase the cd on the regeneration application, completely ignoring the condi removal

Hopes

-1- tornado gain reflection
-2- Ele gains resistance ( diamond skin changed somehow)
-3- Scepter auto-attack buffed
-4- Scepter gain a knockback
-5-Conjures become F5 for eles, you move between 4 attunements and conjures ( with duration)
-6-Conjures become insta cast and cd reduced to 40s CD, auto-attack consumes no charge
-7-Gust become a PBaoe
-8-shockwave becomes an “on target” immobilize removing the projectile aspect
-9-Glyph of harmony CD reduced to 20s and cast time reduced to 1s
-10- All glyphs get looked at ( the elite is terrible outside 1vs1 and the utilities are simply trash on all sides)

I hope that none of your fears come true and I wish your hopes will be fulfilled.

I have no hope, look to the classes are in good place in GW2

Warrior, Thief, Guardians, Engis, …..they are all in good place in META and some developers sees them as their children.

And now look to the classes it has problems
Necro, Ele, Ranger, Mesmer,….

unless every class is designed from a developer who really enjoy and play the class, I guess this picture will stay.

posthumecaver.6473:

I have no hope, look to the classes are in good place in GW2

Warrior, Thief, Guardians, Engis, …..they are all in good place in META and some developers sees them as their children.

And now look to the classes it has problems
Necro, Ele, Ranger, Mesmer,….

unless every class is designed from a developer who really enjoy and play the class, I guess this picture will stay.

Well I assume you’re talking about pvp, so I have to point out that the comparison of the elementalist to the necromancer, ranger, and mesmer is entirely problematic. I have experience on all 4 of those classes that you viewed as non-meta, and I can tell you that the ele is miles ahead of them in pvp viability right now.

Sure, the ele has its problems, being bound to arcane, water, and celestial, but at least those are actual ways to address the ele’s problems. Necromancers have no group support and no way to survive focus fire on their own. The only reason that power necro is a thing in pvp right now at all is simply all due to noscoc sticking with the class and the lack of competitiveness on NA. Mesmers are entirely outclassed by thieves for a burst role, but survive on some teams simply due to portal being strong, but if you don’t want portal, you don’t want a mesmer. Rangers are limited by having their burst build too map dependent (it works on legacy but not forest) and their 1v1 condition/tank builds aren’t effective because they can’t kill things 1v1 fast enough to justify bringing them, because people will rotate to nullify that advantage. There are so so few necromancers, mesmers, and rangers in pvp right now. For necromancers, theres nos, xerrex, and OP necro, for mesmer theres pretty much only supcutie on NA, and helseth and misha on EU, for ranger, I can only think of genyen and eurantien. For Ele, theres phantaram (even if he doesn’t play it as much right now), denshee, eternya, shaku, honey, readymade, zoose, and many more minor ones on various teams.

Anyway my point is that your comparison of ele to those woefully neglected classes is a bad comparison to me. Still, I understand that you recognize that the ele is flawed, but those flaws don’t mean something can’t be meta, since there are ways of fixing those flaws. Ele can do survivability because of the boon uptime and the heals it can trait for. Warrior would be weak to conditions if it didn’t have the warhorn trait or cleansing ire, but its still meta and a highly visible proffession because it can deal with that weakness so well. Necro, Mesmer, and Ranger can’t deal with those weaknesses as well for reasons that are obvious after spending so little time in pvp with them.

Finally, I know that there is considerable anxiety in this thread because you know how the Elementalist can easily be nerfed again like it was in 2013, if the changes don’t allow for eles to maintain sustain, or allow for viable burst builds. I just think its a bad comparison, when elementalist has been pretty viable in high pvp for a while, excluding 2013, whereas the other 3 classes you said were as flawed did not have enough viability. The mesmer may see viability as the proposed trait reworks and its elite spec are giving it great tools and baseline traits to make its burst and control much stronger, while enhancing survivability through more access to blind and slow even. The necromancer is riding on the existence of a viable sustain build through changes to siphoning and blood magic and healing in death shroud, the old condition builds are dead for the time being as long as shoutbows exist. The ranger is simply hoping that its elite spec will give it the tools needed to have better support now that spirits are pretty much botched, while slavaging the broken pet mechanic.

And finally the ele is just hoping that they won’t lose their jack of all trades status with the changes to the trait lines, boon duration, celestial, and condition damage scaling, and that lesser used weapons are given a new lease on life. Still I wish the best for the ele, I just wish more for the mesmer, necro, and ranger than the ele at this point seeing what they’ve had to endure the past 3 years.

dem 33% cooldown reduction traits though
4 sec CD lava font and 20 sec CD Meteor shower
+ free 150 power from fire adept minor

Fire staff ele overlords for pve