Guild Wars 2

TWMagimay.9057:

phandaria.4891:

Sera.6539:

I’m kind of at a loss too. I used staff heavily in dungeons as support and buffing with fields and Evasive Arcana to combo blast.

Same with me. Please share any alternative build for dungeon support ele.

Here’s a build. Take 4 other people in that dungeon and make sure they know what a “blast finisher” is. Problem solved. Seriously, stop looking at dungeons as if you have to solo them. The selling point of the whole puppy game was team work and stuff. You are not supposed to support everybody all the time, you provide the field, they finish it. It’s THAT simple. It’s also how I’ve been playing the whole time and, strange enough, it works!

Well, if I can chose the people I can go to dungeon with I would, but mostly doing PUGs. The only team work I’ve seen is ressing teammates when downed.

FYI, blast finisher is limited to certain classes with certain skill/weapon and other finishers are nothing compared to blast finisher. Do you expect it to proc as efficient as Evasive Arcana build?

Signed. Once per 10 seconds like it was supposed to be and not as many times as you dodge which was the ACTUAL bug that made EA overpowered.

I feel like I just got punched in the gut.

This has to be the biggest nerf I have ever seen out of the couple dozen MMOs I have played over the last 20 odd years.

Would it be too much to ask that they fix Evasive Arcana’s earth roll effect? It is true that it isn’t casting Churning Earth, as it does almost no damage and certainly doesn’t apply 8 stacks of bleeding. Although, as mentioned earlier, it has the same visual effect as that weapon skill, and claims to cast it in the trait’s text.

Please either change the text and animation to the spell it is really casting (ring of earth). Or make Evasive Arcana correctly cast churning earth instantly on the dodge roll (this must have been the intended effect, otherwise why have the text/animation of it).

And if they go the second route, then I would think that the earth roll would count as a blast finisher, as the dagger skill churning earth is also a blast finisher.

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

TWMagimay.9057:

phandaria.4891:

Sera.6539:

I’m kind of at a loss too. I used staff heavily in dungeons as support and buffing with fields and Evasive Arcana to combo blast.

Same with me. Please share any alternative build for dungeon support ele.

Here’s a build. Take 4 other people in that dungeon and make sure they know what a “blast finisher” is. Problem solved. Seriously, stop looking at dungeons as if you have to solo them. The selling point of the whole puppy game was team work and stuff. You are not supposed to support everybody all the time, you provide the field, they finish it. It’s THAT simple. It’s also how I’ve been playing the whole time and, strange enough, it works!

Screw dungeons. Im more worried about sPVP. Theres no such thing as teamwork in sPVP. I barely get ressed most of the time when I get downed. I MF and wander off to a corner where I hope enemies wont notice me so I can spend a minute healing my own kittening self.

Isnt it funny the D/D guys are so happy and laughing at us staff users?

YOU DID NOT GET NERFED TO HECK.

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion.

Evasive Arcana is good as it is now, although I admit it’s more so for pvp than for pve.

From what I’m seeing, a lot of people saying that the changes were good are those who sPvP a lot. And those who say the change was bad, are a lot of PvE players (+ some sPvP). I don’t understand why they couldn’t just separate the effect like they did for other classes. I find it hard to believe this was a bug that JUST got fixed now.

I dont think this will help. ANet doesn’t seem to listen to the forumers.

fixit.7189:

Isnt it funny the D/D guys are so happy and laughing at us staff users?

YOU DID NOT GET NERFED TO HECK.

That’s because that, when the game started, D/D was already “nerfed” and staff was already “broken”. Now they’re balanced.

DiogoSilva.7089:

fixit.7189:

Isnt it funny the D/D guys are so happy and laughing at us staff users?

YOU DID NOT GET NERFED TO HECK.

That’s because that, when the game started, D/D was already “nerfed” and staff was already “broken”. Now they’re balanced.

Hm. I feel like there are much more DD than Staff in sPVP though. It’s very rare for me to run into another Staff Ele and it’s always a bunker Ele which I can never kill (lol).

It offers one of four skills and one of four blasts. It’s a grandmaster trait, I don’t think it asking too much that it be a good one.

fixit.7189:

Isnt it funny the D/D guys are so happy and laughing at us staff users?

YOU DID NOT GET NERFED TO HECK.

Bunker D/D Ele’s also use evasive arcana in PvP.

So not just the function in PvE was harmed, but also PvP.

PLEASE RECONSIDER THIS!

Major fun factor removed. I would even use “The end of your dodges now trigger a blast finisher. 10 sec cd” over new Evasive Arcana. It was such a fun mechanic, especially rolling into my water fields. Big risk/reward decison, very rewarding addition to a Staff Ele’s playstyle.

I use Staff too mostly, I’ve been testing Scepter/Dagger only recently but I still favor Staff for all situations because I know how to handle them.

I never had an issue fighting any profession 1v1 with a Staff before, besides the usual grief “ kitten thief caught me offguard”.

Honestly I don’t know why people would take over 20 points in Arcana if not for the Blasting Staff Major, that is only a must for WvW, for everything else the regular area is fine, and are missing 200~300 points of another attribute…

Yea to combo RoF for might stacks and thats about it. You dropped a bit of power, no biggie. Us staff users just lost an entire game style with massive nerfs on top of it.

Now D/D reigns supreme, hope you are happy.

Anet Please from the bottom of my heart please rethink this decision. The Evasive ele was such a great build to play it really made the combat different and viceral. It was a challenging build that people loved and required skills to play. Positioning, timing everything came into play and was extremely engaging combat. Im so disheartened right now. When I created my ele it was my main. My spiritual successor from GW1. I have alot of emotion invested in her as lame as it sounds. Really Really Sucks.

And to top it all off they pull it out the night before lost shores. Gonna run around trying to figure out what I wanna do instead of having a “blast” with the new content. Just puts a downer on the whole thing.

:(

I wouldn’t mind a blast finisher roller trait in the future, but EA was clearly about punishing the opponent by rolling, not about dodging into fields whenever they were created.

Thanks for nerfing D/D bunker ele by absolutely gutting the 20 water/30 arcane staff support spec… Meanwhile, warriors get buffed.

So stupid.

Im so lost right now. It was such an awesome build. Made combat mobile, Viceral, and exciting. Even fighting trash mobs you could do it in style and enjoy the battle.

Please Please reconsider.

Facepunch.5710:

It offers one of four skills and one of four blasts. It’s a grandmaster trait, I don’t think it asking too much that it be a good one.

It offers four skills, because each skill has its own individual cooldown. Evasive Arcana is about changing attunements and punishing opponents whenever you roll. Not about rolling into combo fields whenever they become available, regardless of attunement.

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

You say that as if you could use all the skills at once. Guess what, you couldn’t. You could use two at once at the cost of all endurance, which is kind of over powered, but all that it needed was a global cooldown. As it is now, its rather lackluster for a grandmaster trait. Why? Because it’s effect is less than the dodge distance. That means if you actually want it to hit, you’re losing the “dodge” part of dodging. Besides, the spells were weakened quite a bit, so they weren’t full fledged skills anyway.

DiogoSilva.7089:

That’s because that, when the game started, D/D was already “nerfed” and staff was already “broken”. Now they’re balanced.

No, they were both nerfed to heck when the game started, (and so was scepter). In case you didn’t pay attention, all ele damage was nerfed to 54% after BWE 2, fields were given less duration, and some cds were increased. It was far more than just D/D.

Spacefish.4623:

Thanks for nerfing D/D bunker ele by absolutely gutting the 20 water/30 arcane staff support spec… Meanwhile, warriors get buffed.

So stupid.

Bunker ele builds were stronger than warriors before the update.

Geyser is basically pointless without a blast finisher.

Evasive arcana made playing a staff ele cool. It was really awesome and created a real reason to weave in and out of melee range to stack might with lava font. Now it’s just stand back and spam while waiting for arcane blast to come off cooldown.

I feel a lot less useful as a “support” elementalist (while still dealing damage) when I can’t provide the most important boons (might) and area healing. I was looking at my build trying to decide what to use in place of evasive arcana and decided it doesn’t really matter. None of the traits are really worth it. I feel like it doesn’t even matter what I choose.

Roll a warrior.

So I do not enjoy playing d/d builds and much prefer staff but as it is now I am trying to adapt to this change and having a hard time breaking my habit of dodge rolling to get might, or heals. I was very comfortable playing staff ele and had a lot of fun doing it. I have tried to play other professions but Elementalist was my first and really the only class i enjoy playing. I just hope after these “fixes” they will then balance the classes. If not well I got my monies worth and enjoyed the game and play style of elementalist.

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

Spoken like a true fanboy. Are you taking a break from defending the new bait and switch gear treadmill to pick on the weakest class in the game?

Nonlinear.9823:

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

Spoken like a true fanboy. Are you taking a break from defending the new bait and switch gear treadmill to pick on the weakest class in the game?

Bunker eles were one of the strongest builds in the entire game before the patch. And they’re still good. Oh yeah.

That being said, it’s unfortunate that backstab thieves and bunker guardians’ nerfs weren’t in time for this patch.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Nonlinear.9823:

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

Spoken like a true fanboy. Are you taking a break from defending the new bait and switch gear treadmill to pick on the weakest class in the game?

Bunker eles were one of the strongest builds in the entire game before the patch. And they’re still good. Oh yeah.

That being said, it’s unfortunate that backstab thieves and bunker guardians’ nerfs weren’t in time for this patch.

Bunker eles being OP means bunker eles should be nerfed, not all staff ele builds in general. Besides, /d bunkers weren’t hit much at all.

Bunker D/D builds you mean. Which actually was the build that majority of people were complaining about yet it is the LEAST effect by these changes. Funny how things work. If we are going to be fair: nerf D/D more as well imo. Do it.

R.I.P. Staff eles; nerfed into oblivion.

What’s really sad is that having a lot of points in Arcane just makes the class more fun, because swapping attunements is fun.

But now that they’ve heavily nerfed that trait line, it’s hard to justify kittening oneself to that extent …

This was my favorite part about the class, and the thing that finally got me to love the elementalist (after going through many unfun builds).

Please anet, revert the changes, or at least give the dodge blast finishers the same cooldowns as the dodge spells.

Bah, I was having so much fun in PvE creating combos with those blast finishers :-(

SecondtoNone.7549:

Screw dungeons. Im more worried about sPVP. Theres no such thing as teamwork in sPVP. I barely get ressed most of the time when I get downed. I MF and wander off to a corner where I hope enemies wont notice me so I can spend a minute healing my own kittening self.

Did you actually try sPvP? I did today(for the new daily) for the first time as ele…had quite the blast without blasting anything. Got downed 2 times total in 3 matches, rallied once because 2 of the enemy went down same time I did and died the other time. And, no, I didn’t spent the time hiding around since I literally didn’t care about score or anything. Ofc, my build never depended on 1 bugged trait to be effective to begin with…

Anyway…what else would work for staff? Signet build works fine for me. Glyph-build can also be effective. Cantrips? Each of those is an option that can go with staff, combos isn;t the the only way.

Lastly, the game wasn’t meant for 1 person to carry everybody else. If your dungeon party is a PUG that can’t support themselves…tough luck. I run dungeons with people who spent 90% of their time in WvWvW and we still don’t wipe on every corner. Because they have a faint idea of how their skills work. Since the -curses quietly- devs decided the game doesn;t need a healer, why would you expect to be one?

Launched with 4 classes, now has 5-ish.

lol Necro still sucks, and Ele just got minced. So, Anet, what sorta spec are we SUPPOSED to be using because the trait system is kittened and lacking ANY synergy now. I guess 20 fire is a must to play with conjures now, eh?

EDIT: ANet staff: “After the small uprising of complaints of what happened to Evasive Arcana blast finishers, we’ve decided to remove the trait entirely. Also, we have corrected any useful options in the trait system for the Elementalist profession. Remember, have fun!”

DiogoSilva.7089:

Facepunch.5710:

It offers one of four skills and one of four blasts. It’s a grandmaster trait, I don’t think it asking too much that it be a good one.

It offers four skills, because each skill has its own individual cooldown. Evasive Arcana is about changing attunements and punishing opponents whenever you roll. Not about rolling into combo fields whenever they become available, regardless of attunement.

It’s got a 10 second cooldown. If they made the blast finishers on a 10 second cooldown as well, that would have been perfectly fine. Instead, they removed them completely. This trait is no longer worthy of being at grandmaster tier. It’s more like a minor trait (deal damage to target when switching to this attunement worthy)

Gintoki.6405:

i will agree 100% that it was broken, since the 10sec cooldown didnt work, but actually removing it completely seems harsh, even if it was just 1 per 10 second only in earth since churning is supposed to be a finisher.. still i dont see how they can say " oh they were unintentional.." would have thought it would be difficult to make the same mistake for every attunement

The 10sec ICD worked fine but per attunement only, i.e you can’t dodgeroll twice in a row in the same attunement and expect EA to proc because you have to wait 10seconds. But you can dodge on one attunement, change attune and dodge again, proccing two blasts almost instantly. IMO, making it a global ICD for all attunements and increasing it to say 15-20 seconds might have fixed the exploits of unkillable Ele bunkers with god-like healing or other builds that rely on might stacking on demand – casting water or fire field>dodging in water/fire>attune in fire/water or earth>then dodge again. It’s like a thief Backstabber with OP damage in a matter of seconds without much of a risk yielding high rewards. But hey, with EA, at least you’re giving up an evasion or two to get your blasts.

Yes, it’s abusive. But removing the blasts entirely is basically handicapping a fun and viable Ele playstyle especially with staff focused on combos. Just increasing ICD and making it global would have been more reasonable.

thetreebranch.4831:

It’s got a 10 second cooldown. If they made the blast finishers on a 10 second cooldown as well, that would have been perfectly fine. Instead, they removed them completely. This trait is no longer worthy of being at grandmaster tier. It’s more like a minor trait (deal damage to target when switching to this attunement worthy)

This trait gives you an extra block, party-wide condition removal and heal, and crowd cripple in addition to the damage. It has a lot of utility, and it’s very versatile.

If only all our minor traits were this good…

Was hoping this patch would give me a reason to log in, doesn’t seem like it has though =/

yeah i was actually agreeing with you, the fact you could do more than 1 per 10sec on same attunement by simply spamming rolls was clearly broken. but being able to get a blast finisher everytime the spell legitimately activates really isnt that bad, or yeah 10 sec global cooldown would be acceptable or just blast on fire/earth or something

This is total bullkitten. I’m pissed off.

TWMagimay.9057:

Since the -curses quietly- devs decided the game doesn;t need a healer, why would you expect to be one?

What game have you been playing? 3 of my 6 guys are healers. Sure it’s a little complicated but totally doable.

I’m done with this game, for at least a few weeks to cool off. I feel like the playstyle I cobbled together out of this underpowered class has been gutted for no explicable reason.

Gibbc.8502:

TWMagimay.9057:

Since the -curses quietly- devs decided the game doesn;t need a healer, why would you expect to be one?

What game have you been playing? 3 of my 6 guys are healers. Sure it’s a little complicated but totally doable.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/ This game. What about you? And if it’s totally doable, what’s with all the QQ in this topic? If it’s doable, go do it….duhhhh….

I should have done my personal story escort mission before the patch. I’m pretty sure staff would have been the right way to go given the number of NPCs. Now it’s either nerfed staff or s/d.

:(

I’m done with this game unless/until this gets fixed. Evasive Arcana’s blast finishers were what I was relying on to feel helpful in group situations. Without it, I just have to hope other people happen to use a combo finisher when my field is down, and that just doesn’t cut it.

IMO, i would be OK if evasive arcana got nerfed IF WE GOT BUFFED…

but ofc we are getting nailed into the ground………

cries so very much

I can’t believe you guys are crying about them fixing something that was never intended.

So you want them to only fix the Ele bugs that are detrimental to play, and just gloss over the ones that provide convenient benefit?

How anyone could think that getting blast finishers wasn’t a blatant bug is beyond me. All it takes is 10 seconds of cross-refencing the skills you’re supposed to get according to the tooltip with whether or not they’re blast finishers, and if you’d done that, you’d see that the only one is churning earth, which, had it worked as it should have, would have given you one blast every 10 seconds, at max.

Instead you got a blast every time you dodged into a field, with no internal cooldown, and irrespective of what attunement you were in, and you thought that was just going to slide by?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it would have been awesome if they’d actually fixed the whole trait so that it worked as described, rather than half-baking it like this, but you can’t seriously believe that Evasive Arcana was going to remain in the state it was in, when it was clearly completely unintended.

And then you have the nerve to complain about it?

DiogoSilva.7089:

thetreebranch.4831:

It’s got a 10 second cooldown. If they made the blast finishers on a 10 second cooldown as well, that would have been perfectly fine. Instead, they removed them completely. This trait is no longer worthy of being at grandmaster tier. It’s more like a minor trait (deal damage to target when switching to this attunement worthy)

This trait gives you an extra block, party-wide condition removal and heal, and crowd cripple in addition to the damage. It has a lot of utility, and it’s very versatile.

If only all our minor traits were this good…

you keep saying that but there is no reason to put more than 10 points in arcane, maybe 20. Will you be taking it?

Ok, I have been playing an elementalist since the first BWE, and I loved it since the first time I played it, it actually requires skill and combinations of buttons to play to the peak efficiency, but the lack of output based on the effort you have to spend is minuscule. I feel like we are left in the dust with nerfs upon nerfs with the lack of response from anybody that makes these decisions and why they make them. I understand that you want to make it more balanced, but making this class so inefficient will make us the bane of all classes. I get burnt out from pressing and macro’ing all the keys in order to put out the same amount of DPS as a warrior, when they click 3 buttons and it’s all fine. Now with the Evasive Arcana “bug fix”, it cut’s the amount of good builds we can use.
So please, ArenaNET, respond to this forum and talk to us instead of JUST relying on your internal testing personnel, since, you know, we, the players play the game.