Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I’ve been playing Elementalist since beta, and never felt so weak as I do now. Despite ArenaNet promising build variety, I really just feel that I’ve been nerfed! What’s going on here? I’ve never felt so much urgency to spec for water as I had before ( PvP-wise). True, I can now choose if I want to be even squishier with 30 traits in fire, or, go back to the 30 arcana ANet was promising we wouldn’t need anymore. It’s now ‘’go with 3 cantrips and deal less damage then before’’ or ‘’die instantly’’.

Elementalists are supposed to be good at everything, or, hybrid. While I like the idea of being hybrid, it basically just means we’re good at nothing, atleast in the Elementalist point of view.
In PvE I’m quite fine, though, here and there I get downed from some damage that anyone with more health or armor would definatly have survived, everytime I see a warrior I feel like we’re lacking both damage and durability, but other then that, I think I do okay-ish damage and give my team a good amount of might stacks and fury.

In PvP however, things have been going from bad to worse. We have to get a full rotation out with loads of cooldowns to deal some damage, if the enemy doesn’t stunbreak or evade our damage. Also note how our cooldowns are way, way longer then other classes, for example warriors, and their ease of stunning for a long time on short cd ( while unlike planned, still does immense damage ). It feels like whatever class we are fighting, they have the upper hand. 1 mistake from the Ele, and it’s over, while the enemy can make numerous mistakes and still win the fight!
It definatly feels that other classes are now stronger versus the elementalist, while the elementalist was already in need of some buffs. I wouldn’t say we were underpowered, though I would say losing against Rank <20’s is really pointing towards the wrong direction. We could definatly use some attention Please note that I’ve played alot of PvP, and I know my class really well. ( Rank 45, for what it matters )

I also wanted to note that I really don’t understand ANet’s balancing methods.
Even considering moving up Renewing stamina together with Elemental Attunement to Master tier means that they have no single idea what to do with the Elementalist, let alone actually planning to do it! They also upped the Cleansing Wave to Master tier, probably not seeing the consequences! Is there even ányone at ArenaNet playing Elementalist? How can you make such not thought through decisions on probably the most complex class in the entire game?

There are tons of problems with Elementalists, one being teamplay in PvP. We’re not lacking it, there simply is none. If we get close to a fight, we will either die, or not deal damage at all. A major issue for a class like the Elementalist, don’t you agree? I also feel like, even if we áre able to teamplay, most other classes can do it better.

These are problems that ANet either doesn’t see, or don’t care about. All we can do is make sure they see our issues and shortcomings. And let’s hope they will change it as soon as possible, because it feels like the Elementalist is really in a véry bad state at the moment.

Please discuss.

Oh man, I wish I could contribute more than saying “we’ve tried but they won’t listen”. A similar thread pops up after every patch and again on the third Wednesday of every month.

Just take a look at all the feedback in the old “head’s up about the patch” thread. Excellent theories and ideas but no tangible results and practically every round of patching results in further dilution of this once amazing class.

Honestly, any hope for a timely return to some semblence of equality is gone and I’ve stuck to my girl since BWE1. As stupid as it sounds saying that a game affects me emotionally but I’m saddened by the way the developers have treated this class.

I would disagree that we have bad teamplay, ele can spam several heals/cleanses in a row albeit with pitiful radius) and push out some impressive aoe (albeit on huge cooldown). The rest is more or less true, the original plan to make ele “hybrid” seems to have caused this disease. We can’t spec for hybrid damage because all of our skills are designed for one or the other, resulting in a string of subpar abilities in a row. We can’t spec full condi because there is no way to reliably spam several at a time or often apply them at all. At least with power specs we can stick to the abilities that hit hard or have utility.

Elementalists have basically two routes to survival- attempt to blast the enemy away with fresh air (the only attack with low cooldown) or spam many small heals to keep themselves in the fight. Anet is apparently super worried about our ability to sustain too much and nerfs healing into oblivion, however this should be exactly what we are good at

ens.9854:

I would disagree that we have bad teamplay, ele can spam several heals/cleanses in a row albeit with pitiful radius) and push out some impressive aoe (albeit on huge cooldown)

We can spam 3 heals if playing S/D with either 15 water or 30 in arcana. 3 heals that heal 1.5k each, 1 attack and it’s gone again. But, fine, we can atleast heal.
However, ’’Ele’s are so squishy, they have to avoid combat at all times!‘’ combined with ’’Véry low radius of healing’’ ( And I’m talking about 240 radius here with a water trident that you can throw at people, but miss 9/10 times due to the incredible 180 radius and slow projectile movement ).

This is no matter of skill anymore, this just needs buffing and is nothing more then outdated. The combat, playstyle and everything in this game is not based on whatever you would call this here. No, I would use these abilities only for my own.

Even considering moving up Renewing stamina together with Elemental Attunement to Master tier means that they have no single idea what to do with the Elementalist

Yeah, it’s pretty funny. While other classes get this trait basically for free, they wanted to make it a master tier trait for the elementalist (which is already the weakest class). Seriously, what the kitten Anet? Even publishing these patch notes in the way they were before shows that there are guys working who know absolutely nothing about balance.

I am speechless really, how can Anet move Cleansing Wave to master tier and called it balancing patch. I now have to put 20 points in water to get this trait which ruins my old build.

I certainly feel WAY weaker after this patch. It feels like I am weak to the high-burst that is around, the high-condi pressure, and the stun-spams, while having very tight restrictions on hitting my powerful skills (landing firegrab just seems so hard most of the time b/c people just run through you).

State of elementalist:

D/D needs some love totally…since it have been overnerfed for a Whole year.

To make firegrab work you need to understand how lag works, anet can t do much about it.

You’re not alone. I played staff bunker spec near release and can easily tank 3-5 guys in spvp and still live, then took a half year break until recently and I can barely stand 1v1 against most classes with the same build. Other classes’ damage output have jumped immensely it seems while ele’s got stale. It’s infuriating watching other classes autoattack with a few skill press on 1 or 2 weapon sets to victory while I have to use twice the work to achieve subpar results. Now I just run zerker staff to blow stuff up for the fun of it even though I die to 1 backstab. Only reason I stick to ele is the playstyle and feel of the class, and don’t want to relevel another toon.

Alex.5349:

‘’die instantly’’.

Elementalists are supposed to be good at everything,

I also wanted to note that I really don’t understand ANet’s balancing methods.
they have no single idea what to do with the Elementalist,

even if we áre able to teamplay, most other classes can do it better.

ANet either doesn’t see, or don’t care about.

This.Devs arent playing ele,and wont be.Healing signet is to good for them.

My awesome roaming 0/20/10/20/20 d/d build kittened up because of water trait changes. I am seriously thinking deleting my ele and never play again.

After playing around, I am having some success with 20/0/0/20/30 or 20/0/0/30/20 (can’t decide which is best) cantrip ele. Taking valks armor, hoelbrak runes, and battle sigil it gets really good sustained damage by stacking lots of might. It also survives better b/c water swap has 2x heals, and you can actually burst heal (I take glyph) as opposed to ether renewal, which adds the most survivability. Ether renewal requires 20 earth for rock solid, and often heals very little net b/c you take a lot of dps while healing.

It plays a lot like old cantrip ele as I get good dps, have excellent healing, and can deal with condis quite well. I’m still testing things out, but it seems to work pretty well.

BlackBeard.2873:

After playing around, I am having some success with 20/0/0/20/30 or 20/0/0/30/20 (can’t decide which is best) cantrip ele. Taking valks armor, hoelbrak runes, and battle sigil it gets really good sustained damage by stacking lots of might. It also survives better b/c water swap has 2x heals, and you can actually burst heal (I take glyph) as opposed to ether renewal, which adds the most survivability. Ether renewal requires 20 earth for rock solid, and often heals very little net b/c you take a lot of dps while healing.

It plays a lot like old cantrip ele as I get good dps, have excellent healing, and can deal with condis quite well. I’m still testing things out, but it seems to work pretty well.

Build variety. We are stíll pushed into the arcana and water traits, and on top of that, are once again forced to play defensively to get only decent surviving while damage is very limited. What are our options now? We can’t even change utilities other then armor of earth for cleansing fire now.

Alex.5349:

Build variety. We are stíll pushed into the arcana and water traits, and on top of that, are once again forced to play defensively to get only decent surviving while damage is very limited. What are our options now? We can’t even change utilities other then armor of earth for cleansing fire now.

Well what I had posted was just one concept of a few that could work. You could take all points out of arcana, go with 30 air and get fresh air. If that is the case, I would want energy sigils or perhaps zephyr’s focus (cmc claims its good, I’m still skeptical) and probably replace mistform with signet of air (so we aren’t slow as a turtle). Also, 20 fire, battle sigil, and valkyrie’s is NOT defensive. You have over 2K power, about 20% crit damage, and I get just under 20% crit chance (I take precision sigil for +5%, and zerker jewel b/c I felt renewing stamina wasn’t proccing enough for my liking). If anything, the build is more offensive/balanced that defensive, even though you do bring good support and healing.

I will be testing more, but it seems pretty reasonable so far.

I never thought that a stupid patch could make me so sad and actually I don’t even know if I still want to play this game like it is now.
Since beta I mostly played my ele, in PvE and PvP.
The nerfs before were “okay” for me, there was still something to change which worked for me in the end, but the current one kinda destroyed my whole playstyle and most of my builds.
I never felt so weak as an ele.
Diamond Skin is a joke. Who in this game is not able to take an eles health down by 10% and then apply all the conditions? xD
Moving Cleansing Wave to Master Tier and forcing people to go 20 Water doesn’t make things better at all…

I don’t know what you guys were thinking when bringing up those changes, I’m not even sure if you were thinking at all…

Bah, don’t know what your doing wrong, but I definitely feel buffed after the last patch.

I think the problem is Eles who are doing D/D S/D bunker builds that look like 0/0/10/30/30. You guys probably feel you got hit by a nerf bat, because you evolved your builds into things that just dip into Arcane and Water, and now you can’t do that and need to put all points into Arcane and Water again.

I’m running a 30 Fire build and I feel stronger, because I never used those Arcane and Water traits that you feel are compulsory.

Regarding the issues with healing — hasn’t ANet made it clear over and over athat they don’t want healers and tanks in this game, they only want DPS? (which incidentally I believe to be stupid game design, but whatever that’s another discussion) So it’s useless to expect buffs to healing.

Regarding other classes getting Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement for free, not sure what that’s about. What class exactly has Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement for free? How? I does not compute.

The most sensible thing I read in this post is Lord Byron’s — I agree D/D ele (as it was before) is totally not getting any love. ANet has clearly been hating on D/D, don’t you know a D/D Ele kitten d the developer’s mom? Other than that, tough, I’m not seeing much else that needs to be commented on. Though maybe everyone in this thread is playing D/D, that’s why everyone’s complaining?

I started playing GW2 a little late (only September this year) so I never got ingrained into the 30/30 D/D builds that were all the rage. I’ve always been squishy, I’ve played all my Ele life as squishy, and instead I’ve been focusing on damage. The changes in this patch have made me feel stronger and I feel I have more options. I already have a lot of ideas on what to build my ele into next. Am gonna try over the weekend. I’m excited and can’t wait.

Mochann.5298:

The changes in this patch have made me feel stronger and I feel I have more options.

Its an illusion. You have new traits to play with, and a new heal skill, so the “more options” only appears because stuff is a bit different.

Its true ANet made selecting some DPS traits easier, but of course to avoid “power creep” (LOL) moved a bunch of survival traits deeper into Water or Arcane having the exact opposite effect of increasing build variation for competitive players. You can throw 14 points into each tree and still kill PvE mobs.

The point is, the changes to the Ele, and indeed to any player class need to be conceived and implemented with respect to the relative power levels of the other available classes. ANet is not with this patch showing success in that regard, and for the last several patches have not shown any particular aptitude for intelligent or rational balance design.

Its not that the Ele forum is composed of min/maxing whiny QQers who want their pet profession to steamroll everyone without taking any damage, those types populate the Warrior forum primarily, and used to take up residence in the Thief forum. The problem is that the Ele specifically, and GW2 game balance in general, is extremely wonky and unintuitive, and in many ways makes no logical sense. I feel like this is ANet’s balance process:

Nothing else really explains what happened to RtL after all…

Here is the current state of the elementalist in my opinion (not talking about PvE, for PvE you can bring enough to the group to not really have to worry):
Elementalists have horrible armor and HP, and are forced to use their traits to compensate because they simply cannot afford to take hits or leave on ANY conditions. In addition, they get no damage boost, real control, or special access to something to compensate (i.e. clones, DS, stealth) that could help them survive.
On top of that, the only utilities which can really be used well are cantrips, because each other type only has one useful skill (Glyph of Storms, Fiery GS, Signet of Air, and Arcane Wave being the only ones available outside of extremely specialized builds) which prohibits traiting for them.

So you’re a D/D player too right, with that RTL comment? I rest my case.

Mochann.5298:

So you’re a D/D player too right, with that RTL comment? I rest my case.

Not much of a case. As a dedicated Elementalist player, I have used all weapon combos, based on which weapon set is best suited, such as Staff for WvW or D/F for Fractals, along with several trait builds which rarely if ever included the 0/10/0/30/30 build so popular a while back.

Ignoring the quite massive issues with the profession because you want to be a banner waving fanboy is not going to help fix the Ele to be actually competitive with the others. And bashing the D/D weapon set, or people who play that set ignores the fact that D/D is one of the most viable sets an Ele has for general PvE and some aspects of WvW and PvP. The RtL comment was of course in the context of the YouTube link, which shows in concise appraisal what I think of the ANet balancing process, which is, in a word, bad.

Well, of all classes I play (listed in sig), Ele is by far the least flexible, has the worst trait and weapon choices, and is overall the least effective class I play overall, while simultaneously requiring the most effort.

I would say it’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

Not trying to be the overoptimistic fanboy here…seriously, trying not to.

But I have to disagree. I know it’s anectdotal, but I’ve had 2 days of very good sPvP matches behind me. Even with my build pretty much the same as before the patch, I can now go toe to toe with most professions I had trouble with before the patch. The ele changes may not have been too positive for us, but the nerfs to other professions are seemingly working to our advantage.

That’s a staff ele duelling 1v1…maybe it’s me, maybe it’s my opponents…but I feel like I can take a lot more hits now, and still deal plenty of damage.

I think that Ele is still in a decent place. I always felt that D/D is meant to run 30 arcana and 20 water minimum. It makes sense to run more defensive setup if you are melee.

For WvW if I look at the popular builds for classes I play there is a very common thread.

Mesmers now usually run 20-30 points in their toughness tree.
Thieves run majority 30 points in their toughness tree.
Warriors run 20 minimum in their toughness tree.
I don’t play guardian but I think many builds go into their toughness tree.
Necromancer- I actually run 20 into toughness now but many necros don’t but Deathshroud somewhat helps them with that.

Ele- Is the class that normally doesn’t dip into it’s toughness tree for many builds. Definitely not 30 points in.

In regards to D/D I would like to see something like rock barrier added to dagger mainhand. It makes alot of sense for melee.

I think that some specialized attunement specific traits should be done away with and a few more general use traits added. General use traits are always popular for all classes the less stipulations the better which means the trait is more versatile.

oZii.2864:

For WvW if I look at the popular builds for classes I play there is a very common thread.

Mesmers now usually run 20-30 points in their toughness tree.
Thieves run majority 30 points in their toughness tree.
Warriors run 20 minimum in their toughness tree.
I don’t play guardian but I think many builds go into their toughness tree.
Necromancer- I actually run 20 into toughness now but many necros don’t but Deathshroud somewhat helps them with that.

Ele- Is the class that normally doesn’t dip into it’s toughness tree for many builds. Definitely not 30 points in.

it’s because the earth line is so crappy. IMO there’s 1 trait worth taking in the whole line, Rock Solid. The rest of the line sucks.

In regards to D/D I would like to see something like rock barrier added to dagger mainhand. It makes alot of sense for melee.

I think that some specialized attunement specific traits should be done away with and a few more general use traits added. General use traits are always popular for all classes the less stipulations the better which means the trait is more versatile.

Couldn’t agree more. Single element-specific traits are bad because realistically you can only benefit from them ~25% of the time while not being any more powerful than other classes’ traits in similar positions. This is one of the reasons why arcane traits are popular – they nearly always apply, regardless of what attunement you’re in.

Well, technically, since our cooldowns are generally longer, we do benefit more from cooldown reduction traits than other professions. 20% of 40 seconds is 10 times as much as 20% of 4 seconds…

That is true ThiBash, but what about the net result? I know you’re not being serious though.

Next time a beggar asks for a meal, go buy them something fresh instead of giving them leftovers, both result in a smile, one’s just bigger.

ThiBash.5634:

Well, technically, since our cooldowns are generally longer, we do benefit more from cooldown reduction traits than other professions. 20% of 40 seconds is 10 times as much as 20% of 4 seconds…

that’s a pretty ridiculous argument. Skill CDs are balanced around being roughly equal in power:CD ratio. A reduction in CD (of any amount) of skills you can access 50% of the time is clearly weaker if you the same reduction applies only to skills you can access 25% of the time.

Besides that, Eles are obliged to switch attunement far more often than other classes, who generally switch weapons at a far lower rate, so access to those CD-reduced skills is further reduced.

So in the case of Eles, there’s a good argument that CD-reducing traits should also reduce their respective attunement CD.

scerevisiae

that’s a pretty ridiculous argument

It was a joke.