Guild Wars 2

I’ve poured through the wiki’s stun break page to give you these numbers, and how eles are really needing some help here.

Across all professions, stun break skill have an average 48 second cooldown. Ele’s average stun break cooldown is 63. Mesmer’s is 31, not factoring in 2 or 3 mantra charges.

Ele Arcane Shield stun break 75 cool down with 3 blocks. Guardian Shield of Wrath, not a stun breaker, 3 blocks, 45 seconds.

Ele Mist Form Stun breaker 3 second invulnerability, movement. Skill lock. 75 second cooldown. Engineer Elixir S 3 second evade, movement. Skill lock. 60 second cooldown. Ranger Protect Me. Stun Breaker 6 Second “no damge” with pet. No Skill Lock. Necro Spectral Walk, 30 second swiftness, 60 second cooldown.

Ele Armor of Earth. Self Stability and Protection for 6 seconds. 90 Second cooldown. Guardian Stand Your Ground 5 second stability to self and allies. 30 second cooldown.
Guardian Hold the Line. Not stun breaker. Protection and Regen to Allies. 4 and 6 seconds respectively. 35 second cool down.

Most professions have a teleport, quickness or dodge roll stun breaker. Since April Ele only has the skill locking mist form. The heal in mistform may have seemed OP, but was it any different than Necro Consume Conditions?

It was a nice try to spread ele stun breakers to other skill types, but the balance was broken. Please fix.

Its been accepted by nearly all Ele that our weapon skill, Utilities and Elites are all to long of a cool down but as we are expected (forced!) to just through all the attunements it is considered balcned.

The fact we havw to jump through all these attunements to do the same thing that another class can do in less time without having to swap weapon shows the state of the class and it is in real need of some help – though i highly doubt that help will ever come.

GASP Elementalist have longer cooldowns than any other profession?
I just spilled my tea all over my pantaloons :O

WE have longer cooldowns, because we have more skills. We have more skills and they are less potent because we can use them one after another. We have less raw defense because we have more skills, we have less raw offense because we have more skills. Auotattacks suck because we have more skills.
In essence we have to use up all the sources of damage we can find to have a hope of bursting someone down, which leaves them all in their long cooldowns, attunements on cd and target most likely alive if he managed to dodge one of our extravagantly telegraphed attacks. Now in that situation we´re supposed to have defense from our attunements that are on cd, skills that we had to use on offense and utilities we most likely had to spend to deliver that damage or to survive long enough to land the skills.

It has become rather clear to me that all the famed versatility ele is supposed to have is there only on paper, in reality we are forced to sacrifice that versatility to do any single thing in a halfway acceptable manner.

Thus showing us having more skills is making us weaker, another class can do more damage and has higher health, better defense and everything with just ONE weapon set, we have to jump through all the attunements and use ALL the skills to actually skill something…

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Thus showing us having more skills is making us weaker, another class can do more damage and has higher health, better defense and everything with just ONE weapon set, we have to jump through all the attunements and use ALL the skills to actually skill something…

This, by itself, is a pointless argument. Attunement dancing is the mechanic for elementalists, just like fury for warriors or death shroud for necros, etc…That is simply the play style of the character and if you don’t enjoy it and would rather stand still and autoattack, play a warrior. There are plenty of people who prefer the busier play style of the elemntalist and enjoy flowing the skills together. I don’t intend to single you out really, just stating that as a general point to the community and everyone else who has said what you said.

Now…the question is, do elementalists have the same production in the same amount of time as a warrior or necro or ranger speced the same way. The answer there is “no”, supported by some of the numbers in the OP. We have short bursts of brilliance followed by long periods of “meh” and that’s what needs to be re-balanced….not the fact that we have to switch attunements to make things happen.

Frostmane.9734:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Thus showing us having more skills is making us weaker, another class can do more damage and has higher health, better defense and everything with just ONE weapon set, we have to jump through all the attunements and use ALL the skills to actually skill something…

This, by itself, is a pointless argument. Attunement dancing is the mechanic for elementalists, just like fury for warriors or death shroud for necros, etc…That is simply the play style of the character and if you don’t enjoy it and would rather stand still and autoattack, play a warrior. There are plenty of people who prefer the busier play style of the elemntalist and enjoy flowing the skills together. I don’t intend to single you out really, just stating that as a general point to the community and everyone else who has said what you said.

Now…the question is, do elementalists have the same production in the same amount of time as a warrior or necro or ranger speced the same way. The answer there is “no”, supported by some of the numbers in the OP. We have short bursts of brilliance followed by long periods of “meh” and that’s what needs to be re-balanced….not the fact that we have to switch attunements to make things happen.

In my opinion, it wouldnt be so bad if you werent pretty much forced to take points in Arcane. 15seconds is simply to long. It needs to be 10seconds and have the Arcane bonus to be something else.

It’s not that i dont enjoy the class because i do, what i dont like is how we are FORCED into a specific playstyle – that being attunement dancing. The Unique F1-4 skills of all other classes are HELPFUL to them, they can either use them or ignore them

Mesmer being the best example for alot of my builds i havent used Shatters as i havent neither wanted or needed to use them.

THAT is how it should be for all the classes, yet it seems some are VASTLY superior to others and i think Ele is the worst of the lot in my opinion. You get so many traits that ONLY affect you in a specific attunement that is going AGAINST what they clearly want us to be doing, they have the 15second cool down which also adds to it.

switching should be out of CHOICE and for the specific situation NOT because if we dont we are not a complete class and NOT because if we dont we die and do pathetic damage.

^ Very well put! I do think that the “long periods of meh” are caused by very poor auto-attacks and, in some cases (like our utils) unnecessarily long CDs. Armageddon’s point about having to give up completely our versatility just to slightly underperform other classes is caused by very weak auto’s/skills that just don’t fit their proper situations. For instance, in a 1v1 fight where I am pressuring my opponent, staying in air, or switching between air and fire for offense SHOULD be optimal. However, if you simply sit in the “single-target damage” attunement, you are gimping your damage because the sustained (auto-attack) damage from any attunement is laughable. A full-glass ele using scepter air-1 against a signet warrior barely outdamages his passive heal, and takes 30% of his health in a single hit (b/c he is glass). Half the problem is other classes are OP, and half is that we are lacking viable ways to pressure besides spamming sub-optimal situational skills to get the damage out of them.