Guild Wars 2

I just want to make something clear in hope that maybe someone up there might listen. The Elementalist is a brilliantly diverse class, offering effective damage with all main hand weapon types through a variety of different trait builds. It has great potential for acting as a bunker or providing support through both selfish and shared healing and buffs. It also provides a variety of combo fields for more complex group interactions. With so many arcane traits and skills we can take advantage of critical damage without even having to build for critical chance, leading to some extremely interesting builds. Even condition and power builds are given potential with a combination of utilities and traits.

So what’s my point?

It has potential. Almost everything about the class has been clearly taken into consideration to provide this diversity but one thing prevents us exploring this.

We naturally lack defense. It’s clearly available through our traits but our initial health pool and armour values combined are too low to make it worth exploring into the vast numbers of potential builds when instead we could increase our small chance of staying alive in a fight where avoiding damage is a top priority.

Just imagine you have a base health of 15k and take a look at those traits again. Try designing a build whilst you enjoy reading through those many traits that you forgot existed. You’d be surprised at how much potential is there, I certainly was.

I agree that Eles really should be in the medium health pool, as their healing abilities in Water attune are definitely not enough to compensate for their low health. I’d like to add to your point in that another bit where there was potential, but the ball was dropped, is the cooldown on Elementalist skills. There’s no logical reason why an Ele should have 40-45 sec CDs on their 4-5 slots, and CDs upwards of 60 secs on abilities similar classes have for far lower CDs. I’ve heard some bits talking about having Mesmers and Eles swap HP pools, and I think it could work. Ideally I’d rather Ele and Mesmer just share the same HP pool, but dunno if that would happen.

Another solution could be to lower the base health differences. Instead of 10k/15k/20k, the values could be 12,500/15,000/17,500. In addition to giving eles a little more room to go on the offensive, it would also allow for better dungeon designs. At the moment, whatever’s threatening to the ele (say a 7k hit) is hardly felt by a warrior (7k is hardly a third of their health bar). This naturally leads to warriors using zerker gear because there’s simply no real threats for them (apart from the 1-shot kills that are the same to any profession/build). The change suggestion makes that gap a little smaller.

maybe ele’s should just get an increase to their base toughness rather than buff their health pool…or not?

CMstorm.8679:

maybe ele’s should just get an increase to their base toughness rather than buff their health pool…or not?

I think this would be too difficult to implement purely because of the base armour values which are determined by armour type (in theory). Simply put, Elementalists would have to move from light armour to medium armour.

Though I’m sure the probably easier change to toughness would be possible I don’t think they would go through with it because it wouldn’t seem suitable to the class type and would create issues would certain boosting effects in relation to toughenss values.

let me edit the title of this thread
The Elementalist: An Infinite Disaster
finite vs infinite
although dagger dagger Seemingly Had an infinite amount of survivability
it got “balanced”
yes, now take a look at elementalists health pool, their armor, their amount of control skills But also their poor damage {glass canon not withstanding; very, very easily broken glass}, their cooldowns, their trait vs attunement Constraints, their poor condition output in a so called condition meta, their laughable cast times
now, once you’ve stepped past elementalist you can’t throw a stick in this game without hitting a profession that has an infinite capacity to reset fights.. something an elementalist simply can not survive
dropped the ball is an understatement.. more like packed it away and sent it off to some distant planet.. we are getting an earthline buff tuesday.. it’s a step in the right direction, a baby step.. if there’s any balance in the world of tyria there’d be an immense overhaul they’re not telling us about
to reinforce what i was saying earlier, to defeat an elementalist you simply need to play any other profession and either swiftly kill them or wait {a very few seconds} until they are running on fumes

I put my ele on hold and rolled warrior a while back. I`m cautiously positive of the coming changes, but it saddens me how long it has taken even to get these small steps and how clumsy those initial changes were.

Take diamond skin, for example. The proposed change, requiring that the ele remain over 90 percent of hitpoints to become immune to conditions, showed how little the developers appreciated the elementalist’s tiny health pool. Most powers that gave conditions would instantly bypass it as they were applied alongside damage that, to an ele, would be over that ten percent. That is ignoring all other sources of damage, which in most settings will be coming in thick and fast.

Ten percent to a warrior would have been fine, but on an ele, the percentages were meaning something different and it was as if nobody realised that. This, to me, showed a grievous lack of understanding of the issues the class faced.

As a staff ele who actually invested in trees like the fire tree, I couldn’t get the blasting staff trait. So I like that it is being moved low down in the arcane tree. Even so, fire is a desperately lacking tree and I`m going to be speccing out of most of it and about time, according to most of my peers. I was making a fair living as a condition ele, but even that was poor.

Why is it that staff earth one doesn’t renew bleed? I now play a rifle warrior and every auto-shot I fire inflicts bleed. Just making that one change would make condition staff so much better….but that change isn’t tabled to occur and I just don’t understand why.

Heck, make that the grandmaster earth trait and I`d still be happy. As it is, a condition ele struggles to inflict the very conditions it is supposed to be built around.

I will try out the new changes….but I sense I`m going to be on my warrior for a long while yet.

chronometria.3708:

I put my ele on hold and rolled warrior a while back. I`m cautiously positive of the coming changes, but it saddens me how long it has taken even to get these small steps and how clumsy those initial changes were.

Take diamond skin, for example. The proposed change, requiring that the ele remain over 90 percent of hitpoints to become immune to conditions, showed how little the developers appreciated the elementalist’s tiny health pool. Most powers that gave conditions would instantly bypass it as they were applied alongside damage that, to an ele, would be over that ten percent. That is ignoring all other sources of damage, which in most settings will be coming in thick and fast.

Ten percent to a warrior would have been fine, but on an ele, the percentages were meaning something different and it was as if nobody realised that. This, to me, showed a grievous lack of understanding of the issues the class faced.

As a staff ele who actually invested in trees like the fire tree, I couldn’t get the blasting staff trait. So I like that it is being moved low down in the arcane tree. Even so, fire is a desperately lacking tree and I`m going to be speccing out of most of it and about time, according to most of my peers. I was making a fair living as a condition ele, but even that was poor.

Why is it that staff earth one doesn’t renew bleed? I now play a rifle warrior and every auto-shot I fire inflicts bleed. Just making that one change would make condition staff so much better….but that change isn’t tabled to occur and I just don’t understand why.

Heck, make that the grandmaster earth trait and I`d still be happy. As it is, a condition ele struggles to inflict the very conditions it is supposed to be built around.

I will try out the new changes….but I sense I`m going to be on my warrior for a long while yet.

I was thinking about this last night. As a trait, the new diamond skin is out of place and extremely situational. I think it should be replaced with an eruption on melee damage with a 6 second cd to allow some greater condition builds in PvE, might stacking for extra condition damage whilst still being a strong but situational trait in sPvP as ranged players would not trigger the eruption and players who are using melee in the cap point can avoid the eruption through dodges or simply moving out of range fast enough but potentially losing a cap point this way.

i agree with u, ele is my main, i love it but…
… he is less stronger then other classes, i also have war and guard, and i feel those classes really much stronger, not a bit, but alot!!
i hope anet will do something about that, my tought is anet will balance classes only for spvp and so we have those unbalanced classes for pve… i play ele cause i like it, but if i need something strong i will switch other classes, and onestly this is unfair, and not really funny
ele need just more survivability like more hp base, maybe 14k, not less, and a little more powerfull healing, the new one sucks alot.

i hope anet will redesign elementalist, cause its really a beautifull disaster and the nexth patch will not change anything, i’ll still need to go deeper on arcana and water for stay alive and enjoy high end content.. i dont need all this defensive build with war and guard..

They don’t even un-nerf healing for pvp.

This is the cause i log in rarely now, eles are not that fun anymore and i can’t play other classes, even though they feel superior to us.

I don’t hold my breath for this tuesday, every time i wait for something good i get dissapointed in the end. Let’s wait and see..

Just a question to arenanet: why are we always the first target at pvp (spvp and wvw)??

Vissarion.6509:

This is the cause i log in rarely now, eles are not that fun anymore and i can’t play other classes, even though they feel superior to us.

I don’t hold my breath for this tuesday, every time i wait for something good i get dissapointed in the end. Let’s wait and see..

Just a question to arenanet: why are we always the first target at pvp (spvp and wvw)??

We are the first target because we might be squisy but mostly because (that is why I target enemy eles) if you leave one unpressured they will deal massive aoe damage.

Vissarion.6509:

Just a question to arenanet: why are we always the first target at pvp (spvp and wvw)??

Eles are the first target b/c they are the easiest to kill.

You see, in the beginning, ele was “trash” b/c they died in half a second so nobody played them. Then, from out of nowhere, someone figured out that if you specced into defense in every way possible, you could survive for quite a while. Other classes didn’t like it, so they cried, and got that reduced a bit – making it balanced. Then, the crying continued b/c people refused to learn to play against the class, and they surgically deconstructed every defense we had until we died really easily. Mind, you this was on our MOST DEFENSIVE build. Then, just for good measure, they nerfed it some more. Since that time, eles have been pretty trash, b/c they die so easily and don’t do a proportional amount of damage.

Anet is so scared of eles ever being good again, they even pre-emptively nerf us, even when trying to buff, not realizing that some of our “OP” low-tier traits (that gave us some decent survivability) still didn’t put us on equal footing with other classes. Making it harder to build for defense either forces us to one of 2 extremes: complete defense (which has been nerfed into oblivion and is useless), or complete offense (which is just a really bad version of a thief).

New changes won’t make any difference, eles will still be terrible until they give some utilities/traits that improve survival a de-nerf some things (not gonna happen, b/c admitting mistakes is apparently a big no-no in design) or buff some things (still waiting 6 months and only seeing token changes).

Eles have such a sucky health pool, but you know what? Just suck it up!

I’ve been going full zerk glass cannon Ele for the past month and I’m doing better than a lot of heavies and mediums out there. It’s definitely a high skill class, but you can rest in your elitist satisfaction that you are able to lord as an Ele.

Mochann.5298:

Eles have such a sucky health pool, but you know what? Just suck it up!

This. Plenty of players play ele successfully without complaint. Just because the class doesn’t fit your ideals doesn’t mean the class is weak or broken.

A lot of ele’s survivability comes from defensive abilities rather than soaking up damage. Blinks, blocks, blinds, cc, and dodges with proper timing can exponentially increase your survivability. This means you can’t faceroll your keyboard and win, but rather allow an ele who knows their abilities to avoid a great deal of damage. I don’t play bunker personally, but I know some ele’s who can go toe to toe with bunker guardians as far as tankiness.

ThiBash.5634:

Another solution could be to lower the base health differences. Instead of 10k/15k/20k, the values could be 12,500/15,000/17,500.

There are problems with the mathematical curves they are using.
Every stats should flatten itself out around 100% or a maximum, so that and increase of 5% critical damage between 50-55% has a perceivable difference but between 100-105% does not. It would prevent people abusing the loophole in their damage curves and healing curves..

Similarly the heath pool difference needs to be compressed and the strongest skills of each classes should do comparable damage in 1 vs 1 on a balanced build.