Hey guys the purpose of this thread is to discuss the current meta and how the Elementalist has played out in it. I also want to discuss ANET’s current view on class balance and what I expect to see in the next few months.
As you all know, the current meta in spvp and wvw is condition/warrior stun spam. First, I am going to discuss how condition spamming has affected overall game play and usefulness of our class.
Conditions have done 2 things to elementalists; forced builds that remove conditions and forced us to play more defensively. Also, with our lack of ride the lighting we can no longer run from battle, clear the conditions and then come back. We also have to factor in our unreliable health. All these conditions placed upon us have made going at least 20 in to water detrimental to our overall survivabilty.
Now let’s look at the stun meta forming. I have seen more and more classes utilitize stuns/dazes these passed few months and none more so than warrior. Not only are they able to stun for long periods of time relatively easily, but they also have 8 seconds of immunity, better auto attack damage than most of our attacks, great defense and a passive heal that takes away half our damage. While the intention of this build was to stop the necromancer from dominating, it ultimately gave the elementalist another obstacle. That obstacle is forcing us to use utilities with a stun break (useless having stun break on only some skills at this point) and forcing some of us to go 20 into earth for the extra stability.
This is what usually happens to me. When I go 30 into water and spec for condition removal I have a much easier time against condition spammers (looking at you necros, engies and cheese build mesmers). I also have a much harder time dealing with my heal constantly being interrupted and getting shut down. When I spec 20 into earth and pick up extra stability I have a hard time against condition spammers and an easier time against constantly being interrupted. If I spec for neither condition removal nor stability I get pooped on.
Now, I want to take into account our traits. I would say about 75% of our traits are never used. For example, gaining a burn on a critical hit. While most classes gain bleeds which stack we get a duration condition. Not only that, with duration conditions being nerfed this skill will be even more useless as most of our weapon skills have some type of burn in fire attunement. Also we have skills that increase our speed the longer we are in air attunement. Which, is counterproductive to the attunement swapping that ANET wanted this class to have. It also does not stack with swiftness or our signet. I wouldn’t mind being forced into earth,arcane and water so much if we just had more variation to our builds like other classes have.
Now I want to talk about what ANET is trying to do for overall class balance. On October 15th they are planning to tone down the warrior while offering different builds for mesmer, guardian and necromancer. ANET does not want to destroy current builds, only tone some of the stronger ones down. They also hope to open up more builds so that the meta becomes less prevelant. This is evidenced with the aoe stability for mantras and life stealing now scaling with a bit for Necros.
ANET’s current stance on the elementalist is that they are in a good place. I agree for the most part. We are having a hard time within the meta, but they also recognize that once this meta is gone elementalists will be up in a relative place they want. Once conditions are toned down we could stray back into air with dagger/dagger. They are offering some counters to stealth which has really been one of the main reasons you don’t see many berserker elementalists .
Things I think they need to be doing right now is toning down warriors auto attack damage and reducing the stun duration. They need to revamp most of our traits so that they become good enough to use in place of lets say Aura Share. Our signets need an overhaul (i’m thinking like signet of air becomes a smoke field). Every utility needs to be a stun breaker. Necros need less access condition spam while maintaining the same ability to transform boons and transfer conditions. Engineers heal better than an elementalist can. Mesmers are in a good place, but the phantasms need to be toned down.
Feel free to add points below and please keep it constructive.
Bad Elementalist