Guild Wars 2

With two large nerfs hitting the class, it is good to look how it will impact which class one choses to play.

In wvw zergs, bringing my ele is still likely to be my primary choice since frozen field and water fields is constantly needed to adjust the fight into a favorable outcome. That is, until frozen field is nerfed.

My ele sPvP builds will be uneffected.

Fractals will be uneffected. The only boss that was partially FGS’able was Molten Furnace, and that boss is very simple with or without FGS.

For world bosses like Teq/wurm, I will likely switch to warrior because of the double spot exploit. It is hard to beat 75k 100-blades on teq, added with the utility of res banner and might shareing.

For all dungeons except Arah, I will switch to warrior. Arah feature less stacking and more stealth exploits which make ele equally valid as before this patch. AC might be an exception, but AC is so simple it doesn’t really matter.

correct sir. nothing will happen. those changes are not even worth mentioning, because they were not nerfs but some sort of bugfixes. the elites were clearly not working as intended. and the buffs will not change anything as well, because, well,... they buffed skills, that are so broken, they need like 200 more buffs to be half as viable as a single cantrip.

Thank gawd they didnt nerf fgs mobility. The saviour in wvw.

However since i i have like a few hours in PvE , i have no clue what to say about the effects on pve.

We – elementalists – shouldn’t rely on niche exploits when we should bend forces of nature to our will.

I think a Tsunami skill could be great

Maybe I’m a terribad elementalist. But I can’t rember the last time I used my elites. Other than.

1- Stacking on dungeon boss. FGS
2- While leveling to solo some stuff. Earth elemental.

I don’t even meteornado in wvw. I rather “Become the snow leopard” for it’s repositioning value. In spvp I don’t even have an elite.

I’m very much gonna miss fgs4, that dmg was seriouly insane. Oh, well still got fire staff, Ligthing hammer, D/F.

Now that the unintended effects of these skills are being fixed, the skills are ripe for real buffs….. in a year or so.

Just make FGS replace fire skills leaving other attunement skills available would be enough of a buff imo.

Also, i’m dreaming, but it would be nice to get other Elite weapons… Frosty Trident for water, Diamond Shield for Earth, Sky Sword for Air… I can imagine nice skins and skills in my mind…

FGS may be a good replacement for nadeo metor kind of a metor sword or firelymetor? Not the best at naming but it still gives you 260 power and will not remove you from atuments with a nice set of aoe both the 1 3 and 5 skills that can be used on a bomb with metor.

@ dev:
I wouldnt mind the nerf on FGS IF and only IF you would also adress the damage taken by retaliation with it. Basically its a good elite un WVW, but due to retaliation you just CANT use it!
Fixing things that favor elementalist seems to always beeing very important but fixing things that are bad for him seems to be irrelevant, thank you so much for this kind of view, it really make us loved/considered/etc.

Basically this patch is all about nerf.
Buffing the under-powered trait the way its done is just giving them the strengh they needed whe they got implemented (like how could you think elemental contingency was balanced with a global CD ? …) so i dont consider it as a buff (especially since they will stay worse than other GM traits).
We have the worst Elite skills and you nerf the only “glitch” that gave them one specific use. I think i’ll unbind my elite key, it is becoming 200% useless. Elite are supposed to be “fight turn over” skills, since release i’m still looking the way my elite change the issue of the fight and are supposed to allow me to win. Tornado just get kited, FGS lower your overall dps (no more attunement rotation), and elemental get killed super fast by good player.
But i understand, you’re busy buffing the warrior (well most change of it are pretty much balanced, but i’m really upset by the change on elementalist that “balanced” change on the stronghest class as the moment seems unfair to me

Only buff we get are on weak utilities. Glyph wont be used more. Buff to signet are designed for Conditionnalist wich seems a bit nice. But on my mind, i never liked Signet, passiv things are to me unskilled thing but its only MO. By the way, “Signet of earthnow applys bleed” … is it in addition to root or in replacement ??? If its in exchange of root, then its a stupid change, if its in addition, i think its a bit OP

@Jski
Nice idea to buff a little metor by using FGS buff. As name i would say “metor sword” wich is so kitten ^^
Golden sun 2 players would maybe call it “Sol Blade” if you get what i mean

Belorn.2659:

With two large nerfs hitting the class, it is good to look how it will impact which class one choses to play.

In wvw zergs, bringing my ele is still likely to be my primary choice since frozen field and water fields is constantly needed to adjust the fight into a favorable outcome. That is, until frozen field is nerfed.

My ele sPvP builds will be uneffected.

Fractals will be uneffected. The only boss that was partially FGS’able was Molten Furnace, and that boss is very simple with or without FGS.

For world bosses like Teq/wurm, I will likely switch to warrior because of the double spot exploit. It is hard to beat 75k 100-blades on teq, added with the utility of res banner and might shareing.

For all dungeons except Arah, I will switch to warrior. Arah feature less stacking and more stealth exploits which make ele equally valid as before this patch. AC might be an exception, but AC is so simple it doesn’t really matter.

I especially laughed at that part about fractals. Mossman, archdiviner, svanir shaman, ice ele, dredge endboss, thaumanova ooze, ettin, about all the trash mobs, all are fgsable and were fgs’d. It just required coordination, that’s why no one was complaining about those. The changes to those elites are pve oriented, hence why you won’t see much difference in pvp game modes. Arah feature less stacking. Ooze, tar, belka, abom, lupi, alphard, crusher/hunter, mage crusher, wraithlord, melandru, balthazar, lyssa, dwayna bosses excluded. Yeah. Eles are still valuable, but now the difficulty difference between for instance ele and warrior doesn’t justify the dps increase in pugs/solo. Don’t get me wrong, the fgs nerf was needed. But first, having encouters like fractals where fgs is hard to pull off would have helped. As someone said on another topic, they are adressing the symptom, not the cause.

This does impact Eles in WvW somewhat, as Meteornado is how you would clear walls of defenders when attacking a tower. People don’t really die to 6-8k ticks of meteor that is normal even from a glass ele, they die to 12k+ ticks done by meteornado, and PVT eles that are more common to the zerg will not be able to shake defenders on the walls at all, as people just ignore 2k ticks from meteors.

So you will really pretty much only be valuable for CC and water fields, instead of also having a damage role.

meteornado also was useful on world bosses, it’s still viable on world bosses to not use your elite at all, as it was, tornado was just a damage boost, but as of now, PVE (except solo PVE where summon glyphs are actually viable, in any group content summon glyphs die almost instantly because they can’t dodge boss aoes and get one shot) you might as well not even have an elite skill slotted. Maybe depending on race you might use a racial skill like artillery barrage, I don’t know.

Were the elite skills being used in ways unintended by the devs? Sure, but that should point out to the devs that the skills themselves were terrible if they were only used for their bugs.

I’m sure the developers think that fiery greatsword is a great skill for eles to use, but the fact is, without pinning a mob against a wall and abusing fiery whirl and fiery rush, you do less damage than your normal weapon sets.

The fact that people are now looking at fiery greatsword just for mobility? That should be ringing alarm bells in Anet’s heads that the core functionality of the skill is leaving something to be desired for an ELITE skill.

The fact that people pretty much only used tornado for boosting meteor damage should also be raising red flags for arenanet. it may have some small niche uses for pushing people out of a cap point or off a wvw tower lord’s room, but it’s certainly not worthy of an ELITE skill, not with a 2 and a half minute cooldown.

In its planned state in september, FGS should be just a normal utility skill, and conjure flame axe should basically be removed from the game, maybe replacing one of FGS’s skills (maybe eruption) with one of conjure flame axe’s skills (the throw with the blast finisher maybe), and we should get an entirely different elite skill to replace it.

Tornado just needs to be tore up from the floor up, redone, maybe make it not a transformation, that’d go a long way to fixing the flawed design of the skill. Cause where Tornado will be after the patch hits? It’ll be a “kill me” sign, a suicide pact, because they’re removing the stat boosts which leaves the squishiest class in the game in a big easy to target form, that can have its stability stripped, and it can be chilled, crippled, and immobilized, and its’ only benefit is weak periodic damage and knockback.

Belorn.2659:

Arah feature less stacking and more stealth exploits which make ele equally valid as before this patch.

Lmao, yet another person that thinks using class skillsets are exploits.

Impossible to take this thread seriously based off of this statement.

real thing:
in WWW any dps build will become too much risk/ almost no reward.
Also the FGS nerf…
Despite i don t care about fgs, fire 4 and 2 on staff and dagger was the onlyh counterplay to the OP immob stacking of certain professions.

That means trait WATER or die…less build diversity GG anet.

That because this game only god is capture point. and everything else could just be removed from the game according to balance team.

Read my sig.

P.S. meteornado is NOT an exploit more than is using a normal DD rotation or Lightning flash to hit with dagger earth 4 or 5 or again using an aura during churning channeling to get fury, or switching attunement to boost dps.

If you think it is yoy should play elementalist more because its how ele rotations works.

P.P.S: after patch a glass ele will be uncapable of Killing anything while will be a rallybot even with the best skillfull play….
If you will hit other glass for 6000 but will lack any defense to stand a mesmer GS 1200 attack or Ranger attack or thief stealth attack is just total lack of balance.

But obviously who cares…its www!
If you don t understand they don t care about it yet you haven t got enough pointless PvP centered nerfs

I’m a bit disappointed as I run a lot of dungeons and regularly make use of the FGS ‘exploits’. It’s not necessarily the damage that I utilise but it’s more the evades that come from using the FGS skills. It’s difficult to stay alive as a Zerk ele when stacking and now it’s going to be even tougher.

We’ll see…

It will remain the same for evading, it’s that the dps of the #4 skill will be quite a bit lower than before (when used in stacks or on bosses with large hitboxes). Or did I miss something?

Depending how the updates to our elite skills work out, that extra evade on skill #3 might be the only useful thing our elite skills will still give us in PvE.

Galespark.7835:

It will remain the same for evading, it’s that the dps of the #4 skill will be quite a bit lower than before (when used in stacks or on bosses with large hitboxes). Or did I miss something?

Depending how the updates to our elite skills work out, that extra evade on skill #3 might be the only useful thing our elite skills will still give us in PvE.

I assume the lack of damage will make it pretty crummy to use though. Might have to revert back to the days of using Arcane Shield and just hope the mob goes down before I do.

Fuzzion.2504:

*Thank gawd they didnt nerf fgs mobility. The saviour in wvw. *

However since i i have like a few hours in PvE , i have no clue what to say about the effects on pve.

^Agreed! The only use i have for an Elite is FGS and that is just for mobility so the fix to the Meteor/Tornado didn’t effect me.

I do like Tornado though but being immobilised while transformed…. Not a good feeling…

I have to remember you fgs3 is on Isaiah Cartwright radar since months.
He told it gives elementalist too much mobility and mobility is a tradeoff for elementalist in his opinion.

Belorn.2659:

and more stealth exploits

Stealth = exploit
Might stacking = exploit
Warrior banners = exploit
wall of reflect = exploit
feedback = exploit
time warp = exploit
vuln on explosions = exploit
Frost spirit = exploit

Have I covered everything?

reading lfg=exploit
empower allies=exploit
spotter= exploit
berserker gear= exploit
stacking= exploit
melee= exploit
food buff= exploit
afk ranging HOTW boss= fighting as intended

You still missed a few so I took the opportunity to add some.

fun = exploit
skill = exploit

meh,.... too boring

If you count fighting a boss with FGS as an exploit, I will use the same languge for skipping the boss and running past them as a exploit.

FGS require you to CC the boss into a specific spot, position every party member to stand in the right position, and dodge instant kill aoe with minimal reaction time. Stealth on other hand just require using the key W and sometimes the jump button.

In the early days, many dungeons was updated to include doors in order to… you can guess… prevent players to use stealth in order to skipp content. Stealth + running, as with stacking, was not the intended within the design of dungeons.

Thus exploit. We could call it creative tactics if we want to use kinder language.

So thieves are exploiting in their dps rotations? Wow, that’s why they are so OP /sarcasm

Belorn.2659:

If you count fighting a boss with FGS as an exploit, I will use the same languge for skipping the boss and running past them as a exploit.

FGS require you to CC the boss into a specific spot, position every party member to stand in the right position, and dodge instant kill aoe with minimal reaction time. Stealth on other hand just require using the key W and sometimes the jump button.

In the early days, many dungeons was updated to include doors in order to… you can guess… prevent players to use stealth in order to skipp content. Stealth + running, as with stacking, was not the intended within the design of dungeons.

Thus exploit. We could call it creative tactics if we want to use kinder language.

The “exploit” is LoSing bosses.
Would be an exploit at least if most bosses had any AI, but since all they do is running into players and using timed Attacks, it can t be called AI at all.

But the point is FGS at this point is as exploiting as a discipline banner or any AoE support are.

Yet i don t really care…once they nerf also LH anet will be forced to actually look at elementalist in PvE.

Tornado nerf is just a mistake, FGS is meh.
PvE is still broken.