Guild Wars 2

So… another patch down and another skip on any real problems. The sad part is that they fixed Lightning Leap for the Lightning Hammer but we still can’t use Ride The Lightning. What made Heartseeker more important than RTL? Was it not useful enough already?

I actually find it funny that the only bugs that they are fixing for the elementalists are ones that hurt us. I realize that you shouldn’t be able to fire skills behind you, but who was really complaining about this? Was their a whole subforum out there filled with people complaining that they were tired of getting hit with minimal damage from these spells as they were running away?

Cool, now I can use my elemental pet more often.

Can we get an update Anet on the state of the elementalist and what your opinion on it is? Should I give up on any real bug fixes for us? How about balancing for us? I don’t think it is asking much for just some information.

I’m guessing the reason they fixed heartseeker, lightning leap, etc first is probably because those skills all shared the same bug and that bug was fixed at the same time.

If you’ve used RTL enough, you can see how it is SUPPOSED to work.
When you activate the skill, it predicts your target’s trajectory based on it’s current movement. Then, it basically just puts your avatar on autopilot and runs to that spot, then explodes when/if it comes into contact (making you invisible and creating that big lightning ball effect).
We see a lot more problems with RTL due to several factors.
-RTL isn’t a leap forward like most other charges. It keeps us on the ground so we are subject to getting stuck a lot easier.
-RTL only predicts trajectory when it’s triggered and determines where to go from there. If your target changes direction (which he often does in PvP), you’re going to go off into nowhere fast.
-RTL has more range than any other charge skill, meaning with more ground to cover and more time, it’s more likely to run into one of the issues above.

It’s not that it’s less important to fix, it’s just much harder to fix. That being said, there’s another big patch coming in on 10/1. So try to relax until then at the very least.

It’s pretty upsetting to see our issues overlooked time and time again. I had so much hope for Anet when the game first launched. They relayed information quickly and got things fixed asap.

Now I feel like i’m playing Diablo3 again. Nothings answered and Class forums are a baron wasteland unless a Mod decides to close a thread.

Now I feel like i’m playing Diablo3 again. Nothings answered and Class forums are a baron wasteland unless a Mod decides to close a thread.

Oh come now, be honest. These forums aren’t NEARLY that bad

I’m guessing the reason they fixed heartseeker, lightning leap, etc first is probably because those skills all shared the same bug and that bug was fixed at the same time.

I would guess this. Basically, they’re an easier bug to fix whereas RTL is complicated. As an aside, I find that RTL seems to track better and most importantly, hang up less often, when I jump prior to using it (so you’re starting the skill in mid-air). Not always possible or easy to do, but if you’re opening a fight with it, try it out.

Cool, now I can use my elemental pet more often.

Yeah, that’s good, but I must admit I was dismayed when I saw this fix cause (and I may be wrong here) Cantrips mastery still does not work with Mist Form (and that’s a big part of my fav build). Just as heartseeker, Lightning, Monarch, and Flame Leap were fixed as a single bug, I figured cooldown reducing traits not working on a particular skill would get fixed similarly.

/tear

I realize that it is probably harder but don’t we deserve more attention? I bet that sounds childish but our class has the most bugs, next to necro (which it looks like they actually care about). Every patch so far has been a huge let down for the elementalists. The only changes they ever make make us weaker. Granted, they are bug fixes, but they only make us less effective; even if only because the bug helped us. Fixing a lot of the elementalist all at once is a noble notion but what about the months until then? Do they want people to stop playing elementalists? A little love would be much appreciated Anet.

Also, it is very hard for me to wait for every patch as that is what I have been doing and I’ve been let down each time.

Yes, that does sound childish. No, we don’t deserve more attention just because our forum whines harder.

A lot of us are no closer to quitting the elementalist then when we rolled him. A lot of us have managed to make him work quite well, and a lot of people are still playing and enjoying the class instead of complaining about it on the forums.

Every class has bugs. There are also tons of bugs plaguing all players involving dungeons and dynamic events. They will be fixed in time. If you really can’t handle the wait, just play another class or go do something else.

Does anybody ever stop and think “why is everybody on this forum whining harder?” Nobody can ever look past their own ego and see that there might be a reason for this. I’m not asking them to stop working on other issues, but as a company (and as a human being) it is MUCH smarter to fix the things that are most broken first… the elementalist in this case. I dislike it when the only defense people have for what is going on is “just wait”. It isn’t a defense and it doesn’t even address the issues. It is a more common statement coming from somebody who isn’t being objective and MIGHT be of a fanboy mentality (I am not calling you a fanboy and in fact I dislike using that word at all). What reasons are there that they don’t make the elementalist a fully working class before they work on minor issues/balancing on other classes? Nothing else demands the attention more than a broken class.

Forum bug can’t edit:

And just because some people can play the class at a decent level, does not mean that it isn’t broken. I once had an iPhone that was broken but it still had a backlight.

The class isn’t broken. There are some class abilities that suffer from bugs. That does not make the class broken.

Broken is the dynamic events that get stuck and prevent people from playing them.
Broken are the skill point challenges that don’t respawn.
Broken are the personal story quests that won’t complete and block progress.
Broken is the Trading Post going down AGAIN and probably requiring a majourity of the ANet team to drop what they’re doing to get it up and running again.

There isn’t a single bug the Elementalist is suffering from that makes him completely incapable of competing in any format. If anyone need to look past their own ego, it’s the guy telling the company how to prioritize thier debugging process.

All of those “broken” things have easy work arounds…. do something else. I was really hoping not to have to do that on with my favorite class. And there are a LOT of bugged skills. To the point that it is almost broken. That is especially true if you also factor in our overall UP state. RTL, literally, stuns myself. That in itself destroys any dagger off-hand build because we have to attunement dance and use all of our skills and that one is one of our most useful skills with dagger off-hand.

I run D/D and use RTL plenty. I also know that, right now, it’s not a good idea to use it on rough terrain or from too far away. Yes, I still get burned by it on occasion but it’s nowhere near often enough to prevent me from using it, or from excelling as a D/D ele.

Also, after researching to see if there were any bugs that crushed the Ele, I came across this in the ele bugs thread.

“Thanks for this. Keep em coming, this is one of our top priorities right now. Please remember that these fixes take a few days and testing them takes about a week.

Jon"

I know you don’t like hearing it, but you seriously just have to be patient. Coming from experience, when dealing with a game of this magnitude, it is dangerous to just slap a patch on without undergoing a rigorous testing and implementation phase. There’s another heavy patch coming in 10/1 and I’m willing to bet we’re gonna see a good amount of fixes for the Ele there.

If you like the Ele as much as you say you do, you can work with his issues until they are fixed. I know I have been.

Frankly, the broken events were hurting my ele more than rlt getting caught up on terrain. I’m a bit sad that rtl has been a bit messed up since bwe3 but then again I don’t want them to screw it up so that we can have people zapping up keep walls in WvW (there have been similar issues with other abilities).

I am perfectly capable of being patient, as I have been. But it is demoralizing to see all of these thrown together patches implemented without testing (see: EVERY dungeon patch yet) and still hear absolutely no word about the elementalists. As far as I can tell they have decided to just give up on the elementalist and just fix a few bugs here and there. Other classes are getting big changes in bugs and balancing but we aren’t getting anything. Right now it is either a HUGE patch for the elementalist which scares me as every patch so far has had a lot of bugs and a patch such as that, with everything implemented all at once, will just be more bug than class, or nothing at all. Honestly, I’m a patient person with things like this when the company keeps us in the loop which is something pre-release I was never afraid of but since then they haven’t made a peep. When did Anet stop being transparent?

My problem with Ele is the slow cast speeds on all but daggers. Ride the Lightning annoys me to death, it used to work FINE. What happened? Not to mention as a full glass cannon 30 fire 30 air, i am doing 1 – 1.5k in WvW where a warrior with a bow does 6.5k with arcing arrow? Changing spec to have 30 Earth made my ability to live a little better, but it’s still rough. Was playing Ascalon Catacombs today and was being hit for half life (1.5k) (scaled down to level 30) in 1 hit. While my dmg scaled down was a mere 100 – 200 dmg, my grp mates were doing a lot more, a whole lot quicker. By the time I had 1 or 2 Auto attacks off (fire scepter) the mobs were dead.

I would love to hear more info about the Ele, as it was the first class they announced for Guild Wars 2. I was hoping it would also of had a lot of work put into it.

Somehow, I doubt they didn’t test the patches they’ve implemented.
Somehow, I doubt they’ve just “given up on the elementalist”.

They’ve said they’re working on it, as I mentioned in my earlier post. We’re not the only class suffering from issues. Perhaps some classes have issues that pertain more to the core of their viability. Have you tried a Necro? They implemented a good handful of fixes for them and there’s still a ton of issues. Still more issues than the Ele suffers from.

How far have you played into PvE? Did you see how bad some of the 60+ zones are? It’s wasn’t pretty. That effected everyone, and it looks like they chose to address that first, which I think was a wise decision.

What bugs are so bad that you can’t play an Ele? So far all you’ve mentioned is RTL. I’m curious as to how “broken” your build is, due to bugs.

I don’t really feel like re-listing every bug so here is a link to follow:
Bug Thread

And I’m very serious, they don’t test their patches. After at least one patch meant to fix their diminishing returns patch for dungeons and it is still broken. That patch was meant to fix it and it couldn’t do it…

I’m a level 80 and I recognize the faults in the late game stuff and I’m glad that that is a priority but I really hope that they can deal with more than one thing at a time. The elementalist has been an issue since the 3rd beta weekend and RTL hasn’t worked…. ever?…. yeah…. ever.

And I’m also very serious that there’s no way they don’t test their patches before releasing them. That’s an insane claim for anyone to make. I’m sure they have a testing process to approximate the conditions of live servers as best as they are able. But you have to be realistic, we’re talking about an MMO. It isn’t possible to perfectly re-create live conditions in a testing environment. The best they can do is approximate, and some problems are going to arise between testing and implementing.

Also, I’m aware of the bug thread. I’m sure not every bug applies to your build. I looked through it to see what bug or combination of bugs is so devestating to how you play that you can’t compete. I couldn’t. So I’m asking you. What bugs make it so you can’t play? All you’ve specified so far is RTL. Is RTL central to your strategy? Is it the key component in your tactics and does your entire build fall apart without it?

Xriah.5743:

If you’ve used RTL enough, you can see how it is SUPPOSED to work.

Warrior’s charge skills have almost same effect, but without RtL bug. Strange, isn’t? And when I see patch changelog… Looks like Anet just hates elementalist.

Magnetic grasp (was in bug thread), churning earth has a huge cast time which makes it a poor candidate for a D/D build (not bug, but still), lightning whip (was in bug thread), and burning speed? (the forward flame wallish spell) has issues at times. That is also not counting some of the minor bugs in our utility skills, nor does it account for the overall lack of synergy in our traits and the lackluster utility skills. The idea is to attunement switch a lot so that I can use all of my skills because most of them have decently long to very long cooldowns. In the event that a quarter of my skills can’t function properly it can break my build.

And if proper testing was going on, the patch to fix the patch wouldn’t have made it through to live without someone realizing that it didn’t even accomplish it’s primary goal…

They fixed a bunch of bugs. What’s the problem exactly? They’ll get around to doing a balance pass when they can. Bugs should take priority.

What? There are many bugs in the elementalist. Why are those bugs of less importance than whatever bugs you are talking about? They have been doing a lot of balance. But for every other class (minus necro who could also use a lot of love) and not the elementalist. The elementalist has been nearly devoid of all updates and comments by the staff since the release of the game. Ever patch has about 2 updates for the elementalist and they are usually completely useless changes. I didn’t even know that I could fire those skills (in this patch) behind me. Why is that a bigger deal than putting more man-power behind fixing real issues with the class?

Cynical.2097:

It’s pretty upsetting to see our issues overlooked time and time again. I had so much hope for Anet when the game first launched. They relayed information quickly and got things fixed asap.

What do you expect? They are still clueless on how to fix the downed state skills. There are virtually no random variables that affect those skills (I’m aware of those trait skills. But REALLY?). There is only 1 skill needed fixing from each professions. Somehow, they still cant balance it. What confidence do you have in them to fix an entire profession?

When you have a team building your house do you yell at them for having the taps turn the wrong way when they are laying the foundations?

Didnt think so.

All classes are being thought about evenly, and no preference is being given to one or another, and none are being forgotten or ignored.

Balance issues are never going to be ‘quick fixed’, because there is this thing called meta. If you dont know what it is google it. Jon has stated they want to see how things play out before making changes.
Its more than likely that changes made to classes are in internal testing right now. They may not come out for a few weeks or even a month or two.

Let them decide what is a priority.

You can always go play kung fu panda while you wait if you really hate things that much

Do you people really think they are sitting around saying “Hey, I know, lets screw over the ele’s and focus all the love on the bugs for the other classes!”?

Bugs are getting solved as solutions are found and tested, I’m sure they are far to busy to worry about which profession’s bugs happen to be easier or quicker to solve than others.

Anlyon.8375:

When you have a team building your house do you yell at them for having the taps turn the wrong way when they are laying the foundations?

Didnt think so.

All classes are being thought about evenly, and no preference is being given to one or another, and none are being forgotten or ignored.

Balance issues are never going to be ‘quick fixed’, because there is this thing called meta. If you dont know what it is google it. Jon has stated they want to see how things play out before making changes.
Its more than likely that changes made to classes are in internal testing right now. They may not come out for a few weeks or even a month or two.

Let them decide what is a priority.

You can always go play kung fu panda while you wait if you really hate things that much

1. I hate games based off of movies. (STOP TALKING ABOUT WOW. IT ISN’T RELEVANT BUT IT IS STUPID!)

2. That analogy stinks. If I had reason to yell at them for doing that before they were supposed to, hell yeah I would. It wouldn’t be my fault they don’t know the proper order of building a house. In fact, I would most certainly fire them at that point. Anet has had months to work on the elementalist but they have neglected it completely. What hope is there when they won’t even acknowledge specific problems with EVERYTHING in the elementalist?

3. The classes aren’t being treated fairly at all times. Have you been looking at the patch notes? Those classes are all getting balance fixes and we are getting next to nothing. Why weren’t their changes being tested for weeks on end? I haven’t seen them wait on making any major changes yet. The dungeon “fix” is a broken quick “fix” that they used to keep people from getting worthless cosmetic gear faster than others. They wanted to keep people from playing the dungeons in ways that they didn’t like and they want to keep people from playing the elementalist altogether.

4. I’m pretty confident that there is no internal testing done on any of this game anymore. Buggy patches that don’t even fix the one thing it was released to fix. That shows some really bad internal testing… they only had to test for one thing…. and it still doesn’t work.

A lot of complaining would be silenced if one of the Anet devs came down to this forum and actually spoke with us about the issues we are having with the elementalist.
Instead we get radio silence and nothing in patches to indicate they care.

They should fix the bugs first but another issue is just to survive the loss of damage is uncalled for. Even then with a glass cannon build i’ve seen other classes hit harder much harder. Every class except a few seems to have far better burst and survivability. Heck even illusions tend to do more damage then most of my attacks yeah the die easily but to AoE clear them out i leave myself with nothing to deal with the actual Mesmer. This can be very frustrating to see less effort and better results from other classes. I love the play style of ele, but lack of synergy with traits and poor risk vs reward forcing you to put trait points in certain places shows a balance issue overall and needs to be addressed.

So how is glyph of elementals supposed to work? It seems even the devs are confused because the cooldowns starts twice, once when you summon your elemental and then it starts over when the elemental dies.

As for the “radio silence” ArenaNet did say they are going to be holding off and waiting for things to settle before doing any kind of balance changes. For now they are just fixing bugs, then they will see what needs to be done to each profession.

I’m usually one of the first in these forums to jump on the “Elementalists need love” bandwagon, but I really can’t fault Anet on anything so far regarding patches.

They really are keeping them coming steady and addressing the important points.

Just be patient guys, I’m certain they are aware they over-nerfed us in the last BWE.

Elementalists were perfectly fine until they were nerfed shortly before the release. And the reason they were nerfed is because warriors were whining about us doing too much damage.

You know, the profession that can oneshot us now and can be played with your eyes closed by spamming two buttons? Those guys whined up such a tsunami of bitter loser tears that ArenaNet caved in and nerfed our damage in half. Learning to evade our spike was out of the question, of course, this is warrior players we’re talking about, after all.

And now we have the Elementalist which:

• Is the hardest profession to play
• Is the professions that is easiest to kill
• Is the profession which does least damage

So yeah, I would say that Elementalist does deserve some attention, and that attention better come sooner rather than later. Most of my Elementalist friends have already switched to other professions. I myself am leveling a Mesmer now and will not even log on to my joke-of-a-profession-elementalist until they are fixed. Though my whole Elementalist experience has already been ruined to a point where I may just delete the character altogether.

And this is not a question of patience or faith in ArenaNet. Such horrible profession imbalance was always fixed in a matter of days in GW1. And yet almost a month after release of GW2 we have heard nothing from ArenaNet about this issue. Other classes have gotten buffs and fixes, we got the square root of jack.

The only reason i keep playing Elementalist is the investment i made on it…

igneous.8153:

Elementalists were perfectly fine until they were nerfed shortly before the release. And the reason they were nerfed is because warriors were whining about us doing too much damage.

Name me a MMO where warriors (and rogues) are not horribly OP, easy to play, super-mega popular played classes and don’t constantly whine about them being still too hard to play and too low damage and anybody else must be perma-nerfed.

Vaerah.4907:

igneous.8153:

Elementalists were perfectly fine until they were nerfed shortly before the release. And the reason they were nerfed is because warriors were whining about us doing too much damage.

Name me a MMO where warriors (and rogues) are not horribly OP, easy to play, super-mega popular played classes and don’t constantly whine about them being still too hard to play and too low damage and anybody else must be perma-nerfed.

In Rift warriors and rogues are easy to play, but that is offset by mages having the highest DPS (if played right). A warrior or rogue player who mastered their class will never outDPS a mage. That is how it should be. Effort and complexity should be rewarded with appropriate results. And that was certainly the case with elementalists until BWE3 nerf.

That’s my view too on what occured after BWE2. Funny how people keep throwing this “l2dodge” rubbish around regarding avoiding Thief & Warrior skills when that’s exactly all you need to do to avoid our heavy burst rotations (it even got easier when they removed DT ground targeting) yet the Thief and Warrior both retained their dps output.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

What? There are many bugs in the elementalist.

Lol. Not saying there aren’t some annoying bugs but… 2 posts of minor bugs in our forum as opposed to:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-bugs-compilation-NB66-NT15-NP6

3/4 of that class is broken. It just doesn’t work right. You should check the other forums a bit before claiming the world is ending.

igneous.8153:

And this is not a question of patience or faith in ArenaNet. Such horrible profession imbalance was always fixed in a matter of days in GW1. And yet almost a month after release of GW2 we have heard nothing from ArenaNet about this issue. Other classes have gotten buffs and fixes, we got the square root of jack.

I really think this line of argument is grossly unfair. It’s pretty clear to me virtually all the work on the classes right now is in the bug fix category. That some fixes end up buffing or nerfing classes is pretty incidental.

There are still some pretty major bugs in this game that I’m sure ANet is making their top priority, for example some people are still have crash/stability issues, there’s all the broken dynamic events all over the world, major bugs for certain classes (e.g. engineer, necro) problems with the dungeons, all the problems with the trading post, exploits in need of elimination, etc.

Once they get a handle on most of these major issues I’m sure they’ll devote more resources to starting work on a balance pass for all the professions.

Truga.5897:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

What? There are many bugs in the elementalist.

Lol. Not saying there aren’t some annoying bugs but… 2 posts of minor bugs in our forum as opposed to:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-bugs-compilation-NB66-NT15-NP6

3/4 of that class is broken. It just doesn’t work right. You should check the other forums a bit before claiming the world is ending.

And yet for a class that is 3/4 broken, it still vastly outclasses elementalists. Thank you for reinforcing our point.

I am fairly certain we’re not claiming that we’re more mechanically broken than any other class, as I cannot prove nor disprove such a statement. Each class is going to have its bugs; ’tis the nature of an MMO.

What I can say with certainty is that Elementalists are by far the most numerically broken class in-game at the moment. When the Effort : Return ratio is so far out of balance that people who know what they’re doing are changing classes because it’s so far under par, there’s a problem.