Let me address your “argument”. First of all Ele is “still strong”. Now the classical definition of this is that they have a role in all game modes or at least 2/3. Dps in PvE typically, some sort of role in PvP (I do not claim to speak on specifics), and of course WvW which is typically backline for water fields and meteor finish.
Having a role, does not mean being perfect at all roles. Or top tier. Think about the actual roles in the game, will anyone reject an ele that tries to fill them? In my experience, and from watching the forums, this answer has always been no. Ele may not be optimal, but I have never seen it rejected to fill a role in which is it possible to fill.
Lets look at PvP – Ele has very little active mitigation, low armor, low hp, and high healing power scaling with low base heals.
Stab, constant protection, invulns, projectile reflect, and massive self healing when in water. You could argue that you can’t use some of these things when you are stunned. But when you are not, you have the toons to survive. Ele is a squishy class tho, no argument on that.
This essentially forces ele to need at the very least healing power, vit, and toughness.
I don’t agree with that sentiment. It doesn’t force you to need those things, it forces you to consider your weakness.
Celestial worked so well bc it also gave them damage however imo being forced to build healing power is holding many builds back. That said it is clear that no team picks up ele anymore and would rather go for a more self sustaining class. You can try ele but that doesn’t mean it’ll be any good.
Which teams are you refering to? As for celestial, you basically just said players dont like to play with weaknesses, which is why the celestial build worked well. I can not agree with that playstyle. It’s a crutch.
Chances are, and this is an assumption don’t get your panties in a bunch, you think ele is still good in PvE.
Because it is.
Well you would be wrong on that part. Dagger Warhorn is no longer viable as on a good day with a perfect rotation and permanent alacrity it gets sub 30k dps.
And that’s an issue because? You do realize that warhorn is a support weapon?
You need minimum 30k to be viable if you play a dps class which ele is in PvE.
Well this is just wrong. Firstly who made this rule? I’ve never heard of it. Seems like nit-picking. And dagger/Wh is a support/dps build. Are you comparing full dps builds to a half support build?
You can say “oh wait Ele is supposed to be absurdly strong on big immobile targets while thief should be good vs small mobile targets!”. Fair argument however the data shows us otherwise.
I’ve never made this argument, because I know why ele is used on large hit boxes. Also again, you are compaing a class who’s niche is single target/cleave dps, to ele. What about everything else ele can do, which theif can not?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4zoswe/qt_gorseval_speed_kill_420_left/
Enter qT’s speedruns with 10 people. This is gorseval, one of the top two fights ele SHOULD dominate in.
You used the word should, which means you feel that ele should have higher dps than theif, on a single target. I can’t agree with that.
Their dps should be easily over the top of what thief can do due to not only needing to clear orbs but also the fact that gorseval is a big immobile target with the only better target for ele being keep construct. Now that you’ve looked at the topic do you notice anything weird?
People asking for their class to not have a single weakness or shortcoming? Nah, that’s very common in MMO’s.
OH They only took 1 ele, and they didn’t do it for dps reasons. They did it because ele has the only weapon with enough range to stay on stack and kill orbs. And to be perfectly honest a dragonhunter could do that now with the new symbols.
Dragon hunter always had the ability to use symbols, it’s just people chose not to. You just admitted that the problem here was the players.
They replaced every single ele with a daredevil on a fight that is supposed to favor ele.
YOU said it’s supposed to favor ele. You are looking at a speed run, in which people choose particular classes for dps. You still seem to ignore everything else an ele can do outside of dps, that a theif can not, which is plenty.
What do you have to say to this? This is the ideal time for ele to shine and yet they are not in an extremely optimal setting.
Theif does more dps than ele, that’s all they cared about in this run. Ele does more than just dps. Comparing the dps of a class that can only fulfil the role of tank or dps, to a class that can fill any role is dishonest.
Is it still fine? No of course not, that was rhetorical. In PvE once you get to high level play doing many different things at average effectiveness is by far not as good as specializing in one thing.
So you agree that the problem isn’t ele’s damage, but the class in general? You can’t buff damage without removing support or healing capabilities. It’s a very delicate balance. And notice how ele (even with people saying how weak iit is) is still accepted in all of these roles. I have never seen a raid that will reject an ele, for healing, or for dps. Using a speed run, which less than 2% even of the community actually even does, to show case a class needing a buff isn’t a good argument.
Ele was one of the two classes I believe were built for pure power dps, the other being thief and unfortunately when you have classes designed to function like this in PvE consistency is important.
I disagree. Ele and thief can both have condi meta playstyles. Both which are accepted in most if not all game modes. Only kicker is ele has way more support/healing options for the party than thief. Many players would rather take an ele, than a thief in unorganized groups.
Not only is ele no longer consistent but its dps is in the pits compared to thief and it does not offer enough team utility to make up for the lacking of dps.
Which is arguable because everyone still accepts ele in support roles. Also you are comparing a class that ONLY bring dps, to a class that brings party support, dishonest. You can’t seriously expect ele to have thief level dps in it’s current state.
My perception is that people vastly underestimate what a thief can do.
Or vastly over estimate it, which led to months of nerfs, and the crippling of every weapon set that isn’t staff in pve, and dagger/pistol in pvp.
I’ve spent sparse amounts of time on thief and what I can tell you is that it is infinitely more survivable and easy to play than Ele as it takes 7% less damage base, has three dodges now, and isn’t limited by cooldowns(making it much more consistent at dps without alacrity).
But it is limited by initiative. But you forget the main meat of a thief rotation is auto attacks, which you can not compare to on an ele. Not to forget thief dps isn’t aoe, in which ele’s is. Thief may take 7% less damage, but ele can heal the group and pump out perma protection. I’d call that even.
Saying that “oh all they do is dps” is interesting bc that is almost all of what ele does too.
Well it isn’t, and you even admit that below. The boons that an ele can provide are invaluable compared to thief dps. Replacing a thief with an ele in a 5 man, can prove useful, however its different in a 10 man where you have more room to replace an ele. If you complain about ele being replacable, I’d like you to look at necro, and thief, and engi, which are no only replaceable, but can be outright rejected for the only roles they can fill.
I never agreed to having tempest be a support spec and honestly I don’t care about the supportive features getting nerfed,
But ignoring the fact it is there, and the fact most, if not ll of the meta builds include it is dishonest.
- interestingly enough thief venom heal will heal the thief for an absurd 8k+ and the team for 5k on 5 targets which would almost be better than old wash the pain away if it was on even 10 sec less cooldown.*
The keyword is IF. And looking at the build date, it hasnt been meta for some time, there’s a reason for that. And even on the meta venom share build, the damage is mediocre.
However a damage class having to compete over damage and not suitability is absurd. There is a trend with ele and engi in that more effort = less reward and anet rarely if ever looks to improve that situation. Even more so when they buff up classes whose optimal rotation is 111111 and occasionally 2 and maybe 1 other skill.
I don’t think about can argue over this. But ele is not nearly as hard to play as engi when it comes to getting even decent damage. Not even close. And ele healing is extremely simple. Same with support ele. Engi is only able to fill the dps role most of the time in groups, and even doing that it has trouble due to the long convoluted rotation. I get the point you are trying to make, but I don’t think the two are equal in terms of difficulty.
As for WvW – some guilds still take ele, but I know T1 and a lot of them have been experimenting with lower cooldown water fields as ele’s is now on terribly long ones. There is so much AoE that meteor is less needed as well.
I can’t really speak on this. When i do wvw, I only roam or havoc, and have never been in a wvw guild.
Now answer me this. Why should a class not do anything well if they do a little bit of everything?
The problem is ele does do everything decently. Ele doesnt do as much dps as a theif, but ele still does good dps. And ele may not heal as well as a druid, but ele still pump out good heals.
You are comparing a jack of all trades to classes that excel in a particular niche, then asking for ele to do that, AND keep its other efficiencies. Until they rework ele and change the class (which at then its a different class than the only you play), then I feel its in a decent spot compared to the rest of the classes.
- By your logic guardian does a little of everything. Team heals, team boons, damage, and yet it has solid damage builds.*
And then look at all the problems guardian has that you are ignoring. So many problem people are outright denying guardians in higher tier fractal, and can be denied in raids.
Revenant can do pretty much everything too, and they’ve been in a good spot for a while.
Rev also received several nerfs, and has very restrictive builds. Even one stance in which people refuse to play.
Due to the design nature of the game every class can do a little bit of everything. The difference with ele is that you have to use your traits to trait for what you want to specialize in instead of simply taking the damage traits and being self sufficient.
Which is an issue. I doo agree on that, but even with this ele is STILL pumping out competitive dps. How is that fair to other classes?
Also you seem to ignore that Ele is surprisingly difficult to play.
I don’t ignore that, I just disagree. I play an ele, and I have never had a moment where I had no idea what skill to use to prevent myself from getting wrecked. I have had them planty on engi, their, and mesmer. Ele is very simple to play,.
Compare the 8 dps steps on a meta ele build (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Fresh_Air_DPS_) to an engi’s 31-32, which changes depending on your alacrity uptime, and quickness, in which one wrong choice can drop your dps SIGNIFICANTLY.
People may not think so but playing ele is a lot about aftercast cancelling and that is what separates the great players from the bad ones.
I have never seen anyone on this forum ever say this. Ever.
As it stands Anet offers two classes that are sufficiently difficult to be considered high-skill. Engineer and Ele.
Engineer and Mesmer*. Fixed that for ya.
Both of which can do lots of things well and both of which are being phased out of various metas bc they don’t specialize in anything enough to be worth taking.
LOL, did you forget necro can be outright denied in open world content if they are not condi?
Making a character weak at everything bc they can do everything works for a competitive moba with very simple controls and balancing.
You think moba’s are simple? Have you ever played dota 2? Come back after a few normal games and show me how even the low levels pub stomped you from lv1 onwards, and how many times you got one shotted by even tank characters because you don’t know the mechanics. You are trying to make ele seem like a difficult class to play, to which I think is laughable.
It does not work in an MMO where min maxing is very very prevalent and classes often can fill the same roles.
Min maxing isn’t prevalent in this game at all. I can show you real min maxing games. Games that will eat you out of a car and home with how much even the smallest stats cost, and how much they make a difference. If you think this game has prevalent min maxing, then i can not take you seriously.
Edit: also you would be completely wrong about saying “Ele has been top tier forever” (paraphrasing). Ele was pretty bad early on, so bad people literally just told you to reroll thief bc you could do more and it was simpler to play. I don’t find it right to ask ele players to put in 2-3x the work of other classes and get 1/2 the reward. The same goes with Engi players.
