Guild Wars 2

So now that eles no longer have nearly as much self-survival thanks to the removal of celestial, nerfing of DS, and change to auras, can we PLEASE un-nerf RtL.

As it stands, this is absolutely necessary:

1. Since eles are so starved for defense, everyone is pushed into running focus for the powerful survival skills. RtL for mobility was the reason you considered taking dagger over focus, but with the extreme CD this is not even worth considering.

2. Ele is being pushed towards a DPS role, but lacks the tools to fill that role. Being able to have high mobility due to dagger off-hand would go a long way towards helping DPS ele play. This mobility both helps ele play a role, and helps augment defense as a way to gtfo when losing.

3. Ele can no longer just RtL out, heal up, and come back to endlessly contest a point. Healing and defense has been buffed so much for other classes, that ele doesn’t even have the most sustain when building a max-sustain build. It is a bad bruiser, that can only function well in 2v2’s (and not really more either, thanks to defenses that scale poorly to larger fights). To fill that role effectively, it is important that ele has mobility to get to the right fights.

4. Other classes have leaps that go as far on a shorter CD, and they also have additional effects. Specifically, other bruisers like scrapper and druid both have leaps that go as far on a 12 and 15s CD (respectively). The druid version also evades, heals, AND blasts, while the scrapper version evades and is a triple leap-finisher that stacks insanely well with the lightning and water fields available. RtL doesn’t evade, doesn’t do any more damage, doesn’t blast, or anything else.

5. Since the normalization of movement skills, RtL no longer has any “special” benefits of being immune to chill and cripple, as ALL movement skills are inherently immune. Further, because it is a transform, it has the unique down-side of being EXTRA vulnerable to immobilize. The only other transform skill is the druid one, and that evades, so it can’t be immobilized mid-skill.

Please add your input as to whether you agree or disagree.

TLDR:

1. Focus > RtL b/c invuln + cleanse is way better than mobility every 40s.
2. Ele doesn’t have tools to play dps, and have been stripped of ability to effectively play its only role of bruiser.
3. Ele no longer has the sustain to relentlessly push far and stall out points, removing the primary reason for the double-CD.
4. No other similar skill suffers the same consequence, and most actually carry extra benefits (like blasting + healing + evading or evading+3x leap finisher)
5. RtL no long has a unique benefit of being immune to cripple/chill, but does have the drawback of being weak to immob while transformed (with no way to cancel).

I plenty agree. And i’d like burning retreat to have a 1200 range like other staff skills too.

You know what is the funny thing is.

Before Cele, when Ele was bad, they buff the ‘Burning Fire’ to give 3 mights with cantrips and they buffed ‘Blinding Ashes’ ICD to 5s.

Then Cele introduced, this traits become OP and they are nerfed, so might gone, BA ICD is 8s.

Now if you consider they removed the Cele, they should again buff these traits.

Do you also have the feeling with all Ele themes we are running in circles? It is either rocks or sucks, there is no middle.

And I am sorry but they will not buff RTL because in some secret holy book of developers it is written that Thief must be the most mobile class and anything that can compete with that is not allowed.

We’re not asking for buffs, just unnerf, there’s a difference

I agree thief should remain the most mobile class, but what are eles supposed to be? We can’t be burst, we can’t be tank, we can’t be healer, we can’t be condi, we can’t be mobile, we could be the best support, but i think even that spot is already taken. We could be more supportive if we didn’t have to trait so much for staying alive.

MyPuppy.8970:

We’re not asking for buffs, just unnerf, there’s a difference

I agree thief should remain the most mobile class, but what are eles supposed to be? We can’t be burst, we can’t be tank, we can’t be healer, we can’t be condi, we can’t be mobile, we could be the best support, but i think even that spot is already taken. We could be more supportive if we didn’t have to trait so much for staying alive.

I can’t answer that I have no idea what developers want Ele to be, I am also afraid that actually they don’t know this also.

The whole Ele situation for the last 3 years tells me that ANet does not want to dedicate the resource to complete overhaul of the Ele mechanics.

They made every other not working thing somehow to work,( necro, ranger, etc) but they are not able to make it work for Ele, what ever you do, the problem is always the survivability.

I have no problem playing glass Thief because I take a great risk but a great reward is there. If I go glass Ele I even take greater risk but the reward is not even %50 of the Thief’s, so why bother?

I think the original design of ele is what it was supposed to be. A hard hitting aoe mage with more than average mobility and soft but constant dmg mitigation through boons (lingering elements – even if never fixed and finally ditched-, elemental attunement, boon on glyph, boon on this, boon on that, etc). Weaknesses: lowest hp/armor, very chill sensitive, hard cc (not so much stab access on core spec), high utilities cd, heartseeker.

Now: underperforming/hard to land damage, nerfed mobility, boons reduced/stripped/converted, and all weaknesses being kept untouched.

Oh i still remember that preview vid when the ele cast meteor shower on two ettins and it actualy knocked down foes. A hard cc on a long telegraphed interruptible channelling fire skill, who would even dare to dream about that now…

All we have now is a shatterstone buff.

buffing fire (ICD blinding ashes 6sec and buring precision 3 sec + one with fire 100% duration) ould be one of my first thougts.
RTL cooldown down to 15sec would be the next one to make offhand dagger again a good choice.
And then scepter auto …..
.
.
..
The list is near endless. But i feel they don´t care to have diversity, because its to much work to balance…

I’m sure there are some developpers in the playerbase that would help them for free.

yes including me. An i am designing and balacing games over 30 years …… I learned coding, writing strategy games in the 80´s …

MyPuppy.8970:

I’m sure there are some developpers in the playerbase that would help them for free.

That is another thing I don’t understand, for ex, Phantaram is a quite competent Ele player, in his stream I hear all the time giving some really logical buffs to for S/X Fresh Air (like the followings https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Changes-I-would-make-to-scepter). Nothing over the board or OP stuff (that is one thing I like with Phanta, he is objective and not trying to create next OP version of Ele) and he has a good contact with Grouch but it seems no developer approached him and ask what is wrong with Ele.

I understand they don’t listen our whining in the forums but I would qualify Phanta a competent Ele player that you can hear his opinions.

So why not listening his ideas but just making that endless buffs of Shatterstone.

Agreed. At the very least, they should remove the cool down penalty if RtL misses, is blocked, or is evaded. Basically, if you use RtL with an enemy targeted, you’ll be using it as intended (gap closer,) so you should NOT be punished.

I never see /D in PvP nowadays. Maybe this might help bring it back.

Also Agreed the suggested scepter changes are good and not OP. Well the aftercast on rock barrier was realy done ….

no one’s using dagger offhand anymore => useless to UN-nerf

Fix scepter already

RtL isn’t going to get buffed back up ever, just accept that. Also, why would they even waste time working on skills of a class they just intentionally removed from the game?