Guild Wars 2

I fully support threads like : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Let-s-talk-about-future-season-4-ELE/first#post6224529

But.. I look at the proposed changes and I see something more akin to a long time project, something that would not be implemented right away or before time consuming testing.

What I propose instead is to focus on small changes that alone would be able to increase ele build diversity dramatically in my humble opinion.

First Step Focus on traitline/skills that can’t contribute anyhow to the current bunker metabuild

-I take in consideration the -20% CD reduction from elemental surge-

1) Arcane shield = CD reduction from 75s to 50s, having over one minute CD for such an obsolete design is completely out of whack, CD could then be reduced to 40s, can be traited also as master adept in arcana.
I wouldn’t go below 50s CD as base, this would lead to abuses as eles could potentially trait x/focus+ 2x arcane shield +healing; actually if I want to be completely honest, I just think that 75s CD base is overkill and anything below that would be fine, maybe even 60s CD could be more than enough as again we must not forget about possible abuses from x/focus users

2) Arcane blast and Arcane wave = I don’t know how much the ele community enjoy the area targeting of arcane wave, I personally hate it and would like to see it removed but again I don’t know if PvErs prefers this aspect to remain. Instead something that both pvers and pvpers can agree on is the excessive CD.

kitten base CD reduction would go a long way in making arcane skills more useful, also a slight increase in dmg would not be that bade, nothing broken really, a 33% base dmg increase ( from 370 to 480)

In the end we give up defensive utilities just to obtain pure dps, let’s make that choice a less punishing one, this is no more 2012/2103, let’s take in consideration where other professions stand in terms of self-sustain

3) Arcane Power = nothing big, just kitten base CD reduction

4) Elemental Surge = This is the main component that can break or make arcane based build, it need some changes, the base idea is good..we just need a little something more as such:

-Replace blind with torment (5s) or confusion (2 stacks).

Blind increase in duration, therefore the usage of Arcane Power while attuned to air, makes really no sense whatsoever, this is not GW1 and blind is not worth a whole utility skill, especially when ele can easily apply blind already with scepter

-Increase Immobilize duration from 1s base to 2s, 1s immobilize is not enough even if use Arcane Power while attuned to earth, basically it cannot be stacked, making the usage of arcane skills in arth , completely pointless

That’s all for arcane skills. Opinions are always welcome but..it’d be great if people could explain their reasoning.

I pesonaly would have made it much easier to Anet.
Increase the CD from Elemental surge to -33%.
I support the 2 confusion instead of blind and the imob to 2 sec.

Make the attunement reduction -20% and work on OL too (not the current increase on swap).
I guess it might give arcane a chance.

Non arcane:
Tempestious aria: add -20% CD reduction

Fire:
Reduce burning precisions ICD to 3s
Buff one with fire. Instad of +% on fire auras give fire aura on heal. (the old on signet would be gorgeous but we can only hope …)
Blinding ashes: ICD back to 5sec. This was only a problem with cele d/d in the past. Now after power creep and all the aoe it´s loughable …

Nothin will buff auramancer here. But maybe we will give some new non full aura builds a chance.

I’m not sure about these changes.

DPS ele has never really been viable, and imo that’s more an issue of tactical value than quality of life or matchup potential.

To put it simply, look at what we’re up against for that contentious “DPS roamer” spot.

- Thief. Extreme mobility. Bordering on the absurd. Steal with all its tactical value in guaranteed interrupting, ripping key boons, etc… Practically immortal to anything but other dps roamers

- Mesmer. Portal. Game-changing elites. Boonrip. Not a strong pick atm, but still a contender to keep in mnd.

- Revenant. God-tier downed contro(unparallelled through reveal, glint elite, very strong cleave and cc). extreme survivability under focus, AoE boons aplenty. Good mobility. Similar to old medi guard in that it’s a competent but not top tier team fighter while still being an excellent roamer.

- Warrior. Pushes the limits on sustain + damage + cc in one package. Very condi resilient. Decent mobility.

And then there’s ele. What would we want ele to be downright best at? Can we realistically expect to ever take a spot off of any of the above?

In my opinion, the closest we ever got to being viable was in the shoutbow/cele engi/cele ele/medi guard/shatter mesmer/thief days. The only time we really offered someone noone else did. Ice bow. Now I know you’re laughing, but it’s true. Back then there was nothing else that could actually stop the sustain triumvirate from ressing something. Besides that, landing icebow 5 on a target, was a guaranteed kill on all of them, except thief, mesmer and ele. I can’t overstate the value of that. It’s pretty much the equivalent of moa morph, especially when you can coordinate a thief for example to pick up the bow and steal-deep freeze.

On top of that we had some silly mobility on a high cooldown with superspeed fgs, before the mobility changes. Superspeed fgs 3 would almost take you from legacy mid to a side point instantly. The distance was insane.

And lastly, stunbreaks/stability were so much less prevalent back then, prominently on cele engi and shoutbow, which only ran 1 stunbreak and no stability, that we were one of the only specs that could kill them so effortlessly with gale – fire combo. I remember being mocked for pushing far against shoutbows, and cleaning them up in seconds.

Even then we had our issues. Mainly the fact that a coordinated mesmer+thief, which was meta back then, would tear you apart. But we were close.

I can’t even imagine what ele would have to be capable of, to be worth picking over its competitors now. I can tell you it’s gonna take a whole lot more than shatterstone buffs though!
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I’m still here to say that for an Ele right by now the only chance to be a “near to viable” build is to make air overload a ground target ranged skill. Since you just can’t go into the middle of team fight without get struck from tons of AoE and CC (guessing dps Ele means marauder amulet).
This will not benefit much metacleric build since it usually have to stay on point. While would buff a lot a dps build (maybe not even enough)
Everything else is just a drop in the Sea.
Aracane shield cd reduced can surely help and it would be welcome but is not enough.
Aracane wave/blast cd reduction doesn’t even help since you can’t waste anymore an utility skill for a damage skill in a tpvp match.
For arcane trait line I think It’s obsolete and it can’t compete with tempest in this meta.
And this from someone who is still playing the old SF fresh air build A/W/Ar or A/E/Ar in ranked.

Well i would love FGS to be more useful. I remember i escaped a lot with it. Lately evrything seems to catch me :-(. Somtimes it still works when only one keeps up and i turn raund for a FGS fight which i usually win but mostly trying to flee with it doesnt work nowerdays.
The changes might not bring a DPS ele into meta, but it might bring more build diversity, especially in wvw roaming. I can´t say if a 20% shout reduction will bring enough to the table to fully compete with auramancer regeneration, but i can say i will use it and it will bring more agressive builds up. And the arcane changes will support fresh air DPS builds.

I hate cleric amulet :-).

In PvP i play three variants of S/F ele depending on mood and oposing team.

1.) Viper E/F/T . Lots of fun. High hybrid damage. But high risk and melts against premades.
2.) Sage: E/W/T cleansbot. very close to meta but with sage. (when i see lots of condi classes)
3.) Wanderer E/Ar/T. My classical setup. Surprisingly solid. I enjoy it.

In WvW roaming i use S/F and staff with a viper/cele +durability setup. E/Ar/T or fire if staff.

Not meta, not good against all builds. But for me it fits. It´s just sad if i meet some broken build and stand not much chances —-> Wanderer(dire) + Perplexity mesmers sigh …

Perplexity rune and Durability should be nerfed. First can give confusion on heal but not passive … And second should not be area boons…. Maybe make resistance 2 seconds and remove the effect being for the team … It´s just not funny when half of a group or zerg runs durablity rune.

To be honest gokill is right. Even if dps Ele will be a thing, other classes have more thing to offfer than us. The only thing we have to offer is a bit of heals and support. Not that usefull.
So no way to us to be a metà dps build for tpvp.
But I would pay to not feel like I’m crippling my team while I go dps.

lucadiro.4519:

To be honest gokill is right. Even if dps Ele will be a thing, other classes have more thing to offfer than us. The only thing we have to offer is a bit of heals and support. Not that usefull.
So no way to us to be a metà dps build for tpvp.
But I would pay to not feel like I’m crippling my team while I go dps.

This is what most eles feel …..

For me i believe that the shout reduction would be a huge step to acieve it for tempest.
Even if a full support cleric is still better in a premade.

Agree totally with Gokil.

I simply can’t see how stuff like Fresh Air Ele can ever compete with those builds. This is not to say that FA Ele doesn’t deserve to be viable. Stuff like Arcane Shield cool down reduction, further Scepter improvements, Conjure buffs, Elite skill buffs and undoing nerfs like RtL are desperately needed. But short of having an extremely coordinated team babysit you, I don’t know what value you bring as an FA Ele.

Anet seems to want to continue to push the Ele to a jack-of-all-trades role like the Cele D/D of old (before the broken burning.) I think that Ele baseline defensive mechanics are still urgently needed; coupled with nerfs to Tempest, maybe that can finally help make Mender or Sage Ele meta-viable. But those changes will need a lot of time/effort/testing on Anet’s part, so I’m not very optimistic things will change for the forseeable future.

Eles don’t need damage increases.

What they need is better base survival, nerf the traits that make bunkering too strong, and buff their ability to land burst.

Every godkitten ele skill has huge cast times and obvious telegraphs. That’s why scepter ele can’t land any burst besides air 2 and lightning strike from air attunement swap.

Fire Grab is a whopping 35 sec cd when it requires a target be burning, and it still hits for way less than an eviscerate or backstab that can be used every 10 seconds.

Air staff 2 takes forever to cast, staff ele is a sitting duck defensively, needs to be babysat.

The nerf to RtL was ridiculous and needs to be undone.

Ele’s have way too long cd’s to be a proper offensive roamer. Their burst is on too long a cd cycle, far harder to land, and takes more hits for the same total damage a thief or revenant can do.

But then again, thieves make every offensive roamer obsolete. They got best burst, best mobility, spammable evades on top of stealth, and the best stun breaker in the game that allows them to stunbreak twice, teleport twice, and cure a condition on a single utility skill.

I’d argue that Ele can’t go damage because we are forced to use 2 trait lines of pure defensive just to deal with our low health pool, low armor and having no class mechanic that improve our base survivability like Death Shroud does, but meh.

If they’d change our bunker traits to be focused on offensive and improved our base survivability as a class, it would give us a reason to go full DPS without making bunker ele broken.
Also if they added an actual ranged power weapon that’d be great.
Staff is bad for DPS in PvP, I think everyone here knows why. We have no main hander for power damage.

I’m not sure if it would be op but maybe they could increase the base healing of water skills and lower the healing power % per gain to better help eles in the sustain department. Some old nerfs would also go a long way to improving at least D/D like the ride the lighting nerf. Eles also personally need better access to stab a to protect overloads that grandmaster lucid singularity in the tempest tree might be the spot for stab improvement on top of harmonius conduit. It also wouldn’t make it op because you would have to pick between elemental bastion for more sustain.

As for the fire trait line I would personally only change 2 things and that’s switch the cleansing ire trait with burning ashes and rework/rename cleansing ire trait to something like Blazing Spirit which reduces all incoming condition damage/duration by 25% while in fire attuntment. In addition anytime you blind a foe you heal for X amount. That way it could have some form of synergy with burning ashes and even arcane utility if traited while reducing a form of damage and bringing in some sustain.

For Air I would personally just redo lighting rod rename it to something like Lasting Storm to make All air auto attacks lighting whip, arc lighting , chain lighting heal for some % maybe 5% of the damage done and increase the stun duration of shock aura by 1 second. for a total of 2 seconds could potentially be op but you would have to give up fresh air so eh.

Also just something that never made sense to me for conjure weps why aren’t they instant cast and why do we lose them when we drop the wep they should only vanish when the charges are all used up would make for way better and exciting gameplay possibly and would instantly see more usage imo if that was changed.

eles don’t have an Hp issue if they run marauders gear or some other form of hp increasing gear they do lack toughness tho and that’s its weakness if not geared/traited to cover it. They do have great healing strength tho but mostly tied up in water or defensives in earth changing 2 grandmasters in fire and air to provide some means of sustain imo is a good idea because it also makes ppl trade off specific powerful grand masters like the straight damaging ones such as fresh air prob being the best example.

Overall though eles do need love in the survival department as fire/air without a focus or equipping nothing but long cd cantrips.

Personally, I would love if they gave a little for those who enjoy the camping side of things…but then again I don’t like playing meta XD

As it stands, we rely a lot just to survive – much like engi’s one has to be a pianist at times to get off a nigh perfect rotation (i’ve played both kit engi and dancer ele but again, off the beaten path is what I enjoy)

Imo, damage, healing and cc/suppression needs to be spread out a little
Yes, various elements.can still outdo each other on certain aspects but the problem therein lies with the cookie cutter builds and the fact it is nigh all the same trait lines and weapons

Let earth actually have some decent bleed procs or a mix of tormet for the so called DoT tree which is easily outdone by the burns of fire and let it be able to become a group support with protection or stability

Give water a shot to do some damage likened to gw1, let it have some hard or soft cc to compete differently rather than just being the heal + bit of damage buff tree

Anyhow, they’re my probably unattainable hopes…

Wolfric.9380:

I pesonaly would have made it much easier to Anet.
Increase the CD from Elemental surge to -33%.
I support the 2 confusion instead of blind and the imob to 2 sec.

Make the attunement reduction -20% and work on OL too (not the current increase on swap).
I guess it might give arcane a chance.

---

Non arcane:
Tempestious aria: add -20% CD reduction

Fire:
Reduce burning precisions ICD to 3s
Buff one with fire. Instad of +% on fire auras give fire aura on heal. (the old on signet would be gorgeous but we can only hope …)
Blinding ashes: ICD back to 5sec. This was only a problem with cele d/d in the past. Now after power creep and all the aoe it´s loughable …

Nothin will buff auramancer here. But maybe we will give some new non full aura builds a chance.

You have a really good point, although a -33% CD elemental surge, would make the trait mandatory but I guess that compromises must be made

About Blinding ashes, it’s still per target meaning that it’s useless against mesmers and necros, other professions have ample access to resistance.

We assume that an ele equipping fire line, does so at the expenses of earth or arcana while keeping Tempest and water therefore I’d change Blinding Ashes to something like:

-Weakening Ashes-
Applies 3s weakness and 3s blind to burning targets , 5s CD

I agree that big changes are not needed but merely number / cooldown tweaks on lesser used traits and the scepter & OH dagger sets. I also dont see ele being the new glass cannon and thats fine. Half the classes rent viable with zerker ammy. Best that could happen is a bruiser like old d/d ele and current scrapper.

I would prefer if they changed how blind works. Something like after the enemy attacks procs a 1-2 sec miss effect. One attack for blind is underwhelming knowing how fast some classes can attack. Its easy to miss that they were blinded.

As for lightning Rod, pre tempest I used it in a roaming build and it had more burst than FA. The Lightning Rod effect hits harder than the FA swap but its only useful in a D/F since it has the most cc. Attack shock aura take 4-5k, then I could knockdown or daze for 4-5k crits. With the current elite spec I see no reason to take arcane traits over earth/water ones.