Guild Wars 2

Is 53k from whirlpool possible using legitimate builds/gearing/skill combos?

10 hits in combat log from the lone elementalist, a guardian and me (warrior) were chasing.

2199, 5191, 5191, 5463, 5463, 6038, 6038, 6038, 6038, 6038

This was full health and downed health to dead within seconds.

Leave ulti alone!

Raid on the Crapricorn, underwater, surrounded by people.

Eles time to shine, the one place we absolutely DOMINATE!

The whirlpool does incredibly high damage. Ive hit people for 3k with it, and im running close to the least damaging build an ele can get.

Yep, its op. It will be nerfed soon I assume.

Whirlpool does ridiculously high damage but the trident skills do ridiculously low damage.

I agree that it’s strong, but it’s also pure damage without any form of utility and it’s the same “kill me” sign as the tornado. It’s a strong skill, but not strong enough to justify a nerf imo.

Naurgalen.2374:

Yep, its op. It will be nerfed soon I assume.

It’s the only good skill ele has underwater and you want it nerfed? No f’in way unless ALL our other underwater skills get buffs to the tune of 25%+ dmg increase

What weapon are you using to get this?
stares at TP in anticipation

The difficulty was this was in quite shallow water just enough to submerge. So visibility due to camera angles and room to move was very small. I still couldnt tell you what the animation looked like in this case. This was in EB.

You can tell i dont do the ruins fight in capricorn map in spvp to recognise this attack. Might have to make an ele up to test out the range on this and its animation.

But still can someone tell me if the numbers i listed above could get there with spec/gearing? If so what gear/spec?

I would like to rule out the first “jump-to” conclusion before i email off the screenies to the anet people.

Naurgalen.2374:

Yep, its op. It will be nerfed soon I assume.

Yes, hundred blades is OP. it will be nerfed soon i assume.

see what i did there?

whirlpool can deal a bunch of damage if you walk right into it… but otherwise, the user’s a sitting duck… sorta like hundred blades. if you sit in a full round of hundred blades, you’re… gonna die. same principle.

Pyles.5301:

The difficulty was this was in quite shallow water just enough to submerge. So visibility due to camera angles and room to move was very small. I still couldnt tell you what the animation looked like in this case. This was in EB.

You can tell i dont do the ruins fight in capricorn map in spvp to recognise this attack. Might have to make an ele up to test out the range on this and its animation.

But still can someone tell me if the numbers i listed above could get there with spec/gearing? If so what gear/spec?

I would like to rule out the first “jump-to” conclusion before i email off the screenies to the anet people.

full berserker exotic level 80 gear.

Which means about +100% crit damage, massive amount of power and precision.

Seems about right to me considering a warrior can hundred blades for almost 20k with the same stats.

Whirlpool being a massive cooldown and an elite skill. I believe it’s more then fine. Just get out of water or move away from it.

I dont find elementalist trident to be that bad. Their burst is in water attunement. Maybe you are overlooking how hard 2 and 3 hit. I just unlocked tornado and I haven’t tried it underwater yet. I’m excited to test it after reading this.

I imagine other classes can reach some pretty high combined damaged as well when using elite skill forms.

I was using it and its not fine, its stupid (I main elementalist sPvP) it is obviously bugged.

Also those complaining about our lack of damage underwater, obviously haven’t seen the ludicrous amount of cc we get underwater.

oh gods, please let a-net focus on normal spvp balance before they even think about water balance issues.

So, CC underwater, we haz plenty eh. I don’t really care for CC in PvE shooting stupid mobs that I want to kill only for loot. I want damage. And again, ele has to use 3x as much skills as other classes to do it. I run full zerker and the damage is still meh, if I put on my magicfind gear…omg, borefest of epic proportions.

Not to mention lightning n1 is so buggy underwater andkitten with the 3 pronged attack, fire n1 detonation delay is way too long, earth n1 is…well…words fail me, hm, what was it, water 5 is perma-miss also.

So yah, might as well nerf the whirlpool to do idk 3k max damage over 10 sec, would fit right in to the low-damage theme of eles.

Novalight, if you want to use one or two abilties to kill an enemy, go play a warrior., Elementalists are about having a ton of abilities to use, not 3 or 4.

Whirlpool is extremely good, added on top of a very strong weapon set that is the trident. It makes elementalists a significant threat when underwater.

It is a balanced skill, though. Think of it as a underwater 100B with a three-minute CD instead of eight seconds. For the entire duration that it is active, the elementalist cannot access any other skills, survival or otherwise. If you’re melee only, just out-range it, wait for a bit, and you won’t have to worry about the skill again.

True, it has the downsides of a very heavy cooldown and being easy to avoid but you have to remember it’s an elementalist skill. Quite frankly I suspect the fact they introduced an elite underwater skill for us at all is probably a bug. They’ll probably change it so it does zero damage but is very useful as threatening to deal damage. We can’t expect more, after all, we have 20 skills!

That’s how you kill sharks to cap a shrine.

I still feel bad for eles look at this :
Professions
General
• Implemented a fix to make Heartseeker, Lightning Leap, Flame Leap, and Monarch’s Leap hit more reliably.

Yet ride the lightning, completely ignored.

R E F L H E X.8413:

• Implemented a fix to make Heartseeker, Lightning Leap, Flame Leap, and Monarch’s Leap hit more reliably.

Yet ride the lightning, completely ignored.

heartseeker really needed a boost sarcasm

The common issue to all these skills is that they’re leaps, and probably use the same targetting/movement methods. It’s not that they made a list; “Let’s fix all class bugs… except Elementalist! trollface” It’s just that fixing one of these skills, by definition, would fix the other ones if they use the same code.

I’m sure some developer out there has a ticket in his backlog system, saying “FIX RIDE THE LIGHTNING” with priority “URGENT!!!!1!!one!!!1!2!!eleven!”.

Dinocool.3069:

I was using it and its not fine, its stupid (I main elementalist sPvP) it is obviously bugged.

Also those complaining about our lack of damage underwater, obviously haven’t seen the ludicrous amount of cc we get underwater.

Yeah CC will really help me kill the mob in a respectable period of time. Don’t worry guys! I only hit for 3 damage but at least I can sink him twice and float him once!

Dinocool.3069:

Novalight, if you want to use one or two abilties to kill an enemy, go play a warrior., Elementalists are about having a ton of abilities to use, not 3 or 4.

Yeah sorry, I didn’t know I signed up for a class that takes 5x as long to kill something compared to a good few other classes. And good for you that you enjoy the snail like pace of killing things. But hey, I have my opinion and you have yours and I’m not telling you to go play necro (I heard they’re good, go kill mobs with poison, it’s exciting gameplay).

And anyway, PvP – PvE, ele should have a split skill set or at least higher general damage modifier for PvE…coz in casual PvE CC is…I won’t say useless but not as useful as in PvP – if you can perma CC someone in PvP it’s very very powerful tool. If I can perma CC a mob in PvE it’s meh (unless it’s bosses and stuff which are ohoho what do you know CC immune mostly).

Point would be, everyone has it’s own gameplay, and if I want to go high consistent damage (not to be mixes with burst one) with my ele it sucks compared to other classes. And in a game with no trinity where I can be anything I like just like my momma, oh ups, Anet, said…yeh.

Another point is, it’s very hard to argue for elementalist changes. I think in WvW ele is ok, sPvP semi-ok but not much variety I guess atm (from what I gather reading various posts from so called “elementalist-is-ok-pro-people”), in PvE eles blow (my opinion). So someone argues ele is ok and he’s thinking PvP, the other thinks they need a slight buff mebbe in WvW, the third PvE, someone is thinking dungeons and support spec etc etc….so you see, it’s complex and as such hard to find good arguments or rather, good solutions for the multilayered problem (and go play a warrior isn’t really a solution – or even a constructive input for that matter why should I press 4 damage skills to get the damage of 1 skill if I spec in to pure damage).

Hammerheart.1426:

Raid on the Crapricorn, underwater, surrounded by people.

Eles time to shine, the one place we absolutely DOMINATE!

well assuming any one is stupid enough to stand on top of hte wirlwind then maybe -_-

You know the whirlpool draws people to the center, so the only way to escape is to swim out fast and far (evading or with skills)… and that lets you take the zone easy. Neutral sharks are a problem to enemy’s, not to a whirlpooled ele. I have taken the ruins alone vs 3 people playing smart with whirlpool, and in more balanced conditions is FAR easy.

Still, I was a little sarcastic, only in a “raid on the carpicorn” situation the skills becomes op. Under normal situations its just a good/strong skill which can be evaded: something that eles underwater mostly lack.

I’ve seen a warrior do 15k in 1 hit. Get over it. Whirlpool is easy to get out of range of. L2P issue. ie. If you’re following an ele into the water and they stop fleeing, you should know why. Any guardian who dies to an ele is just plain bad.

So many people here don’t have a clue…

Elementalists do significant dmg under water, I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

Ontop of that we have 1 aoe blind, 4 stuns, and a chill skill underwater.

And then you have the gall to say WE DO NO DMG UNDERWATER.

Seriously, some people here need to learn how to play there class.

katniss.6735:

I’ve seen a warrior do 15k in 1 hit. Get over it. Whirlpool is easy to get out of range of. L2P issue. ie. If you’re following an ele into the water and they stop fleeing, you should know why. Any guardian who dies to an ele is just plain bad.

Katniss: Cool so you would be happy to have a warrior have a skill which pulled you in deal multiple attacks of 6k in a short time. If this skill did one hit of 15k as you described i would not have even started this thread. I have screen shots of the numbers i listed. Total of 53k. Do you have anything to back up that 15k warrior hit which wasnt an eviscerate hit from a beta weekend which has been nerfed since?
Are you also saying those ele’s above you who claim low damage elsewhere is a L2P issue aswell for them? Or are you two faced (ie hitting hard is L2P hitting soft is broken)?
P.S. the guardian didnt die. The warrior did.

Others: I have seen people quote numbers about 100blades of 20k etc in above posts and saying its equivalent. If 100b pulled you in and dealt more damage i would have sympathy. As it stand 100b is significantly easier to avoid and deals less damage per hit and less total damage.

There is no skill i know of in the game other than this which can reach the total damage achieved in such a short time FROM ONE SKILL and has a CC component.

Yes your other skills need improving. Yes some need a significant improvement. That does not mean that this skill is ok as is.

Pyles.5301:

Others: I have seen people quote numbers about 100blades of 20k etc in above posts and saying its equivalent. If 100b pulled you in and dealt more damage i would have sympathy. As it stand 100b is significantly easier to avoid and deals less damage per hit and less total damage.

Let’s put the comparison into a bit of perspective. At the moment, 100b does all of the following (we’ll forget frenzy for a moment):

• Completes its payload in three seconds.
• Deals about 30k damage payload with a full damage build. Within a span of three seconds, this is enough to one-shot pretty much any character.
• Can be dodged.
• Has no inherit CC component.
• Leaves its user vulnerable for a 3 second duration.
• Has a 8 second cooldown.

Whirlpool does all of the following:

• Completes its payload over 15 seconds.
• Deals about 30k damage over the course of 4-6 seconds.
• Can be dodged. You will have to out-range it during its duration.
• Has a “pulling in” CC component.
• Leaves its user vulnerable for its full 15 second duration.
• Has a 180 second cooldown.

Now, let’s consider what would happen if whirlpool was reduced to, say, only deal 2k damage per hit. Against a character with no other defenses but 21k health, the whirlpool will take a full 10 seconds to kill him. During the whirlpool’s duration, all of an elementalist’s skills are disabled (this includes utility skills, etc.), which means as a high defense, “actually has VIT” character, it is now in your best interest to park yourself right in the middle of whirlpool to get a free kill on the elementalist. This changes whirlpool from a threat into a suicidal elite skill that will almost always get the elementalist killed.

This is never the case with a 100B warrior. Almost no one will choose to stand in the middle of 100B and try to DPS the warrior during the 3 second (usually less!) flurry, and if the warrior happens to use 100B again, the same thing will happen – everyone GTFO’s out of the range. The comparison also takes into account the fact that 100B delivers its payload much quicker (especially with frenzy) and deals more damage per tick with good gear, and has a 8 second cooldown instead of, you know, an elite’s 180.

Whirlpool operates under a similar principle. It’s CC is a soft control, which means you can dodge and use skills to escape its effective range and play avoidance with the elementalist for at least the first 10 seconds of the skill. If the CC is not present, then whirlpool simply becomes a suicidal skill when any ranged attackers are present. Even with the CC, you don’t need stun breaks or invulnerability skills to escape – just dodge twice and you should be out of its range. Avoid elementalist until spell wears off.

EDIT: Also, for comparison purposes, whirlpool is an elite skill. This means it’s on the same level as Moa Transform, Time Warp, Thieve’s Guild, Tome of Courage, Battle Standard, and the likes.

Dinocool.3069:

So many people here don’t have a clue…

Elementalists do significant dmg under water, I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

Ontop of that we have 1 aoe blind, 4 stuns, and a chill skill underwater.

And then you have the gall to say WE DO NO DMG UNDERWATER.

Seriously, some people here need to learn how to play there class.

Congratulations on completely failing to address the point.

The argument is our damage is poor underwater. Your reply is we have 1 aoe blind, 4 stuns and a chill, none of which are damaging attacks…

Our underwater damage is extremely poor compared to above water. We have a ton of control/utility skills, but relatively few hard hitters, and the auto attacks for all attunements pretty much suck underwater.

Emerald: Couple of items missing in your features and benefits breakdown.

100B
- Did 30k during beta. Now does ~12-16k assuming many crits and all 8 attacks hit. Only enough to kill low hp targets. 30k is achievable using more attacks and skills.
- Max targets = 3
- Frontal cone damage.
- Damage ends on movement from warrior including turning.
- Can be avoided by walking/moving behind the warrior or out of the range. No endurance or other skills necessary.
- Skill is 8 swings. ~1.5-2k on crit a lot less on non crits.
-If it downs someone futher actions are required to kill them.

Whirpool: (some of these are questions to clarify my understanding and perception – please correct as necessary)
- is 360 degree pbAOE?
- hits more than 3 targets?
- hits faster than once per second? I took 10 hits for 53k and lasted ~5seconds
- while vulnerable caster is not rooted in place?
- skill does not end on movement?
- endurance (dodge) or a movement or avoidance skill is required to avoid damage.
- deals significantly larger hits. Verifiable hits for 6k. How much potentials for death comparison?
- If this downs someone do nothing and they are dead from the continuing damage.
- using your numbers, whirlpool is potentially 3-5 100b back to back for 15s multi target, AE with a pull. (30k/4s * 15s) 112k damage potential?! per target.

Bear in mind the 100b can of worms was opened by someone near the start of this thread.

My beef isnt that its not comparable or compares poorly or well with other skills.

My beef is should that level of damage in a short period of time be A) achieveable without exploitation if a) is yes, valid in the game currently with such potentially massive numbers.

Many classes ha

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but I was messing around with whirlpool in WvW and I kept going invisible during the animation. I’m not sure if there was just a rendering problem but it make it difficult to figure out how far away I was from other players.

Damage was 3-5k crits per hit

Pyles.5301:

Emerald: Couple of items missing in your features and benefits breakdown.

It’s probably best to continue the discussion with a somewhat more equal environment, so here’s a bunch of damage tests on heavy golems:

100 Blades
(Setup: berserker amulet, only power on armor, force sigil, frenzy and self might buff, full power+crit damage traits, +% damage greatsword trait):
Stacked up to about 14-16k on heavy golem (with crits) in 1.5 seconds.
Without Frenzy, this comes out to about 4k per second.

Whirlpool
(Setup: berserker amulet, only power on armor, force sigil, full power+crit damage traits, +% damage attunement trait, +% damage on burning trait):
Consistently ticked at 1 hit per second on heavy golem (I don’t know how you’re getting multiple ticks, but eh).
Damage was 3.4k per critical hit, 1.4-something without.

Seems that with everything else equal, 100B still did more damage per second than whirlpool when everything else was equal. Certainly, whirlpool lasts for 15 seconds, but obviously you can’t expect it to deal 15k over 15s when using a full glass cannon build when the user is fully vulnerable for its duration – that’s a surefire, instant way to make a elite skill completely useless as you are then able to stand in whirlpool and kill the elementalist while she’s completely helpless and skill-locked.

So, let’s correct that assessment a bit:

100B
- Does ~12-16k assuming all 8 attacks hit.
- Max targets = 3
- Frontal cone damage.
- Damage ends on movement from warrior including turning.
- Can be avoided with movement.
- If it downs someone futher actions are required to kill them.
- Is a number two skill on a weapon
- Has a eight second cooldown

Whirpool:
- Is a 360 degree pbAOE
- Hits all targets in range
- Hits exactly once per second.
- Caster is not rooted in place, but is vulnerable until skill ends or is cancelled.
- Endurance (dodge) or a movement or avoidance skill is required to avoid damage.
- See above for damage. Does not, in fact, outdamage 100B per second on equal terms. Check for vulnerability stacks, toughness differences, and other factors.
- If this downs someone do nothing and they are dead from the continuing damage.
- Is an elite skill, which means it should be on the same par as, you know, the actual elite skills (tome of courage, thieves guild, and the likes). If it’s equal to a single 2 skill on a weapon, something is wrong with the balance of the skill
- Has a 180 second cooldown. This is 22.5x that of 100B

Sorry all – i was having posting issues above. Wasnt a complete post and gave proxy errors.

Thank you for the testing is greatly appreciated. My thought on 100b were about correct and the situation i have with whirlpool was vastly more damage than that. 6k per tick. If you were reaching 3.4k on a crit using a dps spec and gear then they had a spec greater than that by ~60%+ and crit 9/10 hits. This combined with quickness would be something to behold.

There wasnt room with my downed skill spamming to get the extra 2x 6k hits in the one ss. They are on a 2nd.

I’ll send in my situation to the exploit team with the screenies.

Naurgalen.2374:

I have taken the ruins alone vs 3 people playing smart with whirlpool, and in more balanced conditions is FAR easy.

lol, no you havent.

Forums are bugging out for me, so I can’t quote for some reason.

The 3.4k crits were using almost identical setups as the warrior (30 points in fire and air, all traits damage, force sigil, berserker amulet). It’s possible to crit for the first five ticks of whirlpool by also popping arcane power, although that’s really stretching it on survivability – given elementalist base HP values, any elementalist built that way is probably dead the moment whirlpool ends.

I left out crit damage armor sigils in both builds, although it would push up the damage of 100B as well as whirlpool. Also, it’s possible that the elementalist is using traits that increase damage on certain conditions (one that pops to mind is the air trait that increases damage by 20% on opponents with less than 25% HP), in which case the whirlpool won’t deal damage quickly enough to prevent escape.

Also, Elementalists have no traits or skills that grant quickness on any scale, so the only way to get quickness is to use a sigil and hope that it procs. Major sigil is only 3s with a long icd, though, so…

(Also, someple please correct me if I’m wrong, but iirc you can still attack downed opponents underwater with any skill, not just whirlpool.)

GankSinatra.2653:

Naurgalen.2374:

I have taken the ruins alone vs 3 people playing smart with whirlpool, and in more balanced conditions is FAR easy.

lol, no you havent.

lol that you dont know how to play an ele its not my fault.

R E F L H E X.8413:

That’s how you kill sharks to cap a shrine.

I still feel bad for eles look at this :
Professions
General
• Implemented a fix to make Heartseeker, Lightning Leap, Flame Leap, and Monarch’s Leap hit more reliably.

Yet ride the lightning, completely ignored.

Ride the Lightning isn’t a leap unlike all of the mentioned skills above. Also the issues with RTL are far harder to fix as it suffers from a lot of tricky mechanics (like staying on the ground so getting stuck / long range so target prediction is often off / etc); whereas most of those leaps are medium/short range and the travel time is short.

Grevender.9235:

heartseeker really needed a boost sarcasm

No but if it’s bugged it should be fixed, no matter how powerful it is.