Guild Wars 2

Theory and practice. Quoting all the update notes and demanding statistics about statements proves what exactly?

talking about reason and rationality…

Sid.4609:

Theory and practice. Quoting all the update notes and demanding statistics about statements proves what exactly?

talking about reason and rationality…

That the staff wasn’t nerfed. In practice those changes might not make the weapon better, but they sure as hell didn’t make it worse.

EchenSketch.9142:

darkace.8925:

EchenSketch.9142:

Everyone just ignore the troll. He stopped providing any valid arguments, and is just arguing for the sake of it.

I provided valid arguments. I provided undeniable facts. You just chose to ignore them. And that’s why I won this debate. And because I won, you call me a troll? How mature of you.

Yes, past tense, did. Now you’re arguing over empirical vs anecdotal evidence. Your response to all of my points was questioning the wording of a title. Your “undeniable” facts had counterarguments and you ignored them.

The empirical vs anecdotal evidence is in response to all the people who… aren’t presenting reasonable cases. It isn’t the basis for darkace’s arguments, but it’s hard to come up with genuine counter-arguments when the statements made have no meaning or value.

And to you cheese. The staff ele has no place in sPvP because a necro or mesmer is more useful and better fills the role. A necro has long range AoE, can apply more pressure with his minions, and adds condi to fights with his wells.

Can the necro heal an ally? Provide lots of movement-control on many locations at once? Remove any of the conditions that the other team’s necro is applying? Sure, they have other kinds of support roles, but they’re just not the same – the necro and ele perform entirely different tasks within the match.

darkace.8925:

Sid.4609:

Theory and practice. Quoting all the update notes and demanding statistics about statements proves what exactly?

talking about reason and rationality…

That the staff wasn’t nerfed. In practice those changes might not make the weapon better, but they sure as hell didn’t make it worse.

The quoting of update notes was to show that yes, the staff has gained rather than lost in the update – because a lot of its skills now chain better, are easier to manage (moving while healing rain), or have additional, more powerful effects than before (gust’s multi-target).
The demanding statistics about statements is to show how baseless the claims being made are – if you can’t back up a claim that you’re making (such as that nobody (or barely anybody) plays ele), then that claim is not a valid one to make in an argument. If you said, for example, that staff eles are bad at causing blind – that would be valid. They have one skill, and it has such a long casting time that it’s near-worthless as a way to deliberately protect against a specific attack from an opponent.
(yes, eles have access to other blinds, but there’s only one on the staff weapon, and that was an easy-to-explain example that I could come up with quickly)

darkace.8925:

SilverUniverse.7103:

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

How is the ability to chain skills together quicker not a buff?

SilverUniverse.7103:

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

You conveniently forgot:
– Eruption cast time decreased
– Unsteady Ground duration increased
– Lava Font cast time decreased
– Geyser cast time decreased
– Frozen Ground cast time decreased

SilverUniverse.7103:

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.

And if Lightning Surge deals 100 billion damage and it’s dodged or blocked you effectively do nothing. I fail to see what bearing Gust doing no damage has to do with anything.

SilverUniverse.7103:

each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

Okay?

SilverUniverse.7103:

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

For the sake of argument let’s say you’re right. Let’s say the only buff to staff was the ability to move while casting Healing Rain. Were there any nerfs to staff? The answer is no. And if the answer is no, then the staff was buffed. And if the staff was buffed, then assertion that Anet only balances through nerfs is a false statement.

i still feel the update to staff was more of a ‘fix’ or at least “this is what we should have had in the first place”, since we should have been throwing down skills in a timely manner to begin with, as opposed to living with casting a single skill, brewing a cup of tea, then casting the next

and no, i did not ‘conveniently’ forget the rest because i wasn’t looking at the patch notes when i made my previous comment. so lets go over them.

- Eruption: cast time decreased by 0.6 seconds
– Unsteady Ground: increased by 1 second
– Lava Font: cast time decreased by 0.16 seconds
– Geyser: cast time decreased by 0.5 seconds
– Frozen Ground: cast time decreased by 0.16

so cast times as a whole by those skills are reduced by an entire 1.42 seconds. great. 1.42 seconds. i can cast an entire auto-attack with that with 0.02 seconds to spare.

Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.4 seconds.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fireball

the improvement to unsteady ground only affects the stragglers in WvW who weren’t at the frontline. considering nobody stands in the field for more than a second, this really doesn’t make much of a difference. increasing the cripple duration would, which would also be called a ‘buff’

my example for gust was a bad example. i can admit that

just because something wasn’t nerfed doesn’t mean it was buffed. if RTL didn’t have terrain issues any more it would be called a ‘fix’ or an ‘improvement’. a ‘buff’ would be an increase in range or damage, or have additional effects that were otherwise not previously there

and in no part did i mention “that Anet only balances through nerfs”. i don’t even know where or why you said that.

cheese.4739:

EchenSketch.9142:

darkace.8925:

EchenSketch.9142:

Everyone just ignore the troll. He stopped providing any valid arguments, and is just arguing for the sake of it.

I provided valid arguments. I provided undeniable facts. You just chose to ignore them. And that’s why I won this debate. And because I won, you call me a troll? How mature of you.

Yes, past tense, did. Now you’re arguing over empirical vs anecdotal evidence. Your response to all of my points was questioning the wording of a title. Your “undeniable” facts had counterarguments and you ignored them.

The empirical vs anecdotal evidence is in response to all the people who… aren’t presenting reasonable cases. It isn’t the basis for darkace’s arguments, but it’s hard to come up with genuine counter-arguments when the statements made have no meaning or value.

And to you cheese. The staff ele has no place in sPvP because a necro or mesmer is more useful and better fills the role. A necro has long range AoE, can apply more pressure with his minions, and adds condi to fights with his wells.

Can the necro heal an ally? Provide lots of movement-control on many locations at once? Remove any of the conditions that the other team’s necro is applying? Sure, they have other kinds of support roles, but they’re just not the same – the necro and ele perform entirely different tasks within the match.

A staff ele has potentially 4 heals. His ranged heals are healing rain and geyser. Geyser heals 800hp. Healing rain heals 2080 and cures 2 conditions if they are in the rain for the duration. The other heals are from changing attunements and dodging to allies during combat. This is where the problem sets in. An ele gets his survivability from movement, which staff has the least. For a staff ele to be the most effective healer, he has to be next to his teammates. And if he’s in the thick of the battle, he’s going to get caught in enemy AoE’s. If he’s playing ranged and AoE’ing enemies, the heals are wasted.

The necro takes advantage of both situations because he is effective at close ranged and long range because he does not rely on movement. Being able to place wells at his feet along with death shroud gives him his tanky ability. His minions also absorb damage for his allies.

In terms of DPS, staff ele’s mainly deal pure damage along with some fire condi. Where as necros stack bleeds, poisons, chills, etc. Condition damage is far superior in controlling fights.

Does the ele bring things to the table, yes. But in a 5v5 tPvP match with 8 classes, you need to prioritize. And a necro is simply worth more than a few heals and a couple condi. removes.

In the current state of tPvP, competitive teams that zerg in 5 lose. Because the other teams splits off and back cap. Therefore, people have to be able to 1v1 or 2v2, which is part of the reason why you see dueling servers. In a 1v1, Staff ele vs Necro? Good bye ele.

just to make things clear, i’m only speaking generally about the staff. i’m not saying if it’s good or bad in sPvP/tPvP/etc.

i’m not saying the staff was nerfed, but i’m not saying it was buffed

what i am saying is the following:
“why couldn’t we get this update a few months ago? shouldn’t we have already had this?”

SilverUniverse.7103:

and in no part did i mention “that Anet only balances through nerfs”. i don’t even know where or why you said that.

Aether McLoud said, “Also whenever some balance change arises they ALWAYS, ALWAYS take the easy way out of nerfing the thing into the ground instead of doing it the hard way and ACTUALLY BALANCE it,” which was the reason I mentioned the staff changes in the first place.

The empirical vs anecdotal evidence is in response to all the people who… aren’t presenting reasonable cases. It isn’t the basis for darkace’s arguments, but it’s hard to come up with genuine counter-arguments when the statements made have no meaning or value.

The demanding statistics about statements is to show how baseless the claims being made are – if you can’t back up a claim that you’re making (such as that nobody (or barely anybody) plays ele), then that claim is not a valid one to make in an argument.

Empirical evidence is a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation and i observed that there are less and less Eles to find since the mistform/rtl nerf. Its based on my personal experience. I said nothing about staff eles other then they are nonexistent in spvp. Is this empircal enough for you?

cheese.4739:

The facts are that eles have so many more weapon skills available to them, with a variety of uses – this is solid fact. They can use these skills in many combinations, due to having lots of them

I’d like to for once and for all dispel the argument that “eles haveso many more weapon skills available to them” as an argument for eles to otherwise be completely sucky:

Every class has a class mechanic. Every class can weapon-swap besides eles and engis, giving other classes 10 weapon skills + their class mechanic. Class Mechanics of all classes are represented by their unique F1-F4 skills on top of their weapon skills. Now how many and what unique skills do the professions have? Not counting transformations or weapon-swap-esque buttons, but counting the attacks you get through using them, how many unique skills do the professions get beyond the standard 10 weapon skills?

- Mesmer: 4 skills: aoe burst skill, aoe condition skill, aoe interrupt, an invulnerable skill not unlike mistform, shorter but you can still fight while it’s active.

- Guardian: 3 skills not unlike sigils with passives and actives – a condition skill, a heal skill, a block skill

- Warrior: 2 burst skills depending on weapons

- Ranger: 4 skills: An attack spell, a pet special skill depending on pet, a pet movement skill, and a pat swap spell that gives them another pet special skill.

- Necromancer: 5 skills from Deathshroud.

- Thieves: 1 skill that teleports them and gives them a new skill upon use

- Engineers: 4 toolbelt skills which can be multiplied by using kits.

So the average amount of unique F key skills on top of the 10 weapon skills is around 4 (I’ll leave engineers and thieves out as outliers, seeing as engis can have up to 25 weapon skills and 4 toolbelt skills, and thieves weapon skills are completely different than other professions weapons)

Eles have 20 unique skills so 6 more than the average. Now what do eles pay for these 6 additional skills:

- Huge cooldown increase on all 20 skills
- All 20 skills themselves are individually weaker than the ~14 skills of the other professions
- Lowest base survivability of all professions (health/armor)
- Worst active defenses out of all classes

How is that a fair tradeoff for 6 skills that are individually worse than other professions unique skills?

To add on to that, I’d like to restate the Ele’s have the lowest armor and health pool while having less escape skills than Thieves and Mesmers.

EchenSketch.9142:

A staff ele has potentially 4 heals. His ranged heals are healing rain and geyser. Geyser heals 800hp. Healing rain heals 2080 and cures 2 conditions if they are in the rain for the duration. The other heals are from changing attunements and dodging to allies during combat. This is where the problem sets in. An ele gets his survivability from movement, which staff has the least. For a staff ele to be the most effective healer, he has to be next to his teammates. And if he’s in the thick of the battle, he’s going to get caught in enemy AoE’s. If he’s playing ranged and AoE’ing enemies, the heals are wasted.

The necro takes advantage of both situations because he is effective at close ranged and long range because he does not rely on movement. Being able to place wells at his feet along with death shroud gives him his tanky ability. His minions also absorb damage for his allies.

In terms of DPS, staff ele’s mainly deal pure damage along with some fire condi. Where as necros stack bleeds, poisons, chills, etc. Condition damage is far superior in controlling fights.

Does the ele bring things to the table, yes. But in a 5v5 tPvP match with 8 classes, you need to prioritize. And a necro is simply worth more than a few heals and a couple condi. removes.

Mentioning minions on the necro (none of which are weapon skills, I don’t think?) while discounting the non-weapon-skills and traits of the ele for their heals or other points is a bit silly, so let’s go back to the healing ability but including other skills and traits.

You have your two ranged heals, which are water fields. You can combo one blast finisher (eruption) into those really very easily, and target this near yourself or an ally or both. So that’s one more heal on staff already.
With arcane wave, you have another blast finisher that’s incredibly easy to pull off – you can do this while casting another skill, if you so wish. Then there’s switching to earth attunement from water, rather than from – if you do that, you can use evasive arcana to land a blast finisher (so an AoE heal) anywhere in the water fields. Or just dodge in water for a different AoE heal with that trait specced. Staff eles certainly have more than four heals available, due to their ability to create many combos.

And re: minions, there’s the fun of the ele’s summons, which will provide some dps and support and about the same level of distraction as minions to any reasonable opponent – and they all have pretty useful skills for management of the battlefield, even though these skills aren’t player-controlled. The water one even gives you another heal! Smart use of these can really turn a battle, and though they’re not at all necessary to play a decent staff, they really do help in skirmishes and 1v1s to keep things fairer.
(On the subject of non-weapon-skills, there’re also, uh, the summoned weapons. Which give entirely different ways to deal with foes, and mean that you’re /not/ limited to just staff-range attacks)

If your ele is out of the thick of the battle, they presumably don’t need as many heals as whoever’s, say, fighting within a capture point – so why is their inability to target heals both at an ally and themself important? Staying out of the brawl and staying mobile means that you’re probably not taking nearly as much damage as whoever’s actually inside the capture point, so you should be focusing heals on them and not needing to worry about yourself.

sPvP is all about where you are and controlling an area, so while DPS is really important in many ways, managing the space around you and staying alive is much more necessary – being able to keep people out of a point for long enough to neutralise it means that the enemy stops gaining points from it. We have chill, (now very slightly more) cripple, immobilise, stun, knockback. All on our staff. All now AoE. That’s a lot of moving about that we can negate or delay, keeping capture points to ourselves or our teammates, and allowing us to kite about even more.

And as for the damage output itself: yes, it’s bad. I’ve said already, the staff is an AoE weapon. so while it has hella good damage output against a large group, it’s just not for killing single targets with. It is a control weapon, with some minor but non-negligible pressure damage and as much support as you can shake a staff at.

SilverUniverse.7103:

so cast times as a whole by those skills are reduced by an entire 1.42 seconds. great. 1.42 seconds. i can cast an entire auto-attack with that with 0.02 seconds to spare.

<<I removed a bunch of other relevant stuff from this quote, this is just to save space and keep the page readable rather than to ignore it.>>

There are a lot of very minor changes made to staff times, yes. Major changes… tend not to go well. I much prefer small tweaks to try and balance things than something larger that ends up needing nerfed again a month later because it’s found to be overpowered. A little over a second doesn’t sound like long at all, but with the pace at which fights take place, a single second is still an awful lot of time to gain. I can immobilise someone with shockwave and have a moment longer to get off my gust and push them away – that moment of improvement means that they have slightly less time to get off a condition removal and dodge my gust.
The same goes for a very slightly longer unsteady ground – that’s another second in which people can get crippled, which I’d argue is often better. Conditions can be removed, AoE fields on the ground can’t. WvW stragglers… eh. WvW plays absolutely nothing like sPvP, at least when you have zergs involved.

just because something wasn’t nerfed doesn’t mean it was buffed. if RTL didn’t have terrain issues any more it would be called a ‘fix’ or an ‘improvement’. a ‘buff’ would be an increase in range or damage, or have additional effects that were otherwise not previously there.

I can definitely agree with what you say about RTL, that making it more functional in all the situations that it doens’t work at you’d expect would be a fix. The same goes for how you define a buff… apart from that you apparently don’t see the value in a few moments more to chain attacks in. Improving cast/aftercast/recharge times really is buffing, in the same way as upping damage or other effects are. A buff is any change to a skill that makes it more useful than previously – while changes in functionality can sometimes be argued to be buffs, usually I wouldn’t consider that to be the case.

Yes, and while your team is stacking on water fields, the other team is pounding yours with AoE’s. Stacking in sPvP is not the same as stacking in WvW. While you’re taking the time to heal, the other team is still damaging you, and your melee classes aren’t dealing dps.The only blast finisher with Evasive Arcana is in the Earth Attunement. Standard rotations call for water attunement last, because you will have time to cast around 3 attunements worth of skills because you need to heal, so we can assume you’ll almost never pull off that combo.

Ele summons are near useless in teamfights. For your elite? sure, mind as well, but taking up one of your utilities with a minion that easily dies by being caught in AoE is meaningless. Ele’s need Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth, Arcane Shield, etc. Taking up another summon cuts their survivability even more. Summoned weapons are not viable because they take up your skill bar. Ele’s have to do their rotations to keep up pressure, they can’t stand there autoattacking like other classes. And again, it’s not worth taking up another utility.

Their inability to heal at a range is important because they aren’t being as useful to the team as they could be. Switching to water attunement heals and cures a condition. Something their team isn’t receiving at a distance. Dodging heals and cures a condition, another thing their team will miss.

An ele’s role in sPvP should not be to keep people off capture points, but to support the team w/ constant boons, etc. Leave control to those who excel at it, engies and guardians. The “chill, cripple, immobilize, stun, and knockback” have long cooldowns and won’t be sustained in a fight.

In a standard tPvP composition, you can expect:
Guardian
Mesmer
Engineer
Thief/Ranger

One slot left. Necro or Ele. The necro is simply more valuable.

Sid.4609:

Empirical evidence is a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation and i observed that there are less and less Eles to find since the mistform/rtl nerf. Its based on my personal experience. I said nothing about staff eles other then they are nonexistent in spvp. Is this empircal enough for you?

Oh, I replied to this and it mis-posted. Was wondering why I had a post of empty quote tags to Sid.

Anyway, aye, I’ll re-say what it was:

NO. No, no, no. That is not even slightly ‘empirical enough’ for me, or anyone else.

That is anecdotal evidence.

You are saying something that you claim to have observed. You have no proof of what you’re claiming at all. You don’t have a link to official Anet stats on what builds are (and have been) getting used where, you don’t have a log that you or anyone else has kept of every sPvP team they’ve been on (with data from both well before and after any changes to staff ele). You can’t back up the claim that you’re making at all, so it is entirely anecdotal evidence that you are providing.
Unless you can prove, in some way, that there are genuinely fewer people playing staff ele in sPvP than previously – and saying “I’ve not noticed as many” is not proof – then you’re stating unverifiable conjecture as fact and it can be safely ignored by anyone wanting to have a reasonable discussion.

The problem that we’re having with your posts is that you really don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’re throwing around ‘empirical evidence’ like it’s a new word that you want to show off. Like the assistant manager that keeps saying ‘synergy’ and kitten ing off their team because it’s not even slightly relevant to what the team is doing.

well i didnt throw it into the discussion, darkace did. I just find it hilarious that you and darkace, who obviously misinterpret empiricism, used it out of context to prove your point.

cheese.4739:

<<I removed a bunch of other relevant stuff from this quote, this is just to save space and keep the page readable rather than to ignore it.>>

ok, my standpoint was from WvW, not PvP. i should have stated that to begin with. i know how important a second can be in PvP since it literally is the difference between life and death. and i can definitely appreciate they didn’t have a knee-jerk reaction and make something OP just to be nerfed a moment later

but from my perspective, in WvW, everything feels pretty much the same apart from gust/meteor/rain. obviously this is because it’s not PvP, where i’d have to defend a point by myself at times or be the main target of a burst. i can’t comment much on PvP much since i don’t play that any more, but i do agree with you that it was an improvement that was needed

below is my interpretation of buff/fix/etc.

OP – too powerful for what it should be
buff – abilities have improved to the point where change is very noticeable and makes it more viable for use or allows greater variety
fix – improvement from before. noticeable, but does not change much to what is currently available and does not change gameplay greatly. skill works as how it was intended
<no change to skills>
fix – a skill was a bit too powerful for what it is or where it was, but still viable and works how it should
nerf/UP – skill or ability was reduced to the point where there is little to no reason to have, other than in extremely situational areas if at all

so in this interpretation, from your perspective in PvP, this update is a buff. the change is very noticeable and staff users can do more in the same amount of time. but in my perspective in WvW, not much has changed for me to notice apart from the 3 skills i mentioned earlier

aka everyone’s a winner we all get a free car woo

Sid.4609:

well i didnt throw it into the discussion, darkace did. I just find it hilarious that you and darkace, who obviously misinterpret empiricism, used it out of context to prove your point.

We didn’t use it at all to argue points – we only mentioned it because unverifiable statements were repeatedly being made and not backed up. It’s hard to have meaningful discussion when half of one side of the thread is effectively contributing nothing then claiming that they’re right because of it.

EtchenSketch: I read your post, and will probably reply properly at some point tonight, ta. I will admit to not having as much proper tPvP experience as I’d like, and I ought to find a decent PvP guild to get into it and not have to rely on random matchups for my fix.
On that note, most of what I’ve been saying is based on the lower-tier PvP that I’m still in, and that which I’ve garnered from watching other matches. A lot of map and position control stops being team-based when your team is randoms who keep three people capping an uncontested point while the other team ganks your lord and caps the rest of the map, or runs an orb, or otherwise takes advantage of poorly organised play.

SilverUniverse.7103:

cheese.4739:

&lt;&lt;I removed a bunch of other relevant stuff from this quote, this is just to save space and keep the page readable rather than to ignore it.&gt;&gt;

ok, my standpoint was from WvW, not PvP. i should have stated that to begin with. i know how important a second can be in PvP since it literally is the difference between life and death. and i can definitely appreciate they didn’t have a knee-jerk reaction and make something OP just to be nerfed a moment later

but from my perspective, in WvW, everything feels pretty much the same apart from gust/meteor/rain. obviously this is because it’s not PvP, where i’d have to defend a point by myself at times or be the main target of a burst. i can’t comment much on PvP much since i don’t play that any more, but i do agree with you that it was an improvement that was needed

below is my interpretation of buff/fix/etc.

*OP* - too powerful for what it should be
*buff* - abilities have improved to the point where change is very noticeable and makes it more viable for use or allows greater variety
*fix* - improvement from before. noticeable, but does not change much to what is currently available and does not change gameplay greatly. skill works as how it was intended
*&lt;no change to skills&gt;*
*fix* - a skill was a bit too powerful for what it is or where it was, but still viable and works how it should
*nerf/UP* - skill or ability was reduced to the point where there is little to no reason to have, other than in extremely situational areas if at all

so in this interpretation, from your perspective in PvP, this update is a buff. the change is very noticeable and staff users can do more in the same amount of time. but in my perspective in WvW, not much has changed for me to notice apart from the 3 skills i mentioned earlier

aka everyone’s a winner we all get a free car woo

Oh right, cool, sorry! I glossed over what you were saying about WvW because I was entirely in PvP mode I guess. My apologies.

I agree, again, with your list of ’how I think of changes made to skills’ - they all make sense. I haven’t played all that much WvW, and am sad that I have to either just use my PvE build there or constantly re-spec things for an appreciable amount of coin. Gotta say that staff still appeals to me more than other ele weapons for WvW, due to group sizes, though that says nothing as for how good it is compared to other professions’ builds.

EDIT: oh aye, though you missed one thing from your list: S-booning. It’s like three steps worse than nerfing and I find it hilarious for some reason.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter's_Boon_

I assume you refer to the royal ‘we’ since you cant speak for darkace who still didnt proved me wrong. i suggest you stop your wisecracking and present your stats and evidence to your statements and stop projecting your subjective view on others.

cheese.4739:

EDIT: oh aye, though you missed one thing from your list: S-booning. It’s like three steps worse than nerfing and I find it hilarious for some reason.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter's_Boon_

oh god, don’t get me started on that. i also didn’t mention “Kilroy Stonekin”, although i would love this to be an elite that all classes can use. that or Anet changes everyone’s profession to Commando for April fools every year

Sid.4609:

I assume you refer to the royal ‘we’ since you cant speak for darkace who still didnt proved me wrong. i suggest you stop your wisecracking and present your stats and evidence to your statements and stop projecting your subjective view on others.

Sid, you are the only person who insists on going on about this – I am going to stop replying now because you clearly don’t get it. There has been proper discussion in this thread, and you have been involved in very little of it. Please stop.

EDIT: dammit, I want a thread view so’s I can easily quote more than one person in one reply.
SilverUniverse: eeeee. There are numerous excellent references to gw1 already, the odd extra one here and there would be wonderful. I’m sad that I missed out on most of the gw1 april foolses >_<

cheshirefox.7026:

this thread has degenerated into one of the dumbest arguments of semantics
not to mention this is a place for discussion not argument

trying to breathe in some fresh air here “gasp” ok
lets try why does Anet love Elementalists

they obviously care about our profession so much that comparatively
we aren’t in a state of:

-low toughness
-low health stat
-easily countered mobility
-poor damage output
-trait line kerfuffle

-discuss

ok, i give it a shot from a pvp perspective(since thats all i play)

Tis true, you can have all of that just not all at once and there lies the problem. Lets compare it to a thief, wich have all at once and is in my opinion the real Jack of all trades(dmg, aoe, surviveability, moveability even support). His Stealth ability pulls him easily out of any trouble, his moveability is unrivaled and so is his dmg ouput. With his short bow he does probably the best aoe dmg of all classes (talking about splitterbomb). Yes, its possible to prevail against thiefs as ele but thats not the easiest task specially against backstab basilisk thiefs that suprise you. Not to mention the ability to remove boons with a sword. I for one fear this class more than any other.

Lets take a look at traits: In order to stay alive there isnt much of an alternative, so evasive arcane is a must have wich left you with 40 points for other lines. Yes its possible to play glassy builds and i played them a lot before the mistform nerf. Not anymore tho. Even in tournaments with a team to back you up. Once the foes know you provide a lot of dmg you turn into the main target. The reason is obvious (thats my experience anyway). Izzy mentioned this in his live stream and said they are working on alternatives to 0 0 10 30 30 meta.

So whats left to justify his existance? The Rtl nerf made him an mediocre roamer, Thiefs do a better Job. For tanks, people choose a guard. Whats left? A yes, supporter, how pathetic is that?

There is no place for mediocre Jacks of all Trades! The whole concept is bullbutter in my opinion and get worse from update to update.

I’m no expert on staff eles tho and i didnt had a chance to check on the updates. Nothing much has changed i presume cause during my 4 hours of play today i didnt met just one even tho i cant provide any stats or empirical evidence to Mr. Know-it-all Cheese here.

I’d like to hear from the community their responses to my previous points which have not been answered, but to sid. My Ele has 0 problems with thieves. Basilisk venom? Shock aura. Stunned? Air 345 to Fire 3425 to Earth 342. That should be enough to kill him / scare him off.

I don’t quite under stand what fox is saying. Is it sarcasm?
Our mobility was nerfed
We have the lowest hp pool and armor
Minimal damage
Trait Line kerfuffle – Anet’s split decisions on whether or not they want us to spec into 1 attunement or not.

Aether McLoud.1975:

cheese.4739:

Sid.4609:

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Um, yes it does?

No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.

This is true. Base damage numbers for Staff are the worst in the game. #1 skills for Staff Ele are maybe 6/10th of the average across the other professions, adjusted for skill speed and 45% of the damage for the most potent professions. Most #2-#5 skills aren’t any better. All tend to be below numbers seen in similar skills in other professions, some as low as 1/10th the damage numbers. There are also so effect skills that also have a damage component for other professions that do no damage for an Ele.

Ele also is heavily reliant on 20-30 points in arcane and 30 or more points split between Earth and Water to have any degree of survivability. So, Staff eles, (and Eles in general), don’t really have much room to boost that worst in game base damage numbers via power/precision.

Staff skills did get some nice playability buffs. With out the utility nerfs, they might have been slightly more capable. Unfortunately, the nerfs more than out-weigh the staff buffs and the other weapon sets did not get any compensation.

A 25% base damage boost for Staff skills would probably only be a first step towards finding proper balance. 33%, with some skills boosted by 50%, is probably much closer to where the staff should be.

BTW, Ele #1 skills have almost no finishers among them, vs. other professions which have almost universal access to finisher status on their #1 skills. This also impacts the anemic DPS potential of Staff Eles and the other weapon sets as well.

@EchenSketch
You made some points in your previous post. I forget to mention that cantrips are a must. Before the mistform nerf i had 2 arcane skills in my bar. That changed after the nerf.
As for summoned weapons, i tried them more than once and really looked into it but since an Ele allways have to watch health, i cant afford to waste a slot for that.

But let me ask you this, how many tpvp teams choose Eles for support? As you said this task isnt really neccessary and teams go rather for additional dmg. I forget to mention their CC ability thats the only argument that speaks for an Ele in tournaments.

As for your tactic against thieves: backdraft is on CD most of the time. My opening as DD is air 45 fire354 earth kitten if a thief joins in an ongoing fight, theres nothing much left to answer with.

EDIT: I really like to know why “earth 4 5” automaticly changed to kitten???

The new buff for staff ele’s is good, but nowhere near enough. Still too squishy for no more damage than anyone else. The thing that makes me sick is that it has taken nearly 3/4 of a year to get out the buffs we have gotten. The only character I’ve leveled to 80 is an ele. I’ve played him since opening week and have never felt powerful in this game. Anytime I every got close to feeling powerful a mesmer, guardian, warrior, necro, ranger, engineer, and/or certainly a thief cut that short for me in a hurry. Finally gave up on my favorite class and rolled a guardian just to get two shotted by the 50 million thieves in WvW. Still better than the one shot for my poor ele. Guess I’ll just have to shelve him and hope that some day he is more viable.

darkace.8925:

Because you’re on the elementalis sub-forum. Go to the warrior sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates warriors. Go to the ranger sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates rangers. Rinse and repeat for each of this game’s professions and you’ll realize things aren’t as bad as you’re thinking they are.

+100

Completely true. Myopic focus always hurts these type of games.

Stealth.9324:

Well, guess a full team of 5 Eles can win against a full team of 5 Necros. If you are Bunker Build, you can still 1v1 Necro, but if it 2 Necro, instead of lasting for a while, you melt instantly. That is my lesson from last SOAC tournament match when our team Eles vs Necro team.

Player on the ranger soac team here. I was wondering if you thought maybe fighting the wellomancers off point would have helped? Because they do this thing where they explode their enemies in four seconds on point.

Hi there. Fight off point to me as a D/D bunker is not really an option since I am melee and they are range. If I run out of point, they simply place well on point and sit in there while I am out and can not do anything much since they can also range attack me. That means I lose point even faster. Regardless my lesson is to run away if I see two Necro coming,LoL. I would rather lose point and live rather than lose point and die..Speaking from Bunker D/D Eles with 4 cantrips build, and Melandru runes. >_<

ANet doesn’t hate Elementalists. They buffed our scepter burst build dramatically with the last patch.

They don’t hate Staff Elementalists either. They buffed our ability to apply debuffs and our ability to provide support.

ANet hates kiting. Their entire game is built around kiting being really really hard. Haven’t you noticed that there’s a zillion ways to close range, and only a few lackluster ways to build range? Haven’t you noticed that most control effects are pretty easy to ignore or don’t last long? Yeah. ANet wants melee to happen, so if you don’t thrive in melee you’re gonna have a bad time.

Staff is a low-damage, high utility weapon that needs range to do well. It also has no way of keeping range other than a few of easy-to-dodge control effects. If you’re using Staff and your target isn’t busy fighting someone else you’re probably going to lose.

Notice that most of the recent staff buffs didn’t touch our damage much. They increased how easy it is for us to apply control effects and support. That’s a hint.

So, the short guide to playing a Staff Ele is still the same.

1) Find Other People Fighting Each Other
2) Apply Pressure AoE and Support
3) Run Away

If that playstyle isn’t your cup of tea then you need to find a different weapon. Scepter/Dagger is amazing right now, and Scepter/Focus is getting there.

Edit: And as to the question of whether the Support/Control specialist is a viable role, that’s not about Ele. That’s about core game design, and effects all classes. My opinion is that Control/Support is largely irrelevant when compared to how much damage or inherent survival you could have brought if you hadn’t bothered with that other stuff. When Control effects work (i.e. your opponents run out of cleanses) they’re awesome. But the rest of the time they seem like a waste of points. I don’t tPvP, so maybe it’s different there.

LordEnki.9283:

The only character I’ve leveled to 80 is an ele. I’ve played him since opening week and have never felt powerful in this game. Anytime I every got close to feeling powerful a mesmer, guardian, warrior, necro, ranger, engineer, and/or certainly a thief cut that short for me in a hurry. Finally gave up on my favorite class and rolled a guardian just to get two shotted by the 50 million thieves in WvW. Still better than the one shot for my poor ele. Guess I’ll just have to shelve him and hope that some day he is more viable.

Given your grim experience with class balance, have you ever considered that you’re the problem? After feeling inferior to every class out there, then rerolling and still crying like a wimp, maybe it’s you. Have you ever considered that?
In MMOs rogues are like a mechanism of natural selection. Players with the reflexes of a dairy cow and clicking all skills are easy prey, but no thief can touch a good player under fair circumstances. Mistform, protection, knockdowns, stun and chill aura – what else do you need? It’s almost impossible for a properly built S/D, D/D or even staff ele to lose against a thief.

I’ve been playing my ele since Beta and we all have to admit that the ele has been at the top of the food chain for many months. The steady nerfs for the D/D ele brought him back into line. Today the elementalist isn’t top tier anymore, but still viable in all aspects of the game.

Yeah, pls tell us more about your superiority over others and natural selection. With your attitude you would get a top notch position back in Germany of 1933.

PinCushion.7390:

ANet doesn’t hate Elementalists. They buffed our scepter burst build dramatically with the last patch.

They don’t hate Staff Elementalists either. They buffed our ability to apply debuffs and our ability to provide support.

ANet hates kiting. Their entire game is built around kiting being really really hard. Haven’t you noticed that there’s a zillion ways to close range, and only a few lackluster ways to build range? Haven’t you noticed that most control effects are pretty easy to ignore or don’t last long? Yeah. ANet wants melee to happen, so if you don’t thrive in melee you’re gonna have a bad time.

Staff is a low-damage, high utility weapon that needs range to do well. It also has no way of keeping range other than a few of easy-to-dodge control effects. If you’re using Staff and your target isn’t busy fighting someone else you’re probably going to lose.

Notice that most of the recent staff buffs didn’t touch our damage much. They increased how easy it is for us to apply control effects and support. That’s a hint.

So, the short guide to playing a Staff Ele is still the same.

1) Find Other People Fighting Each Other
2) Apply Pressure AoE and Support
3) Run Away

If that playstyle isn’t your cup of tea then you need to find a different weapon. Scepter/Dagger is amazing right now, and Scepter/Focus is getting there.

Edit: And as to the question of whether the Support/Control specialist is a viable role, that’s not about Ele. That’s about core game design, and effects all classes. My opinion is that Control/Support is largely irrelevant when compared to how much damage or inherent survival you could have brought if you hadn’t bothered with that other stuff. When Control effects work (i.e. your opponents run out of cleanses) they’re awesome. But the rest of the time they seem like a waste of points. I don’t tPvP, so maybe it’s different there.

For that last time, it’s a title, of course Anet doesn’t hate elementalists.
The title was meant to grab one’s attention, a bit too much? Maybe.

If Anet wanted melee to happen, why did they nerf the Elementalist’s movement/survivability? Once again (are you guys even reading?) RTL, nerfed. Lightning Flash, nerfed. Utilites to keep us in melee range, nerfed (Cleansing Flame, Mist Form). Yes, scepter/dagger was buffed, and I currently run it right now, but without the ability to Ether Renewal + Mist Form, Necros condi spam and burn through me. Sure I can water attune, dodge, and pop my 2 heals, but during those cast times, while I am removing conditions, I’m taking pure damage and it’s counter intuitive. I might use cleansing flame, but a standard ele s/d build uses Arcane Wave, Lightning Flash, and Arcane Shield. If I take out AW it cuts out dps, and a blast finisher, and I’m sure you know Ele’s dont exactly have the highest dps.

I do agree with you about control and support. Being active in Gw2 is superior to being reactive. Why support your team with cleanses and heals when you can support them with conditions and pressure from minions? If Staff ele is going to be a viable tPvP build. We need either more dps, more control, or more heals.

FirstBlood.7359:

In MMOs rogues are like a mechanism of natural selection. Players with the reflexes of a dairy cow and clicking all skills are easy prey, but no thief can touch a good player under fair circumstances. Mistform, protection, knockdowns, stun and chill aura – what else do you need? It’s almost impossible for a properly built S/D, D/D or even staff ele to lose against a thief.

Lol, staff elementalist beating thief 1v1. What game are you playing?

Jaytee.9513:

Lol, staff elementalist beating thief 1v1. What game are you playing?

It’s called GuildWars 2. Some classes in this game such as the elementalist have access to many area of effect spells that can be casted without targeting an individual opponent. Not to mention their ability to make themselves invulnerable for a short time, break out of stuns easily, heavily reduce incoming damage for a short amount of time and control their opponents movement by stuns and snares.
The PvP in GuildWars2 is not rocketscience. Is it really so difficult to see why the staff ele is a good choice against a Thief? Just to remind you: Thief is a class that relies heavily on burst and avoiding damage by movement and stealth. Maybe you can figure it out on your own.

Sid.4609:

Yeah, pls tell us more about your superiority over others and natural selection. With your attitude you would get a top notch position back in Germany of 1933.

Oh, we’re on page 2 and it’s already time for Godwin’s Law. There’s surely a helpful wikipedia article on natural selection.
After reading it you may ask yourself: Can virtual characters die out? No, but the players behind them can quit the game. Look at all those threads about thieves that are full of frustrated bad players threatening to leave PvP. Now you might understand the funny metaphor for rogues as means of natural selection.

Well, I gotta say I’m really loving the S/D Fresh Air Ele in spvp. The burst is insane, and killing thieves in a fraction of a second is a dream come true (sweet, sweet revenge >D)

Lightning Flash makes my openings very strong and unpredictable, and if someone can survive the initial burst it’s all OK, I can also survive just fine with well timed dodges, blinds and protection while I kill them quickly with the following bursts. I always keep RTL in reserve so I can run if two enemy team mates decide to join the fight – that coupled with Signet of Air and FGS gives me enough mobility (plus the crazy FGS burst with signet of earth!).

With that said, conditions are the weakness of this new Fresh Air build. If it didn’t have this weakness it would probably be too OP tho… but yeah, please spend some time with the new FA build before complaining too much. Soon we will see thousands of other professions coming to cry about it, you’ll see.

FirstBlood.7359:

Mistform, protection, knockdowns, stun and chill aura – what else do you need? It’s almost impossible for a properly built S/D, D/D or even staff ele to lose against a thief.

You need to give me number to your thief friends. I have to see that. Yeah, but really – I have all 8 class maxed (and yeah – I’m from early beta as well), mainly playing Ele and Guardian, complementing it with a little thievery and I need to say kitten to You sir. Cuddly kitten! Can’t imagine that I can win 1vs1 against thief on my Ele (while on staff) in WvW, or lose with some staff Ele, while I’m ripping him out. Gush – today I won 1vs3 (and fourth guy killed me). Guess against who I was fighting? 1 staff ele, 1 s/d ele and ranger on longbow (switched on sword / torch I think, right before down state – didn’t do him any good). The guy who killed me was… thief (TaDaaam)!
Either you meet highly incompetent thieves, or Your GW2 is some kind of different GW2…

Aether McLoud.1975:

Yeah PVP at the moment is made up of necros and their minions. It’s insane.

So many minons. Me and a friend were in hot join 5v5. There were so many npc’s it wasn’t funny, was hard to select a target. Mesmer clones, minon masters, rangers pet’s and thieves guilds / thieve npcs everywhere. Those dam zergers.

Perhaps Anet wants this game to be NvN. NPC vs NPC lol.

Chopps.5047:

Stealth.9324:

Well, guess a full team of 5 Eles can win against a full team of 5 Necros. If you are Bunker Build, you can still 1v1 Necro, but if it 2 Necro, instead of lasting for a while, you melt instantly. That is my lesson from last SOAC tournament match when our team Eles vs Necro team.

Player on the ranger soac team here. I was wondering if you thought maybe fighting the wellomancers off point would have helped? Because they do this thing where they explode their enemies in four seconds on point.

I was one of the elementalists who was in that tournament, and would say that it might have helped, but we would have given up the point to them and they have the range superiority over us (well any one of us who was running D/D).

Necro’s hurt like a kitten now, and the more there are the more it hurts. More than 1 and unless you are fully specced to remove conditions you wont last more than a few seconds under that condi pressure even if you are off point. Even specced right I had a hard time with those condis and we only won because the WHOLE team specced points into water to get the AOE cleanse and me and another went full bunker with clerics to help with the healing.

It was me, Kaane Moka, one of the bunker. If you happened to watch our replay, we lost our first match because no one was fully dedicated Water tree. But since we changed it for the second match, we stood a chance against them and as the result, we won.

Stealth.9324:

It was me, Kaane Moka, one of the bunker. If you happened to watch our replay, we lost our first match because no one was fully dedicated Water tree. But since we changed it for the second match, we stood a chance against them and as the result, we won.

Lol Stealth I was on your team!

First round we all went S/D burst builds with me being the only one with 30 points in water, the other 2 had 10 points in water, and we had Cmc Cmc go full Air/Fire for fun.

It was once we switched me and Kaane to a full 0/0/20/20/30 with clerics amulet that we stood a chance for more cleansing /heals and stability.

And as to the original topic name, I don’t think that Anet “hates” elementalists. More that they have no idea what to do with the class. There is an inherent problem when the class can do everything well and can lead to a class being OP if not balanced properly. If we were to go by the original plan that Anet had that each class can do everything so long as they spec for it, then this should not be an issue. But with the direction that they are taking that they want each class to have a “specialty” it leaves the Elementalist nothing to specialize in due to the nature of its weapons. It does have access to everything depending on its sets (not talking range, talking about what the abilities can do) and leaves it with nowhere to really go as far as a specialty except that it can do it all.

This means that it will be hard for them to balance, because they have to decide does this mean they want the class to be mid tier, second place or last in the specific area. This also sadly means that the class will be mediocre in everything and never really shine.

This dev team needs someone who understands the class and what it should do, or at least a vision for the class as right now its floundering due to them trying to make other classes better at the elementalists expense.

I know Raif, the post was not dedicated for you. I went 0/0/10/30/30 build with cleric amulet and thanks to your Rock Solid that we are not being CC too much.

PinCushion.7390:

ANet doesn’t hate Elementalists. They buffed our scepter burst build dramatically with the last patch.

They don’t hate Staff Elementalists either. They buffed our ability to apply debuffs and our ability to provide support.

ANet hates kiting. Their entire game is built around kiting being really really hard. Haven’t you noticed that there’s a zillion ways to close range, and only a few lackluster ways to build range? Haven’t you noticed that most control effects are pretty easy to ignore or don’t last long? Yeah. ANet wants melee to happen, so if you don’t thrive in melee you’re gonna have a bad time.

Staff is a low-damage, high utility weapon that needs range to do well. It also has no way of keeping range other than a few of easy-to-dodge control effects. If you’re using Staff and your target isn’t busy fighting someone else you’re probably going to lose.

Notice that most of the recent staff buffs didn’t touch our damage much. They increased how easy it is for us to apply control effects and support. That’s a hint.

So, the short guide to playing a Staff Ele is still the same.

1) Find Other People Fighting Each Other
2) Apply Pressure AoE and Support
3) Run Away

If that playstyle isn’t your cup of tea then you need to find a different weapon. Scepter/Dagger is amazing right now, and Scepter/Focus is getting there.

Edit: And as to the question of whether the Support/Control specialist is a viable role, that’s not about Ele. That’s about core game design, and effects all classes. My opinion is that Control/Support is largely irrelevant when compared to how much damage or inherent survival you could have brought if you hadn’t bothered with that other stuff. When Control effects work (i.e. your opponents run out of cleanses) they’re awesome. But the rest of the time they seem like a waste of points. I don’t tPvP, so maybe it’s different there.

Well, part of the problem is that all the Elementalist’s handicaps only have any justification if the profession can kite and range makes any real difference beyond the opening 2 seconds of an encounter. Lowest base damage, lowest HP, lowest Armor, mandatory 50 SP locked into two trait lines just to be playable. Even the many hoops we have to jump through to be mediocre. might maybe, possibly make sense if this was a game were the “mage” class/profession could actually kite opponents.

I’m glad we can’t just safely kite people until they are dead. That’s about as fair/fun as a profession with perma-stealth or wack-a-mole clones or 3 second burst kills. However, handicapping the profession as if kiting was viable or ranged attacks offered a real advantage that could swing a battle in our favor is just absurd.

The frame work of the profession could be great, fun and balanced. It wasn’t quite there at launch, but instead of making the logical improvements and tuning to the profession, all they’ve done since launch has been to make the profession stray further and further from it’s potential.

I think it’s becoming more and more clear ANet has no idea what they are doing with this profession. Before anyone steps in and says “well, you should check out ‘X’ profession”, let me say that I don’t think ANet has much idea what they are doing with most of the professions in the game. It’s not “who has it worst”, it should be “why are all these professions much worse than they should be”.