Guild Wars 2

Think about Elementalist dagger autoattacks in air attunement. They’re straight damage melee attacks. Now compare them to warrior, ranger, or guardian autoattacks with weapons like sword, axe, and greatsword. Even though elementalists have both the lowest armor and lowest healthpool in the game, forcing us to take a greater risk in order to attack in melee, our damage doesn’t even come close to what warrior, ranger, and guardian can do.

Why doesn’t Anet buff the damage we do at melee range? Our melee attacks are being treated like they’re ranged.

And yes, I know we’re supposed to be using all our skills and swapping around and stuff, but the only way we can come close to the dps of other classes is with lightning hammer, and that’s a utility skill. If it was a kit, like engineers have, I wouldn’t mind so much.

It’s not just dagger auto attacks. I recently went full zerker on my ele finally and I realized the damage still isn’t that great compared to the other classes I play. Even though eles have good utility and some ok survivability skills, I still feel like I’m giving up a lot for the little damage I do comparatively.

I’m talking about dagger attacks specifically because the other weapons are ranged and should be slightly weaker, so it’s more difficult to compare. But yeah, thief shortbow autoattacks are wayyyy stronger than ele scepter or staff attacks, though scepter is so bursty and reliant on skills for it’s burst that it’s more difficult to compare.

Elementalists shouldn’t rely on autoattacks for damage. Lightning Whip is also instant cast, cleave and generally has 2 attacks in the time frame of 1.

RyanThomas.4182:

I’m talking about dagger attacks specifically because the other weapons are ranged and should be slightly weaker, so it’s more difficult to compare.

This same logic would apply to ele dagger skills. Every dagger skill for ele has over twice the range of normal melee weapons, and I think that’s a fair trade for damage. I’d say dagger auto-attacks are about right ( though I do wish vapor blade traveled faster) except for impale. Impale deals too little direct damage and is too slow to stack bleeds effectively. Oh yeah, it doesn’t hit multiple foes either. It should really apply multiple stacks of bleeding or fire faster.

lightning whip can also hit 5 targets, thief cant.

Most of our autoattacks are pretty bad.

RyanThomas.4182:

And yes, I know we’re supposed to be using all our skills and swapping around and stuff,

You hit the nail on the head right here. With 20 weapon abilities, I hardly ever autoattack. Unless I’m in Air waiting for a CD in another attunement.

From what I can tell, we have 20 skills, so our skills are half the power / support / control of other classes, unless they have a big startup or hard to hit mechanic. Such as Dragons Tooth and Churning Earth, they have decent damage but are harder to land in compensation.

It’s not just dagger auto attacks, but any auto attack.
It’s not just auto attacks, but any weapon skill.
It’s not just weapon skills, but any skill.

I feel that ele skills generally deal too less damage or have too high cooldowns for their effect. But this can be fixed with some number tweaks.

I know, that especially the auto-attacks have low damage to promote attunement switching. The problem is, that that undermines the goal of switching. Instead of changing roles and adapting to the combat situation, you are forced to switch to fill the damage role decently. Attunements – the most interesting class mechanic imo – have degenerated to a tool that artificially bloats the standard damage rotation: other classes equivalent of 11123 is F1-23 F2-23 F3-23 F4-23 for the ele. It doesn’t add any depth, just APM.

I see 2 possible fixes for this:

1) Make each attunement bar comparable to other classes’ weapon skills in terms of damage (auto attacks) and cooldowns (skills 2-5). Just a reminder: without investment the Arcane line, our attunement cooldowns are about the double of the weapon switch cooldowns. Having double skills for double cooldown seems fair. Investing into the primary attribute to do something better than other classes seems also fair. Being able to ignore the last trait line for raw damage is also something any other class can do. Edit: Oops, somehow I thought that normal weapon swap is 7 seconds)

2) Attunement switching has no cooldowns besides a global cooldown of 1 second, comparable to the engi kits. Switching is still part of a damage rotation, but it’s possible to use the emergency skills when you need them and not when you are coincidentally in the right attunement as part of your rotation. That way, the skills can stay the same as they are now, but it would require a class overhaul, as on-switch traits and the Arcana bonus need to be replaced by something new.

I think #2 is more work for devs, but it’s a safer option than #1. #1 is in principle a flat buff to weapon sets and it’s hard to find the sweet spot between sub-par damage and beta-facerolling.

Edit: Can’t believe what my short ranting-post has become…

1. Attunement Swap is 15 seconds untraited. Weapon swap is 10 seconds untraited. We have 2 attunements to swap to besides the one that is on CD and the current one we are in right after a swap. Other classes are stuck with their weapons for another 10 seconds after swapping. With 30 Arcana, our attunement swap is down to under 10 seconds. Warriors are the only other class that can trait for a faster swap (to 5 seconds). With 30 in Air and Fresh Air, our Air attunement is now down to 5 seconds like a warrior with 15 in Discipline. Not only that but with 10 in Arcana and with the Elemental Attunement trait, swapping attunements grants us a few seconds of Fury and a boon for our entire party based on attunement. No other class (on weapon swap) gives a party-wide boon on swap. And there are a lot of things to take into account that would be lost or nerfed if swap had a lower CD.

2. Okay…this exists for the same reason as global CD’s do. It’s compensation for people lower end computers and/or on weaker connections. If the global CD didn’t exist, computer and internet speed would be much more important than they are right now. Because no matter how you spec, swapping to an attunement always does something. (unless you put 4 points into every tree and stop there)

1) Okay, that I was mistaken with the normal weapon swap cooldown. That Arcane Fury and Elemental Attunement are unique effects are justified because they are traits. (I don’t get the complaint about Arcane Fury anyway, because Ranger’s Furious Grip gives a higher fury uptime than Arcane Fury). Also, fix #1 promotes fewer switches, so on-switch traits would be overall weaker.

2) Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but fix #2 means that attunements have no cooldown besides a global cooldown of 1 second (comparable to 3 kit engineers). Not to mention fix #1 and fix #2 are mutually exclusive.

And that’s the problem with fix #1. If anything Anet wants us to switch more…not less. And I agree with them. I do know there are some incredibly stupid traits that give you certain boosts for being in them longer. (though…arguably…the Air movement one is fine since that could be used for moving around the world and adept air traits are kinda meh to begin with.)

Unlike every other MMO, the Elementalists of GW2 are masters of ALL elements, not just one. This always confused me with the “mages” of other games boasting to be master of all elements but you would only ever use one. Look at Fresh Air…yes…you specialize in Air magic to get it…but it promotes frequent swapping of attunements more than any other trait.

I think they need to add more traits like this to benefit from attunement swapping and not hinder us for wanting to do so.

I don’t have a problem with the switches itself (i probably would run 20+ arcane even with the damage/cooldown buffs), but for the reason why we currently switch: as a part of the damage rotation. I’m just saying that better auto-attacks would lead to more tactical switches, because it would no longer required to switch for damage alone.

If lightning whip did more damage than other abilities on a single target…why would anyone use anything else? Players will always take the easiest path to the greatest damage. Look at Guardian Sword. BOOOOOOORING. I quit playing Guardian because it felt so dull. That’s why I love elementalist…I have to plan out my attacks or I could end up dying.

I think they should do this:

1. Switch lightning whip and Dragon’s Claw:
a. Fire is supposed to be AOE damage, all they need to do is modify the color and it is a fire whip doing decent aoe damage. JUST RIGHT

b . Air is supposed to be single-target damage, it could have an animation like a slimmer dragon’s claw that is colored purple/white for lightning. Call if something like “lightning blast”. Raise the damage a lot, decrease the cone angle/range a little bit, and have the skill slightly track with a target. Alteneratively, they could animate with just a quick lunge outward with a lightning strike at the end toward an enemy in about 400 range. It should be better to stay in lightning and AA for single-target damage than swap to fire over the long-haul.

2. Decrease the cast-time on impale to 0.5s. Add another bleed stack, decrease the bleed duration to 4s. You should be able to stack up a lot of bleeds here.

3. Add a chance to proc a short chill on your opponent with vapor blade (10%).

Now that each attunement is more viable in its role, you can truly have versatility. You don’t have to spam like crazy, but switch for the proper situation. The down-side is that switching out of one role, locks you out of it for a while.

Fade.1743:

If lightning whip did more damage than other abilities on a single target…why would anyone use anything else?

When something else is needed. Below 50% health? Switch to water to sacrifice damage for healing. You saw a thief stealthing? Switch to earth for protection to mitigate some damage from their initial burst. You need AoE instead of single target damage? Switch to fire. That’s what I mean by tactical switches. Rotation switches are just auto-attacking with more button presses….

Our attacks hit less because we have 20 skills to pick from, we are supposed to attunement swap like crazy to make up for this.

Our defense and hp pool are the lowest, because we have water attunement to heal ourselves.

Too bad that in order to make our class mechanics viable we are FORCED to spend half our skill traits.

Having a bigger amount of skills means nothing if you can’t use them when you need them, and as normal attacking someone feels like a waste of time (unless in air), you end up spamming whatever is off cooldown.

When i saw videos about this class i saw that each attunement had it role, i would switch into it depending on who i was facing/what i needed to do. I didnt know that Anet would want me to buttonsmash everything and make pretty much the same rotation regardless of who im facing.

Niebelheim.6041:

Our attacks hit less because we have 20 skills to pick from, we are supposed to attunement swap like crazy to make up for this.

See, the issue with the line of reasoning used to make our auto-attacks worthless is that it COMPLETELY destroys our flexibility. You can’t use the right attunement at the right time, because you have to constantly cycle through them all to output damage that is even on par with others. This means that it is not ready when you need it. Sitting in the proper attunement that best fits the situation should be optimal over going to a sub-optimal attunement to use the 2-5 skills that shouldn’t apply to the situation.

In other words, Fire #1 should have better aoe dps than the other attunements, and you should only switch to earth if you need some control/defense or air if you need to try and burst a single-target. Instead, as soon as fire 2-5 are used (sometimes you save fire 5), it is mandatory to switch or else you kitten your effectiveness as your dps completely falls off.

Having a bigger amount of skills means nothing if you can’t use them when you need them, and as normal attacking someone feels like a waste of time (unless in air), you end up spamming whatever is off cooldown.

Niebelheim.6041:

When i saw videos about this class i saw that each attunement had it role, i would switch into it depending on who i was facing/what i needed to do. I didnt know that Anet would want me to buttonsmash everything and make pretty much the same rotation regardless of who im facing.

BlackBeard.2873:

Niebelheim.6041:

Our attacks hit less because we have 20 skills to pick from, we are supposed to attunement swap like crazy to make up for this.

See, the issue with the line of reasoning used to make our auto-attacks worthless is that it COMPLETELY destroys our flexibility. You can’t use the right attunement at the right time, because you have to constantly cycle through them all to output damage that is even on par with others. This means that it is not ready when you need it. Sitting in the proper attunement that best fits the situation should be optimal over going to a sub-optimal attunement to use the 2-5 skills that shouldn’t apply to the situation.

In other words, Fire #1 should have better aoe dps than the other attunements, and you should only switch to earth if you need some control/defense or air if you need to try and burst a single-target. Instead, as soon as fire 2-5 are used (sometimes you save fire 5), it is mandatory to switch or else you kitten your effectiveness as your dps completely falls off.

Having a bigger amount of skills means nothing if you can’t use them when you need them, and as normal attacking someone feels like a waste of time (unless in air), you end up spamming whatever is off cooldown.

Niebelheim.6041:

When i saw videos about this class i saw that each attunement had it role, i would switch into it depending on who i was facing/what i needed to do. I didnt know that Anet would want me to buttonsmash everything and make pretty much the same rotation regardless of who im facing.

I somewhat agree with this. Every other class can choose 2 weapons for any situation. A warrior, for example, can bring to the table a Sword and Shield and a Bow as the secondary weapon. Now if I apply pressure and his bow is out, he can choose to change to sword & board a put up his shield, conversely if I run away he can swap to bow to apply ranged pressure.

The elementalist is funnelled into 1 weapon set (by design) with some other options open such as conjure weapons. In exchange, the elementalist has access to 20 skills divided into 4 attunements. The problem is everyone else has 10 skills, so they have to balance the Elementalist’s potential power. They have done this in 3 ways though, 1 by putting a huge default cooldown on attunment swap, 2 by putting large cooldowns on the skills themselves and 3 by toning down the effectiveness of the skills themselves (less damage mainly).

The 3 things that bring our class into line force many elementalist players to spec for builds that move away from the traditional “I have the right tools at any 1 time” methodology. That move sees many builds trying to overcome the 15 second cooldown on attunement swap with 30 points onto arcane. They over come the damage short comings by the “dance of the Elementalist”, rapidly swapping attunements once all skills there are blown. And the long cool downs on the skills themselves can’t be over come, forcing the player to choose wether to use it this “dance” or two dances later.

My personal opinion is that each point down the Arcane tree should work the elementalist towards becoming a Major Master of all the elements. Each point into a specific tree works the Elementalist towards being a Grand Master of that element.

So the elementalist starts as a Minor of each tree, each point spent in the specific element tree builds the elementalists powers with that tree, decreasing the cool down of that tree (or opening up traits like fresh air as a given, not a choice). Each point spent in arcane builds the elementalists power over all trees and ability to enter each attunement faster.

But that’s enough dreaming for one day

According to test, DnD Autocast A1 hits the most over a period of 10seconds. It also has a cone effect of about 90 degrees.

A1 is good with SoR

The whole point of being an Ele is to cycle through your attunements surely? This is the class’s primary attribute and it needs to be utilised to get the maximum benefit.
On DD it’s standard to close on Air, follow up on Fire, shift to Water to negate damage received and then finish off anything left standing in Earth with bleeds. With boons, esp Fury popping like billio, the DPS is through the roof with a crit build. My Ele speed kills as fast as my Warrior easily.
Anyone who can’t/won’t consider attunements whilst attacking needs to roll a different class. Sticking to auto attack is pointless.

WarpSpasm.9721:

The whole point of being an Ele is to cycle through your attunements surely? This is the class’s primary attribute and it needs to be utilised to get the maximum benefit.
On DD it’s standard to close on Air, follow up on Fire, shift to Water to negate damage received and then finish off anything left standing in Earth with bleeds. With boons, esp Fury popping like billio, the DPS is through the roof with a crit build. My Ele speed kills as fast as my Warrior easily.
Anyone who can’t/won’t consider attunements whilst attacking needs to roll a different class. Sticking to auto attack is pointless.

Whole point of an elementalist is to use your attunements based on current situation, not to spam every single skill and swap attunements and then complain about 30 arcana being necessary.

Your elementalist can’s speedkill (assuming you’re talking about pve) anything as fast as warrior if you constantly swap attunements.

^ Very well put, haviz. Simply spamming all your skills to try and get some decent dps, you are killing your versatility. It seems that is exactly what the current class design requires. Thus, we get very few of the benefits of our supposed “versatility” while being stuck with all of the draw-backs.

Better auto-attacks that are appropriate for each situation would help to remedy this situation.

pmnt.4067:

I know, that especially the auto-attacks have low damage to promote attunement switching. The problem is, that that undermines the goal of switching. Instead of changing roles and adapting to the combat situation, you are forced to switch to fill the damage role decently. Attunements – the most interesting class mechanic imo – have degenerated to a tool that artificially bloats the standard damage rotation: other classes equivalent of 11123 is F1-23 F2-23 F3-23 F4-23 for the ele. It doesn’t add any depth, just APM.

You hit the nail on the head there. Attunement swapping is just for damage and not for adapting to the situation, which also leaves eles not as versatile as they should be.

Anyway, great post, you wrote down exactly what I think before I even thought it.

WarpSpasm.9721:

The whole point of being an Ele is to cycle through your attunements surely? This is the class’s primary attribute and it needs to be utilised to get the maximum benefit.
On DD it’s standard to close on Air, follow up on Fire, shift to Water to negate damage received and then finish off anything left standing in Earth with bleeds. With boons, esp Fury popping like billio, the DPS is through the roof with a crit build. My Ele speed kills as fast as my Warrior easily.
Anyone who can’t/won’t consider attunements whilst attacking needs to roll a different class. Sticking to auto attack is pointless.

If this is indeed the whole point of an ele, then why do we need such a high trait investment for it to be viable? An ele with no points in arcana is not versatile.

Your rotation being “standard” shows exactly how this broken mechanics force elementalists to spam the same rotation regardless of whats going on, in a desperate effort to keep up with your opponents damage (and often even a perfectly executed rotation isnt enough).

Also i assume you are mostly a pvm player? the rotation you mentioned (“finish off anything left standing in Earth”) would only work vs low hp mobs… vs anything else you would find your opponent still alive, and then you start struggling as your main CC skills are in cooldown for another 30 seconds, your normal attacks wont cut it, and the attunement you want is not available. And this is when things change from using what you need to spamming what you have. So much for versatile playing.

Maybe if there were better auto attacks, but longer lockouts on switching? Not recharges specifically, but instead of being able to swap attunements every 3 seconds, once you go into water you’re stuck there for 5-6 seconds instead of hitting frost armor, cleansing wave and moving on. The idea is to make people commit to entering an attunement, instead of just committing to leaving it.

Softspoken.2410:

Maybe if there were better auto attacks, but longer lockouts on switching? Not recharges specifically, but instead of being able to swap attunements every 3 seconds, once you go into water you’re stuck there for 5-6 seconds instead of hitting frost armor, cleansing wave and moving on. The idea is to make people commit to entering an attunement, instead of just committing to leaving it.

I really like that idea. I think it’s easier to balance than the current system, because there is no cycling through all attunements and only using the strongest skill any more.

Softspoken.2410:

Maybe if there were better auto attacks, but longer lockouts on switching? Not recharges specifically, but instead of being able to swap attunements every 3 seconds, once you go into water you’re stuck there for 5-6 seconds instead of hitting frost armor, cleansing wave and moving on. The idea is to make people commit to entering an attunement, instead of just committing to leaving it.

This would destroy cross-attunement comboing, which is a large part of what makes Eles fun.

I was literally thinking the same thing. Make intelligence 1/2 as effective (min swap speed is 12s), add in fresh-air trait to allow specialization at the 30 point level. X-Alacrity skills: decrease skills in X attunement by 30% and increase attunement recharge rate by 1% per point in this attunements trait line (going 30 in the line and 30 in arcana keeps that attunement at 10). Increase the damage on autos so that each attunement is viable to stay in and be optimal in its role. Improve the 5 point minor traits in fire/air/earth, as well as fix lingering elements (15 point arcana) to work with all of them.

Now the elementalist has versatility, has different builds/roles to specialize in, and an inherent weakness in that getting back to certain attunements is limited by time.

Additonally, they can move bountiful power to arcana 25, make the water-level 25 “Stop, drop and roll: dodge-rolling removes burning and chilled.” (water is supposed to be about chills, heals, and condi removal). Move the nerfed cleansing water down to the master tier (maybe even increase internal cd). Insert new Water-type fresh air as a GM.

Also, Blaine Tog, we really only have cross-attunement comboing in X—>Earth for blast finishers. You could actually combo more often with an earth-type fresh air trait. The speed at which you can execute combos is already limited by how quickly you can drop the fields (ring of fire is on a 15s cooldown for instance). Further the X-alacrity type skills could get you back to your 10s cooldown.

It’s not that a compromise needs to be made, elementalists have issues. There’s reasons why people play other professions over them. The auto attack being weak is one factor, but there are other factors too, such as very telegraphed big damage skills (ie Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Churning Earth, Cone of Cold, Drake’s Breath, Burning Speed, most staff skills). The attacks are AoE, which is nice, but that’s only useful against opponents that don’t understand positioning. Other issues include, being required to use your skills on cooldown instead of when you need them in order to output decent damage. Another issue is being locked out of an attunement when you need access to another skill.

Other classes don’t have the same problems. Engi’s have access to their kits all the time without recharge, and still have just as many utility skills. Thieves don’t have recharges, they can just burn their resources on a spike then hide. Necromancers have access to death shroud while their other weapon is on cool down. Warrior’s have the option to use a 5 second weapon swap, but also strong autoattacks. Ranger’s can compensate for weapon swap down time with strong auto attacks and pet skills. Guardian’s compensate with strong autoattacks or just don’t swap because they can tank.

It’s not exactly fun to be required to attunement dance to deal damage and be locked out of your utility weapon skills. You kind of just have to hope attunements unlock as you need them, because you have only a couple of rotations and it’s pretty predictable to other players what you’re going to do when they know you’re locked out of an attunement.

Am I the only Ele out there that does not believe that ANet intended Ele’s to swap attunements like crazy as the only viable playstyle?

Everything about this game seems to be designed with player choice in mind. Even down to what weapons you wield.

It seems much more likely to me that one effective playstyle is to trait deep into Arcana and stance-dance to victory, but that is not the only way to play an Ele effectively.

If you don’t believe me then try out this build and then tell me that you are not using Water, Fire, and Earth attunements tactically.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/07-08-13-Optimized-PvE-build-Direct-damage

Da Beetus.1275:

Am I the only Ele out there that does not believe that ANet intended Ele’s to swap attunements like crazy as the only viable playstyle?

Everything about this game seems to be designed with player choice in mind. Even down to what weapons you wield.

It seems much more likely to me that one effective playstyle is to trait deep into Arcana and stance-dance to victory, but that is not the only way to play an Ele effectively.

If you don’t believe me then try out this build and then tell me that you are not using Water, Fire, and Earth attunements tactically.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/07-08-13-Optimized-PvE-build-Direct-damage

I posted a response to your build, but basically the two most effective ways I’ve experienced playing an elementalist are Attunement swapping and Lightning Hammer with scepter/focus

Blaine Tog.8304:

Softspoken.2410:

Maybe if there were better auto attacks, but longer lockouts on switching? Not recharges specifically, but instead of being able to swap attunements every 3 seconds, once you go into water you’re stuck there for 5-6 seconds instead of hitting frost armor, cleansing wave and moving on. The idea is to make people commit to entering an attunement, instead of just committing to leaving it.

This would destroy cross-attunement comboing, which is a large part of what makes Eles fun.

It would destroy triple attunement combos (Are those a thing? Probably, I am not good at elementalist) – but technically you could still cross-combo between any two attunements. You just have to wait a few seconds before you start the combo. So Air → Fire (Ring of Fire) → Earth (Earthquake) becomes Air → Fire (Wait 5s, do other things) (then Ring of Fire) → Earth (Earthquake).

I’ll admit, I’m not totally comfortable destroying the “Switch all the attunements” playstyle, but I think it’s sort of Too Good to allow any sort of dedication to any attunement / specific combat style.

Niebelheim.6041:

If this is indeed the whole point of an ele, then why do we need such a high trait investment for it to be viable? An ele with no points in arcana is not versatile.

My 30/0/30/10/0 Power/Conditions FGS Ele disagrees with your stereotyping.

I’m not sure why air does substantially more damage than everything else. The only time fire is better is with staff.

Even making a 100% condition build s/d or s/d, air 1 will still do more damage. The entire conditions option seems to have been heavily overlooked with this class as a whole.

Burn and chill are both extremely powerful conditions, and we’re not good at maintaining those at all. We have a major and minor trait in the fire line that add 5% damage to burning foes. How about turn one of those into “burns you apply last 10% longer”? Which even then isn’t much.

Well, I just tried a maximum condition build in spvp with 15% burning duration x3. There’s no survivability to accompany that setup. The damage was decent, but playing staff is the same as saying I can’t move out of anything hurting me. Let me just go re-spec again.

I don’t think I can play this game without a) energy sigil, and b) renewing stamina in spvp. It’s next to impossible. Our class is so heavily built around arcana which doesn’t give us any actual power, except for being able to swap sooner, and dodge more. Then swapping which skills are break stuns for us just don’t make any sense.

TL;DR
Spvp is absolutely horrible if you’re an ele.

Make Attunement swapping 9.6 seconds BASELINE, change the Arcana bonus to something relating to retaining Attunements, fix Attunement retaining to actually mean something, make fire traits not completely suck for non-fire builds(and even fire builds), and add more traits like Fresh Air.

If lingering attunements worked as expected, it could be a good replacement for the attunement recharge reduction (if attunements were reduced to 10s base)

katniss.6735:

…Burn and chill are both extremely powerful conditions, and we’re not good at maintaining those at all…

What? Have you even looked at Signet of Fire ?

With 20 points in Fire (for the +Condition Duration) and with the Signet cooldown reduction from Earth this becomes a 14.5 second burn on a 16 second cooldown.

1.5 second downtime on burn without even using Fire Attunment.

Back on topic:

The auto-attack in Air for main hand Dagger is the highest dps ability the Ele has (excluding Lightning Hammer’s auto-attack but that does not have 100% uptime so it’s tough to come up with an objective comparison).

lupercaleb.6041:

Razor.6392:

lightning whip can also hit 5 targets, thief cant.

by that logic lightning whip can hit up to 6 unique targets, but they would each get hit once. each of the 2 whip hits can only affect up to 3 targets

also, cluster bomb affects up to 5 foes

The comparison being made there was between the dagger kits of the two: bringing up thief shortbow is about as relevant as bringing up elementalist scepter. You’re very right about lightning whip though: it can only affect 3 targets per swing, with two swings per cast. Still, it’s multiple targets where the thief’s dagger auto and heartseeker are single-target only.

I’m a proponent for keeping our auto attacks the same. On most players, my two whips of lightning will hit on average 2800. On full Zerk, more like 3k, on full tank, more like 2.5k.

Water is more ranged, so I love that we gett a ranged hit even if it is farther. It has utility.

Fire is the only one I’d change, but I’d never recommend switching it for air’s auto. If you think about fire, you get between 1000-2400 depending on your hit. If all your blades hit, you hit that much. Just add it up.

Earth applies a bleed. It is a two sided edge, it hits low, but it deals a bleed. It has utility too. Just not as much as the others.

I think our autos are perfect. I think our damage needs a 15% buff overall.

Da Beetus.1275:

katniss.6735:

…Burn and chill are both extremely powerful conditions, and we’re not good at maintaining those at all…

What? Have you even looked at Signet of Fire ?

With 20 points in Fire (for the +Condition Duration) and with the Signet cooldown reduction from Earth this becomes a 14.5 second burn on a 16 second cooldown.

1.5 second downtime on burn without even using Fire Attunment.

Back on topic:

The auto-attack in Air for main hand Dagger is the highest dps ability the Ele has (excluding Lightning Hammer’s auto-attack but that does not have 100% uptime so it’s tough to come up with an objective comparison).

To add to this, Frost Bow 3 can apply 35 seconds of burning (when used with arcane power and Elemental Surge) as well as its 7 second chill. With this same notion, in theory, it should be able to apply a 7 + 21 second chill. None of this takes into consideration condition duration.

I have also seen a build (some time ago) that could apply so much chill that the enemies just rage quit instead of trying to fight it.

Fire Axe can also apply a 30 second burn if used correctly.