Guild Wars 2

Hi all. Despite Ele being the main class I’ve played since launch, I’m not the best Ele player when it comes to PvP. So I’d like some opinions from more experienced PvP Eles regarding the Dec. 10 patch. How effective do you think it will be in making us viable in high-end SPvP?

From what the devs and some PvPers are saying, Ele is held back currently due to the condi spam/CC heavy meta, along with builds like S/D Thief completely countering us. The Dec. 10 patch goes some way towards addressing these concerns; S/D Thieves are being (rightfully) nerfed, and the Hammer nerfs for Warriors means that they will be doing less damage if they choose to go CC-heavy. Necromancers get 1 less stack of bleed from Mark of Blood in PvP, but Dhuumfire remains untouched and they are receiving a bunch of buffs to traits related to minion and Power builds, so I don’t think they’ll be any less of a threat. Engineers are losing perma-vigor, and Incendiary Ammo is moving up a tier, but they are getting a bunch of buffs to survivability, so I don’t see us being able to push them off points any easier than now. Meanwhile, Mesmers are getting buffed, and they were always pretty good; I’m scared to think of how powerful they’ll become now that S/D thief will be mostly out of the picture.

Diamond Skin sticks out to me as the devs’ response to our disadvantaged state in this meta, as it’s a condition immunity that is in a trait line that also provides us with Stability (Earth’s Embrace/Rock Solid.) But I’m so torn on this change. On the one hand, I despise it since it’s a passive immunity (dumbs the game down). On the other hand, I don’t think it’s especially difficult to get an Ele below 90% health, despite our plethora of healing options. Plus, from a purely vindictive standpoint, it’s nice to have a possibly OP (I’m not convinced of this) anti-condi trait after so many months of being at the bottom of the meta.

To me, the Ele’s issue is and has always been survivability. Cantrips, despite being nerfed to near-uselessness, still ironically remain our most useful utilities purely due to the survivability they offer. To get any further utility from them, we have to spec into Water (especially now since Soothing Disruption is moving to Master), which kills damage output. Similarly, speccing into Water for condition removal neuters damage output.

Condi classes can spec into Toughness/Vitality while still doing great damage through condis. We can’t do this because we have no way to reliably re-apply a good variety of conditions.

Warriors can spec for great damage or great CC while shrugging off damage and condis through their base HP/toughness, Healing Signet and stances.

As far as we go, the devs are adamant that our current HP and armor baselines remain as they are. The problem is I don’t see us getting any decent compensation.

So what are your thoughts? Will things change for the better for us in PvP come Dec. 10? Or is the outlook still bleak?

To be honest, the most likely outcome is that this won’t change anything at all. None of the changes are big enough to ruin existing builds or make any new ones viable. Diamond Skin is just too situational to be relevant – in most cases it will do nothing, in some it will be slightly useful, and very rarely it will be a significant advantage. Choosing a trait that is only useful a small percentage of the time is a recipe for disaster. Frankly, the Burning Fire change is more interesting as an anti-condi trait, it has good strength against condition openings and only requires 20 points. It’s still not good enough to be the reason to spec into Fire, and sadly the rest of the traits are still awful for everything except for a Conjure build.

So really, the only thing that’s going to impact our place in the meta is the changes to the other classes. We’re going to have to wait at least one, and probably closer to 3, balance patches after this one before they sufficiently build off of the changes they started here.

S/D burst ele MIGHT make it’s way back in the meta with a different type of build. Have to see what people come up with. That usually takes at minimum a month after balance changes like the one coming. It took warriors like 2 months before they hit the meta in PvP.

I don’t think D/D or D/F or S/F will make it into the meta. The old days of D/D roamers is gone unless they revert RTL or give it some other type of mobility tools.

oZii.2864:

S/D burst ele MIGHT make it’s way back in the meta with a different type of build.

Wait, could you please elaborate? I thought S/D burst is somewhat viable in the current meta? Or are you saying that the patch will render the build unviable? I don’t play S/x so I’m not familiar with the build, but Fresh Air isn’t being touched right?

Diamond skin is incredibly broken and if it manages to get through (please no) it’s a huge buff to eles. Even without that, the current iterations of Fresh Air burst and tankier D/D are mostly being held back by S/D thief and hammer/longbow warrior. Both of those are receiving nerfs, which is the best buff eles could really get. Ele has never needed buffs, only the overpowered classes to be brought down. Of course Fresh Air is pretty broken from a balance perspective, and may finally be picked up by Anet’s nerf radar. Overall a great patch for eles, and again please no diamond skin.

Diamond skin would be fun to run against all the fotm garbage necros out there.

Glenstorm.4059:

oZii.2864:

S/D burst ele MIGHT make it’s way back in the meta with a different type of build.

Wait, could you please elaborate? I thought S/D burst is somewhat viable in the current meta? Or are you saying that the patch will render the build unviable? I don’t play S/x so I’m not familiar with the build, but Fresh Air isn’t being touched right?

I think he refers to the auto cleansing fire we will be getting in fire line. allowing us to get more damage from that line and less points into water

Iksargo.2640:

Diamond skin is incredibly broken and if it manages to get through (please no) it’s a huge buff to eles. Even without that, the current iterations of Fresh Air burst and tankier D/D are mostly being held back by S/D thief and hammer/longbow warrior. Both of those are receiving nerfs, which is the best buff eles could really get. Ele has never needed buffs, only the overpowered classes to be brought down. Of course Fresh Air is pretty broken from a balance perspective, and may finally be picked up by Anet’s nerf radar. Overall a great patch for eles, and again please no diamond skin.

You seem remarkably certain about Diamond Skin being good; unless they do lower the threshold to 85% like is speculated I don’t see how it’s anything other than garbage. There’s exactly one build on one class that would have any problem with it, and the manner in which the trait would encourage spending heals early opens an enormous liability for the class, it’s contrary to how the class tends to want to play.

No nerfs reverted, no change to the PvP scene, simple as that….
We are still squishy, we lack mobility needed, our heals are weaker now than should be to help us sustain some damage (especially in PvP, with the nerfs) and the patch won’t change anything about it unfortunately.

Let’s not forget that elementalists were a top-tier pvp class before the huge buff patch in June. This was even after all the nerfs we have gotten. By toning down the current meta, the already-existing elementalist builds should become more viable, although to which extent they will is pretty much impossible to predict right now. Likewise, we don’t know how strong our new options will be until we try them out. 30 earth eles, 20 earth eles, fire eles, cantrip eles, aura eles, non-arcana eles – all of them will get buffed, and it remains to be seen how viable they might become.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Let’s not forget that elementalists were a top-tier pvp class before the huge buff patch in June. This was even after all the nerfs we have gotten. By toning down the current meta, the already-existing elementalist builds should become more viable, although to which extent they will is pretty much impossible to predict right now. Likewise, we don’t know how strong our new options will be until we try them out. 30 earth eles, 20 earth eles, fire eles, cantrip eles, aura eles, non-arcana eles – all of them will get buffed, and it remains to be seen how viable they might become.

Agreed, Eles were top-tier, but mainly because of the players, not the class itself. Because if you hand an elementalist to an average warrior player, he will be screwed hard…..
Of course we can’t predict the outcome of the patch, but I think that most of the Ele players would like to have our skills functioning properly (no clunky mechanics like RTL is now…. Or lingering elements etc…), not just some other alterations to our traits that won’t fix any of the old issues, you know what I mean, right?

Melancholia.8123:

To be honest, the most likely outcome is that this won’t change anything at all. None of the changes are big enough to ruin existing builds or make any new ones viable. Diamond Skin is just too situational to be relevant – in most cases it will do nothing, in some it will be slightly useful, and very rarely it will be a significant advantage. Choosing a trait that is only useful a small percentage of the time is a recipe for disaster. Frankly, the Burning Fire change is more interesting as an anti-condi trait, it has good strength against condition openings and only requires 20 points. It’s still not good enough to be the reason to spec into Fire, and sadly the rest of the traits are still awful for everything except for a Conjure build.

So really, the only thing that’s going to impact our place in the meta is the changes to the other classes. We’re going to have to wait at least one, and probably closer to 3, balance patches after this one before they sufficiently build off of the changes they started here.

I would have to agree with this in its entirety. The changes amount to too little in the face of other class changes. I will most likely still be running cantrips or a different profession altogether for a few months.

It is completely unknown. The devs took down our thoughts on their proposed changes and now we have no idea what is actually going to happen now in this patch.

If they kept to the original, it would be the nail in the coffin for ele’s in XvP

Few tanky build will be screwed, but the main part are intouched.
Small buff to burst spec, which i never considered to be viable as those burst are often not enought to kill the target, but it’s just my opinion, anyway, its still a buff.

Diamond skin: no comment

Elementalist is pretty intouched wich is in my mind very good (if they haven’t changed ele at all it would probably has been better (thinking to cleansing wave)) as the class is almost good currently (i should say “viable” instead of “good” but nevermind). Devs needs to nerf what is currently OP (what they seem trying to) to balance elementalist

X/30/30/X/X, probably with 10 in water using s/f burst will be really strong. Some very tanky aspects and very burst aspects will make this a pretty fierce competitor. However, mobility will be pretty bad, which is something I really enjoy personally.

It will not make any difference. It’s like the new super speed trait… Never noticed anyone using it and nobody in my guild is using it.

Xillllix.3485:

It will not make any difference. It’s like the new super speed trait… Never noticed anyone using it and nobody in my guild is using it.

Actually, the new traits are far worse. The super speed only demands 10 in air, something nearly every ele already specced for. Burning fire and diamond skin need 20 and 30 points in trait lines nobody likes for passive traits that provide condition defense, something water already does quite well, via passive traits that we have no control over and don’t even provide steady, constant, dependable benefits.