Guild Wars 2

Hello, Ihave an ele as an alt and this has bothered me for a quite a while so I will ask it on the forum:

Why do cantrips have such long cooldowns? Especially mist form and armor of earth but the others as well. They are not that OP, so why do they have such cooldowns? Do I miss some dangerous combination or something?

Most of Ele Utilities are of high cool down, even if they are pretty average. I would go as far to say that most of the Utilities are pretty poor.

Conjures – 60 second duration? 15 uses? What is that all about?
Signets – Most average with even worse actives that make the passive better…
Glyphs – Long cool downs, lesser ele sucks. Renewal sucks as well
Arcane – Meh. Blast finisher every 30seconds? 5 crit hits every 45seconds? just meh
Cantrips – Mostly rubbish or have very long cool downs. Some just too weak.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Most of Ele Utilities are of high cool down, even if they are pretty average. I would go as far to say that most of the Utilities are pretty poor.

Conjures – 60 second duration? 15 uses? What is that all about?
Signets – Most average with even worse actives that make the passive better…
Glyphs – Long cool downs, lesser ele sucks. Renewal sucks as well
Arcane – Meh. Blast finisher every 30seconds? 5 crit hits every 45seconds? just meh
Cantrips – Mostly rubbish or have very long cool downs. Some just too weak.

Sorry but if you think conjures are weak, you have never played this class.

Siobhan.3582:

Sorry but if you think conjures are weak, you have never played this class.

Sorry but because YOU dont think they are weak, doesnt mean everyone thinks that way.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Siobhan.3582:

Sorry but if you think conjures are weak, you have never played this class.

Sorry but because YOU dont think they are weak, doesnt mean everyone thinks that way.

So you are saying that hammer and greatsword conjures are bad? They are weak? honestly if you can say that with a straight face, you have not played this class at any real level.

You can slot those two and get amazing results in all 3 aspects of the game.

Siobhan.3582:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Most of Ele Utilities are of high cool down, even if they are pretty average. I would go as far to say that most of the Utilities are pretty poor.

Conjures – 60 second duration? 15 uses? What is that all about?
Signets – Most average with even worse actives that make the passive better…
Glyphs – Long cool downs, lesser ele sucks. Renewal sucks as well
Arcane – Meh. Blast finisher every 30seconds? 5 crit hits every 45seconds? just meh
Cantrips – Mostly rubbish or have very long cool downs. Some just too weak.

Sorry but if you think conjures are weak, you have never played this class.

Conjures aren’t used at high lv tpvp gameplay. Fiery/Icebow perhaps but mainly used for trolls.

Siobhan.3582:

So you are saying that hammer and greatsword conjures are bad? They are weak? honestly if you can say that with a straight face, you have not played this class at any real level.

You can slot those two and get amazing results in all 3 aspects of the game.

Greatsword is decent, though i wouldnt exactly compare it to the others with it being an Elite, i see more Eles using it to RUN than to actually fight with as well and dont forget the long cool down. Though it needs to have a higher usage number considering it is a 180second cool down elite.

As i said, 60second cool down and 15 uses? What is worse is that the AUTO ATTACK counts towards it…

It is ok Ash,,, you can stop now.. We understand you are do not actually play this class and are just trolling our forums

People who think FGS is weak have never exploded 3 people reviving one downed guy with fiery rush + lightning flash.

Yeah, go and run away with fgs in a tpvp match. Super helpful.

The cooldown of Armor of Earth is going to be brought down to 75 seconds in the upcoming balance patch. This is still long, but more reasonable than 90 seconds. Using Cantrip Mastery you can even bring it down to 60 seconds. This is reasonable for a stun breaker and 6 seconds stability and protection. With increased boon duration, you can prolong this even further.
Mist form also has a 75 seconds cooldown untraited and 60 seconds if traited. For another stun breaker, 3 seconds invulnerability and increased movement speed this is pretty OK. You will love this skill in WvW when you just vapor through 50 people zerging in front of a gate.
The other two cantrips (Cleansing Fire and Lightning Flash) are also very nice skills. Casting Churning Earth far away from a small group of people and using Lightning Flash to teleport right into them, finishing the cast there is always great fun. Those utilities have a 40 seconds cooldown (32 seconds if traited), which is shorter than the cooldown of many – if not most – other utilities in the game.

Siobhan.3582:

It is ok Ash,,, you can stop now.. We understand you are do not actually play this class and are just trolling our forums

I do love the elitism of some people on these forums, So because i think Conjures are rubbish, with FGS being the exception mostly thanks to its high damage yet i see it used more to ESCAPE than to attack means nothing.

The only reason it looks so “good” is because just how average all our elites are…

sorrychief.2563:

People who think FGS is weak have never exploded 3 people reviving one downed guy with fiery rush + lightning flash.

Yeah, go and run away with fgs in a tpvp match. Super helpful.

So the you are using 3 min cd AND utility to perform this one bug-based trick and this is what makes ele’s conjuries strong? Nope. They are pretty much useless in spvp

Mist form has a long cooldown because you could heal in it, use abilities and had stability. They removed all those cool functionality from it and didn’t fix the cooldown.

Typical way the elementalist is balanced in this game. Now they are supposedly trying to help us survive with the next patch while they are the one that broke it in the first place. They could just undo the useless nerfs instead.

Xillllix.3485:

Mist form has a long cooldown because you could heal in it, use abilities and had stability. They removed all those cool functionality from it and didn’t fix the cooldown.

Typical way the elementalist is balanced in this game. Now they are supposedly trying to help us survive with the next patch while they are the one that broke it in the first place. They could just undo the useless nerfs instead.

The problem is – The changes will have little to no affect on our survivability. I think moving us up to medium armor level would be a decent start, though i think that would just have to many issues, they could just buff the Toughness/Armor we start with but keep us as Light Armor users. Or they could bump us up a tier in Health. We don’t have the insane damage or survivability as we did way back at the start so i think it is time that we got some buffs.

Siobhan.3582:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Siobhan.3582:

Sorry but if you think conjures are weak, you have never played this class.

Sorry but because YOU dont think they are weak, doesnt mean everyone thinks that way.

So you are saying that hammer and greatsword conjures are bad? They are weak? honestly if you can say that with a straight face, you have not played this class at any real level.

You can slot those two and get amazing results in all 3 aspects of the game.

Conjures are more than decent (IMO they’re in a good spot aside from the 15 base charges) in PVE, but not in the PVP/WvW aspect of the game.

I don’t even remember when was the last time I saw someone use Conjures in PvP/WvW aside from FGS which was mainly used for running away on a 180s cooldown.

@topic
Cantrips used to synergize well with Soothing Disruption which gave eles perma Regen and Vigor before it was nerfed.

Another thing is that all cantrips used to be stun breakers and most builds used to have 3 cantrips. If you use them at the right time, an ele can be invincible in 1v1s or more depending on the skill cap of your opponents.

I’m a mesmer player who has been getting into wvw ele recently and here’s my take on the whole thing:

Elementalists have access to 20 weapons skills at a time, all of which are extraordinarily diverse and generally on respectably low cool downs (before any traits). Because of this, they can generally fulfill most build requirements with just weapon choices without compromising on situational needs. That is, what would generally take other classes both weapon and utility skills can generally be done with just ele’s weapon skills. This means the utility skills can’t follow suit as the other classes do, sparing engineer.
It’s important to note that ele’s have insane access to boon through their utility skills and attunements but choosing a few traits. Because of this, the utility skills become less of the standard “utility” skill and more of a source of specific boons, like gaining might when using a cantrip. This means the the individual skills, by necessity, are less “powerful”.
Consider the other option, where the cooldowns on all cantrips were reduced and their numbers all enhanced. In this case, no one would play anything but ele, the meta game would likely degrade.

As an example, I’d like to compare the mesmer’s blink with the ele’s blink cantrip. For the mesmer, blink is usually a necessary skill, as battlefield movement is essential to success. It’s on a similar cooldown to that of the ele, but it has a significantly longer range. Naturally, one would assume this means that the mesmer has more in-combat mobility than an elementalist. Unfortunately, this is incorrect. In addition to this blink, ele’s have access to a plethora of swiftness spells and a variety of “dashes”, if you will.

So, back to the question at hand, why are ele utility skills so “bad”. My short answer is, because it’s necessary. Buffing these skills in any significant way would do more than just give the ele a small advantage, it would elevate them beyond any other profession. In my opinion, it would completely destroy any meta.

My suggestion with the ele utility skills would be to view them as boon sources or “get out of jail free” cards, like mist for and earth armor. If you find yourself outnumbered, just become vapor and swiftness or dash away. If you see a loner you want to gank, then drop all your cantrips and surprise him with your stacks of might.

I’m curious to see how this conversation develops. I believe that everyone in here who says that ele utilities are “underpowered” or “useless” has a clear misunderstanding of the purpose.

Its cause of the water traits and the good synergy there used to be before they got nerfed to the ground together with all ele healas and sustain.
The balance in this game is a mess.Even a kid can tell you that if you break the reason something is good then you need to compensate for that if you want it to remain viable.
Not only that but when something needs so many other factors to shine means theres no choice. Luckily for cantrips ALL other ele utilites apart rom arcanes are terrible for pvp.So in the end they are actually so bad only f you compare them to the other classes
And dont get me started on elites.Only fgs remotely resembles an actual elite for the mobility and raw damage while the other 2 offer so little that even the classification of “elite” on them surely must be a mistake that passed alpha.

Also the ele got 20 skills arument cant cut it..Tell me what of the elementalist weapon skills or rather even which whole combination of a couple of them would make up for what portal brings to the table.Or which elites has the impact of mass invis (an elite that mesmers didnt take for a whole year cause ofhow usefull the others were)
Not only that but i dont think anyone believes an ele without utilities is stronger than other classes without utilities?!?!? :O
Heck even at ele meta mesmers were running around wiht entirely group based utlities and still were great at 1vs1.
Most of the squishy classes have integrated defence mechanism.
Only the ele needs to both trait and equip utility skills to have any defence. Thats a fact..a very obvious one

LCV.7245:

I’m a mesmer player who has been getting into wvw ele recently and here’s my take on the whole thing:

Elementalists have access to 20 weapons skills at a time, all of which are extraordinarily diverse and generally on respectably low cool downs (before any traits). Because of this, they can generally fulfill most build requirements with just weapon choices without compromising on situational needs. That is, what would generally take other classes both weapon and utility skills can generally be done with just ele’s weapon skills. This means the utility skills can’t follow suit as the other classes do, sparing engineer.
It’s important to note that ele’s have insane access to boon through their utility skills and attunements but choosing a few traits. Because of this, the utility skills become less of the standard “utility” skill and more of a source of specific boons, like gaining might when using a cantrip. This means the the individual skills, by necessity, are less “powerful”.
Consider the other option, where the cooldowns on all cantrips were reduced and their numbers all enhanced. In this case, no one would play anything but ele, the meta game would likely degrade.

As an example, I’d like to compare the mesmer’s blink with the ele’s blink cantrip. For the mesmer, blink is usually a necessary skill, as battlefield movement is essential to success. It’s on a similar cooldown to that of the ele, but it has a significantly longer range. Naturally, one would assume this means that the mesmer has more in-combat mobility than an elementalist. Unfortunately, this is incorrect. In addition to this blink, ele’s have access to a plethora of swiftness spells and a variety of “dashes”, if you will.

So, back to the question at hand, why are ele utility skills so “bad”. My short answer is, because it’s necessary. Buffing these skills in any significant way would do more than just give the ele a small advantage, it would elevate them beyond any other profession. In my opinion, it would completely destroy any meta.

My suggestion with the ele utility skills would be to view them as boon sources or “get out of jail free” cards, like mist for and earth armor. If you find yourself outnumbered, just become vapor and swiftness or dash away. If you see a loner you want to gank, then drop all your cantrips and surprise him with your stacks of might.

I’m curious to see how this conversation develops. I believe that everyone in here who says that ele utilities are “underpowered” or “useless” has a clear misunderstanding of the purpose.

1 – If an elementalist only needs weapon skills to do something that other classes require both weapon and utility skills, how come eles are the most underpowered class along with rangers even with utility skills available?

2 – Edited, thanks to Bunschii. I wouldn’t pop defensive cantrips with high cooldown for the sake of stacking might. Would you?

3 – An elementalist’s blink has damage, a 40 second cool down and is not a stun breaker. A mesmer’s blink has no damage, 30 second cool down, and is a stun breaker.

4 – These “dashes” you speak of comes from different weapon and as everybody knows, elementalists can only use 1 weapon set. On a side note, elementalists have “in-combat mobility” because they don’t have access to a plethora of stealth and clones nor do they have high HP and armor. Warriors and Thieves has more mobility considering they either have High HP/Armor or stealth.

5 – Nobody considers Mist Form and Armor of Earth as “get out of jail cards” like you claim. Mist form or Armor of Earth won’t get you out of combat, mobility, or give you max HP. If you get away from combat just by popping Mist Form or Armor of Earth, you better stop playing PVE because players in PVP/WVW won’t stop chasing you until you go down.

I believe that everyone in here who says that ele utilities are “underpowered” or “useless” has a clear misunderstanding of the purpose.

Not to be rude but base from your statement, I think you also have a clear misunderstanding of how elementalist skills work in general.

Cantrips gives 3 stacks of might with spell slinger

The ele is the class where you have to pace out every decision. With arcane, you pretty much just spam it all.

Cantrip offers you damage reduction, regen, vigor, and mobility (LF). Mist Form can be used early to help get distance from being chased down while other things come off cd. I have no problem using it early because it’s one of those skills that will eat up burst, where you can’t fight back while it’s in use, then you can setup whatever you want. I really wish that cleansing flame was still a stun breaker, as I would be using mist form 5% of the time after, instead of 90% like now.

I’m not into dungeons, and thus never use LH unless I’m stacking swiftness for s/f.
I use FGS every single day. That’s our biggest burst and escape. Cripple runners. It’s amazing. It’s the best chance at killing max mobility warriors and thieves. Well, maybe tornado/ meteor shower on thieves is the best most of the time.

I’ve never used a signet build for more than an hour at a time. I find the activations very slow; and what they do is lackluster. Signet of Restoration and Air are relatively common in WvW. Signet of Fire for zeles is fairly common.

I use glyphs rarely in WvW such as something for guards to attack while I contest a keep, or fight a fully upgraded camp. I have used greater and lesser fire eles when using full pvt before, and the damage is pretty good if you kite all the npcs to one spot. But having crit damage with FGS is much faster for this scenario. You can rez a claimer with glyph of renewal, but I’ve never actually done this. I don’t know what anyone’s success rate with this is.

Bunschii.2918:

Cantrips gives 3 stacks of might with spell slinger

Honest mistake. I didn’t even know that existed because I don’t even bother looking at the Fire trait line anymore. Thanks for the heads up, gonna edit it and give a more appropriate resonse.

LCV.7245:

I’m a mesmer player who has been getting into wvw ele recently and here’s my take on the whole thing:

Elementalists have access to 20 weapons skills at a time, all of which are extraordinarily diverse and generally on respectably low cool downs (before any traits). Because of this, they can generally fulfill most build requirements with just weapon choices without compromising on situational needs. That is, what would generally take other classes both weapon and utility skills can generally be done with just ele’s weapon skills. This means the utility skills can’t follow suit as the other classes do, sparing engineer.

Can you explain how the “20 weapon skills” matter? I mean we can not use them all, we only get 5 at a time and most of them have ridiculously long cool downs for what they do anyway.

As i have stated we DON’T have 20 weapon skills at a time we have 5. and unlike every other class if we are running certain weapons we don’t have the option for Melee or range. Take D/D for example we are forced into melee 100% of the time or deal no damage.

LCV.7245:

It’s important to note that ele’s have insane access to boon through their utility skills and attunements but choosing a few traits. Because of this, the utility skills become less of the standard “utility” skill and more of a source of specific boons, like gaining might when using a cantrip. This means the the individual skills, by necessity, are less “powerful”.

Consider the other option, where the cooldowns on all cantrips were reduced and their numbers all enhanced. In this case, no one would play anything but ele, the meta game would likely degrade.

Insane boon access means nothing when you are the class with the lowest health and armor and forced into defensive traits/gear to counteract that. This alone reduced our damage potential more than anything else, if you as an Ele go Zerker, all it would take is 1 dodge, 1 invul or 1 missed skill chain and you would be dead.

Lets have a look shall we, without traits D/D has access to – Swiftness(Air 5) and that is it via weapons. Utilities wise -

Armor of Earth 90second cool down 6 second stability, 6 second Protection
GoEH- either 3stacks of might(20sec), regen(10sec), Swiftness(10 sec) or Prot(3 sec)

and that is it, everything else requires traits. Now we have traits to MUCH improve that but again why not? after all it is coming at a cost.

I totally disagree, Even if Cantrips were reduced in cool down and given a buff this wouldn’t have that much impact on the class as they would STILL be required to build defensive thanks to the lowest health and lowest armor.

LCV.7245:

As an example, I’d like to compare the mesmer’s blink with the ele’s blink cantrip. For the mesmer, blink is usually a necessary skill, as battlefield movement is essential to success. It’s on a similar cooldown to that of the ele, but it has a significantly longer range. Naturally, one would assume this means that the mesmer has more in-combat mobility than an elementalist. Unfortunately, this is incorrect. In addition to this blink, ele’s have access to a plethora of swiftness spells and a variety of “dashes”, if you will.

Lets compare them:
Lightening Flash: 40 second cool down, 900 range, deals damage
Blink: 30 second cool down, 900range and stun break

Personally i would take the stun break and lower cool down over a little bit of damage, no stun break and a longer cool down myself, don’t know anyone else though. If you are comparing what else they have. Mesmer – Stealth, Decoy, Phase Retreat, iLeap, Into The void – both swiftness and interrupts and can KILL people by pulling them off cliffs and ledges. Lets not forget the clones, Phantasms, invuls, blocks and everything else.

Curious as to where all this swiftness is from? You are also forgetting that you are talking about a weapon set that is 100% Melee. You can swap from Melee to range every 10 seconds if you have the right weapon set. As i have shown that unless traited we have ONE access to Swiftness and we have Ride The Lightening, 20second cool down, 40 if Blinded, target as Aegis and such and Burning Retreat with 600 range and 15 second cool down

(due to length)

LCV.7245:

So, back to the question at hand, why are ele utility skills so “bad”. My short answer is, because it’s necessary. Buffing these skills in any significant way would do more than just give the ele a small advantage, it would elevate them beyond any other profession. In my opinion, it would completely destroy any meta.

It is “necessary” for the LOWEST Health and LOWEST armor class in the game to have the longest cool downs on Utilities? Sorry don’t buy it, That is no excuse we simply in our current state do not deserve to have such long cool downs. Even if they were reduced it wouldn’t FIX the BIGGEST problem with the class and that is the sustain.

You are saying that reducing the cool down on what is mostly rubbish skills anyway would suddenly make them the best class in the game? Sorry that is simply wrong. We dont even have the best Condition removal and this IS a condition Meta after all. we would need HUGE buffs in order to suddenly become the new Meta.

LCV.7245:

My suggestion with the ele utility skills would be to view them as boon sources or “get out of jail free” cards, like mist for and earth armor. If you find yourself outnumbered, just become vapor and swiftness or dash away. If you see a loner you want to gank, then drop all your cantrips and surprise him with your stacks of might.

My suggestion for ele would be to buff up either (or both) the health and armor. This way we would not be forced into going defensive when it comes to builds and armor thus allowing us a bit more freedom to go for a build that we would like but that would currently get melted in seconds.

Mist Form and Armor of Earth are NOT get out of jail free cards, both in WvW and S/TPvP they mean nothing and more times than not you WILL still die when using them. You do know that we have NO access to skills when we go Mist Form right? we aren’t the warrior with its Invuls that can continue to deal damage and use other skills. All we get is a 66% movement speed increase for 3 seconds, pretty much EVERY class will still be able to catch up to us in that time. We would have to go right from that into Ride The Lightening and Burning Retreat to stand a chance at escape – and what do we do if they are on cool down? We die.

LCV.7245:

I’m curious to see how this conversation develops. I believe that everyone in here who says that ele utilities are “underpowered” or “useless” has a clear misunderstanding of the purpose.

I think the only one with the misunderstanding here is you. You clearly have no idea about the problems the class has, You seem to think that the Lowest health and lowest armor class in the game is right up there with the best classes in the game – we are at the bottom with Rangers.

They have long cool downs because you are meant to use them in a strategic manner.

Aside from the number of bonuses they give, cantrips are used by the best WvW eles as offensive weapons while the new ele uses them as crutches.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Lets compare them:
Lightening Flash: 40 second cool down, 900 range, deals damage
Blink: 30 second cool down, 900range and stun break

Personally i would take the stun break and lower cool down over a little bit of damage, no stun break and a longer cool down myself, don’t know anyone else though.

Huh no please. I crit 2k with lightning Flash and I use it in burst with air attunement for a 4k+ crit potential. It doesn’t do “minor” damage. In other words, you may use it as a get away card, but I use it for offensive – often with Fire 4 (staff) combo.

Xillllix.3485:

Huh no please. I crit 2k with lightning Flash and I use it in burst with air attunement for a 4k+ crit potential. It doesn’t do “minor” damage. In other words, you may use it as a get away card, but I use it for offensive – often with Fire 4 (staff) combo.

You have to BUILD for it to do that damage, that is fine. I see no problem with making something stronger when it COSTS you doing so. 2k damage every 40 seconds….Oh SO much damage!

Mist Form is currently garbage in the condition/ immobilize spam state we’re in at the moment. I don’t use it in any form of PvP. Armor of earth, lightning flash, and cleansing fire. Mist Form just gets you killed these days as you try to use it at low HP then die to conditions or immobilize.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xillllix.3485:

Mist form has a long cooldown because you could heal in it, use abilities and had stability. They removed all those cool functionality from it and didn’t fix the cooldown.

Typical way the elementalist is balanced in this game. Now they are supposedly trying to help us survive with the next patch while they are the one that broke it in the first place. They could just undo the useless nerfs instead.

The problem is – The changes will have little to no affect on our survivability. I think moving us up to medium armor level would be a decent start, though i think that would just have to many issues, they could just buff the Toughness/Armor we start with but keep us as Light Armor users. Or they could bump us up a tier in Health. We don’t have the insane damage or survivability as we did way back at the start so i think it is time that we got some buffs.

Actually our survivability hasn’t changed that much, aside from signet of restoration having a decrease in scaling with healing power, not triggering anymore with evasive arcana and not being able to use your heal, utility’s anymore while in mistform I can’t recall anything else that has dramatically changed our survivability.

Giving us extra health or armor won’t solve anything imo, before the game was made they must have thought things through which classes to give light/medium/heavy armor. Changing those “plans” just because a class isn’t working in the current meta isn’t a solution, in fact it would probably only cause more trouble in the near future with balance. If anything they should simple nerf the traits and skills people have been saying from the start that were overpowered, not buff 1 single class “to keep up” with the other unbalanced things that are currently in the game.

Like other people said already, no one wants a power creep fest, nerfing is a better solution then buffing imo.

katniss.6735:

You can rez a claimer with glyph of renewal, but I’ve never actually done this. I don’t know what anyone’s success rate with this is.

I tried running with it after they nerfed mistform by making invulnerability a non capture point contribution, the long cast time absolutely kills the utility. A stomp actually takes less time then to cast the skill. I’ve seen some tanky ele’s be succesful with it, but as a glass ele a +3 second cast time is really well.. bad..

The problem is – at the start of the game Ele were insane and nearly unkillable. They SO many nerfs – Damage, healing, Mobility as well as to specific skills and to counter that what did we get? Nothing.

We have changed A LOT since release. We were prtty much demigods back then but after all the nerfs to healing skills, damage reduction, mobility reduction, utilities and traits being nerfed and such we are FAR from the class that actually started the game.

Shinoobi.1259:

Mist Form is currently garbage in the condition/ immobilize spam state we’re in at the moment. I don’t use it in any form of PvP. Armor of earth, lightning flash, and cleansing fire. Mist Form just gets you killed these days as you try to use it at low HP then die to conditions or immobilize.

I still run mistform, it isn’t such a bad skill as people claim to be. I prefer it above armor of earth since it doesn’t make me such a huge corrupt boon target. And being completely invulnerable to damage ( aside from existing conditions on you ) is still better than having -33% damage reduction. It’s also pretty much a guaranteed stomp/ress unless they have a teammate that stealths the downed body.

You can still die in it, i hate that it says that you are invulnerable but doesnt say that falling damage will still hurt you…

Bsgapollo.5364:

Shinoobi.1259:

Mist Form is currently garbage in the condition/ immobilize spam state we’re in at the moment. I don’t use it in any form of PvP. Armor of earth, lightning flash, and cleansing fire. Mist Form just gets you killed these days as you try to use it at low HP then die to conditions or immobilize.

I still run mistform, it isn’t such a bad skill as people claim to be. I prefer it above armor of earth since it doesn’t make me such a huge corrupt boon target. And being completely invulnerable to damage ( aside from existing conditions on you ) is still better than having -33% damage reduction. It’s also pretty much a guaranteed stomp/ress unless they have a teammate that stealths the downed body.

Corrupt boon? Not a factor, really. You can use armor of earth to secure stomps, cast safely, channel ether renewal safely, channel churning earth safely, all kinds of things. Mist form just isn’t good anymore. It’s another skill that makes us forgo continuing doing damage while we try to survive longer- like being pretty much pigeonholed into ether renewal and not attacking for 3 1/2 seconds every 15 seconds.

Shinoobi.1259:

Bsgapollo.5364:

Shinoobi.1259:

Mist Form is currently garbage in the condition/ immobilize spam state we’re in at the moment. I don’t use it in any form of PvP. Armor of earth, lightning flash, and cleansing fire. Mist Form just gets you killed these days as you try to use it at low HP then die to conditions or immobilize.

I still run mistform, it isn’t such a bad skill as people claim to be. I prefer it above armor of earth since it doesn’t make me such a huge corrupt boon target. And being completely invulnerable to damage ( aside from existing conditions on you ) is still better than having -33% damage reduction. It’s also pretty much a guaranteed stomp/ress unless they have a teammate that stealths the downed body.

Corrupt boon? Not a factor, really. You can use armor of earth to secure stomps, cast safely, channel ether renewal safely, channel churning earth safely, all kinds of things. Mist form just isn’t good anymore. It’s another skill that makes us forgo continuing doing damage while we try to survive longer- like being pretty much pigeonholed into ether renewal and not attacking for 3 1/2 seconds every 15 seconds.

It isn’t corrupt boon only, there are other skills out there that steal/convert boons, s/d thief for example ( actually the class I fear the most ). Also the fact that you’re forced to run ether renewal isn’t entirely true. I’ve been running glyph for the past few months and I’ve been doing more then fine with it. Actually for one of the reasons you mentioned yourself is that you can’t do anything for those 3 seconds. It’s basicly the same like an immobolize except you can walk around. If I can’t use my skills or dodge for 3 seconds I probably take more damage then I can heal during that period. Also the fact that the skill is so easy interuptable is one of the reasons why I don’t run it.

I also prefer Mist Form over Armor of Earth when stomping. You can easily get boon corrupted or get bursted because everybody knows that eles are still squishy as hell even with protection.

I agree a lot of our utils are under-whelming or have very long CD’s, but luckily they are finally working on it a bit with the armor of earth reduction. Also, a lot of our utils ARE very strong depending on the situation.

Go to any major open-world boss type fight (such as Teq or Jungle Wurm) and ask them if frost bow and FGS are worth taking – they are the difference between success and failure. Frost bow can also WRECK a point in pvp if used right, while FGS is excellent for mobility and has some great attacks as well.

For those asking for more armor, I’m about to make your day: Since you are probably already more than 15 in arcana anyway and have lingering elements, by putting just 5 points into earth you can get +120 toughness nearly all the time with proper rotation. Considering earth is one of our best trait trees and its not very hard to justify going further up the tree, with proper play you are now a psuedo-medium armor class!! Enjoy!

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xillllix.3485:

Huh no please. I crit 2k with lightning Flash and I use it in burst with air attunement for a 4k+ crit potential. It doesn’t do “minor” damage. In other words, you may use it as a get away card, but I use it for offensive – often with Fire 4 (staff) combo.

You have to BUILD for it to do that damage, that is fine. I see no problem with making something stronger when it COSTS you doing so. 2k damage every 40 seconds….Oh SO much damage!

What do you mean every 40 seconds? It’s more like every 4-5 seconds with Fresh Air.

The ele isn’t in such a bad state seriously. Mine is running around with 20k hp (21500+ with guard defense stacks ) and meteors crit between 6-10k with tornado, and I have about 1700 toughness. A single well placed meteor shower will globally do over 50k dmg agains’t people who fail to dodge, I made the sum out of my combat log yesterday.

We just needs a few buffs to the useless traits.

Xillllix.3485:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xillllix.3485:

Huh no please. I crit 2k with lightning Flash and I use it in burst with air attunement for a 4k+ crit potential. It doesn’t do “minor” damage. In other words, you may use it as a get away card, but I use it for offensive – often with Fire 4 (staff) combo.

You have to BUILD for it to do that damage, that is fine. I see no problem with making something stronger when it COSTS you doing so. 2k damage every 40 seconds….Oh SO much damage!

What do you mean every 40 seconds? It’s more like every 4-5 seconds with Fresh Air.

The ele isn’t in such a bad state seriously. Mine is running around with 20k hp (21500+ with guard defense stacks ) and meteors crit between 6-10k with tornado, and I have about 1700 toughness. A single well placed meteor shower will globally do over 50k dmg agains’t people who fail to dodge, I made the sum out of my combat log yesterday.

We just needs a few buffs to the useless traits.

Lightning Flash is the Blink Skill. Lightning Strike is Scepter Air Attunement #2 skill.

D/D survivability is broken. Scepter and Staff are somewhat OK but needs to fix a few spells especially Auto Attacks. Offhand Focus needs a lot of work.

I don’t like how everyone is using cantrips as an example of long cooldowns.

Of course they’re long. But people still use them because they’re still the best utilities in an elementalist’s toolbox. So if they need to be buffed up by bringing down the CD, then every other utility will need to be improved proportionately or we’ll see an even bigger disparity between Cantrips and the other utilities than we already do.

Many of the other abilities have relatively short CDs. Arcane blast can get on a 16s CD (and it’s a great ability contrary to popular belief). Arcane wave can get down to 30s. Signet of fire is 20s. All the other signets are 30s, and they can be reduced as well.

The truth is—everyone whines about cantrip cooldowns because cantrips is the only thing anyone uses. Ironically, it’s because they’re the only utilities worth their salt.

So why would we buff cantrips, but not any of the other utilities? Of course they’re on long cooldowns…

Xillllix.3485:

What do you mean every 40 seconds? It’s more like every 4-5 seconds with Fresh Air.

The ele isn’t in such a bad state seriously. Mine is running around with 20k hp (21500+ with guard defense stacks ) and meteors crit between 6-10k with tornado, and I have about 1700 toughness. A single well placed meteor shower will globally do over 50k dmg agains’t people who fail to dodge, I made the sum out of my combat log yesterday.

We just needs a few buffs to the useless traits.

You are confused Fresh Air has NO affect on it what so ever, it is a 40second cool down no matter if you use Fresh Air or not seeing as Fresh Air only gets you back into Air attunement and Lightening Flash is a utility and not a weapon skill.

Right and without having to blow a 180second cool down Elite skill which will soon enough get fixed, what does Meteor Storm do?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xillllix.3485:

What do you mean every 40 seconds? It’s more like every 4-5 seconds with Fresh Air.

The ele isn’t in such a bad state seriously. Mine is running around with 20k hp (21500+ with guard defense stacks ) and meteors crit between 6-10k with tornado, and I have about 1700 toughness. A single well placed meteor shower will globally do over 50k dmg agains’t people who fail to dodge, I made the sum out of my combat log yesterday.

We just needs a few buffs to the useless traits.

You are confused Fresh Air has NO affect on it what so ever, it is a 40second cool down no matter if you use Fresh Air or not seeing as Fresh Air only gets you back into Air attunement and Lightening Flash is a utility and not a weapon skill.

Right and without having to blow a 180second cool down Elite skill which will soon enough get fixed, what does Meteor Storm do?

Meteor Storm is an awesome skill with awesome design, and I will defend its current state until the end, because its about as balanced as it gets.
Also, the dude just got confused and thought you were talking about lightning strike (the scepter skill/air 15 trait).

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Meteor Storm is an awesome skill with awesome design, and I will defend its current state until the end, because its about as balanced as it gets.
Also, the dude just got confused and thought you were talking about lightning strike (the scepter skill/air 15 trait).

I disagree, he specifically states about the use of Tornado to do such damage. That alone means nothing for the class having to use a 180second Elite cool down for ONE skill, It says a lot.

While it might do 6-10k crit hits when using Tornado – Remove Tornado and what is the damage that is that counts because we all know it will get fixed at some point because it nothing more than using glitch sort of away to make the skill do such damage.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Meteor Storm is an awesome skill with awesome design, and I will defend its current state until the end, because its about as balanced as it gets.
Also, the dude just got confused and thought you were talking about lightning strike (the scepter skill/air 15 trait).

I disagree, he specifically states about the use of Tornado to do such damage. That alone means nothing for the class having to use a 180second Elite cool down for ONE skill, It says a lot.

While it might do 6-10k crit hits when using Tornado – Remove Tornado and what is the damage that is that counts because we all know it will get fixed at some point because it nothing more than using glitch sort of away to make the skill do such damage.

It’s not so much that you have to use tornado to make Meteor Storm do lots of damage, it’s more that our elites are so bad that often using tornado storm is your best use of the elite slot. I very often run staff without tornado, and am fine with that damage. The reason I personally run tornado with staff is because it is really effective at preventing rezzes on the people who were stupid enough to stand in the giant balls of fire, and thus accelerating natural selection.
If we had better elites that were worth using in their own right, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t see all the ’nado storms that we do now.
This is off topic though.

I have to agree, our elites are rather lacklustre (not including FGS) But i am curious, doing 6-10k Crit damage using the Meteor Storm into Tornado – what would the same skill do without using Tornado? But yes, slightly off topic.

In my view:

Lightening Flash – Decent skill, mostly used to get Churning Earth off, will only work once due to the person will know right after and be able to avoid it most of the time. I do question the extra 10second cool down for the added little damage.

Armour of Earth – Even with the cool down reduction i find it rather weak. I think what would help would having it so that it grants extra Toughness for the duration as well, the boons can be easily removed by several classes.

Cleansing Fire – Decent condition removal, the Burning is rather weak and the cool down is rather high. Unless built for condition damage it is rather weak and does that justify such a high cool down? In my opinion no.

Mist Form – Rather high cool down, low duration i think it should remove ALL of – stuns, cripple, Chill, , Immobilize

That is it, none of them are really “wow, that is a must have skill” You take Armour of Earth or Mist Form because in most cases you know that you need defence

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I have to agree, our elites are rather lacklustre (not including FGS) But i am curious, doing 6-10k Crit damage using the Meteor Storm into Tornado – what would the same skill do without using Tornado? But yes, slightly off topic.

In my view:

Lightening Flash – Decent skill, mostly used to get Churning Earth off, will only work once due to the person will know right after and be able to avoid it most of the time. I do question the extra 10second cool down for the added little damage.

Armour of Earth – Even with the cool down reduction i find it rather weak. I think what would help would having it so that it grants extra Toughness for the duration as well, the boons can be easily removed by several classes.

Cleansing Fire – Decent condition removal, the Burning is rather weak and the cool down is rather high. Unless built for condition damage it is rather weak and does that justify such a high cool down? In my opinion no.

Mist Form – Rather high cool down, low duration i think it should remove ALL of – stuns, cripple, Chill, , Immobilize

That is it, none of them are really “wow, that is a must have skill” You take Armour of Earth or Mist Form because in most cases you know that you need defence

Again it depends on traits and playstyle. I prefer offensive use of said spells.

I like cantrips not just for the regen and vigor but also for tide turning comboes: Quakeflash and Cleansing Fire Grab.

Armor of Earth CD sucks but the stability is really important and in keeping the pressure on without having to constantly dodge warriors and thus lose to Heal Sig among various other situations. With the extra AoE from Earth’s Embrace trait, it lets you have it up whenever the warrior pops BS and you can’t soft CC/blind them.

It’s also getting buffed to a base cooldown of 75 and thus 60 when traited which will be a pretty major bonus since we’d have access to 1/3 coverage of AoE assuming Earth’s Embrace is also receiving the same treatment.

Mist Form isn’t worth slotting.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I do love the elitism of some people on these forums, So because i think Conjures are rubbish, with FGS being the exception mostly thanks to its high damage yet i see it used more to ESCAPE than to attack means nothing.

The only reason it looks so “good” is because just how average all our elites are…

Which is pretty much the same thing as you’re doing when it comes to glyphs.

The thing is, you have to look at skills in combination with traits and other skills to see their true value. You call signets actives and passives weak individually, yet there is a trait that allows eles to have both at the same time. You say conjures only have 15 charges, but you get 2 weapons and can trait them to have 25 each. You call glyphs weak because you look at their individual effects, but being able to cater your effects to specific opponents is very useful.

Each player has their own preferences and there is nothing wrong with that. However, you shouldn’t go around trying to make your opinion law and then call out when others do the same.

Fuzzion.2504:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I have to agree, our elites are rather lacklustre (not including FGS) But i am curious, doing 6-10k Crit damage using the Meteor Storm into Tornado – what would the same skill do without using Tornado? But yes, slightly off topic.

In my view:

Lightening Flash – Decent skill, mostly used to get Churning Earth off, will only work once due to the person will know right after and be able to avoid it most of the time. I do question the extra 10second cool down for the added little damage.

Armour of Earth – Even with the cool down reduction i find it rather weak. I think what would help would having it so that it grants extra Toughness for the duration as well, the boons can be easily removed by several classes.

Cleansing Fire – Decent condition removal, the Burning is rather weak and the cool down is rather high. Unless built for condition damage it is rather weak and does that justify such a high cool down? In my opinion no.

Mist Form – Rather high cool down, low duration i think it should remove ALL of – stuns, cripple, Chill, , Immobilize

That is it, none of them are really “wow, that is a must have skill” You take Armour of Earth or Mist Form because in most cases you know that you need defence

Again it depends on traits and playstyle. I prefer offensive use of said spells.

I agree. I almost exclusively use Lightning Flash to chain my Scepter bursts. On D/D though I reserve it as an escape mechanism unless I’m planning to land Churning Earth. The damage is decent (it’s actually stronger than Arcane Blast) but not decent enough to warrant the 40s CD IMO.

I think they should either reduce the cool down or return the stun break on it. Or maybe both would be much better.

ThiBash.5634:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I do love the elitism of some people on these forums, So because i think Conjures are rubbish, with FGS being the exception mostly thanks to its high damage yet i see it used more to ESCAPE than to attack means nothing.

The only reason it looks so “good” is because just how average all our elites are…

Which is pretty much the same thing as you’re doing when it comes to glyphs.

The thing is, you have to look at skills in combination with traits and other skills to see their true value. You call signets actives and passives weak individually, yet there is a trait that allows eles to have both at the same time. You say conjures only have 15 charges, but you get 2 weapons and can trait them to have 25 each. You call glyphs weak because you look at their individual effects, but being able to cater your effects to specific opponents is very useful.

Each player has their own preferences and there is nothing wrong with that. However, you shouldn’t go around trying to make your opinion law and then call out when others do the same.

Not at all like what i have been saying. Not once i have said that no one else doesn’t play ele because their views are different THAT is what i was commenting on, funny how you leave the post i was actually commenting on out of your quote….

Also, i have said some of the Glyphs are good, the heal and power are solid even if the stun break on the Power one is rather wasted seeing as you want it cast before or early in combat.

Elite elemental is decent, nothing more but it is NOT worth the huge cool down it currently has and how the elementals summoned are out of your control and rather average. As i said elsewhere, Quality > Quantity. Anet seemed to have gone with the quantity when it comes to the elemental glyphs – rather than quality.

The fact we have to trait for them to be worth using says it all. Say those traits didn’t exist – then what would those skills be like? Not everyone can go into the specific traitlines and spend points to make HUGE cool down skills with low durations worth using.