Guild Wars 2

Remember the old days when elementalist were really good.
This is a short summary for the nerfbats that killed our profession to be nothing but heavily teleported spaghetti slaps. This is what I compiled after reading some old topics.

So we used to have mobility. Untill they nerfed us by increasing almost all of our cooldowns.

We used to be survivable, all our cantrips were stunbreakers.

We used to have good heals, then they nerfed our primary heal skill to bits making it completely unusable in pvp especially.

AoE damage used to really be AoE then they nerfed it to only be hitting 5 people at most at any given time.

What has this lead us to do: we trait to be tanks and if we don’t we die without being able to do anything but mistform in downed state. While a thief, mesmer, ranger, warrior, guardian, necromancer all have inherent skills that keep them alive without having to trait for it the elementalist and the engineer don’t. We just have more skills making it harder to L2P. When a Warrior can just hit one button and do a ton of damage an elementalist has to do a 5 skill 3 atunement combination to match that damage. While a thief can stealth and teleport away the elementalist can drop cc’s that can be teleported or walked past.

The elementalist was supposed to be a jack of all trades and heavy hitting at a long distance.
When Elementalist go for heavy damage at long distance with staff… well it works but the moment you’re spotted you’re dead.
When Elementalist goes for a jack of all trades build well… we don’t have retaliation, aegis, mediocre protection, no stealth, no quickness, no torment, no poison, no fear, no confusion barely passable mobility on a very high cooldown, lowest base health and the lightest armor.

Conclusion:
We had perks that made us usefull, others complained, perks dissapeared every couple months and will continue to do so. While we have the worst base stats and specs and accessibility to boons and conditions we are still one of the classes that are the hardest to master because we need to press 2-5 times more buttons than any other class to reap the same reward (except maybe an engineer).

I’m sure plenty of people will start disagreeing with you, but as for me, I agree. I laughed out loud when you said, “we trait to be tanks and if we don’t we die without being able to do anything but mistform in downed state.” It’s only funny because it’s true. Good stuff, mate! Hopefully in time the devs will get around to buffing us up a little bit more.

I got hyped about elementalist when I first started playing because I loved the idea of being able to tank, heal, and dps depending on attunement and traits. But then I started playing, and it became obvious they need to jump through so many hoops to do any of them. I mean, I got an elementalist to 80 and then made a thief so I could at least try roaming in WvW, and I was just shocked at the versatility of their skills. Everything gives them stealth, they have tons of conditions and evades… and all of them on such a short cooldown! What the heck!? Take Shadowstep for example: 1,200 range, breaks stun, and warps you back to the original position while curing three conditions. And all of this on a 50 second cooldown (which starts when Shadowstep is used and turns into Shadow Return, not when Shadow Return is used.) Then take elementalist’s Lightning Flash: 900 range, doesn’t break stun, doesn’t cure conditions, and does 365 damage. Oh, and it’s on a 40 second cooldown.

I’d love to know who on the dev team hates elementalists.

I think they’re afraid to buff us after what they did with warrior, so now they try to buff us by making bad skills mediocre and adding more bad skills to take their place. It also doesn’t help whenever a skill is made “good” people start complaining that we’re OP because they actually have to pay attention to us now. I bet Rangers feel the same way.

I think they should take a few risks, add some more meaningful buffs, and use the two week intervals to fine tune the buff to where it won’t make us OP without it being absolutely lame.

Cecilia.5179:

I think they should take a few risks, add some more meaningful buffs, and use the two week intervals to fine tune the buff to where it won’t make us OP without it being absolutely lame.

Yes I agree, this is what they should do for all the useless abilities and traits across all classes. I don’t care if a class becomes OP if they pay attention to whats making it OP and keep tuning those abilities every 2 weeks.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

What has this lead us to do: we trait to be tanks and…

No.
It has always been this way.
The difference is that our tanks aren’t impossible to kill anymore, so the other weaknesses show up more prominently.

Ele bunkers were terrible. Low on health? heal to full almost instantly. Low on health again? heal again…and again…then zip away with RTL until cooldowns are back, then jump back into battle, and so on. It was impossible to kill.

Those nerfs were needed.
The reason they appear to be undeserved nerfs is because all the non-bunker builds are crippled by low base health, leading to the once overpowered ele bunker to be the only good build except the cheesy fresh air builds.

Buffs are needed to our defences, but not to healing or other reactive defenses, otherwise we will spend all our time healing, and only healing, unable to spend time actually fighting while the other player has an annoying time trying to kill the unkillable.

My assumption is that base stats are to blame for most of it. Attempts to fix this without focusing on base stats will result in an overpowered, or underpowered class rather than a balanced one.

magic fly.2041:

then zip away with RTL until cooldowns are back, then jump back into battle, and so on. It was impossible to kill.

So, thief? Why was that over the line but thieves doing the exact same thing (attack attack attack, stealth away when you get in trouble, come back to wear them down) is a-okay?

ceol.9175:

magic fly.2041:

then zip away with RTL until cooldowns are back, then jump back into battle, and so on. It was impossible to kill.

So, thief? Why was that over the line but thieves doing the exact same thing (attack attack attack, stealth away when you get in trouble, come back to wear them down) is a-okay?

Let me get some ice for that burn!

ceol.9175:

magic fly.2041:

then zip away with RTL until cooldowns are back, then jump back into battle, and so on. It was impossible to kill.

So, thief? Why was that over the line but thieves doing the exact same thing (attack attack attack, stealth away when you get in trouble, come back to wear them down) is a-okay?

I never said that thieves were a-ok. Just that a fight that a person can run away from, heal up, and come back without any way to stop them is not fun at all. This means that I think thieves are not ok as they fall into that category, but this is a thread about elementalists.

magic fly.2041:

I never said that thieves were a-ok. Just that a fight that a person can run away from, heal up, and come back without any way to stop them is not fun at all. This means that I think thieves are not ok as they fall into that category, but this is a thread about elementalists.

Sorry if that seemed directed at you. It was directed at the folks who decided that elementalist was overpowered for that reason but thief is just dandy.

Someone from Anet previously mentioned in another player’s Twitch stream that he believes that the Ele nerfs went overboard. Take note, he also stated that Elementalists will most probably get buffed if they are still in the bottom tier in PvP after the April 15th patch. He said they want to see how the new changes would work out with the Elementalist first but he’s all in for Elementalis buffs in general.

Kyon.9735:

Someone from Anet previously mentioned in another player’s Twitch stream that he believes that the Ele nerfs went overboard. Take note, he also stated that Elementalists will most probably get buffed if they are still in the bottom tier in PvP after the April 15th patch. He said they want to see how the new changes would work out with the Elementalist first but he’s all in for Elementalis buffs in general.

Thank you for sharing! This is just more reason to have faith in the devs. Or at least have faith that they aren’t biased idiots like most might propose. The simple truth about mmo’s is that it takes a lot of time after making any changes to any class before the real issues in balance have clearly come to light. There have been previous mmo’s where some people complained and complained while others actually experimented and made relatively op builds. Once those builds came to light, it was too late. The devs had already buffed that class and they were now op. Anet is smarter than that. They take their time and make perfectly certain that they aren’t overdoing it. Or they at least try to, anyways. That’s why the changes are always so minor. Over correcting is messier than under correcting. Balance is harder than it seems.

Indeed balancing is hard and the patch ups for balancing are not over yet. Do note that to my knowledge this is the first patch that doesn’t nerf the elementalist and only buffs.

It’s sad that the pvp nerfs when applied to WvW are so utterly magnified.

Eles are the primary target in a fight, everyone knows you’ll have low armour and hps compared to everyone else so why not go for you. Yet it’s not like we can counter with massive burst.

The original ele sustain was designed for a class with low armour and low health. You removed that and what’s left?

phaeris.7604:

It’s sad that the pvp nerfs when applied to WvW are so utterly magnified.

Eles are the primary target in a fight, everyone knows you’ll have low armour and hps compared to everyone else so why not go for you. Yet it’s not like we can counter with massive burst.

The original ele sustain was designed for a class with low armour and low health. You removed that and what’s left?

PvE

This one is funny. When first nerfs hit were announced for ele I remember pointing out that it was stupid for because:
-anet created ele in such way that low hp/armor was supposed to be balanced by high healing/condi removal + mobilit/range depending on weapon set.
-ele were running 30 pts in water – anet somehow figured that even so they actually should NOT be healing more then other classes and have good condi removal even with these 30 pts there.

so they nerfed condi removal and healing to point that most classes have w/o heavy trait and gear investment…

Another “awesome” change was removal of stun breakers from some cantrips and nerfing mist form to the ground rendering it totally useless in most circumstances – our only good heal atm is also most devastating one if interrupted and it is easiest one to interrupt in the game.
This was done in the name of build diversity, as few other skills received stun breakers instead…

Ofc this could not have possibly worked seeing how other skills were just bad to begin with and do not have good synergy with weapons/traits and adding stun breakers wouldn’t help all that much – all that was achieved was nerfing the only actually good skill set.