Guild Wars 2

Laken.4056:

Uhg. Ok I am sorry but this needs to be said.

Firstly, elementalist is not your typical MMO style mage. I honestly consider it a battle mage of sorts. You will never get away playing a single element as an elementalist. Its just not how the class works. In order to successfully play ele you need to learn to swap and use your combo barriers. If yo want a single element mage; go play rift or wow.

Second, if you are specing into full assault. Yes, you will be squishy beyond reason in pvp. Its the sacrifice for maxing out burst to be so high. Cantrip builds are absolutley superior survivability in this game as an ele. The healing power we are cabable of is nuts. Which really goes back into my first point of attun swapping. Simply swapping to water is a 2.5k heal+another 2k regen. Not counting all the defensive 33% shields we get. You can even spec into an additional arcane shield that auto procs at25%…

Third, do research before making false claims. If I had come to the forums first to check the state on elementalist. I would have never rolled one with the amount of crying on how bad they are. Luckily, I youtubed videos and came upon a player named “excala” who is absolutley amazing. Even gives guides along with high quality WvW and Spvp (non zerg)

Finally, learn your class. Stop being scrubby and constantly crying. Ele does fine when played properly. Its about managing all the stuff you get as an ele and using it at the right times. High skill ceiling is fun, ele is where its at.

You must be new here; here’s a guide by your hero Excala. Class subforums are all about talking about how underpowered the respective class is (except maybe the Guardian subforum).

Your claims would be valid a few months ago. They’re not so much anymore. The cantrip build you mention. That’s ONE build that might have been able to hold out in the current condi meta pre-nerf.

Swapping attunements does indeed bring your survivability up on par with the other classes… if you spec for it. Most people including eles seem to forget they don’t get any healing if they don’t spec for it. The devs agree with you about attunements. That’s 45 points (15 water, 30 arcane) required to survive aside from bursting down your opponent before they can kill you. You also need 1k healing power if you want to heal 2.5k, but unfortunately, you won’t be doing any damage.

The requirement of arcane and/or water outside of full burst builds is a design flaw that hurts the ele’s build diversity and has been brought up constantly since the game was released. You can pretend these problems don’t exist or outright ignore them, but they won’t just go away. I currently just ignore them as my elementalist continues to be my main character since early access, but most people have already rerolled another character.

You should do your research on the state of the elementalist before making outdated claims. While it’s not as bad as a few people make it out to be, we’re not exactly in a great spot either having dropped from taking a top place in a tpvp team composition to having no place.

I’m sure it’s been mentioned before but please reconsider

Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

The squishiest class without class specific damage mitigation mechanics needs it the most, yet it’s the only version that is getting moved to a higher tier. This doesn’t make sense.

Just want to point this out to the calls to heal nerfs. Healing à la water attunement is our class mechanic. In game, the tooltip even says “Attune to water, gaining superior support and healing abilities” so it’s only natural water traits enhance this further. If water didn’t grant condition removal (cleansing), there would be even more healing traits. If these traits didn’t grant healing abilities, there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever to even take these traits when you could take other traits for damage.

We don’t get any other way to mitigate damage other than healing, cantrips with long cds, and straight up tanking the damage with toughness and protection. The nerf crowd (who have either never played an ele or never played one that wasn’t a bunker) never considers builds that don’t build on healing power and the fact they have no way to avoid damage other than with the required stun breakers that all classes have in some form.

With the way healing power scales, you already sacrifice a lot to go with healing power. Sorry to disappoint most of you but you can’t easily nerf healing without making the entire stat useless.

As an ele main myself and having used the bunker build a lot, I also believe the bunker build is a bit over the top. I only build this way to avoid nasty burst that I would have no other way of countering. There’s no easy solution and I’ll bet 10g we won’t be seeing changes any time soon. Nerfing healing is akin to nerfing stealth and blocking. You can’t nerf it without gimping the rest of the entire class, which is why they haven’t done so yet despite all the whine threads.

You can take away the “burst” (lol) by moving zephyr’s boon (air I) into the grandmaster traits as previously suggested. The damage of this build itself is no higher than what other classes can dish out with the same stat distribution so removing perma fury will bring it down in line. But even then, someone somewhere will find something to whine about because they couldn’t 22222222 (by this I mean any burst of course), and then stuck around to die.

Elementalists can’t have nice things. Their skills and traits always have to be a kitten version of that from another class.

Nerfed healing: check
Nerfed condition removal: check
Lowest base hp: check
Lowest base armor: check
melee range: check
Long CD on stun breakers: check
No class specific damage mitigation mechanics: check (except auras maybe)
Obvious burst sequence that doesn’t hit as hard as other burst: check

Ok I get it now. Eles should be free food like they were a few months ago. Oh wait a second, they can still run away. Silly me.

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Didn’t think I would ever see low base health and armor acknowledged; that alone is appreciated.

That said, where are these “powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses”? Did you mean the cantrips? Healing? Boons? Dodging? It seems these tools were and still are repeatedly being taken away instead.

Stringing together small heals to maintain a health pool?

Do you mean something like signet of restoration that was nerfed in sPvP? I’ll also note that 1900 healing power with the pre-nerf or PvE signet of restoration is the equivalent of healing signet. I know different classes require different tools but the disparity is quite significant here.

Perhaps you meant regeneration. Unfortunately, outside of external sources, you don’t get any without any points into water or healing power to make the regeneration have any significance. You are also highly considering moving a significant source of regeneration (elemental attunement) into master tier.

Another issue is that if you don’t spec into water, you will also lose out on a significant chunk of hp with respect to elementalists. This will also lower the threshold of traits that operate based on the total hp pool such as diamond skin. If someone decides to take diamond skin (supposedly a build-defining grandmaster trait), the next logical step would be to increase that threshold by increasing your hp pool with water and topping up your hp with heals. Balance really is difficult

I find the staff range is fine (1200). The problem is that the staff has no gap creators outside of the mandatory cantrips that give you a few seconds of breathing room. Even if you have inhuman reflexes and react instantly, the staff is so slow that your opponent is already all over you with multiple gap closers in their weapon sets and/or utilities.

The supposed single target/line cc skills, air3 and earth5 won’t do you any good unless you magically predicted their leap. Pray they don’t strafe 1 inch to the side either. Water4 offers very potent cc but that also comes with a massive cooldown and the attunement itself is often reserved for healing. Air5 can be nice but again the staff is so slow that you might have gotten off a single auto attack with the stun duration. Teleports and shadow steps are a different story; you can’t react to those at all.

Once you’re in a fight, you’re committed to it since you can’t run away due to the disparity between gap closers and creators. Also, you’re also forced to a melee fight since you can’t create any distance, which is why casting AoE at your feet while running around like a headless chicken is effective with a more tanky build. Auto attacks often won’t even cast. If anyone says otherwise, I’d love to hear about it (and don’t just say you use staff while hiding behind a wall of guardians).

His comment was directed at PvE eles. Well, let me just chime in and say I stay in fire most of the time because there’s no need for me to switch, or the other elements are just subpar and are only useful for the utility 1 or 2 skills provide such as static field. In a self-sustaining party, I might as well stay in fire and dps. If I swapped to maybe get a heal off (mainly directed at staff since I use it in PvE) or earth for a blast finisher, I’d be locked out of the only attunement (fire) that does any damage for 10 seconds minimum, ~11 seconds for me since I only want blasting staff.

Don’t forget they can still bunker. Everyone complains about the bunker being too strong, which is true, but they go ahead and nerf all the non-bunker builds.

Loco.4561:

I might start playing my ele again now it’s been balanced down a bit, might be more of a challenge.

Maybe it would been more of a challenge if you didn’t use the most overpowered build in the first place.

KazNaka.4718:

Ok, you’re saying when I attune to water it gives regen. I get that, but what about the 10% damage increase?

This is from wiki: "As conjure weapons are environmental weapons, they will not benefit from traits that effect weapon skills. "

So isn’t Internal Fire a trait that affects weapon skills or am I wrong?

If that’s the case, if I have Piercing Shards (deal +20% dmg to vuln while attuned to water) and attune to water while equipped with Fiery Greatsword, I’d deal an extra 20% dmg to vuln foes with the gs?

It should work. Some guy around here made a build with a lightning hammer that builds around these sorts of traits such as piercing shards.

The wiki I believe is referring to traits for other classes that affect weapons directly. For example, a 20% cooldown reduction to hammer skills won’t apply to lightning hammer, while attunement bonuses aren’t weapon or skill specific.

You can easily test this by going into heart of the mists and verifying the numbers.

“Fireball aftercast decreased by 0.1 seconds to match the other auto attacks.”

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Lava font is supposed to receive a 30% fire field duration extension, which it does not. I am not referring to damage ticks in this instance. The duration is 4 seconds with or without the trait slotted. The DoT should stop but the fire field should remain to combo for an additional 1.2 seconds.

Adastra.9821:

Works for lava font afaik. It gives 5 ticks of damage. Also with this trait, it is also possible to blast lava font by casting eruption after.

By blast, I meant to use the blast finisher from eruption (earth 2). I’m sure most staff elementalists are used to casting eruption first then lava font, but this trait along with the recent changes allow you to do it the other way around if you’re fast enough.

Raif.9507:

This stream was just disappointing.

Wall o’ text

While I do appreciate the time they take to do this, I’ll have to agree. It’s already been discussed in the past how the low health pool, high base attunement recharge, and now low mobility all work together to encourage arcane+water builds. I’ll admit though this patch and new traits like fresh air were a step in the right direction but it still fails to address the core problem.

There’s some shred of hope in there though towards the end when he mentioned arcane+water builds. Couple that with the earlier comments he kept making about the ele being about swapping attunements, I hope this means we can get rid of traits like the following which require you to be in an attunement for extended periods of time to have any effect at all:

one with fire
flame barrier
pyromancer’s puissance
zephyr’s speed
one with air

Fixing terrible traits can go in another thread, but these were chosen specifically to highlight the disconnect between their vision, as I interpreted from this stream, and reality.

Ulion.5476:

The total dps of arc lighting is like someone spamming dragon tooth every 6sec but arc lighting does not miss. It is nice to hit 3-5 enemies with it. With this changes make all air attunement weapons have the highest auto attack damage against multple opponents.

On my usual scepter build (note I even use the air X trait), dragon’s tooth crits for 4k while arc lightning does 2k on a full channel. Dragon’s tooth isn’t channeled and you can use other skills while it’s on cooldown. Arc lightning’s damage is pathetic and it’s not easy to hit multiple targets unless you’re in the perfect position. FYI arc lightning will only hit up to 2 additional targets. Its damage and multi-target buff still doesn’t justify me using it regularly and so it’ll remain a filler while everything else is on cooldown. The uselessness of this skill is only rivaled by the scepter water auto, but I’m fine with that since I only go into water attunement for its heals.

Rizzy.8293:

Thunderbrew.7034:

SuiRyuJin.4615:

if ur server got some well organized groups, a staff ele on either dmg build or a bunker build is a god send. a well organized zerg finishes the battle in like 1min. either ur wiped, or the enemy is wiped. they stack up, they push, smashing into and through each other. personally, even as a glass cannon, i am almost always in the front line, right behind or close to our commander leading . as u run through, u drop ur aoe in the back line of the enemy. some aoes like eruption or ice spike can interrupt the cast time by dodge rolling foward to keep mobile. glyph of the storm can be casted on the go. magnetic aura can take care of any range atks as u charge forward. its a… risky style as a glass cannon, but when the fight is over in about 1min-2min, it really doesnt matter much once u finish ur cycle.

i started wvw as a staff ele glass cannon, i am sticking to it unless some major changes get applied to staff.

So let me get this straight. You are a glass cannon ele, that stays in the front
and “runs through” their zerg while dropping AOE? If that is even remotely
true the only thing saving you is complete and total lag in large zergs, preventing
the enemy from attacking. That or they are complete newbies.

After 1500 hours in staff ele WvW at tier 1, I can assure you that that doesnt work.
You are the first target they look for.

Pfft, assuming they can catch you through all your cantrips and ride the lightning -.-

Because we can equip a dagger offhand here right

He’s basically saying someone’s going to come in and tell you you’re doing it wrong and that ele is basically one of the best professions.

flame barrier
Not only do you have to get hit, it also only has a chance to proc. The 1s burning is also negligible when you already have a number of ways to burn in fire attunement.

One with fire
Same as above. Even worse is that this is a master trait.

Zephyr’s speed
Won’t stack and 10% is hardly noticeable. It might as well not exist.

Arcane precision
Only has a 10% chance on crit. Even with 50% crit, that’s a 5% proc for very low duration conditions. An idea for a fix would be to replace it with elemental surge and introduce a new grandmaster here.

Arcane retribution
Because arcane power sucks. A single lava font that hit 5 targets and it’s gone with 1 tick. It could have some synergy with elemental surge, but is still underwhelming.

It’s arcane wave causing it; they count as sword kills for some reason.

inb4 50s cooldown

I’d rather this be a knockdown instead of a knockback, then we can also make use of the air grandmaster trait.

have you fed the quaggans this year?

Senjun.8149:

Just an idea ive been suggesting for a while now. You dont see condi eles in pvp because we don’t have the best conditions ingame, although burning is acceptable its way to easily cleansed constantly because we lack the ability to really stack anymore than 2 conditions at a time (burning and bleed) and our bleed stacking is lackluster, if you use a scepter you know it takes way to long to stack those bleeds in a fight and if anything gets in their way they hit that first.

We need another condition to stack and so Ive had this idea for a while now.

In PvP, we don’t need more condition spam in the game. We also don’t need more passive unavoidable procs similar to incendiary powder and dhuumfire. Our conditions are mostly fine. It’s the other condition spam that needs to be toned down and subsequently some of the condition removal which imo would both work together to improve the state of a PvP condi ele.