Guild Wars 2

The changes aren’t bad, but I was expecting more. I hope these are fake or incomplete otherwise they did a terrible job at creating “build diversity” for Eles. We’d still be required to place points into arcana for any viable builds, and the focus changes aren’t too impressive.

I remember seeing this suggestion elsewhere as well, sort of like engineer kits. That’s be awesome.

Caffynated.5713:

I wonder if some of you even realize that D/D is considered nonviable by many top level players. S/D is the preferred weapon set, with it’s higher healing, blinds to secure stomps (saves mist form), free armor, longer range, spamable low cooldown abilities for signet heal, zoning ability, burst, etc.

Crying about D/D is kind of a sign that you don’t actually understand the problem and shouldn’t be taken seriously in balance discussions.

Most people are arguing about the dagger offhand nerf (RTL), which affects both D/D and D/D. People are probably just bringing up D/D rather than S/D because that’s what they’ve been playing in either W3, PvE, but not necessarily in sPvP.

They should have reduced healing taken while in mist form by x% instead of locking out abilities altogether. Simple fix, doesn’t completely kill non-bunker specs with lower hp that can’t survive condi stacks ticking through mist form.

It’s so easy to read when an ELE will pop RTL, not sure why it was nerfed. Maybe to make things easier for people who spam abilities mindlessly? For people who don’t want to put effort into learning how to counter certain abilities?

Pay attention to what cooldowns the ele has blown, watch for the swap to air attunement > http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilize .

Even if the cooldown on your immobilize is greater than RTL most eles will not “GTFO” out unless they’re out of healing/defensive options. In that case they’ll usually have nothing left once you’ve countered their RTL and you’ll have (or would have had) 20 seconds to finish them off before they can use it again.

Playing S/D thief and other games.

Boon stealing, Condi removal, high damage, high survivability (stealth, shadowstep), insane mobility, lots of cc.

I liked the play style of my ele better, but the recent nerfs were unnecessary and the buffs/changes still don’t pave a path for a variety of builds (it actually nerfs non-bunker builds). By the changes made every patch I’m fairly certain that internal testing is lacking for the Elementalist class, and the devs are simply listening to QQ posts made by newer players that didn’t know how to counter Eles.

TooBz.3065:

Delak.1064:

Disappointed in this patch, zero effort into fixing our useless traits. It’s unfortunate that they’re listening to people cry about our mobility instead of listening to the players that actually play the class and want a larger variety of builds.

ANET’s idea of balancing appears to simply be: kill off anything viable without adding anything to compensate for it. balancing needs to go both ways sometimes, and this is one of those instances.

Now we have to wait another month for more minimal buffs that still don’t fix our traitlines and probably rtl being killed further by decreasing the range to something like 600. Sorry I sound so negative in this post, but ANET has made it clear that they simply aren’t listening to numerous suggestions (most which say the same thing) made by players that actually play eles.

I’m fairly certain that’s why they have a suggestions forum. So they can isolate ideas from anyone who may see them.

Yes, I’m fairly certain that both class and suggestion forums are being read on a regular basis by employees at ANET. The fact that they seem to ignore many positive suggestions (in which many players agree upon) and favor the “NERF X SKILL PLZ” suggestions is pretty disappointing and has started to discourage a lot of positive input toward the game. There used to be a lot more player discussion on methods to improve the weaker parts of each class (traits/utilities/weapon skills), but people quickly realized that no one was taking those suggestions into consideration.

I’m not saying that every suggestion is a great one, but I’ve yet to see ANET even simply comment on popular viable suggestions.

Disappointed in this patch, zero effort into fixing our useless traits. It’s unfortunate that they’re listening to people cry about our mobility instead of listening to the players that actually play the class and want a larger variety of builds.

ANET’s idea of balancing appears to simply be: kill off anything viable without adding anything to compensate for it. balancing needs to go both ways sometimes, and this is one of those instances.

Now we have to wait another month for more minimal buffs that still don’t fix our traitlines and probably rtl being killed further by decreasing the range to something like 600. Sorry I sound so negative in this post, but ANET has made it clear that they simply aren’t listening to numerous suggestions (most which say the same thing) made by players that actually play eles.

Nice vid, I’ve seen you around in WvW a few times. I used to run a similar build, maybe I’ll try it out once again!

I’d rather have seen more changes to focus abilities and staff, but I think they’re saving that for next patch. The RTL nerf sucks, I hope they allow Aeromancer’s Alacrity to affect it now (20% reduction to Air CD).

Some great Ideas in this thread. From what I’ve experienced the main tweaks that Elementalists could use are:
- Allowing players to move away from feeling forced into placing points into Arcana
- Having a higher chance of landing scepter attacks (while not being 100% chance)
- Increasing staff single target damage output
- Increasing the speed of staff abilities
- Making focus more desirable
- Making some utilities slightly more desirable
- Tweaking Ele base stats / bonus trait stats to allow for more viable damage builds
- Making some traits more desirable (especially in Fire)
- Increase damage of trident

Some ideas expanding upon that

Scepter:
- Increase direct damage on all auto attacks
- Increase damage on Shatterstone (water 2) and increase the animation speed by ~20%
- Increase the animation speed of Dragon’s Tooth (fire 2) by ~20-30%
- Increase the speed of the Phoenix “projectile” by 50%
- Increase damage on Hurl (earth 2), increase the animation speed by ~20%

Staff:
- Increase all auto attack speed / projectile speed
- Increase damage on all auto attacks
- Increase the animation speed of eruption (earth 2) / ice spike (water 2) by ~20%
- Add a direct damage component to Flame Burst (fire 3) (only affects your target, burning component is still aoe)
- Damage on Lava Font (fire 2) now occurs the moment it’s cast. The fire combo field will place a 1s burn (refreshes) on enemies standing in it
- Add a small medium damage point blank aoe to Burning Retreat (fire 4)

Dagger mainhand:
- Make Burning speed (fire 3) mechanics similar to heartseeker (can still move in a direction without a target, won’t overshoot enemies)

Dagger offhand:
- Make churning (earth 5) earth a “hold to channel” ability. The longer it is channeled, the more initial damage it does. OR reduce the cast time significantly

Focus:
- Reduce cooldown on Gale (air 5) by ~30s and add a damage component OR add a small AOE knockdown radius from the target
- Reduce cooldown on fire aura (fire 5) by ~20s, increase duration to 5s
- Replace fire wall (fire 4) with an ability similar to Thief’s Infiltrator’s Strike/shadow return, except causes a small fire wall at your location
- Allow an out of combat weapon swap

Trident:
- Increase auto attack damage on all attunments and speed of projectiles
- Add a medium direct damage on Boil (fire 2)
- Significantly increase damage on Steam (fire 3)

Utility and elites:
- All four utility signets are now instant cast similar to signet of air (signet of restoration unaffected)
- Combine all utility conjured weapons into one, allow swapping similar to attunements. Increase charges to 25. Increased stats will vary according to the weapon you’re holding
- Tornado adds protection and swiftness for the duration
- Whirlpool adds stability, protection, and swiftness for the duration. (maybe too strong?)
- Unsure what 3 utilities to add in place of 3 conjured weapons being removed

Other changes:
- Arcana traitline now increases combo field and aura duration by 0.5% per point (or 1% if it isn’t too powerful)
- Attunement swapping has a static cooldown (same as -60% reduction from current Arcana trait)
- Allow out of combat weapon swap

It’s up on Stormbluff Isle

Very detailed overview of current camera issues, I fully agree with what you’ve stated and believe that ArenaNet should take a look at this.