Guild Wars 2

lLobo.7960:

Im sorry,

but diamond skin and burning fire are options.
Yes you need water for a bruiser spec to be reliable against condi. But its expected.

You cant put condi removals on all traitlines and call it balanced. The suggestions by Jski are just blatant OP and crazy.

If your oponents are traiting for condi, you should trait for cleanse. Or trait to finish them (or run) before the condis take you.

Take note: Individually

Have we ever seen a viable build with only Fire or Earth alone? Burning Fire is very unreliable and can’t be properly used as the sole cleanse trait. Same goes with Diamond Skin as you need to maintain above 75% HP and has a “on-hit” requirement which is a big no-no for non bruiser builds.

These are solid options for secondary cleanses but not as a primary one, which would lock you into Water. Another option would be prioritize all your Sigils and Runes to cleansing which is not a real solution to the lack of build diversity.

I agree that Water Trait Line cleanses must be nerfed a bit and then they should distribute cleansing traits around other lines. Simply leaving Water trait line as is then adding similar cleanses on other lines is blatant OP.

narcx.3570:

Kyon.9735:

narcx.3570:

As I revenant main, I find ele’s complaining about a lack of cleansing options hilarious…

My friend, ignorance is a sin.

Burning Fire from Fire trait line and Diamond Skin from Earth trait line are not even considered “options” individually. Eles are still locked to Water trait line if they want reliable cleanses.

Instead of whining that Revs have much worse cleanses than Eles, why not ask for a buff too as both classes need better cleanses for more build diversity? Ignorant people can be so petty.

Oh, Rev’s would dream to have “worse cleanses.” We have… Leadership Runes. And then one condi every 10 second on legend swap if traited.

There you go again whining “Oh we are poor Revs cry me a river”. Is it that hard to understand the words “ask for buffs, both classes need it”?

narcx.3570:

As I revenant main, I find ele’s complaining about a lack of cleansing options hilarious…

My friend, ignorance is a sin.

Burning Fire from Fire trait line and Diamond Skin from Earth trait line are not even considered “options” individually. Eles are still locked to Water trait line if they want reliable cleanses.

Instead of whining that Revs have much worse cleanses than Eles, why not ask for a buff too as both classes need better cleanses for more build diversity? Ignorant people can be so petty.

The best solution they can do for Sword Weaver is to balance out the risk-reward playstyle of a pure melee spec which has been asked countless times.

They need to do 4 things:

1. Increase Sword DPS by a huge margin.
2. Increase barrier HP and improve decay timers.
3. Improve gap closer skills.
4. Improve condition cleanses on weaver trait line.

I see a lot of people complaining about the Weaver attunement CDs and not being able to use offhand skills on demand. However, that is the general design of a Weaver and should not be touched. The problem is that the current risks are far greater than the rewards.

DPS and Attunement CD: To simply put it, Elementalists have 20 weapon skills which dealt small~medium damage because these skills should be chained together by dancing through attunements. However, with the current Weaver design you are not able to reliably chain weapon skills due to attunement CD and each specific skill is abysmally weak as well. To justify the Attunement CDs and to compensate the loss of reliable skill chaining, skills should deal more damage than they currently do.

Barrier, Gap Closers, and Condition Cleanse: Sword Weaver is a pure melee spec. As it stands, it’s currently impossible to go toe to toe against condi Necros without going to a bunker build. I think I don’t need to explain further why improving these 3 are essential for build diversity.

Another point I’d like to make is that the Barrier design is absolutely terrible for Weaver. The current formula as per wiki is (Coefficient * Healing Power) + Base Value and it is also capped to 50% of the target’s max HP Link. If weaver is the “DPS spec” for Elementalists, it makes no sense that the formula would include Healing Power and be capped at 50% of maximum HP. This kind of mechanic just pushes weaver into another bunker spec which Elementalists already have through Tempest. I think the current formula is only good for Scourge.

My opinion: I love the general idea for the Weaver design but it is clearly lacking to be a real “DPS” spec. I’m very happy that they put several skills with evade frames. I hope they improve the spec by the time of the expansion’s release.

I love having access to multiple skills with evade frames. Damage is very subpar though it’s probably because it’s meant to be hybrid for both power and condi. I still find it very lacking as people would still take a hybrid reaper anyday. Somewhat decent with carrion amulet in PvP but as usual, still weak against condis and chill. Maybe if Unraveling Hexes actually worked, it would be ok I guess. Survivability against power builds is really good with all the evade frames and barrier mechanic. For a “true melee” spec, it needs better gap closers. A little bump in range might be enough.

TL;DR – I had a blast but it can still be significantly improved in survivability against condis and in the damage department.

Good vid, not the standard support tempest build and you actually pump out respectable condition damage. I could see that you focus on pumping out damage more than actually supporting as there were times wherein you chose to swap attunements/continue DPSing instead of healing/overloading water (which was really crucial for your teammates at some points).

However, I find it extremely weird that your enemies usually choose to focus the reaper instead of an offhand Warhorn Tempest. Pretty sure the outnumbered fights would have gone the other way if they had focused you right at the bat instead. The first 20-30 seconds of a fight is usually enough to tell what utilities your enemies are using if anyone is really paying attention. It would have been easy to capitalize on focusing you if they knew that you had no Mist Form nor Obsidian Flesh.

In my honest opinion, what makes condi more annoying is that most skills comes with effects that affect movement like chill, cripple, immobilize, and weakness to some extent (reduces endurance regeneration for dodging). Sure, these effects can be used in both power or condi builds as long as that skill is tied to the weapon or utility skill but condi builds have a default food which is anything that increases condi duration.

In general, I believe that what makes most people hate condi is that because nobody wants to die a slow, painful death. Watching your HP tick chunks while all your cleanses are on cooldown due to cleanse cooldown mismanagement or the sheer fact that condi application rate is far greater than cleanse rate is one of the worst feelings you can get which can be compared to the old full zerk 1 combo builds of the past.

I’ve been in both sides of the power and condi meta and it’s easy to say that condi build allows you to play more defensively than power builds. In the end, I prefer if ANET is able to find a middle ground and tone down everything (power damage, condition damage, and survivability) but hey, balance is a myth.

IDK if people forgot how to count or just don’t know the new cast time of Churning Earth post-buff due to the lack of OH Dagger Eles. It hit waaaaay too many times more than it should on a 1v1 scenario. Good vid anyways. Would love to see how it fares against outnumbered with condi cheese.

All I can say is that 2000 is a lot. I played since launch and have been mostly a WvW player. I’ve quit and came back multiple times but when I’m active, I almost purely play WvW as a scout/roamer and I’ve always been capping camps and towers with my group to generate small scale fights. I have no interests in ktrains so I barely ever joined them.

I have no issues with this as I already have multiple ascended sets. 2000 is a small number for zergers and those who join ktrains. But for roamers/scouts like me, even purely playing WvW is not enough to hit rank 2000. I’m currently around 1.6k.

I highly doubt that it will be reverted since Mesmers are already destroying WvW zerging right now.

Though I’d agree that it’s extremely underwhelming the way it is right now. It should be buffed so it would also grant fury and not just share it and a huge buff in cast time (1/4 sec) is needed to reduce its clunkiness.

I used a similar build (Arcane, Water, Tempest with Leadership Runes and S/WH) and all I could say is that the DPS downtime is alarming while waiting for overloads.

I would highly suggest using MH dagger, Sigil of Strength + Battle instead to maintain higher stacks of might uptime. I also realized that Arcane is definitely better than Earth for WH if you are not going to use Auras because of the higher boon uptime, extra heals and blast finisher.

That is what I’m currently rolling in WvW though I eventually swapped to Durability Runes instead of Leadership. Against similar bunky sustain builds it will most likely end in a stalemate. Playstyle is pure attrition as MH dagger only offers Burning Speed as its true burst and WH has 0 burst at all.

However, that would be the limit of offhand warhorn as it is very clunky. Cyclone is very unreliable, a buff to its cast time will do wonders. Air #5 could use a massive buff in cast time as well because it’s meant to be combo’ed with Cyclone. Wild Fire is just for might stacking. It does not strongly punish people who ignore it since it has so-so damage. Tidal Wave is pretty much just for healing/cleanse if you have Cleansing Water. The KB delay is so huge and stupid IMO. Earth #5 can be used on downies or stand over its AoE to make defensive use of the blind against melee. I have to love how Earth #4’s blast effect is right at the start of the animation. Makes it easier to stack might or blast your water field after dodging in Earth for another blast finisher. Fire #4’s cast time is extremely slow and annoying as well and could use some cast time buffs.

All in all, WH can be decent following some cast time and cast delay buffs but is extremely reliant on cantrips because it has no cleanse and invulnerability.

So I got an in game mail from Shadowrose (he said his account was banned) so I’m posting it instead. My comments will be in bold.

P.S – I removed the remaining part because he stated that the following changes are not simple tweaks.

Weapon changes:
Scepter:
-Flamestrike: Increased damage by 33%.
-Dragon’s Tooth: Radius increased from 180 to 240.
-Phoenix: Increased projectile width by 25%.

-Shatterstone: Now additionally chills for 3 seconds on detonation.
-Shatterstone: Radius increased from 180 to 240.
-Shatterstone: Cooldown increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
Seems OP for a short CD skill. Can perma stack Chill with a little condi duration bonus

-Water Trident: Cast time reduced to 1/4 from 1/2.

-Arc Lightning: Decreased channel time from 3.5s to 2.5s. Damage unchanged.
-Lightning Strike: Increased damage by 25% in PVP.
The skill deals decent damage right now

-Blinding Flash: Now has a 120 aoe radius around its target (like Comet).
This is actually a really decent one. Blind has greatly lost significance since HoT because a lot of the new skills introduced are AoE and pulsing.

-Stone Shards: Decreased cast time from 1.5s to 0.75s.
-Stone Shards: Reduced aftercast significantly.
-Stone Shards: Bleed duration reduced to 4 seconds from 6.
-Rock Barrier: Projectile release speed increased by 50%.
-Rock Barrier: Animation size increased.
-Dust Devil: Added homing properties.
I think it’s fine as it is

Focus:
-Flamewall: Grants 2 stacks of might for 8 seconds to allies that pass through.
I assume the effect will only be once?
-Flamewall: Increased power scaling significantly.

-Freezing Gust: Chill duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
-Freezing Gust: Increased power scaling significantly.
Should be AoE as well

-Comet: Is now ground targeted.
-Comet: Radius increased from 180 to 240.
-Comet: Animation size increased by 100%

Staff:
-Burning retreat: Removes Immobilized.
-Meteor Shower: Cast time reduced to 3 seconds from 3.75.
I’m not sure how it will affect PvE but it’s fine right now in WvW. If anything, it should be nerfed in WvW so it doesn’t cover everything in a tower’s wall.

-Ice Spike: Now falls after 2 seconds from 3.
This skill deals great damage right now and currently has no AoE red circle for enemies
-Frozen Ground: Cooldown reduced to 36 seconds from 40.
-Healing Rain: Cooldown reduced to 40 seconds from 45.

-Chain Lightning: Projectile speed increased by 50%
-Lightning Surge: Cast time decreased to 1 second from 1.5.
-Gust: Added homing properties.

-Eruption: Now cripples foes standing in it as it casts.
-Shock Wave: Bleeding duration decreased from 20 seconds to 10.
-Shock Wave: Bleeding stacks increased to 3 from 1.
Why is this nerfed?

Staff skills across the board had their aftercast diminished.

Dagger:
-Dragon’s Claw: Increased total damage by 20%
-Fire Grab: Normalized with Lightning Touch, now it whiffs considerably less.

-Vapor Blade: Increased projectile speed by 20%
-Vapor Blade: Increased attack speed by 15%
-Frost Aura: Decreased cooldown from 40 to 30 seconds.
-Cleansing Wave: Increased base healing to 2000.
-Cleansing Wave: Decreased healing scaling from 1:1 to 0.75:1
-Cleansing Wave: Decreased cooldown to 35 seconds from 40.

-Lightning Touch: Whiffs less.
-Ride the Lightning: Cooldown decreased to 25 seconds from 40.

-Impale: Range increased to 450 from 300.
Increase power modifier as well.

-Magnetic grasp: Leap is faster and less clunky, especially in the landing part.
-Earthquake: Cooldown reduced to 40 seconds from 45.
-Churning Earth: Can now be channeled while moving.
-Churning Earth: Self movement speed slow: 20%
-Churning Earth: Can now be cancelled earlier for a fraction of AoE and damage depending on how early it was cancelled. (damage ramp up increases every 0.5 seconds, minimum 25%)
This is not a simple tweak.

So let’s make a compilation of traits, utilities, and weapon skills that can be realistically tweaked without exerting too much effort for the devs. Don’t expect any of these to be game changing as Anet obviously “doesn’t have the resources” to completely rework eles. Let’s accept it, there’s no way this class can be saved (in terms of PvP/non bunker builds) without a complete rework which would consume a lot of time on their end. Let’s settle for small realistic changes for now.

Keep in mind. Make it realistic, reasonable, short, and simple.

Armor of Earth
• Reduce base CD to 30s
• Reduce stability stacks to 3.
• Reduce protection duration to 3s.

Reasoning: Too much boon corrupt and boon rip to justify 75s CD on a skill that gives 2 boons without traits making the duration and number of stacks negligible. Much needed short CD damage mitigation skill.

Arcane Shield
• Reduce base CD to 45 secs.
• Increase shield charge to 5.
• Ability to self detonate.
• Increase Damage by 33%

Reasoning: 3 charges are too low. Reduce CD bit by bit if still not decent. Increase damage to make it more punishing to players who ignore it. As it stands now, the damage is not decent enough to stop players from ignoring the effects of mindlessly attacking through it.

Tempestuous Aria
• Reduce Shout CD by 20%.
• Shouts Apply 5s of Fury.

Reasoning: DPS trait for Tempests.

Lucid Singularity
• This GM trait needs a complete overhaul so I’ll only be mentioning it.

Ride the Lightning
• Reduce cooldown to 20s.
• Add 1 second Evade Frame

Reasoning: Much needed mobility and defensive buff for offhand dagger.

Ring of Fire
• Increase burning stacks for crossing the threshold to 2.

Drake’s Breath
• Increase burn duration to 3.5s.

Reasoning: These skills were nerfed because of the Celestial Might stacking meta which are now but over.

Cyclone
• Increase velocity to be the same as Dust Devil.

Reasoning: Too slow and radius is small as well to compensate for the speed.

Dust Storm
• Reduce Cast time to 0.5s.

Tidal Surge
• Reduce Knockback Delay to 1s.

Heat Sink
• Reduce Cast time to 0.5s
• Apply 4s fury.

Wildfire
• Increase animation and burning damage by 20%.

Reasoning: General buffs to reduce warhorn clunkiness.

P.S – I skipped scepter buffs because there are already a lot of decent suggestions for it.

Dawdler.8521:

Kyon.9735:

That logic should only apply in large scale zerg fights, not in small scale roamer fights and skirmishes wherein every player has a bigger value than a zergling. Players should be rewarded for outplaying enemies, much more against a larger group. The counter before auto-death for getting ressed or rallying should be reduced.

Logic? It’s the facts of combat. You said it yourself – you had 7 vs 12. That’s nearly a 2:1 advantage for the enemy. 1v2 in practically any scenario assuming equal skill and any classes is going to be a hard fight. All these videos of people going 1v2, 1v3, 1v4 or 10 man guild groups taking on 30 man zergs is a matter of different skill levels or builds meeting their perfect counter. They are not representive of any kind of average WvW play where yes, that “logic” apply across the board.

And no, we had 0 scrappers and I doubt scrappers could do much against an organized DH heavy guild group. We had 3 condi users (2 Rev, 1 Reaper) and 4 power users (2 Tempests, DH, Chrono). We obviously had the upper hand in mobility and personal DPS and I believe we used it to our advantage decently well. The fight took 6 minutes before we got wiped and we got our first double downie at the 5 minute mark.

Then you have no idea what scrappers are capable of in small scale combat and what they bring to the table with their ranged stomp.

You probably did a good job fighting a numerically superior force for that long, but you still brought an obvious GREN zerg composition (albeit a smaller group) to fight against what I can only assume was a bigger GREN group. But your group wasnt good enough (or they wherent bad enough) to weigh up for the difference in numbers and you didnt bring any tools that could have tipped the scales. Numbers won. Outcome obvious.

Please try reading. 7 roamer builds against 12~DH heavy zerg type group and we’re obviously more than your every day casual roamer. We were picking them apart even though they stacked and we have the superior mobility and personal DPS advantage because we don’t stack and we specifically use roaming builds.

Scrappers can’t really do much against a tightly stacked boon spam group. If it was a smaller scale skirmish against a roaming group then yes, they’d be good.

Dawdler.8521:

Kyon.9735:

I’m not entirely sure if it’s supposed to work this way.
Rally in downed state is -25% HP each rally.
Ressed by team – always 75% HP when you get up

Being ressed is seriously BS. I play in a roaming group and there was a time my party and another roaming party (total of 7) fought a 12~ man guild group. We downed this player 3 times in a span of 10 seconds. Since it was an organized guild group, they always mass ressed him the moment he downed and he always came back up with 75% HP.

Obviously, we lost because we’re unable to secure stomps and they had the upper hand due to superior cleave so we couldn’t res our own without blowing everyone’s invuls.

So you’re saying that you lost because the enemy outnumbered you so much you couldnt win?

Yes, thats exactly how its supposed to work. In WvW, in sPvP and even in PvE. Thats how all games work when you fight enemies and they kill you.

I’d also like to know how many Scrappers you had because if you dont say at least 2 then you brought screwdrivers to hammer in nails. Sure it will eventually work if you are completely backwards but bringing the proper tools is always better.

That logic should only apply in large scale zerg fights, not in small scale roamer fights and skirmishes wherein every player has a bigger value than a zergling. Players should be rewarded for outplaying enemies, much more against a larger group. The counter before auto-death for getting ressed or rallying should be reduced.

And no, we had 0 scrappers and I doubt scrappers could do much against an organized DH heavy guild group. We had 3 condi users (2 Rev, 1 Reaper) and 4 power users (2 Tempests, DH, Chrono). We obviously had the upper hand in mobility and personal DPS and I believe we used it to our advantage decently well. The fight took 6 minutes before we got wiped and we got our first double downie at the 5 minute mark.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s supposed to work this way.
Rally in downed state is -25% HP each rally.
Ressed by team – always 75% HP when you get up

Being ressed is seriously BS. I play in a roaming group and there was a time my party and another roaming party (total of 7) fought a 12~ man guild group. We downed this player 3 times in a span of 10 seconds. Since it was an organized guild group, they always mass ressed him the moment he downed and he always came back up with 75% HP.

Obviously, we lost because we’re unable to secure stomps and they had the upper hand due to superior cleave so we couldn’t res our own without blowing everyone’s invuls.

Jana.6831:

And you have never faced a Berserker with durability runes? And think that all those who call that class and build OP should be ashamed of themselves – alright then. Why don’t we all just run the same class with the same build and call it a day? Even then skill wouldn’t matter if it’s berserker – just random wins/losses everywhere.

Do you seriously think that anyone who picks up a meta build magically becomes godlike? Does every meta build you meet destroy you?

If you can please actually calm down and start using your brain, it’s pretty logical that a meta build on a mediocre player is good. A meta build on a great player is obviously better. Just because you hate meta builds doesn’t mean that you should ignore the individual’s skill.

And to be clear – I hate metabattle and meta builds. You can even look up to my previous posts. That website has done nothing but promote one true build for each class causing massive nerfs that affect non meta builds harder.

Jana.6831:

Kyon.9735:

So those people saying “you’re just using OP meta build” are completely irrelevant and should be ashamed of themselves rolf.

Let me guess what class with what build you’re running…

Go on take your guess and I bet you were thinking I play a meta class with a meta build. Sorry to disappoint you but I play a D/WH Tempest with 0 shouts.

It would be godsend if boon duration of Imbued Melodies work on all weapons.

You’d just be wasting gold for equipment when revs can do it better and requires a lot less effort.

On the other hand, I’ve tried it in roaming before. Commander set with leadership runes, boon duration food, and arcane line. You’re simply sacrificing too much stats for boon duration. Also, staff is not that good in might stacking mid fight.

Saiyan.1704:

Kyon.9735:

R O C.6574:

Blame MetaBattle

It goes bothways. People have their own free will and most choose to lazily use metabattle and go the easy route. Metabattle caters to those lazy tards and IMO is bad for the game. But on the other hand, meta builds exist because of Anet’s incompetence in balancing professions.

But in my own honest opinion, metabattle should go. Let people start trying and discover their own builds. Some people even harrass others for not using metabuilds.

I’m sorry but I rather have a Metabattle type site for new players to have a start, than have them be on my team with some glass PvE rez-bot build. Sure bad players will be bad but at least they’ll be a bit more efficient on a good build.

The differences between every Esports player’s build in Leagues is off by maybe 1 trait, 1 utility or 1 rune. There are no secrets here… build diversity (finding that gem) is pretty much non-existent now.

And this kind of logic is why were stuck in meta wars. PvP just rotates between meta builds and meta classes. Noobs stomping others with premade builds generate QQ followed by massive nerfs. which in turn kills more non meta builds. And then there’s the “if you can’t beat them, join them” logic so yay more meta spam and QQ.

Seriously, people want change but won’t dare experience a bit of inconvenience in the process? Pure kappa.

Regarding your concern on new players, this is why Anet should make better matchmaking and it’s pretty much the same thing now. GW2 shouldn’t be like a FPS game where you just grab a build from a website and pewpew everyone. If you want to excel, learn it. No more spoonfeeding.

So much salt. This is definitely why people are still in WvW (forums included).

Great vid nonetheless. Good players know how to differentiate mediocre players with meta build from real good players with meta build. Using the same build will obviously not yeild the same result because that’s where player skill kicks in.

So those people saying “you’re just using OP meta build” are completely irrelevant and should be ashamed of themselves rolf.

We won’t be having this kind of problem if the game balancing was separate.

PVE – Quickness sharing is essential in raids.
WvW/PvP – Remove quickness (and resistance) from boonshare list.

R O C.6574:

Blame MetaBattle

It goes bothways. People have their own free will and most choose to lazily use metabattle and go the easy route. Metabattle caters to those lazy tards and IMO is bad for the game. But on the other hand, meta builds exist because of Anet’s incompetence in balancing professions.

But in my own honest opinion, metabattle should go. Let people start trying and discover their own builds. Some people even harrass others for not using metabuilds.

@Senario
The main problem of non bunker builds are self sustain and defense. Eles doesn’t have access to stealth, does not have decent mobility, nor do they have access to low cd blocks. Those are needed to compensate having the lowest base HP and Armor.

In the first place, damage was included as an effect of breaking arcane shield to discourage enemies from attacking through it. However, the damage itself is not enough so I figured that adding a heal on break effect would achieve its true goal – stop attacking carelessly or suffer the consenquences.

I am basing it on experience as I have been playing S/X in duels and solo roaming with rune of defender. When people realized I was using the rune, most decent players stopped mindlessly attacking and actually learned to wait it out a bit.

The next problem is active defense. Since eles can’t stealth and has bad mobility ouyside of FGS, they will have no choice but to bulk up in defensive stats which is a no go for DPS eles. Hence, I added blocks on different traits which would require active play.

BTW I made a mistake, One with Fire will give an Ele 1 charge of arcane shield upon signet use, not Rock Solid.

TL;DR – All my suggestions are centered around non bunker builds and I tried minimizing buffingbunker builds in the process.

I find it hilarious that there is not a single ban for Eles. Talk about how celestial amu carried the class for years. But I might pick up my hanged shoes and suit up my scepter. Hopefully I don’t get rekt by P/P thieves and medi guardians ????

@OP
Too many passives and overpowered might stacking across the board.

A couple of ideas to make non bunker Eles work. I have a lot more but I don’t want to make a long wall of text.
Goal – Increase active defense

Final Shielding – Increase threshold to 40%.

Reasoning: Glass eles have low base HP. Chances are they’d get burst even before the 25% threshold procs.

Rock Solid – Activating a signet grants you 1 charge of Arcane Shield. Heal yourself for a small amount when the charge is consumed (around 1k hp).

Elemental Attunement – Make it baseline. Nerf the effects so that it only affects the user unless Arcane trait line is taken.

Elemental Surge – Add effect: Remove 2 conditions when an arcane skill hits your target.

Conjures – Reduce CD to 30s. You won’t and should not camp in conjures in the first place.

Earth Shield – Breaks stun.

Arcane Shield – Reduce base CD to 45 secs. Heal yourself when all 3 block charges are consumed (same healing as rune of defender).

Reasoning: The current effects of consuming 3 charges are not reasonable enough for enemies to stop hitting you.

Signet of Water – Active: Convert all conditions into boons. Passive: Breaks stun. CD increased to 40s, remove cast time. Passive: 33% chance to Chill your target on hit. ICD 8s.

Signet of Air – Active: Teleport to your foe (900 range). If you hit your target, stun them for 1s. Breaks Stun. CD 25s.

Reasoning: Much needed mobility and additional burst setup.

Lightning Flash – Reduce Base CD to 30s. Reduce damage.

It’s fine as it is if you look at the class design IMO. Lowest base HP, high armor, bad mobility, standard block CD. It’s not like those heals passively pop out of nowhere, at the very least it’s active.

This is actually how low base stat classes should be balanced around (in terms of active skills and self sustain only).

There are specific ways of chaining Ele skills to aqcuire optimal defense and offense and it’s usually enough in most scenarios. They’re simply too good and too easy to chain that’s why some people say that chaining skills is easy. Though there are some people who go out of their way and create new chain combos, that’s where it starts to be hard like you stated in your staff example (your example of chaining 5~6 skills simultaenously leaves you with too little attunements to work on if your enemy pops stab).

The weapon class with the highest number of different chain combos would actually be S/D.

If we’re specifically talking about meta builds, then yes, all Ele meta builds are the lowest skill cap class for the past few years along with the old hambow warrior, sentinel mesmer, and turret engi. Celestial Ele is the prime example of a class being carried by stats/amulet.

In the other hand, I bet most people would agree that a zerker DD or Fresh Air S/D would be the highest skill cap if someone can actually pull it off in high tier PvP in this meta but who are we kidding? Eles will forever be stat and amulet reliant unless we see some massive changes. It will forever be the trademark of Anet’s bad class design.

Seriously though, who would have thought of stacking bruiser traits on the squishiest class in the game if they wanted build diversity? They just blatantly promoted bunker playstyle for the class and out of nowhere they say that they don’t want bunkers anymore. Honestly, that’s fine by me but there were no actual buffs to non bunker builds at all.

Problem is that Tempests who were overloaded with reflects are now gone. Add to the fact that their outgoing heals to their allies were enough to mitigate most of the DH damage.

Since the class that hard countered DHs were removed, the outlying problems of DHs in the past are just surfacing now. I believe you can’t compare old DH to new DH directly like that.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Balance is done by a team.
They have the information to show how it interacts with all the other professions
They actually do use that info to make balance changes
Just because you think something is wrong doesn’t mean it actually is.

So are Elementalists anywhere near that “Balanced” Status?

The fact is: No. So let us return this right back at you.
Just because you think something is wrong doesn’t mean it actually is.

Isn’t the real problem here is the 30s+ of resistance and quickness? Nerf that on mesmer boonshare. Protection is pretty easy to spam anyway.

Oh, they can nerf Durability Runes to self only as well.

It’s more OP than Clerics and amulets shouldn’t be a class’ saving grace.

The Profession Balance team needs to get their kitten together.

Elemental Attunement should be baseline though it should be nerfed to self only and only be able to share if people take Arcane traitline. They could combine Arcane Fury with that if they’re feeling generous.

S/D Ele was my favorite. The very definition of high risk high reward wherein you can’t rely on passives to save your life. Too bad that the powercreep and condispam made it kitten unplayable. I really miss saying “kitten , I misused my blind/dodge” when I die.

My 2nd favorite would be DD though it was a lot more forgiving than people admit it to be. Celestial Ele pre-might nerf was downright OP though.

They already increased CD to Flash Freeze and Feel tje Burn because it was too good for Dupport builds.. I guess Tempest DPS aura based builds doesn’t really matter to them.

The main problem for Eles ia that most of their utilities and traits are made for bruising. Why would they not give a class a proper damage mitigation not reliant to stats is something I fail to understand.

Sure, they have mist form, Obsidian Flesh and Arcane shield but they’re all on big cds. What they need to be proper DPS builds are not reduce damage skills and traits but complete damage mitigation with respective counters.

These are something that amulets will never be able to resolve because they’re nothing but stats and passive defense and zerk playstyle relies on active defense which is something that non bunker eles lack.

Technically speaking, I agree that it would be OP to have access to all those skills. But realistically speaking from a PvP standpoint wherein non support Eles/Tempest are barely viable (if not totally not viable), this brings a lot to the table.

Sure, Eles will have access to many additional skills but with the current lack of any good amulets that will allow them to survive as a non-bunker build, I can’t see them being able to actually use all those skills against decent type of players. It’s not like people will allow you to use all of them so it becomes highly situational and I think there will only be a couple of conjure skills that will actually be used (All skills in Earth shield are good, LH 4 and 5, Deep Freeze).

Topic aside, I’d love to see buffs to Earth Shield especially the Conjure Cooldown. It’s one of the best utility skills out there that non-bunker tempests can use so people should try using it more

PvE shouldn’t be touched for the sake of PvP because its state is a lot better than PvP and there’s no point in destroying it for another game mode. As others have suggested already, Anet should hand over PvP balancing to the PvP team and that means they should be balanced separately.

Still, I find it funny when I see some random people in the game QQing about how PvE has become broken because for them, Anet supposedly balances around PvP which is actually the opposite.

What if Conjures worked like the bugged Glyph of Elemental Power? There will only be one utility slot for all conjures and you can summon them based on your current attunement and they have different internal cool downs.

OP? Some may argue. Fun? Definitely. 10/10 would use it.

Well, people’s main gripe with Warhorn is that it offers worse self sustain/mitigation than offhand dagger and focus aside from being clunky. I don’t see it working at all for non bunker builds in terms of PvP/WvW.

Jourdelune.7456:

Kyon.9735:

Allison The Strange.4519:

Josh Davis.6015:

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

If your team has no direct impact on skill balance then we don’t need you or it, especially if your team is going to be removing things from PvP…

The whole point of having a dedicated PvP team should be to balance it & your failing beyond miserably at it… You’ve failed so hard you have driven away many players that have either left the game entirely or just the game mode never to be seen again…

At this point PvP means nothing to me & will continue to mean nothing to me until balance is shown some proper TLC…

You won’t be seeing me back in the PvP scene due to the obvious neglect and uncaring nature anet has shown PvP…

Aren’t they more like trying to salvage whatever that PvE Profession balance Team has broken for PvP?

If anything, you should be happy that decided to remove Durability Runes and not add broken stuff like Perplexity and Dire. If you look at that perspective, you’d see they’re somewhat actually trying within the limits of their power.

If you look at the patch notes. Tempest ELE got balanced for all game mode. Removing Cleric was not need. They did it with the last opportunities they had, because most people where crying about tempest sustaining.

But with the nerf of Tempest, Cleric would had been fine. And so the “opportunity” to remove the amulet, would had been void.

Balancing around amulet, sigil and runes is not balancing the game at all.

Well, this is how I see it. Removing Cleric Amulet is fine (for tempests only. They literally killed non-tempest cleric amulet builds like druid and guardian) but they should have not nerfed the healing. Their aim is to make the game something more high risk high reward so a full glass healer tempest who can’t sustain himself but heals his allies to no end is more logical if we look at that scenario.

The problem here is that following the nerf to Tempest Healing, is their Healing Output even enough to justify taking in a Healer Tempest? Their aura heals are easily made useless by simple auto attacks and they can barely keep themselves alive against decent players. Logically speaking, it would be better to just take in another class.

But then again, I’m pretty sure that more than half of the player base will choose to ignore that glass healer Tempest and will just rain down QQs regarding support Tempests which is a L2P issue.

In short, the problem lies with the Tempest’s class design followed by the player base who chooses to complain instead of learning how to play the game. Its design is completely flawed and not fit for their plans and for the majority of the low IQ player base.

Even with my statement above, I don’t support making glass healers because it will have L2P issues in solo queues wherein most players don’t know how to prioritize targets.

To be completely honest, I would blame everything to the Profession Balance team. The class is so broken that it has to rely on specific amulets to be viable and that is the very definition of bad balancing.

The extra hits are somewhat weak though

Allison The Strange.4519:

Josh Davis.6015:

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

If your team has no direct impact on skill balance then we don’t need you or it, especially if your team is going to be removing things from PvP…

The whole point of having a dedicated PvP team should be to balance it & your failing beyond miserably at it… You’ve failed so hard you have driven away many players that have either left the game entirely or just the game mode never to be seen again…

At this point PvP means nothing to me & will continue to mean nothing to me until balance is shown some proper TLC…

You won’t be seeing me back in the PvP scene due to the obvious neglect and uncaring nature anet has shown PvP…

Aren’t they more like trying to salvage whatever that PvE Profession balance Team has broken for PvP?

If anything, you should be happy that decided to remove Durability Runes and not add broken stuff like Perplexity and Dire. If you look at that perspective, you’d see they’re somewhat actually trying within the limits of their power.

Would Cyclone be OP if it had the same speed as Dust Devil?

Would Wildfire and its huge AoE be OP if it was instant like other fire fields?

I am still waiting and hoping for an official statement from Anet regarding their plans for Tempests with the current direction of the game.

As stated above, Anet wants a fast paced pvp but tempest was exclusively designed to prolong fights which directly contradicts it.

For support tempest, I believe that Magi Amulet is still completely viable if they remove the nerf to the base healing of skills. I agree that their self survivability should be toned down but the removal of toughness/healing amulet is more than enough. Healing/vit doesn’t even scale well so the recent nerfs to both amulet and base healing double jeopardized the build.

For non support builds, I can hardly think of any viable build that does not result into a very quick death resulting into uselessness to a certain degree. They can be easily compared to a zerk thief or revenant but the amount of self survivability and mobility is incomparable. But yes, fresh air tempest is very fun and can drop massive amounts of damage if left alone.

We are now back to the old problems of ele. They can do everything fairly well but can be easily replaced by another class. The only real thing tempests can do that others can’t to a certain level is only supporting but is it even worth giving up a slot for something that can only support and can die as fast as other zerk builds? Is the amount of healing they can output enough or is it simply better to take in another DPS class?

Are we just supposed to give up on getting a fun and viable non support high tier tempest build and wait for the next specialization or is Anet already planning something aside from buffing shatterstone? I hope we can somehow get Anet’s input.

Been playing this recently as well (I switch in LF and Glyph Heal) since last week. It’s extremely fun though you die when someone sneezes at you.

I think this would be completely viable with a few buffs here and there especially to Arcane Shield/Earth shield (I wish earth shield was instant) and some more active defenses.

For WvW, I find it extremely meh though. T1 roaming is nothing but condi cancer or p/p thief.

I LOL’ed hard at the Elementalist comment. Sure they can still be tanky AF but there’s no way they’re gonna tank/outheal a 20 man zerg. They’re just most probably only tanking when they have Obsidian Flesh ready then runs away and hides when it’s on CD. Too much exaggeration won’t help.

Welp, I’ve had a blast playing S/F Zerk FA Air/Arcane/Tempest with 3 Arcane skills. Though it was mainly only because for some reason I was barely even getting targetted by anyone at all which we can only dream of happening in high tier PvP. The moment someone gets on my kitten I’m pretty much dead be it condi or Power. Still fun though, dishing out 700k~1m damage in games flooded by lower tier players.

If only Anet would lower Arcane Shield’s CD and increase/remove the block threshold and actually give condition cleanse on traits outside of Water, I think it’s not a far fetched idea to think that it would be viable.

It’s actually pretty simple. Remove Quickness and Resistance from the Mesmer boon share list. All that would be left is nerfing Durability Runes’ resistance sharing.