Guild Wars 2

This mindset is why skill balance in this game is so bad right now. Anet caters to people like you who don’t want it to be “hard” to learn small differences between game modes. Look where that has gotten us every balance patch….

Saiyan.1704:

• Purification: The cast time of this ability has been increased from 0.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds.
• Hunter’s Determination: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds.

So now Purification is ever more susceptible of getting interrupted… ok so this means casting it around 60% HP when we’re getting focused targeted, or using Focus#5, or Virtues’s F3 Stability just to guarantee a successful cast. Regardless which is used, it means we have to waste a very situational utility just to pull off a heal.

• Looking at other class nerfs, Rev got hit but I don’t think it’s on this level. Everybody virtually plays the same.

Stability & Stun gains in DH treeline is the only reason why our heads are above water in this powercreep meta. I rather they just remove the Aegis & damage proc and give us back our Stability on 45icd.
(passives in this game needs removal entirely but Anet wont do that.)

SoloQ players will still grind their way to Legendary but it’s a huge survival nerf in the proleagues. Last I checked, everyone else’s sustains remains unaltered.

They might as well have reverted the buffed F2 and F3 they made months ago. Anet changes to Purification is working backwards.

For those who thought DH was OP prepatch

hide spoiler

You were either a War, Thief, Necro, or Mesmer.

If you were a Rev, Ranger, Engi, then you deserved it. Sorry, but these classes can consistently soft counter Symbol & LB DH builds. There’s no excuses.

Those 3 classes counters us so hard, we were Barely a 5th pick in the pro leagues. Some think we’re not a pick at all.

What other heal in the game has less than a 1s cast that heals for 8k with no healing power? Seriously it should have gotten hit to base healing that heal is kittening absurd. Seriously what other heal heals for that much besides attacking a glint heal? Not only that but it blinds AND dazes (because yes you all have the kittening trait)

Yeah i don’t think a marauder amulet build should be able to full 0-100 reset with no interruption chance without any stats put into healing on a 20 second CD. And engi is the last other class that can do that that needs to be addressed, but they dont ouput nearly as much damage so its not nearly as significant.

But sure I’m salty so my argument is void. They listed in the patch notes your defenses will be addressed next patch so I’m not sure why were even discussing this.

Kuya.6495:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Kuya.6495:

They reduced healing on purification, lowered daze duration on traps, increased cd of hunter’s determination n and reduced shield of courage from 5 to 4s. What else do you want?

Monks focus base healing normalized like all the other ones have been over the last few patches

when was monk’s focus last changed? Like 3 years ago?

Why whine about it now?

I haven’t particularly commented on DH, I was fine with it but then they gutted elemental bastion on eles and now base healing on druids. Guard deserves the same gut to base healing (they should work their way across the board at this point) then they can move to addressing overabundence of active defense (blocks, invln, evades) and dumb passive auto procs, acess to too many dazes and stuns, stability uptimes. Obviously that would be across all classes not just guard.

But while they are hitting all the base heals Guard deserves the hit too. They are the only one that I’m aware of that have a serious heal vs health pool ratio trait left.

Kuya.6495:

They reduced healing on purification, lowered daze duration on traps, increased cd of hunter’s determination n and reduced shield of courage from 5 to 4s. What else do you want?

Monks focus base healing normalized like all the other ones have been over the last few patches

Core spec pre hot patch killed ele in pvp for me, actually it killed pvp in general for me…

Ancient Ranger.3276:

Internal cooldown can now be shared between elementalists.

Can someone spell this out without typos. Does this mean I can cast it once in each attunement with independent CDs or does each attunement get it’s own effects with independent ICDs?

The wording on this is horrible and I can’t log in to test.

Lahmia.2193:

I’d happily swap my high necro health pool for some invuln/block or evade skills.

I’d happily swap my low hp pool for some invln block or evade skills. Oh wait.. Guess what class has been stuck with defense amulets because we lost access to minor toughness, healing, and vitality gains through trait lines.

You atleast can go offensive…

Coldtart.4785:

Don’t forget signets and glyphs either.

Baby steps man, baby steps.

Seriously tho, cantrips could use some tweaks too… They still suffer from all the nerfs back when they used to be traited for might…

draxynnic.3719:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Ele is bad from a game play perspective. It goes completely against the class as a whole. Ele are the lowest hp/armor class with the least access to stability.

I’d say that necros have less access to stability. And thieves, come to think on it. Neither of those have a mechanic based on a five second channel with an “Interrupt Me Now!” sign over their heads, though.

(Strictly speaking, you can get a trait that grants stability while channeling, but in the current meta that’s competing with a trait that you need more.)

The fundamental reason why people don’t like it, I think, is that it effectively replaces the core elementalist playstyle with something different. If the elite specialisations were balanced against core builds, this wouldn’t be a problem – people who liked the core elementalist could play the core elementalist, and people who liked the tempest could play the tempest. Because they’re clearly not balanced, though, the old playstyle that veteran elementalist players enjoyed has effectively been removed from the competitive side of the game, leaving something they don’t enjoy.

(Personally, I like tempest as an alternative, but it would be better as an alternative rather than something that’s effectively required to be competitive.)

Now, even with the downsides and the nerfs, tempest can still shine in the right team compositions and strategies. However, it can also be frustrating when you don’t have a team that gives you the support to get your overloads off, while the old elementalist was a lot more independent.

True, Thief by definition have the worst stability. Both necro and ele have 1 utility on a long kitten CD. All 3 have elites (as if those were good)

But that aside these are the 3 that have the most difficult time surviving in the current mass aoe daze/cc meta.

I would argue that in the current meta 1 stack of stability over 5 seconds is garbage and honestly should have been baseline with a trait making it 2 stacks.

And your right, part of the hate on tempest is because they completely destroyed a class people loved with it.
Part of it is for some, myself included, because the playstyle is not enjoyable, we didnt sign up to auto attack and wait, we signed up to dance.

But from a design perspective, it is also in a VERY bad place. It was clearly looked at with design based around Raids, where it shines very well (and if it wasn’t they got lucky, even then you cant dodge while overloading so you sometimes don’t have a choice to dodge mechanics…)
But where else in the game are overloads even useful? Ele autos are garbage and the fact you have to stay in an atunement for 5 seconds to charge it means you WILL be auto attacking. The fact it extends the CD further deters ever leaving a good auto attack atunement because you will be locked out of it. This leaves just F/A air dagger and Fire Staff as viable auto attacks and viable builds or LH, but surprise, conjures are pretty garbage.

And yes, nearly every patch brings a further nerf, which inevitably further forces us into the support roll and destroys every chance at being free from it, and yes we can still get by in good pre-mades and high level match-ups but kitten, I didn’t start maining ele years ago to play the priest class of the game… That’s what tempest is, the babysiter for necro…

Even season 3 I was still able to play F/A variants but then they nerfed base healing and we were forced into healing amulets as the only method of survival. Tempest didnt bring what we desperately needed , Active defenses. A-Net made it clear they didnt like the sustain bruiser, but that was our base mechanic of survival, unlike other classes with HP bars, Blocks, Invuln, stealth, blinks, evades. We had sustain, keeping massive boons for regen and prot, keeping up soothing mist, blasting our water fields, traiting water. They gutted that then moved parts of it to tempest, with a mechanic that doesn’t even synergize with the 4 other trait lines minors, let alone half of the traits that require on swap. It doesn’t synergize with Glyphs that require you to be moving through attunements to use the proper spell.

Tempest is bad. Could it be improved ? at this point no. We gave so much feedback every beta, every announcement and Karl & crew refused to listen. But what do you expect when the head of our class cant even overload against svanir? Devs dont play ele, its obvious.

But anyway, rant ending and on topic of this thread:

Bad feeling about next elite spec.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

I mean really, when you look at the heal output of DHs, Heralds, Druids, Scrappers, Tempests and even Reapers “between heal, life steal and life force bar”, the sustain is far above and beyond what Berserker is capable of. Daredevil and Chrono you ask? These at least have UBER disengage methods.

Did you look? because two of the classes you listed are running healing amulets. And one of them the entire build is 100% focused on healing every utility, every trait and they hit like a noodle. You want to heal as much as that with a zerk/viper equivalent?

The real issue isn’t buffing warrior to that level it’s bringing the others down.

Jski.6180:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Jski.6180:

Wait how is tempest bad? You cant play ele atm with out having tempest line at all points of the game.
It may of been some what week to start with but they buffed it a good bit over time showing they are willing to make the new elite spec work and have a use after the fact. If any thing your bad feeling is your own problem with change.

Ele is bad from a game play perspective. It goes completely against the class as a whole. Ele are the lowest hp/armor class with the least access to stability. This on top of the massive amount aoe daze/stuns added in hot overload is absolutely garbage in pvp. Dodging and kiting is the only way to stay alive as an ele and overload is a melee 5 second cast. Anyone with a semblance of logic will understand that. But the anet dev, who couldn’t even get an overload off against an npc thought this was a good idea! Not only this but it encourages auto attacks because you have to wait for it to charge, this is bad because 10/12 ele auto attacks are garbage.

Now for raids it’s meta but this isn’t because its a well designed spec, it’s because it had massive power creep like all the other hot specs. You don’t not get to take an elite

Welcome to playing a mages class.

Oh it’s jski, always great discussions with you…

Jski.6180:

Wait how is tempest bad? You cant play ele atm with out having tempest line at all points of the game.
It may of been some what week to start with but they buffed it a good bit over time showing they are willing to make the new elite spec work and have a use after the fact. If any thing your bad feeling is your own problem with change.

Ele is bad from a game play perspective. It goes completely against the class as a whole. Ele are the lowest hp/armor class with the least access to stability. This on top of the massive amount aoe daze/stuns added in hot overload is absolutely garbage in pvp. Dodging and kiting is the only way to stay alive as an ele and overload is a melee 5 second cast. Anyone with a semblance of logic will understand that. But the anet dev, who couldn’t even get an overload off against an npc thought this was a good idea! Not only this but it encourages auto attacks because you have to wait for it to charge, this is bad because 10/12 ele auto attacks are garbage.

Now for raids it’s meta but this isn’t because its a well designed spec, it’s because it had massive power creep like all the other hot specs. You don’t not get to take an elite

Tomiyou.3790:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Tomiyou.3790:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Conjures: when you drop it it doesn’t disappear (think banner) still lasts the same duration, remove auto attacks from using charges. Reduce base charges by 5.

Arcane: increase power multiplier on damage, shield is now duration of 2 seconds not 3 blocks.

Arcana trait rework: after using an arcane gain a 5% stacking damage buff for 15s

That seems pretty good, tho I’d rather see some CD reductions in Arcanes and conjure weapon skills.

Yeah I thought about CDs but with scaling their damage i wanted to push them into a more burst category and with a tweak to the trait giving a stacking percent damage buff reduced CDs might be a bit too much but that’s always numbers to play with. I also wanted to give them a chance to possibly be used in pve with the %damage without having it be a permanent thing due to short CDs (so use it before the highest damage portion of the rotation to get the most out of it)

It would also be nice if they made picking up the conjures not interupted by movement or instant. Because there is no indication your picking it up until it’s picked up and that’s quite frustrating to move or cast a spell just a moment too fast.

The reason I want some CD reductions is too make it less punishing to pick them in a PvP scenario. (48 CD on Arcane shield is quite good, but it’s not gonna save you against someone who knows what the skill does. If they lowered it to 50s tho, then the 20% would lower it to 40s, which would be an amazing skill).

I completely agree with your point of view tho, as it is completely valid.

Oh I see it the opposite way, all the other blocks, evade, active defenses need longer CDs. This coupled with some power creep culling. I think active defense is way to strong right now across basically everyone but ele. (now for the time being they can totally reduce it so it’s ballance with everyone else but I think continuing that direction is very unhealthy for the game)

Fashion Mage.3712:

Don’t forget about guardians. :>

Moral of the story is that he shouldn’t be in charge of entire classes (or anything?).

Oh I totally forgot he also did the DH. You really don’t have to look further than the state of those 3 forms to understand how badly it’s going. (kitten i remember pre hot I joined the Rev forums. Their dev was commenting, discussing feedback on the spec, what changes we wanted. It was great!

Eldar.5146:

zealex.9410:

Eldar.5146:

zealex.9410:

guard dps is better for small hitboxes but for big hit boxes ely is better.

Tempest is better on both.

that not the case guard dps is higher in smaller hitboxes and he gives more buffs than ele might fury prot aegis and the on demand heal with f2 the only places to pick ele are big hitboxxes kc gorse and for rebound if you find your self in a bad spot

Well dps tests show someting diffrent even on small targets. Yeah i dind’t say guard is useless. Prot and aegis can be useful on some bosses.

On top of that even d/w is basically the same dps on small as guard on large.

But guard rotation is much easier for someone not experienced at the classes, so as far as alts go I’d take a guard. I see way to many eles with trash rotations that inevitably lose dps. (or just make a theif, solid no risk dps)

Tomiyou.3790:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Conjures: when you drop it it doesn’t disappear (think banner) still lasts the same duration, remove auto attacks from using charges. Reduce base charges by 5.

Arcane: increase power multiplier on damage, shield is now duration of 2 seconds not 3 blocks.

Arcana trait rework: after using an arcane gain a 5% stacking damage buff for 15s

That seems pretty good, tho I’d rather see some CD reductions in Arcanes and conjure weapon skills.

Yeah I thought about CDs but with scaling their damage i wanted to push them into a more burst category and with a tweak to the trait giving a stacking percent damage buff reduced CDs might be a bit too much but that’s always numbers to play with. I also wanted to give them a chance to possibly be used in pve with the %damage without having it be a permanent thing due to short CDs (so use it before the highest damage portion of the rotation to get the most out of it)

It would also be nice if they made picking up the conjures not interupted by movement or instant. Because there is no indication your picking it up until it’s picked up and that’s quite frustrating to move or cast a spell just a moment too fast.

Conjures: when you drop it it doesn’t disappear (think banner) still lasts the same duration, remove auto attacks from using charges. Reduce base charges by 5.

Arcane: increase power multiplier on damage, shield is now duration of 2 seconds not 3 blocks.

Arcana trait rework: after using an arcane gain a 5% stacking damage buff for 15s

Honestly the only time rebound works well is raids, basically saving you and 4 nearby allies from someone kittening up a mechanic. Everywhere else its more of a free heal and aura.

Fashion Mage.3712:

If you-know-who is still in charge of the next elite spec, then there’s a good chance that it’s going to be worse.

RIP ele, RIP Theif

Wouldn’t it be better to play now and tank your mmr, then take a break and then play? Think about it.

Omega Zoa.3859:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Omega Zoa.3859:

Dr Patrik.3642:

GhostAirborne.6872:

Fine as is right now

Please explain how these are fine.

-the OVERWHELMING number of passives on every class
-the lack of build diversity
-elementalist pretty much getting deleted from PvP as it has no other build options
-condi spam faceroll chronomancer
-Reapers that can put insane condi damage while still being a tanky hp pool.
-passive tank bruiser scrapper that is almost unkillable 1v1 (assuming the scrapper isnt completely brain dead)
-Bristleback and Smokescale being the only used ranger pets
-perma evade condi thief
-condi warrior with insane condi damage and passives and regen for days
-dps DH trapper with heals and blocks like a bunker
-Revenants with evades and blocks on almost everything

But nope! PvP is fine. (sarcasm)

Spoken like someone who never touched Rev, as a rev we got nerfed into the ground, and now we are bugged galore.

As for ele, try experimenting a LITTLE, don;t just auto go to metabattle, try new things, from what i seen ele is still in a ok spot, just not god mode anymore.

Revs are in a great spot (yeah bugs suck). They are top tier atm.

Everyone keeps saying “oh just keep experimenting I’m sure ele are fine” how long till you guys finally understand that we’ve been experimenting this entire time most of us never wanted to be a kittening bunker heal bot. We’ve been experimenting for a season now. But we got nerfed across the board what build that wasn’t viable last season would become viable with flat nerfs everywhere??

And your right ele is an okay spot but everyone else is at demi-god or God tier level in comparison…

Hue, yes great spot, Apply any condis on revs and they melt in seconds, “but run mallyx” yeah sure a few seconds of resistance does not do much with the constant condis being thrown around.

I guess its a thing where we think our respective classes are weak, you think ele is weak but rev is in a “great” spot and i think the other way around, ele may not be in a “great spot” but neither is rev.

Actually at expo release I dropped ele for Rev. I kittening had a blast playing Rev (I really liked mace are bummer it’s not too viable now) , because I hated (and still hate) what the tempest spec and Hot has done to ele as a class.

Yes, I agree rev have have a weakness to conditions but the difference is they can flat out just avoid the application with their numerous hard migatiom if they are playing well. Their burst is kittening insane. There is no doubt they are top tier right now in the meta, you can quote me on this in a few weeks or at the end of the season or however long it takes for you to be convinced.

Omega Zoa.3859:

Dr Patrik.3642:

GhostAirborne.6872:

Fine as is right now

Please explain how these are fine.

-the OVERWHELMING number of passives on every class
-the lack of build diversity
-elementalist pretty much getting deleted from PvP as it has no other build options
-condi spam faceroll chronomancer
-Reapers that can put insane condi damage while still being a tanky hp pool.
-passive tank bruiser scrapper that is almost unkillable 1v1 (assuming the scrapper isnt completely brain dead)
-Bristleback and Smokescale being the only used ranger pets
-perma evade condi thief
-condi warrior with insane condi damage and passives and regen for days
-dps DH trapper with heals and blocks like a bunker
-Revenants with evades and blocks on almost everything

But nope! PvP is fine. (sarcasm)

Spoken like someone who never touched Rev, as a rev we got nerfed into the ground, and now we are bugged galore.

As for ele, try experimenting a LITTLE, don;t just auto go to metabattle, try new things, from what i seen ele is still in a ok spot, just not god mode anymore.

Revs are in a great spot (yeah bugs suck). They are top tier atm.

Everyone keeps saying “oh just keep experimenting I’m sure ele are fine” how long till you guys finally understand that we’ve been experimenting this entire time most of us never wanted to be a kittening bunker heal bot. We’ve been experimenting for a season now. But we got nerfed across the board what build that wasn’t viable last season would become viable with flat nerfs everywhere??

And your right ele is an okay spot but everyone else is at demi-god or God tier level in comparison…

Allow dodge while overloading, let’s get to the real root problem here we cant survive 5 seconds without a Dodge and with no active damage migration on our class at all even if we can get the cast off we still get eviscerated by any decent team. Make stability give an additional 20% damage reduction. Change how auras work,for some reason anet is dead set on these being our defense mechanisms give us a trait make them block each attack they trigger their effect on IE you don’t take damage on the attack that triggers the chill, stun, burn, (reflect can stay the same)

Pulsing stability on overload rather than one stack that doesn’t even last. There are so many issues that can be improved upon,

but let’s be honest we need a second elite spec and a dice roll that our next one will be a damage capable spec with hard migation built in. Our current elite is clearly ment to be a support forcing spec and because of that and the power creep brought with elite specs anything that isn’t support based will not be viable in pvp. And because they are trying to remove support bunkers our class will not be viable (unless they make class specific amulets in spvp and ours give us more base vitality/healing/toughness)

Pre hot-pre trait rework ele, the old trait system allowed so much more variance, fun, and viability to ele, old amulets made us relevant, focus wasn’t mandatory, we weren’t pure heal bot condi cleanse. Loved arcane dance playstyle. Tempest/hot ruined so much on ele. I still play it because I’m a diehard but in competitive pvp I’ll be playing face roll condi classes and pve I have alts geared out because let’s face it pve ele isn’t that fun and I’m getting arthritis playing with seaweed damage while moving in raids…

I’ve been running a similar build (earth instead of air) and you hit the exact same problem I’ve had, against any decent players you will NEVER get any overload off aside from Earth and a LF full cast onto point.

It’s just not competitive when every class has 3+ stun/daze at their disposal at all times. Our overloads need a base stack of stability and the trait needs to add a second. Overloads are just not competitive in pvp as a primary source of damage, especially without the 1 stack of stability, it’s been what we’ve said from the start taking a super glass sustain class and giving them a 5 second melee cast with no stability was stupid from the start. This type of build works fine in low tier but as you get higher its just not competitive.

Xillllix.3485:

Iason Evan.3806:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

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

What about non-elite specs? I am not interested in PvE anymore so buying HoT for 4-5 specs wasn’t the life I was about. I hope that’s understandable. What’s my core Ele to do then? I felt pigeon-holed before and now there is no hole really whatsoever. Wholesale removal of the amulet feels like the path of least resistance. It doesn’t feel like the grandiose words that get bandied around by the staff when they are hyping a patch. The words are much grander than the result. I hope that makes sense as well.

The elementalist class is just made to be played with Celestial. Anything else and build variety is just gone. The class was also made with the old trait system in mind, because builds for the elementalist depends on stats more than with the other classes. Diversity had taken a hit first when that change was made.

A good balance team would have nerfed the celestial amulet by 5% or 7% after some testing. I presume that it’s the balance team that didn’t want to balance it so the PvP team removed it. Its probably just a miscommunication that lead to more impactful complications than what they imagined.

Why cant the PvP team balance PvP, WvW team balance WvW and PvE team balance PvE?

When the balance team do changes we should be able to test them on a test server, and also they should have to demonstrate why the changes are good.

Hell they could make class only amulets to help with this issues since clearly the gw2 engine design is so bad they cant split skills/traits well

Kyon.9735:

So where are the people who said Tempests as a whole, not just the meta build, deserved this kind of nerf now that they’re given hard solid facts about non-meta builds?

These nerfs are all directly realated to Temp being too strong in pve, all nerfs were targeted at that tempest because they did 15%+ more damage on average than other classes and wash the pain away was a really strong heal in raids for everyone. They were getting stacked 2-4 a group because of this.

Unfortunatly Karl gives no kittens how this effects PvP and we get kittened by that.

In addition to this, The PvP team, wanted to remove clerics, because it brought on a sour role to the game and gameplay they didnt like (and I’m okay with that, i hated cleric meta) The pvp team can only change amulets, sigils, and runes. They have zero control over class changes, they can only ask Karl nicely for changes.

When you add both those together along with the gradual removal over time of all the amulets that eles could in some way use, you get exactly what happened. The last and final class crutch amulet (clerics) was removed at the same time tempest base sustain got hit on the pve side so they would bring less support by defualt to raids and damage and cds were hit to further lower the dps rotations to be inline with other classes.

TL;DR Karl and his team kittened us because they have no disregard for pvp, and the pvp team kittened us by not leaving us with an amulet that would make us viable with karls changes, and the GW2 engine developers kittened us by apprently making it a nightmare to skill/trait split ballance between modes so here we are.

RedDeadFred.1256:

I won’t deny that Warriors are in a good place, but…. the heck? More damaging skills? As in, we have more skills that do damage? Uh, maybe. Who cares? Most of those skills aren’t used. Eles do way more damage over all. You sacrifice having mobility (and you’re still probably middle of the pack when it comes to mobility, not bad at all) and tankiness to get the best damage in the game with the option to do it from much farther away than a Warrior.

Ele self sustain is built right into their weapon sets through the water atunement. Warriors would have to take Defense if they wanted Adrenal Health. In PvE, that’s never going to happen.

What, ele don’t get more base sustain than warriors just by having water on weapons. Warriors have 7567 more base HP, and I’ll ignore armor for now (which is quite a impact on effective HP)

An ele with no +healing (IE not currently geared for specifically for “sustain”) gets:
>Staff gets 2424 Gyser, 1560 Healing Rain and 1320 if you blast a field with eruption.
This requires you to put 1-2 attunments on CD, stop DPS for 3.5 seconds minimum, and is not instantaneous, and you must stay in the fields for full effect.
-D Main – 740
-S – 2219
-D OH – 1302
-F 0
-WH 1880 +2 blast of 1320 if you use a dager main hand , I guess you could get 3 blast with sceptor maybe if you went Fire>water>earth and placed phenix and drag tooth where the water will be correctly, not sure if the timing would allow phenix to hit though, never really tried since it would burn 3 kittening attunments.

Don’t bull kitten anywone with “ele have more base sustain” we only have a lot of options for traiting sustains (which means we cant trait damage) This is why ele have always been forced into busier tank builds through the entirety of PvP.

And on top of that our sustain is split between healing water and defense (kinda) earth. Most other classes can get both in one line, or off their damage lines.

Their passive heal signet is better than our heal on cast signet (heals more base and is everysecond no matter what. Their highest heal is 9100 ours is about 5k. Their heals have extra migation effects on them like converting damage, or condi immunity or remove conditions, what the kitten does ours do? heal?

To say ele have better Sustain is a lie. We don’t, when everyone traits full damage ele have the worst suitability. they might have the highest theoretical dps (IE raids) but in PvP they have nothing in the damage department.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

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

What the actual kitten. this explains so much. You guys need to split the traits/skills and take control from the “profession teams” They are making pvp absolutely horrible.

Alekt.5803:

Tempest needs to support another style than auras._

Auras never made sense on the lowest hp armor class it’s just another bad class design mechanic from the get go.

Xillllix.3485:

You know what I would like to see? I want to see the Anet balance team play pvp with an ele, doing a 4 hours Live-Stream taking turns showing us how overpowered it is.

It would be the funniest thing ever, it would certainly make their Twitch audience increase as well.

I’d like to see them play ANY class in ranked

Edit: mid to high level elo/mmr/whatever they call it ranked

We gave the feedback that overloads and tempest were a horrible direction for the class pre hot, thousands only suggestions on better methods, tweaks etc. They ignored all of them.

They chose to stick with overloads, we pointed out time and time again long cast melee range abilities would only further force us to tank amulets because our horrible base stats. We pointed out that without stability on overloads they would be useless. Karl the lead ele design got wrecked trying to show off overloads, he was interupted multiple times by the Npc.

They won’t be reworking overloads it would be such a massive undertaking, especially how their game engine is apparently a nightmare to work in, ele is unfortunately stuck with a bad pvp spekittenil we roll the dice on them kittening up our next spec on the next expansion.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t do an aura rework or rework our arcane or conjures or glyph. They could provide us active defenses, give us access to resilience (w/ the condition immunity is) give us access to more evades, higher mobility, better burst, less Telegraphed bullkitten (I’m looking at you dragons tooth) improved blocks (arcane shield) traits that provide toughness, vitality, or healing power base instead of just in an attunement.

There are so many small tweaks they could make to make us viable, they choose not to.

Zelulose.8695:

. But they did 1/4th of the job.

Basically every patch every

Yeah it is really disappointing the ballance team for this game is so bad. Gw2 has one of the most fun and engaging/smooth combat systems around it has so much kittening potential. A solid pvp balance team could turn pvp from a casual game to something played as much as dota (purely pvp aspect) but that would also require some new pvp game modes and significant reworking across the board on class design and abilities. It just won’t ever happen as much as we all hope.

Condition needs to go back to be condition over time. Shave the stack add duration reballance condition removal across classes around that. Unblock able attacks need to be toned down as well. Unblock able damage is one thing but unblockable interrupts need to be removed. Long duration blocks need to be toned down. Base healing needs to be toned down across the board, physical spike needs a tone down burst builds need increased CDs. There are a lot of things that need to be toned to bring it to a healthy place.

Yeah with protection, earth damage reduction trait scrapper runes damage reduction frost aura and a medium stat amulet of toughness, without vitality you can still be 100-0 in less than a second or 2 if you miss time a Dodge and you’ll never be able to heal it back up. There has been way too much damage power creep and self sustain for other classes for us to compete as we lose at both in equivalent damage builds. Ele us not reasonably viable in any amulet that is not stacking at least 2 defensive traits, you cannot afford to take one of the new amulets, if you can’t stay alive what good is buff duration?

I’m pretty sure the extent of their balance and pvp experience comes from those training class npcs in the mists. Nice dumb targets that won’t 1 shot you or burst too quickly.

Xyonon.3987:

Heya everyone!

I’ve already made new dps tests and overall the Ele has lost ~10% damage as both, Staff and DW Ele. Ele still remains the top of the top against large hitboxes but has been kicked from the throne against small hitboxes.

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Those are the realistic (2 stacks gotl, no empowerment, no necro, no rev, 8% and 6+4% food) dps numbers for the highest dpsers right now:

Staff Ele, large hitbox: 28.0k / 33.6k with Alacrity (-9.5% dmg after patch)
DW Ele, small hitbox: 23.6k / 26.0k with Alacrity (-10.1% dmg after patch)
Condi Engi: 25.5k / 28.4k with Alacrity (+2.9% dmg after patch)
Power Engi: 25.8k / 27.2k with Alacrity (a bit more than +0% dmg after patch)
Power Thief: 26.2k / 26.4k with Alacrity (-3.1% dmg after patch)

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• Don’t forget that Air Overload still grants 5 allies a damage skill, resulting into ~150-200 dps per target. So you can add ~600-800 dps to the DW Ele.

• If you play with a Rev (usually small hitboxes) you can add ~4.5% to all these professions except for Condi Engi, there it’s rather around ~1%.

• I didn’t yet test condi Thief, may be a thing due to the recent buffs.

• Condi Necro requires 270-400s of combat to summon enough Minions to reach the 26k dps mark and the same time again to make up for the until then not dealt dps. However this variies greatly depending on Alacrity and most of all Epidemic.

---

Greez!

So what your saying is bringing eles is now a liability as a large portion of pug raid eles couldn’t pull off top dps already, and now that they are in line with other classes there’s a risk to bringing them because of their ease of being downed by mechanics and lack of heals to make up for it.

They will still be wanted for large hit box fights and certain raid mechanics but mark my words raid skepticism will begin to form on eles as a class due to the risk vs reward of bringing them now.

I’m not sure I’ll be happy to see the non main eles get off the train or upset that as someone who runs a dps meter and knows I hit my mark that I might be blamed for not achieving optimal damage.

Either way glad I geared out my chrono/ps/rev/guard and nearly have theif/necro done.

Its so kittening easy to play PS in raids just ignoring mechanics because of the base hp pool, I see a trend moving to classes that can soak mistakes more easily now.

Dahkeus.8243:

Xillllix.3485:

As an elementalist it’s the second season in a row I’m going to skip.

Or maybe I’ll try facerolling elementalists to death on other classes for practice.

Why did you skip last season? Eles were great last season.

Many of us absolutely hate that our class got turned into a heal bot cc cleanse face tank. And we were only relevant and will only continue to be relevant because support is better than no support.

I personally ran f/a all last season, when at the top of my game I could beat most average players (excluding warrior there’s just nothing f/a can do about it) , I would loose most fights to any decent player even with perfect migation timing and burst timing. F/a just wasn’t competitive enough and many other classes outshine the same roll entirely.

This patch F/a got nerfs it most certainly will not fill a meta slot.

And moving from clerics to meanders is just insult to injury, atleast with clerics we didn’t get 100-0 instantly by burst classes, it’s a core mechanical issue that all our defenses rely on tanking damage and healing it back up that we get stuck in these bruiser rolls. We may still fall into the meta with meanders just to fill the heal/condi cleanse role but I for one will continue not to play it. Which means to be competitive I will need to play another class yet again.

Yeah honestly no one is complaining over the damage loss it’s the method they applied it, they broke the rotation smoothness.

And in pvp no one liked clerics but our burst builds were unviable . We were only in the meta because support was needed and we could heal and condition clear. We are just going to migrate to a less effective amulet and still be support until they ballance out damage rolls.

They needed to do buffing on the pvp side to make us competitive in non support rolls. And on the pve they should have targeted specific abilities not blanket wide cd nerfs, breaking rotations as substantially as they have should have been compensated by buffing the abilities to make them less rotation but situation which would have been fine but they didn’t do that instead they left all the abilities ballance around the CD of 33% reduction while removing the cdr. Meaning the abilities are still weak situationally. This nerf needs some serious buffs to compensate but we all know Karl and his team will just kitten it up again buff the wrong things and we’ll end in some other weird niche meta spec.

lucadiro.4519:

Elementalist is gonna to win any 1v1 thanks by flamestrike so your ranking are all wrong

My flamestrike shatterstone combos are blowing up!

(blowing me up, see yall in S5 or S6 when ele swing back on the pendulum, everyone knows they cant balance us for kitten were ether op or an empty slot, wish they would just rework the kittening class by now…)

Karl and his team has been dragging our class through the mud since pre-Hot every patch we have gotten less fun and less engaging viable builds. Our class gets thrown all over the place. Every time we settle into a meta it’s decided for us that thats not the meta we are supposed to be in and get removed from it. There’s never a semblance of though every time its just remove/nerf/double nerf buff shaterstone and lets see what happens. And every time we have to sink into a less fun roll IE cleric ele.

He’s proven he has no idea how to play ele, hell their kittening footage trying to show off tempest for HOT is him getting wrecked trying to overload. It’s time he steps the kitten back from any class balance and moves to something else because I’m kittening sick of this kitten. I really hope he’s not involved on our next “elite” spec.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

It’s all fine to me save 2 things:

• Ele didn’t need to be broken entirely
• Chronomancer did NOT need god tier buffing

This exactly, I agree the clerics needed to go but they literally killed of a class by removing it, and that’s on top of nerfing ele they really needed to do some serious rework on ele (pvp SEPARATE from the rest) Hopefully with the amulet removal they can rework the class just sucks they had to kill it first. They had finally had a meta where all classes were viable too, even if it wasn’t the greatest.

No idea what they were thinking buffing mesmers. Litterally evrey time they do they make a demon of a class all because people complain it’s to hard to play so they need a buff etc etc.

Also how Condi war got by this one is beyond me that build is cancer. And with removal of the ele condis are going to become a lot bigger of a problem in pvp.

Preferably after they re-balance this disaster of a patch.

If there wasn’t another viable build without clerics in the previous meta, and most classes got buffs and ele got its only viable amulet removed. The only place in the meta will be doing a role worse than another meta build. Eles are first to fall out of a viable meta build, it’s unfortunate since the FINALLY got every class to have one.

110% worst meta, bunker beta is a bad meta when everyone is running tanky as kitten there’s no gameplay. There are far too many distortions blocks, invnl, reset buttons in this meta its just not fun, and skill is not rewarded well.

No I’m saying that the unique rewards should only be available at the current difficulty

I agree skill is very much pvp my main aspect of the game up until raids (and the insane power creep cause by HoT)

Raids are very much skill based as they are dedication based.

I’m sorry many people are just not skilled enough to do vale. It is skill to properly maximize your damage rotation while dodging blues, getting to greens, avoiding lava, breaking CC knowing when to avoid or knock back sparks.

Now gors I actually think is less skillful but VG mechanically because the randomness doesn’t exist so there’s less to adapt too.

Yeah there are some classes that require significantly less skill and you can tunnel vision on just mechanics but look at mesmer proper dropping and upkeep of alacrity and haste, healers knowing when and who to heal, knock backs not kittening up or being wasted tank properly kiting green circles groups avoiding sparks while keeping up their damage and soaking the lightning.

There’s a lot of skill involved, yes a lot of it is gear, but just having the gear does not make you skilled enough to raid.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

spoj.9672:

I have a small complaint about rewards.

Specifically to do with the magnetide shard cap. The cap is good. The problem is it caps magnetide shards on successful boss kills as well. I feel like the bonus shards from successfully completing a boss should still be granted and should be separate. So if you fail and cap at 105. You can still earn a few extra from succeeding. If you dont succeed then you only get 105 per week. This means players that actually clear the raid can get ahead of those that fail. Right now all players are rewarded almost equally regardless of success of failure. Unless you get lucky and get an ascended or unique item from the boss kills you are rewarded almost the same as someone who just farmed to fail constantly.

This kind of ruins the incentive and cuts the motivation to succeed.

Good idea.

This, the reward for killing a boss should not count toward your cap of shards. Any subsequent kills that week however should be effected by your weekly cap.

Minos.5168:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Yes, you take away the exclusive skill based rewards. A huge driving factor in keeping the skilled players interested in actually playing, take that away and it becomes very difficult to find groups (probably impossible once everyone’s cleared it once cause now you can just farm it on lower difficulty. Completely removes the reason to participate in higher level raids.

And here’s the key issue, I think.

Raids aren’t as “fun” as they were promised to be.

I found Fractals pre-HoT to be enjoyable. Rewards were decent. I ran them daily.

Then they nerfed Fractal rewards in the hopes that people would try raids.

If raids were enjoyable, then even the 4g + possible Ascended loot + boss-specific drops should be more than enough to keep people grinding.

Raids are the most enjoyable aspect of the game for many people. Most people who are doing raids would not be playing otherwise.

And they nerfed fractal rewards because they made the lower tiers easy as kitten. And the upper aren’t hard they just failed scaleing difficulty and they already said they would be re adjusting the rewards and fixing the scaleing.

Also people didn’t run fractals for acended. They ran it for the unique skins. They already had acended

People don’t run raids for acended. They run them for the unique skins and legendary. They already have acended.

You’ll get your farm gold legendary with a different skin later. For now do raids or wait.

Just because you don’t enjoy something doesn’t means there should be an ez mode so you can get the rewards others are working hard for.

I don’t enjoy pve open world but I did map completion and farmed karma and other crap for my legendarys.

Sorry skill is finally a factor in obtaining am item. It’s about time