Guild Wars 2

Ele is pretty much awful at this point. I’m not speaking about PvE or WvW.

Pigeon holed into playing D/D for viability.

Yawn….

ANET doesn’t respond to much of anything when it comes to balance

unless you plan to play the d/d meta for spvp. I would go guardian. ele isnt rising in the food chain at all and its going to be 6 more months before we see another change.

Also, pve ele is probably still highest pve dps in game but gets cleaved a lot.

Guardian pve provides highest group support.

its a bug, like everything else in this awful feature patch.

As a Scepter/Dagger ele who wipes the floor beneath my feet with staff and d/d ele. All I have to say is try ele for a day and see if you don’t pull your hair out and quit the game.

Staff ele is annoying and that is all. A staff ele on a point isn’t one you should fear, it’s the one standing on high ground trying to avoid damage because he spec’d man mode and can’t hold his own ground but will destroy the ground you stand on.

d/d ele, well, it’s flavor of the month (or 6 months for guild wars 2). Its hardly even good. For some reason, kitten bags like to run around spamming LW and doing a predictable fire rotation. It can wear you down, but d/d ele has one ranged ability of 900 and its a lengthy cool down. they are just above melee range and are easy to deprive of actually doing damage. Most suck because they jumped on the ele hype thinking it was probably something near as good as grouch made it seem pre feature patch.

play ele and see how much you can stand.

Either way, he is right. The bunkers are becoming just as stale as the condi spam.

1v1, 1v2, 1v3. Doesnt make a difference.

I’ve been on treb nuking mid and the bunkers don’t dodge and don’t move. They eat the damage + damage from my team in mid and surive. Me (the ele) die in two treb shots if I have 100% hp on the first hit and will have a few hundred HP to try and recover.

At this point, who cares. 50% sale this week on GW2. I smell smoke. PvErs without content and PvPers stuck with crap WvW or even worse sPvP. Another MMO burning to the ground.

But good news guys, sPvP will bring lambs to the wolves when PvE’ers must PvP to get exclusive items. Only causing more excessive kittening on these forums. When they are forced to deal with the meta as it “settles” or more realistically stagnates.

oZii.2864:

disagree that range attacks are unappealing as many people use range weapons.

Staffs, scepters, focus, bows, rifles, pistols, these are all ranged options and are popular.

The range weapon usually as it should becomes less effective when melee is in your face and then you become pressured. I don’t want everyone running around pew pew 1 spamming like rangers personally that would be lame imo.

The range weapons are used alot so I don’t see where you get the conclusion that ranged attacks are unappealing.

Mesmers’s use GS and Staffs and Pistols and Scepters
Engis use pistols, E-guns and rifles
Warriors are using bows, not so much rifles
Necros are using staffs and scepters and focus
Guards are using staffs, scepters, and focus
Thieves are using bows, and pistol
Rangers are using bows and bows

If your argument is 1 spam then I guess but I would disagree with that too. Everyone shouldn’t have a awesome 1 spam auto at 900+ range. Range many times = free damage on melee or the use of important cooldowns if you can apply enough pressure before melee gets to you. That is the advantage of range and it’s a pretty big one.

I like how you leave out Elementalist. Because it’s the one class that is truly suffering from the absurd amount of gap closers in the game.

You can’t combat gap closers with gap creators because then it becomes a mobility issue. Anet seriously needs to tone down the amount of gab closers and leaping attacks because it’s gotten unreasonable.

O well, bigger and better games over the horizon.

This topic is going to get you an infraction come Monday.

#nerfthief

Lol! This is the most hilarious garbage post I’ve seen. Take diamond skin, no one will notice when it’s gone. The health threshold is crap and will always make this skill worthless as is.

It’s cast time needs to be cut in half for what it’s worth and unfortunately, unless you cast it in a mosh pit, people will just walk out. Use lightning flash which will also east the blind.

BlackBeard.2873:

Actually, thieves need major nerfs, while eles only need minor buffs.

This is a pretty good point itself. lol

The only damage buff ele needs is sustainability across the few weapons they have. Staff needs some help, they are one trick ponies in tpvp that i walk up and down on. EVERYTHING on staff is over telegraphed and most of it, why even dodge? Just strafe and save the dodge for something more important.

Survival buffs need to be integrated into the weapon sets and not traits, i like glass cannons and that doesnt include defensive traits. Thief as glass doesn’t have to trait for the excessive evades, stealth, and mobility. We should have some improved ‘standard’ defensive capability. I don’t want brainless defensive mechanics. Extra toughness on Rock Barrier for example, maybe also adding a short duration of protection. Frost Aura granting some extra healing power during its duration to help give your healing a boost when you really need it.

Idk, I could bounce a lot of idea’s out there. But Anet won’t read or care about them.

the patch is not coming on the 18th for balance.

Initiative is broken above all else. Focusing one thief ability will push thieves into playing a different weapon set. Thief has more ways to close the gap on classes that require distance to even stand a chance.

So my question is, is pistol whip really the problem or being unable to escape the inevitable the problem?

I personally main ele and to a great extent, you can’t avoid dying unless you land a burst combo on the run.

It’s not a L2P issue for other classes, we only have a couple of dodges for abilities that only have soft cool downs which makes them spammable resulting in the inevitable eating a pistol whip, heart seeker spam, whatever the case may be.

Look at the class as a whole and not a single ability.

Carighan.6758:

Frenk.5917:

Great post. This deserves more attention by the devs than the other rage/nerf/lulz topic in this forum section. And I’ll keep bumping it untill an official reply from devs.

It’s a shame that most of the forum is just “My class is too weak” / “That class which killed me is too strong” / “I was hit for X by Y” whining, yeah. I think the main reason this forum was created was to contain the rage, so to say. Keeps the rest a bit more sane.

Every game is like this. The dev’s have to balance based off their numbers and not our complaints. As far as I can tell, neither really seem to happen. Buffs seem extremely random when they do come and things that people cry to get nerfed just get ignored while they nerf around the issue is causing more issues.

+1 on thread, hope the dev’s read this.

ShadowNinja.1238:

Amonatory.2453:

ShadowNinja.1238:

I play p/d perplexity as I’m decent not pro and I have great success i beat serane a couple times around 3 and got beaten like 2 times which proves how OP it is a noob beating a pro like serane. It’s just so OP I’ll post some WvW footage soon.

P/D in general isn’t OP it’s the runes. Also, facing an ele while using p/d is an easy win. You choose to use the easy runes.. Also serane kills you almost evertime, stop trying to lie on the forums.

Oh yeah i forgot YOU WERENT AT THE ARENA YESTERDAY. I keep losing as d/d which d/d ele counters. And did you know elementalist has many forms of condition clear like ETHER renewal which serane didn’t swap to for some reason as well as swapping to water cures 2, dodging in water cures one, water 5 cures another, so I don’t see how ele is disadvantaged here…

And to the dude who said hes pro at warrior in spvp I have a couple words, Warrior and I’m talking about wvw not spvp… Warrior broken in spvp…. Level a character to 80 get gear duel serane see who’s bad lol.

Your knowledge of elementalist is fairly bad.

D/D ele doesn’t counter Thief. The only way the ele will survive more than a few back stabs is if they are in some way bunker. In which they will not have much damage to even hurt a fly. Ele has huge sacrifice to surive.

ER is a very subpar heal and a decent D/P thief will interrupt it with #4 pistol. It has a 3.5 second channel, most good players will get it in the first 1.5 which really screws the Ele.

As far as removing traits by attuning to water, you have to trait 30 points into water. At that point, you’re bunker and your 1v1 ability is a nightmare (lack of damage).

Dodge to remove condi is seriously a kitten . Yes, it’s good from the outside looking in. But wasting dodge rolls in a fight to clear a stack of bleeds, cripples or poisons is crippling the Ele’s ability to survive.

Water 5 has a 40 second CD for one condition. The rate condi’s stack in this game, if you’re not bunker Ele. Your condition clearing ability is absolute kitten.

Please don’t try to hype a class you have a terrible understanding of.

Prysin.8542:

To all of you, if you want to become good with Ele, IE; learn to manage what you here claim to be issues, you should play a ranger in WvW Roaming.
WHY?
Just like ele, the ranger is somewhat squishy, so you are forced to dodge. You cannot mistform, you cannot blink/teleport or use RTL. You are forced to deal with it in a close quarter battle. Trust me, a few weeks on a ranger and you know what i mean.
Secondly, rangers has less and worse condi removal then Eles. Thus if you think you are in a bad spot, now, you will learn to take care of yourself with even less luxuries then you have already.
Thirdly, Glass Ele, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, Engineer, Necro or Guard is nowhere near as glass as rangers is, as ranger glass builds (thanks to how traitlines work) makes them super glassy. Yes the DPS is awesome, you can do 6-7k crits with a LB on AA alone, however, you’ll get downed if someone as much as farts in your general direction.
In other words, with time, you learn to survive while being left with fewer survival tools then you have on ele.
A thing you should NEVER do is run trap ranger. Not because its hard to use, but because once you learn what real condition pressure is like on other roaming professions, you get sad when you try to do it on your ele. Just doesn’t come close to that pressure, like ever.

Why do i say this?
Because iv’e mained a ranger for over a year, and once i started leveling my ele i found it to be the easiest profession (apart from attunements, they still kitten me off royally) to keep alive. So many tools, cooldowns a kitten but thats ok.

Oh and forgot to say; Conjuration DF roaming FTW.

Lol. Seriously, lol. You don’t even know what glass ele is. Go back to the hole you crawled out of you 1 button spam wonder.

posthumecaver.6473:

If Necro has Minions Ele will never win, it will be fight 4 vs 1 (2 if u use elite but our Elite sucks big time compared to Necros)

Necro will probably have 17-18K HP and tanky like hell, to be able to kill them quickly you have to go glass because an attrition war will be won from Necro.

With the minions there will be around 40K HP that you have melt, you really don’t want to know how long it will take an Ele to dish that much damage, during which Necro will send you Condi Nukes against which you will spend all your time with cleanses (Spite, Corrupt Boon, Terror Combos, any one).

It is really no fun, they should really revert the nerfs also on healing ripple and Evasive Arcana, with the sustain I have in WvWvW I can beat them but not in sPVP.

MM necros are the easiest necros for Ele. Power necros can 2-3 shot Ele and condi necros, well kitten you Signet of Spite.

Bringing warriors healing signet down (more than what is already planned) and hopefully anet will take a look at thieves. I don’t want to scream nerf them, but the whole initiative system feels horribly broken. It’s rewarding them with evades, mobility, with the ability to spam abilities like heart seeker and pistol whip which can be deviating to a class like Elementalist who doesn’t even stand a chance at getting away in the first place.

The philosophy of “tweaking” needs to go down to toilet and some changes need to be made. I’m not saying thief and warrior are the only problem, simply the least transparent of the bunch.

Right now in tPvP; ele doesn’t have good enough sustain to even hurt warriors healing sig + cleansing ire. Yes, you can kill warriors. With a great deal of struggle because Ele’s sustain is simply horrible.

Thieves can 2 shot you if they run glass. You’ll probably see 2-3 heartseekers after you go down just to show how hard they were spamming that kitten.

Necro Signet of spite is getting kinda nuts considering we can only cleanse 1 condi at a time unless we run bunker water builds. Good news is, most necro’s are absolutely horrible and I support the MM necros because they are easy to kill and really bring nothing to the table for their team. Wait, I take that back. The petting zoo for down time is nice to play with. :P

Ele seem okay outside of sustained dps, some other classes need to come down is the biggest issue I see. Thief needs some serious balance with their spam and Healing Sig needs to come down some more even after this 8%. I would really like the see the passive not be ‘as passive.’

dude, we are the red headed step child. you either out skill everyone 10x or lose and anet seems to feel thats okay.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I agree with the OP. HS’s passive heal should have a completely passive component, and a more active component which requires some effort.
For example:
– 65% of the heal is passive
– 35% of the heal comes from landing non-burst attacks

This means the HS is as effective, and in some cases moreso, as it is today when the warrior is wailing away and hitting someone. This means damage avoidance (reflects, dodges, blinds, etc) would reduce the warrior’s healing effectiveness. Additionally it would make warriors give more consideration as to when they should use their defensive cooldowns and when they should disengage and leave.

This would also allow ANet to rebalance/boost the active heal.

Really, when you consider it, such a change would change warriors from a broken profession to a balanced profession with a much higher skill ceiling. Skilled warriors would still dominate nearly as well today, but there would be good counterplay.

No, no more passive healing without a condition is what OP said. Why promote the ability to run and passively heal. Chase warriors down and don’t bleed them, gut them because healing signet will be dead and the feeling of a running warrior will be glorious.

runeblade.7514:

What I like about healing signet:
-It shows the warrior’s natural toughness that anet envisioned.

/gag

I doubt Anets vision was to make healing signet stupid strong. They just added a few other buffs at the same time reacting very poorly with a passive heal.

SO ANET, get rid of passive healing. <- Best solution

Seryi.7936:

Razor.6392:

Sorry but no. Warriors gaining a lot of ehp by doing NOTHING is not good design.

Warriors have too many layered passives that lead to their current state of being extremely strong while not having to put in as much effort.

I don’t think Healing Signet needs to be nerfed more then ArenaNet is already planning to do so. Rather, you should be advocating for less passive defense on traits that give such powerful benefits with absolutely no real input on part of the player, and no real downside (Cleansing Ire comes to mind).

Passive defenses in general shouldn’t be so widespread, but that’s another discussion entirely.

Well, you were on the right path until all the contradictions began after saying don’t nerf healing signet, but nerf these other no skill passives!

Bottom line, no one should have ‘passive’ healing, a.k.a. no user input for heal. I don’t even care for heal on hit signets. But they aren’t as easily abused as healing signet.

I don’t think Anets done with healing signet. 8% isn’t much and cleansing ire hasn’t been touched. Warriors will all still be running it.

8% off of 392 is about 31 HP/s
That brings Healing sig to 361 HP/s @ 10,830 HP/30 (only a 930 total health lost per 30/s)

All I can say is bring the nerf bat for round 2, because the problem isn’t over.

juno.1840:

Other games seem to do a better job delineating the roles. In other words you can build for DPS, but the game design ensures you’re horrible at sustain. You can build for sustain, but the game design ensures you’re horrible at DPS. This dichotomy doesn’t exist in GW2 for Ele.

I really wish Anet would get this right. Warriors being one of the serious issues. Thief with far too much evasion. I know there are other classes with issues, but I feel those are the two worst offenders. I’m tired of hearing thief justify everything by saying their squishy. I wish they’d try Ele…

First, all staffs are clunky (except maybe guardian), Ele has the highest damage on staff AA from all other staff users. Water obviously less than other attunements due to the fact it also heals.

Mesmers auto attacks on scepter in comparison fall slightly behind on first two AA’s and then a strong third attack generating a clone which is one of the hardest hitting AA’s even though it’s third in sequence.

Thief’s damage balance is hardly justified by ability to survive.

Their ability to spam (no remarks about OP) is a little out of control since the initiative buff Dec 10.

Also, a little ironic guardians took a dodge nerf and not thief because “dodging is prevalent in GW2.” Which was even mocked by countless.

I find it comical you say Ele staff and not scepter.

Ele staff is pretty strong as it is (especially AA), except for the ground targeting + long telegraphs making it quite pitiful in tPvP.

As for Mesmer scepter, it seems fine considering it generates clones and condi’s.

Thief doesn’t need anymore damage buffs until the spam that’s going on is toned down.

As an elementalist. Balancing everything else would probably be a good start to fixing ele. Anet needs to start making ‘regular’ updates to balance so we actually start to feel some change.

So far, I don’t have much to look forward to as ele and hiding patch notes from the community (set in stone or not) is just bad practice IMO. Community input is not worth much if we aren’t able to input on what changes are made until after Anet has already made a sometimes or even often drastic change.

There is no reason no class shouldn’t be viable in pvp and no reason ele should be pushed into support role in pvp when it’s a heavy damage class.

Look guys, warriors are hard. Pressing f1 to do 12k damage gets tiring. Thief, also hard, their fingers get tired from spamming evades into back stabs and heart seekers. Ele is where they should be, a free kill to boost the egos of learning warriors and thieves.

Dolores.5471:

I had this crazy idea the other day when thinking of how to make eles less dependent on arcana. Along with making elemental attunement baseline, as its already been suggested, why don’t we divide the evasive arcana trait into 4 minor traits spread on the other trait lines? It has always seemed a little odd to me how other classes get “on dodge” traits so easily and ele has to spend 30 points for it.

Anet could make it so that for example, an adept trait in the water trait line granted cleansing wave when dodging in water attunement, same on earth, fire and wind for their respective effects. That way we could pick which effects of evasive arcana we wanted and possibly save points to diversify/strengthen our builds… Was this ever suggested before? Is it too crazy/op?

+1

I would like to see ele scepter auto attack damage match other weapons we have. It’s kind of ridiculous that healing sig warriors can completely mitigate auto attack damage with a passive heal. I know HS is getting adjusted, but it’s still not where it should be.

I run FULL zerker ele in LA and survive without any issues what so ever.

If you think you can’t survive PvE, go try PvP. We are kittening cat nip to thieves.

Sure, ele is going to get some extra healing and condi clear and still die in .5 seconds to thief.

It’s a pretty punishing skill vs ele if we aren’t even paying attention to the mesmer casting it. I don’t know about you guys, but I may be fighting someone else and a mesmer sneaks up and moa’s me. I would like to see utility slots kept so moa can be broken.

Think of a game like WoW. Everything in the game has a counter from invulnerabilities to all types of crowd control. This game, just likes to give you the shaft. Play meta or GTFO right?

Edit: Just got moa’d from stealth. GW2 at its finest.

Warrior longbow is very strong FYI. The only things I can say are, ele can’t switch between ranged and melee. We only get one weapon set. You could use conjured weapons, but viably speaking, probably not always situationally the best choice over survival utilities. Ele staff has been popular in WvW. But it’s a stand back and aoe build which is boring to me. Big numbers, but you’re absolutely worthless solo. Last, ele is extremely squishy, be prepared to get one or two shot by a lot of things if you run zerker.

Good luck choosing.

Dave Pare.2069:

PART 3

WEAPONS: there are 2 weapons that really need to be looked at and improved, Longbow and Greatsword, these are my suggestions:

LONGBOW:
*1 (Long range shot): adding a few more damages at max range (1000+) would be nice (10-20%?) or maybe the Cripple condi. on a successful hit.

I seriously hope you’re joking. Cripple on auto attack is an absurd idea.

Remove passive healing from the game and this problem will be solved.

Everyone would probably throw a fit, but it shouldn’t exist in the first place. You can’t counter play something you can’t stop.

Just hope the Ele changes are for the best and maybe some of the other class changes to bring them more in line with Ele *cough*thief*cough*.

I have too many complaints to even care to list.

They are reversing the ele sig nerf for PvP on the 18th I think.

But lets face it, there is no logic behind Warrior’s healing sig.

I don’t think healing should be a passive effect for any class. Maybe a survival boost through vitality, toughness, improved healing, ect.

Thats my opinion though.

ICD will make this thing worthless. it wouldn’t proc when you need it to or will be counting down in our head while taking heart seekers up the kitten .

I think low duration active and ICD are ideal. 1 sec quickness, 1-2 second ICD. It’s not as if its 24/7 up time. it would help with getting off useless abilities like dragons tooth, churning earth, ect. the things where hitting the target or getting the cast off is questionable in the first place.

Last thing ele needs is another useless ability.

i think the mobility nerfs over did ele. thieves are out of control vs ele right now and i doubt anet knows because half the developers are warriors.

Substance E.4852:

silvermember.8941:

Substance E.4852:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Do the developers really want feedback? If so, then I have a story for them.

Before I played GW2 I used to play Rift. The PvP there was not as good as GW2, but it was decent…at first.

In the beginning the PvP was decent. Then the developers tried to balance the PvP.

And so they buffed warriors and thieves.
And the nerfed warlocks and pyromancers.

And so the game persisted. Players clamored about the imbalance that existed, and even offered suggestions on how to improve the balance.

And the developer response was the same: we have to be mindful of scope (though the changes were typically analogous to changing one or two talents). And they did nothing. And warriors and thieves rampaged over the battlegrounds.

That was about 2 years ago.

The other day I swung into the Rift forums and saw the same complaints. Nothing changed.

Today, in GW2, I see warriors are overpowered and still dominating the meta, as exemplified by teams like Cheese Mode winning tournaments with double warrior.
Thieves are the apex roamer class, pushing out Elementalists and Mesmers from the meta.

And I see ArenaNet doing nothing to change this.

I believe history will repeat itself.

As long as people keep buying gems don’t expect anything to ever really change.

Makes one wonder why you still bother if believe nothing is goign to change. Just for the record, the ones complaining like us are generally not the ones that prop up the game.

Things will change somewhat, but major sweeping changes don’t seem like they will happen or will happen so slowly people will just start to lose interest before they are fully realized. I firmly believe that this games B2P model is it’s biggest saving grace at the moment.

I mean, it’s been almost 2 yeas and we still don’t have a new spvp game mode. WvW got a new map and it’s just more of the “zerg the local” game play we’ve always had.

If Anet had a real competitor that made them afraid to lose customers we’d probably see a lot more innovation and change than we have been with their only real drain being general player bemusement.

Wildstar will give GW2 a run for their money if they don’t fix something before launch. I’m not saying it’s going to kill the game, but I will jump on that gravy train if something isn’t done to GW2 by it’s launch (this summer i think).

Ele: Some added survival that isn’t rejuv. Running zerker as is, you won’t survive long enough to enjoy it vs a thief.

Thief: Remove all weapon evades or place a heafty ICD on each, stealth debuff increased to 10-15 seconds to stop that madness of thieves jumping in and out of stealth. Lastly, balance their burst. It’s so out of control vs other glass with no setup involved.

Nothing about rush is risky.

Silly warriors.

Aside from phantasams, illusions don’t do much if any damage without active play. You chose the one class that doesn’t really apply to. Illusions only attack the target you summon them on, they are designed as distractions until the active (shatter) is used.

Copy and paste away, warriors are getting nerfed because while the community has a problem with warrior, so does anet. You posting warriors are fine is only comforting yourself and fellow warriors in denial or fear of becoming the bottom of the food chain again.

Why do warriors assume people can’t defeat warriors because they are on the forums trying to address a blatant issue: Healing Signet.

As a full zerker ele it’s hard to burst a warrior though healing signet. Is it impossible? No. But my mistakes result in 1/3 or more of my health gone because of a single attack hitting me. One stun from hammer without a major cool down is death.

Warriors have too much healing without the loss of damage suffered by other classes. Warriors should not be able to run knights or soliders and maintain a high level of dps.

Warrior feels like its in a good place because you’re only looking out the window, not in it. I have over 1000 hours on warrior and plain and simple, it’s too easy and basic to challenge the player. That’s ultimately why I stopped playing it.

Ele is in a bad place.

But I kept hearing play zerker, it will make you a better player being forced to react and move faster. I stayed true to that and I feel like I’ve gained a lot from it.

Zerker ele as is, it’s frustrating and life expectancy is about 1-2 shots. But you will learn, adapt, and become a great player in the process.

And just maybe when ele gets a buff, working through the bad will help you excel in the future. I think the people who just play flavor of the month are obviously subpar players. They depend on the aspects players once excelled without.

This is just food for thought, I hope you decide to try out new builds and find something you enjoy.

This has been an amazing thread to read and I found myself not skipping a word. I love a lot of what’s been said and I can’t agree more. Base stats are too spread out while the system the base stats were designed for (high hp/less damage and low hp/high damage) has lost its place.

I thought it was just me, but I was in shock and awe when anet stated ele’s damage felt like it was in a good place. As a full zerker s/d ele, the damage just doesn’t seem to meet the bar and factoring my survival, well, zerker ele says it all. I can’t bring myself to play defensive because it simply lacks just to meet the same standard most classes are accustom to with no defensive investment in traits or armor.

I really hope anet replies on the thoughts in this thread. I will continue to follow.

+1

Sickness.9831:

if there is nothing huge, beside the stuff you stated yet, you want to change in terms of ele survivability it will be another 3-6 months without having elementalists in esl tournys

:/ something needs to happen. I should be able to play zerker without a thief being able to spam heartseeker on me with little to nothing that I can do. They have faster burst with higher mobility. Lose lose.