Guild Wars 2

Of all things you could have addressed with Elementalists … I really don’t understand why you picked the things you did to meddle with.

If you wanted to actually help Elementalist you could have addressed some of our long outstanding questions:

1. Why is Balance Stance a 40 second cooldown / 8 second duration on a high armor/high hitpoint class, but Armor of Earth is a 90 second cooldown / 6 second duration on Elementalist?

2. Why does Lingering Elements not affect all attunement dependant abilities such as Piercing Shards and Internal Fire

3. Why hasn’t Zephyr’s Speed and Windborne Dagger been replaced with traits that would be useful? You nerfed One With Air (something people actually used) and left us with their broken and unwanted cousins.

4. Why is ANet so aggressively pushing Burning on a class that, as designed, is not a condition class. If Burning was power based, I could understand … but stacking burning when its only doing a few hundred a tick is asanine.

5. When are the focus and scepter issues going to be addressed? You acknowledged the issues with both since the end of Closed Beta and still nothing has been done. The only benefit/advantage that elementalist has is the fact it has access to more abilities than other classes … so none of them should be lackluster. Example: Shatterstone.

6. With nerfed Mobility, gutted Healing abilities, and the 5 player AE cap … how does ANet justify the low hitpoints/armor that the class was given back in alpha/closed beta? Look at the other low hitpoint classes: Guardian, Thief, Elementalist … which is doing the worst (especially in sPvP)? Look at the other low armor classes: Necromancer, Mesmer, Elementalist … same question as before? Don’t you feel that the drawbacks given to the class have should be reviewed given that you have abandoned the reasoning for them in the first place back before release? It isn’t like other classes aren’t doing the same damage output at Elementalists with far more survivability.

I would also like some clarification on two points that on the surface look completely hypocritical.

1. Why was RTL nerfed and Warriors, Rogues, and Thieves are allowed to do the very thing you deemed improper for elementalists to do in your game?

2. Why are you thinking of moving Vigor on crit to 20 points in Arcane when you give it to both Guardians and Mesmers for a 5 point investment?

Of all things you could have addressed with Elementalists … I really don’t understand why you picked the things you did to meddle with.

If you wanted to actually help Elementalist you could have addressed some of our long outstanding questions:

1. Why is Balance Stance a 40 second cooldown / 8 second duration on a high armor/high hitpoint class, but Armor of Earth is a 90 second cooldown / 6 second duration on Elementalist?

2. Why does Lingering Elements not affect all attunement dependant abilities such as Piercing Shards and Internal Fire

3. Why hasn’t Zephyr’s Speed and Windborne Dagger been replaced with traits that would be useful? You nerfed One With Air (something people actually used) and left us with their broken and unwanted cousins.

4. Why is ANet so aggressively pushing Burning on a class that, as designed, is not a condition class. If Burning was power based, I could understand … but stacking burning when its only doing a few hundred a tick is asanine.

5. When are the focus and scepter issues going to be addressed? You acknowledged the issues with both since the end of Closed Beta and still nothing has been done. The only benefit/advantage that elementalist has is the fact it has access to more abilities than other classes … so none of them should be lackluster. Example: Shatterstone.

6. With nerfed Mobility, gutted Healing abilities, and the 5 player AE cap … how does ANet justify the low hitpoints/armor that the class was given back in alpha/closed beta? Look at the other low hitpoint classes: Guardian, Thief, Elementalist … which is doing the worst (especially in sPvP)? Look at the other low armor classes: Necromancer, Mesmer, Elementalist … same question as before? Don’t you feel that the drawbacks given to the class have should be reviewed given that you have abandoned the reasoning for them in the first place back before release? It isn’t like other classes aren’t doing the same damage output at Elementalists with far more survivability.

I would also like some clarification on two points that on the surface look completely hypocritical.

1. Why was RTL nerfed and Warriors, Rogues, and Thieves are allowed to do the very thing you deemed improper for elementalists to do in your game?

2. Why are you thinking of moving Vigor on crit to 20 points in Arcane when you give it to both Guardians and Mesmers for a 5 point investment?

Ele’s were never overpowered. They were designed with disadvantages back in the day when healing was powerful and AE wasn’t limited to 5 players. The AE Cap was put into place and the healing crippled, but the disadvantages for them remained.

There is nothing the Elementalist can do that warrants their life pool and armor values. We don’t have stealth like the thief to reset the fight and don’t have the base survivability and armor to take the beating like the guardian.

The fact that they nerfed all our Mobility just shows how little disregard ANet has for the class. If they had done the same thing to Warriors, Rangers, and Thieves then it would have still been wrong, but at least it wouldn’t have been as blatantly hypocritical.

The only way we beat other classes is to put in twice the effort and use three to four times the abilities. Anyone that is good at elementalist would perform far better playing any other class.

Mesmer’s Critical Infusion is 5 point Minor Trait in their Dueling line.

Guardian’s Vigorous Precision is 5 point Minor Trait in their Honor line.

I have to ask … why does ANet feel that Elementalists Renewing Stamina warrants being a 20 point Major Trait in the Arcane line?!?!

If there is any justice you should make Renewing Stamina the 5 point Minor Trait in Air … replacing the nonsense that is Zephyr’s Speed. Then come up with something new for Arcane … maybe something that actually makes Arcane spells actually preferable to Cantrips?!?

Shockwave.1230:

Diamond skin is a hard counter to pure condition builds. All you need to do is inflict 1,500-2,000 damage then you can continue melting Elementalists as normal.

Funny … many thief builds can melt an elementalist in a few seconds regardless of build , but elementalist becomes powerful vs a subset of a couple of classes and all of a sudden its a big thing. No one seemed to care when it was just Elementalists dieing without being able to be a noticeable benefit in a group situation. :p

Diamond Skin is not powerful at all vs the vast majority of the game … while the ele remains the lowest hitpoints, lowest armor class with no survival gimmicks like stealth, clones, or deathshroud … and all the while basically having the same damage output as every other class.

In short … cry me a river.

As an Elementalist convert … I don’t want to hear how tough Thieves have it with Mesmers. I play Mesmer now to give you ba****ds some of your own medicine without having to be you. Go back to your own forum.

Amazing as in hyper laggy blob fests where you just follow someone with a tag over their heads mindlessly for hours?

Roaming WvW has been sacrificed at the altar of “WTF were you thinking” and the WvW players can’t even play the one aspect of the game they enjoyed because of all the achievement players locking them out.

PvE players ‘enjoy’ killing with the same predictable pve mobs over and over again … of course you are going to ‘enjoy’ what they have turned WvW into.

I have to disagree Jon. I can’t count the number of times a Thief comes out of stealth and does multiple attacks that breach any numbers I can do outside of Earth Dagger 5 just to disappear into saftey.

Elementalists have more drawbacks then thieves and no saftey of stealth or even gimics like Death Shroud/Clones.

The damage is all we have and if we could use our mechanic to achieve that damage all the better.

Edit: I am just fearful that elementalist is being pigeon holed into being a staff zerg/blob heal bot with no practical use for tPvP or Roaming WvW.

Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

Great, so now it is impossible to have Elemental Attunement + Renewing Stamina + Evasive Arcana. Thanks for another Elementalist nerf while calling it a buff.

/facepalm

BlackBeard.2873:

I’ve said it before and I will say it again…

ELEMENTALISTS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE NICE THINGS!!!

Just accept it now and stop looking at how pathetic the class is. Bad and getting worse (if you prefer d/d, especially). Just re-roll at this point. Even when eles are down and out, they insist on nerfing. If major nerfs are still coming at this point, someone REALLY does have a vendetta for the class.

Disclaimer: I really am trying to be an optimist, and have for so long…But its just so hard when you keep getting crapped on over and over to think that its gonna turn around at some point.

Yeah … I am still pondering why Armor of Earth is a 90 second cooldown for 6 seconds of duration … while Balance Stance is a 40 second cooldown for 8 seconds of duration.

Then there is:
1. Blink vs Lightning Flash.
2. RTL vs … well … lets not go there.

Elementalist just has a tradition of being crapped on.

I fully understand the whole reason for not having weapon swapping on the elementalist … but since I can open my inventory and swap weapons manually while out of combat, why don’t they allow us to use our actual weapon slots and swap normally as long as the character is out of combat?

oZii.2864:

Nyxion.9142:

I play D/D to not use any ground targeting, however with scepter it makes more sense. ANet, Is it possible to change targeting so it depends on main hand weapon?

emikochan.8504:

Use fast cast if it’s taking too long to arcane wave

Good luck aiming for Burning Speed combo field.

You just have to hit the field with wave and it should give you the might. I just messed around with it quickly and no fast cast was able to give myself the might mid burning. You do have to am it a little behind you though.

It completely screws up all my combos … such as Burning Speed → Lighting Flash → Arcane Wave →Fire Grab

There is no time to retarget the Arcane Wave after the Lightning Flash.

Please allow partially used Mantras to regenerate back to full charges out of combat. It is frustrating as hell to use 2 of my 3 charges during a fight and then when out of combat have to burn the last one, wait the cooldown, and then recharge the mantra.

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin
In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

That is reasonable. You have to understand how small a window 10% is on an elementalist … a bunker build hit would breach that threshold easily. The same is true of Vital Striking in Water attunement. Then there is Final Shielding … that 25% life can be completely be bypassed by most classes in a single hit which means the trait never fires.

JonPeters.5630:

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

You have to remember that you guys waged a war against ‘soft healers’ and all our Water abilities are fairly weak vs what every other attunement provides. I mean, I would love for Water to do damage akin to Air/Fire … but until then a 20% reduction does not warrant Master tier.

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Ok, I have to admit to being a little pieved that as a developer you admit something is completely useless and were willing to let it be that way for a lower cost. As a Software VnV guy, I don’t let my developers get away with that ><. A redesign is exactly what should happen.

JonPeters.5630:

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

Jon, Mesmers and Guardians both get Vigor on Crit as a 5 point minor … and Elementalist have a completely worthless 5 point minor in air that would be the perfect place for this ability to wind up. That would allow you to put a new trait in Arcane to help the class some in its weaker areas.

JonPeters.5630:

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Fire and Earth are always going to be shunned due to the fact that you based these lines on conditions (burning and bleed) when Elementalist is not a viable condition class. there is no bleed on crit trait to even make earth remotely work properly and most of fire needs you to be in fire … which means you lose the other half of your condition abilities. If you really wanted to help Earth/Fire out then you should redo them without reliance/focus on conditions.

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thank god.

They need to make Tornado destroy projectiles like Swirling Winds.

Think about that for a minute … Swirling Winds … Tornado.

Kyskythyn.6471:

Honestly, 15s was an entirely too low cd. The issue is not the lack of mobility for ele’s, it’s that other classes have too much.

Warrior.GreatSword.WhirlwindAttack = 10
Warrior.GreatSword.Rush = 20
Warrior.Sword.SavageLeap = 8
Ranger.GreatSword.Swoop = 12

I could go on, but you should get the point by now. Eles can’t even catch a Ranger anymore … let alone a Warrior or Thief.

Kyskythyn.6471:

Dragon’s tooth is ok for how hard it hits, but water 2 is next to useless.

Hits hard compared to what? I can name at least 10 abilities that hit far harder that are cast much faster and FAR less telegraphed.

Kyskythyn.6471:

Annoying, yes, but mesmer’s blink can’t crit for 4k. ^.-

Mesmer’s blink breaks stun.

Kyskythyn.6471:

You mean, like opening your inventory and weapon swapping? confused

You have a bag full of stuff and try swapping while trying to keep up with other people and come back to me.

Zelyhn.8069:

BlackBeard.2873:

\
I have heard it worked like this at some point in alpha/beta and was WAY OP. You could get +26-30% damage very consistently, maybe even +40%, which is absurd.

The build I run (10/30/10/10/10) has +35% “permanent” damage and I still deal less damage than most warriors, I have less health, less armor, I can dodge less and I give less support (compared to banners + FGJ).

Exactly.

Other classes are doing the damage Elementalists do with the elementalist going full glass cannon and jumping through all the hoops to get all the stacking damage multipliers FULL TIME and with FAR BETTER SURVIVABILITY.

I honestly don’t believe that ANet has any idea how fragile the class is or how badly lopsided the Risk/Reward (and effort to achieve it) is compared to every other class in the game.

Has anyone actually seen this skill work? I have attempted it many times in sPvP and more than half the time the ability doesn’t do anything. Rarely it will shadowstep me, but not the target.

It just doesn’t seem all that useful. Personally I think the range of the attack should be 300, not 130, and the shadow step should be guaranteed regardless of if the attack lands.

Been attempting to use it to get out of the ridiculous Dragon Hunter traps after I am pulled into them. I am just about to give up on it and swap over to axe or shield I think.

JonPeters.5630:

Fyi, the delay on first attack has been present since BWE2. It is there for balance reasons to give enemies a moment to react to the powerful summon.

Then what is the build up for on the cast to summon the thing for, Jon? Not only do we have to deal with all the counters on our summons as we cast them, but then targets get more opportunities to counter them again after we do? Did you put much thought into this decision?

1. FIRE

• One with Fire / Flame Barrier – A horrible concept on a class that certainly can’t take many hits to utilize.
• Persisting Flames / Pyromancers Puissance – If these two were combined into a single trait it may make a decent Master level trait. Individually they don’t even come close to grandmaster.

2. AIR

• Zephyr’s Speed – Only 15% away from being useful. Or at least stack with other movement speed abilities up to the 25/33 cap.
• One With Air – 1.5 seconds of running just as fast as you normally do.

3. Earth

• Diamond Skin – Between this and One With Air I am actually afraid to ask ANet to ‘help’ elementalists any further.

4. Water

• Bountiful Power – I once thought this was good, then I noticed then I saw warriors ‘Destruction of the Empowered’.
• Piercing Shards – This being limited to water is a cruel and sick joke.

5. Arcana

• Arcane Precision – A % chance of a % chance for a very short duration condition.
• Elemental Surge – The durations are far too short to be useful.
• Arcane Energy – Only half of what is actually considered useful.
• Arcane resurrection – Really?!?

Just some random thoughts on how to streamline the Elementalist. To me, it always seemed that our traits and utilites were completely random and unwieldy. I am sure there are far more issues then what I address, but below lists the issues that I always thought were common sense fixes. Then again, this is just my opinion … I could be wrong.

1. Remove Glyph of Lesser Elementals and replace it in our utility lineup with Glyph of Elementals . Comparitively, GoE is not “elite” in power to other classes.

2. Remove all conjured weapon utilities and create a new elite Glyph of Conjuring. The weapon it summons is based on what attunement you are in at the time.
Fire – Fiery Greatsword
Water – Frost Bow
Air – Lightning Hammer
Earth – Earth Shield
Glyph of Conjuring has a 5 second casting time. The weapon conjured will reside in the elementalists secondary weapon slot and be accessible by the weapon swap button on a 9 second cooldown. The conjured weapon has 25 charges and exists until all charges are used. After the last charge, Glyph of Conjuring goes on a 60s cooldown. The conjure can also be aborted by using the elite again before the charges are used which will result in dropping the weapon and putting the elite on an immediate 60s cooldown.

In short, Glyph of Conjuring would act like a Mantra that has a long casting time, but then is available on demand until all charges are used at which time it goes on cooldown. This would give elementalists instant access to a conjured weapon when they need it, assuming that it was precast, which fixes one of the biggest complaints about conjured weapons.

The “spare” weapon could be sacrificed, IMO, but if it was to remain it should just follow the existing mechanic as that makes sense for classes that already have weapon swap capabilities.

3. New Utilities to replace the conjures :
a. Burning Retreat – Combo Field: Fire
b. Flame Leap – Leap Finisher
c. Fire Twirl – Whirl Finisher, Based on Chilling Whirl, but deals burning instead of Chill.
d. Lava Axe – Blast Finisher

4. Remove Conjurer from the fire line and replace it with an Adept Major that reduces the cooldown of the abilities listed in #3 above by 20% in addition to providing a fire aura on use.

Still nothing on RTL … the hypocrisy continues.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

0/10/0/30/30 (Generic D/D Arcane build)
0/20/0/20/30 (Generic S/D Burst build)
0/30/0/20/20 (Fresh air build

I’m sorry, but I completely disagree. The best trait the elementalist has is Evasive Arcana for survivability, burst, and utility. No D/D ele in the right mind is going to give that up to play with your re-arranged already rejected abilities. All you did with this patch is make life harder for D/D after all the needless nerfing you already did.

Do I have to mention the hypocrisy that was the RTL nerf given what you freely allow Warriors, Rangers, and Thieves to do?

Wolfric.9380:

While this is all correct how does it help other classes getting outperformed by d/d eles ?
I played water/cantrips and the sustain is gigantic for a low healt class. Never felt conditions as a threat, disengaged with flash to come back seconds later healed …
the cantrip domination washes away all build diversity. water + cantrips is nailed if you want stable competative play, and D/D fire/water/arcane just outperforms annything when played well. Of course you can say skill should be rewarded but soemwhere the fun (especially for others) ends. It also allows for nerly no counterplay/build and that makes it even worse.

Anything “played well” can out perform the norm. What’s that DD ele going to do when there is a guardian that is “played well” holding the point? Not take the point, I can promise you that. What is that DD ele going to do a evade ranger in WvW that is “played well”?

xiv.7136:

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

Been saying that since forever. Most of the risk was already applied to the elementalist to pay for rewards that didn’t even make it out of closed beta. The war on soft healers, AE, and then our mobility left us with no ‘reward’ … and no gimmicks like Stealth/Clones/Death Shroud.

Scepter is still slow as b***s, so no … no real improvements.

I still can’t believe that they changed RTL 3 times because they said that amount of mobility was just wrong … but Warriors and Thieves being able to do with with their weapon skills is just fine.

ANet is just chalk full of hypocrisy.

Valento.9852:

Scepter’s Fire #1 is so clunky, I wonder if they’re touching it.

Of course not, that would be helpful. They did a Mic drop and gloating on twitter on nerfing cantrips, the fire line, and ice bow … do you think they actually want to help the class?

Plus all the #1 abilities are pretty much bunk on scepter. They also need to decide if Scepter is a condi weapon or dps weapon because the mix of the two and hamstringing it.

The Mesmer has many good options for off-hand, but the on hand weapon choices are limited to 1 DPS (Sword) and 1 Condition (Scepter).

I would like to see a new main hand weapon so that Mesmer don’t have to fall back on two handed weapons to round out their weapon choices if they don’t want to.

Main hand Pistol:
1: ((Greatsword 1 in reverse))

• Casting Time: 1.5 second
• Range: 900
• Damage if Range is less then 300 (3x): 348
• Damage if Range is between 300-600 (3x): 300
• Damage if Range is between 600-900 (3x): 249
• Damage if Range is greater then 900 (3x): 201 ((With Talent))

2: ((Phase Retreat in reverse))

• Range: 900
• Rechange: 12 s
• Stealth: 1 s
• Distortion: 1 s
• Creates clone that dodges away from your current position and then perform Pistol 1 attack.

3: ((Sort of a mash up of Static Shot and Head Shot))

• Recharge: 15 s
• Range: 900
• Damage: 84
• Daze: 0.25 seconds
• If target is interrupted: (5x) Torment
• Number of Bounces: 4

I feel this would fit in with both a condition and dps spec in addition to being a true interrupt spec weapon of choice.

I find the Revenant rather clunky. My impressions and some suggestions…

1. Impossible Odds is blocked while Facet of Nature is active.
Solution: Impossible Odds deactivates Facet of Nature upon activation and places it on cooldown.

2. Soothing Bastion interrupts everything and roots you randomly. Usually right after I use Infuse Light (Glint Heal) or when I am in the middle of downing someone.
Solution: Have Soothing Bastion trigger Infuse Light for 3 seconds instead of Crystal Hibernation. Increase Soothing Bastion cooldown to 60 seconds. (Equivalent to Warriors Defy Pain which is only a Master ability and lasts 4 seconds).

3. Impossible Odds will not deactivate when stunned, dazed, or knocked down meaning you are chewing through your energy without any benefit.
Solution: Have Impossible Odds deactivate when stunned, dazed, ect.

4. Our ShadowStep abilities are activating traps and triggering walls. If you use Frigid Blitz, Phase Travel, or Phase Smash they will activate and trap you inside traps or bounce of walls. I don’t remember Thief shadow step ever doing this.

5. Our stability on dodge activates at the conclusion of the dodge and not at the start. When I attempt to dodge out of a DH trap things go really bad even though I should have stability to do it.

With the RTL nerf, Warriors now have superior mobility on top of superior CC, Damage, and survivability options over the elementalist … and we pay for those disadvantages with lower hitpoints and worse armor.

ANet has their head in the sand on this one. Being able to have AoE doesn’t mean crap when it is limited to 5 players in the face of the blobs that dominate the game. Especially since it is also penalized by being greatly telegraphed and long cast times. There is a reason that most Eles are using the freaking melee range D/D builds … because AoE in their game sucks.

Cry of Frustration is only bad because Confusion is now bad. You have to fix the core problems, not the symptoms of them. Confusion needs a rework … and so does retaliation for that matter.

In my opinion, the greatest issue in the current state of WvW is the lack of motivation to separate from the “zerg”. I have a proposed solution that actually comes from the venerable Dark Age of Camelot. In DAoC, players were worth an amount of points that was based on the players realm rank. The higher the rank of the player, the more points that player was worth. A players points were given evenly to all the players of a group that killed them. If more than one group was involved then the points were split between the groups based on the percentage of life taken by each group.
This is what motivated people to separate from the zerg … capitalism. There was more “profit” for your group to kill another group than you were likely to see in a zerg vs group or even a zerg vs zerg fight. Sure, zergs were useful still for getting relics and such … but roaming groups was what people serious about realm rank did.

So my suggested solutions would be to:

1. Create a WvW rank system
2. Apply a WvW specific Karma amount and Rank XP to each rank
3. Grant points evenly in a group
4. Grant points proportionally across groups
5. Create WvW gear sets, siege equipment, ect that would use the new WvW karma points

Some lessons from Warhammer Online:

1. Do NOT grant WvW Karma for objectives such as keep takes, defenses, sentry kills, ect, ect. This would just promote keep defenses over zerging which is just as bad for the “fun factor” of the game.
2. Make your zones larger. The ability of the enemy to walk right out of their spawn onto an objective destroys all strategy and fun involved.

It seems warriors, thieves, ect can face roll on the keyboard and find a way to deal more than 3k damage in an attack, but my elementalist has to align the stars and planets to come close to that amount of damage.

Seriously … its like a check list … am I above 90% health, am I within 600 units, am I in the correct attunement, does that attunement even have a damage ability off cooldown, ect, ect.

Even after the hammer nerf my warrior has 500 more armor, nearly double the hitpoint, and can press just about any attack and deal more damage than my elementalist whenever he wants.

Insanity.5174:

vigor in earth maybe?

Again, please no.

Listen … Jon wants to help out fire and this is how I suggest he does it.

1. Move Renewing Stamina to 5 points in Air.
2. Move Conjurer to Adept in Arcane (there is nothing to that ability that makes me think fire anyway).
3. Move Persisting Flames to Fire Master.

Ta-Da … room for a brand new Fire Grandmaster without any decisions that don’t make sense.

My Phantasmal Mage was most useful when it accidentally got Moa ’d. That bird was tearing stuff up!

Tyler Chapman.1832:

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do.

Burning fire will allow you to invest offensively in fire and get some defense capability that you lose if you opt points out of water/arcane. This will likely be more useful to PvPer’s rather than PvE’rs, however, PvErs already find it innately easier to take points in fire since kiting mobs is more easily done as compared to kiting players in PvP.

Fire and Earth have been avoided mostly because they focus on conditions and due to the mechanics of the class … elementalist is a horrible condition class.

You can’t be “offensively” investing in “fire”, especially if you are taking defensive traits. Nothing in fire is going to make Scpeter1 any better, Scepter 2 actually hit anything, Focus 4 be remotely useful, or address the survivability issues of putting your lowest hitpoint/armor class with low mobility and no gimicks (stealth/clones) in melee range. I like to know who seriously believed that having procs such as fire aura and flame barrior in regards to needing to be hit as an elementalist was a good idea.

Our offensive line is Air as it is all about damage. The air attacks are far more reliable too.

Phoenix the One.4071:

And when that happen, you might have missed you chance to get a big hit in.. and he might be standing in melee range taking nearly no dmg.
also if it is a mesmer, he wil evade, guardian will block and thief dodge..

So getting hit by such spell might also show that you are not the most skilled player.. granted range vs range it is very good.. but rangers outrange it. And only when the trait trigger will it bdeal these sick number.. but guess ppl forgot all about DH and moved on to the next nerf-thing..

that said 5 energy is way too low.. make it 25-35.
that said I would like to see removal of CD and increased upkeep through traits.

Um, no. This is an attack, not a utility skill. No weapon attack has an energy cost greater than 15.

That said, I have been hit just as hard by fellow full Zerker classes since release. You are complete glass cannon and easily countered. This is a L2P issue. Being full Zerker has a built in counter.

So, because Ele requires movement and a ton of coordination to pull off what the Rev can do just sitting still afk … that makes the ele the better class? If this is how ANet has been making balance decisions the current state of the Herald makes a lot more sense.

The thing I do not understand the most is what right to warriors have to do the damage they do?

ANet acts as if healing is still viable on the lower hitpoint classes. Guardian has low hitpoint not because of Utility (Warrior has just as much) … but because they could heal.

Elementalists have the lowest hitpoints and armor not because of the damage they do (Warrior can do just as much in the same period of time) … but because they could heal.

Well, ANet nerfed the crap out of all the healing at the game and left all the drawbacks on the classes that could heal … just because.

Their class balance is outdated as it was all made of decisions that they have since abandoned.

Been playing M/G since release and then swapped to S/G power build last night.

Power > Condi, unfortunately … Mostly because Mallyx doesn’t synergize well with other trait lines and doesn’t give you everything you need within the trait line itself to compete.

Mallyx also is suffering from an incomplete and hurried last minute redesign that has left it in bad shape compared to all the other trait lines.

As someone who gave up Mesmer for Necromancer … let me try and give you some badly needed advice:

Ruufio.1496:

Meanwhile, the Mesmer had pretty much every boon beyond the kittening sun up at all times.

Corrupt Boon is one of the Necros best utilities. I strongly recommend that you use it.

Ruufio.1496:

He did catch me with crappy utilities up though because I was traveling. Necromancer everybody! You have to use Signet or Spectral Walk in WvW no matter what woohoo!

Mesmer would pay any amount of money to have our signet as it is ridiculously good.

25% out-of-combat speed buff which becomes an AE lifetap that you have no negative to using when you would actually use it due to not having the 25% speed anyway. Mesmer has to have a specific weapon in addition to a specific spec just to have speed and it isn’t even a 100% uptime.

We get 75% of that just by using one utility slot and its 100% uptime.

Spectral Walk is an option … I would suggest you drop it for … Corrupt Boon.

Ruufio.1496:

I even tried to get out of the fight 2 different times because it was taking kittening forever. Both times I used Spectral Walk-jupe trick where you run far and then recall. It confused him for like 3 seconds until he turned around and caught up with swiftness.

I take it you don’t use staff, scepter, or anything else with chill/cripple? The battlegrounds aren’t even that big … you could have easily reached a friendly structure if the battle raged as long as you are claiming.

Ruufio.1496:

Any time I got him below 50% health a whole bunch of “Block block block” came up.

Right … so not staff … as the first trait any necro I know that uses staff takes is the Can’t be blocked +Mark Radius trait. When you see that block/block/block it is usually a good time to throw down your unblockable fear mark.

Ruufio.1496:

Oh yeah and any time I would try to disengage and I turned around, he would just stand there casting auto-attack with ~4 other clones. So fair. Throughout the entire fight there was at least 3 clones at almost all times because destroying was useless since he would just create more 0.5 seconds later.

Those clones hit for 5-10 damage and as for the conditions they are most likely applying … Dagger 4 is really good. I try and wait till I pop Corrupt Boon before using it as it will then also transfer my weakness to the target as well. Anything left over is just fuel for our heal which is one of the best in the entire game.

Ruufio.1496:

What did I say to the Mesmer? I told him to play a class that takes kittening skill. I don’t think opponents can hear you though..

See … this is where you just kitten me off because you have no idea how much skill it takes to make it look that easy. You were the wrong spec to face that target and you choose to stay and die rather than walk away to saftey. It is ultimately your fault you died. Instead of crying and complaining here you should have been in the necro forums asking for advice or strategy to make you a better player.

biofrog.1568:

earth attune + trait + arcane wave gives a glorious area effect immobilise now

Also, I noticed fire ring + arcane brilliance + arcane wave gives a looot of stack mights.. neat having two instant blast finishers on hand.

1s immobilize is hardly glorious.

A suggestion that attempts to make the Elementalist not so reliant on water/arcane. This is basically an initial concept, but I believe what I am suggesting has some potential to help and I would love to hear some feedback on it.

Instead of:
Latent Stamina (Adept)
Apply vigor in a radius when attuning to water. Granting vigor to allies also restores a portion of endurance.

Replace it with:
Diversify (Master)
Gain the following based on what trait lines you do not have applied:
Water – Gain 4 seconds of regeneration when apply an aura to yourself or an ally.
Arcane – Attunements recharge 15% faster.
Fire – Conjured Weapons have 10 more charges.
Earth – Gain 3 seconds of protection when apply an aura to yourself or an ally.

Move Earthen Proxy to Adept to make room for Diversify.

Thoughts?

Our elites don’t need that much, really.

Tornado: Have it destroy projectiles like Swirling Winds and it will be much better. I mean … aren’t tornados swirling winds after all?

Glyph of Elementals: The elementals should provide pulsing boons in an AE around them based on attunement. The boons would be 6s duration and pulse every 6s (10 pulses over its duration) in a 360 radius around the Elemental.

• Fire: Might
• Water: Regeneration
• Air: Swiftness
• Earth: Protection

What we really need is an Elite Signet on a power scale equal to warriors:
Cast Time: 1 second, Cooldown: 60 seconds.
Passive: Range of all attacks increased by 300 units.
Active: 90% reduction to attunement recharge rate for 30 seconds.

If you are like me, you look at our trait trees and ponder “What the hell does <x> trait have to do with <y> trait line?” So I went through and tried to tidy it up a bit by moving some stuff around. Let me know what you think or some suggestions of your own.

My suggestions are as follows:

Signets:

• Signet of Domination: +10% Condition Duration, Stun Foe. (Actually fits the Domination line)
• Signet of Midnight: Improved Condition Damage, Blind Foe. (Fits the Illusion line)

Traits (Minor):

• Move Confusing Combatants from 25 Dueling to 25 Illusions. (Illusions line = Confusion)
• Move Shattered Strength from 25 Illusions to 25 Domination. (Might = Domination)
• Move Wastiel’s Punishment from 25 Domination to 25 Dueling. (Wastiel is best for pistol users)

Traits (Major):

• Move Master of Manipulation from Chaos to Dueling. (Dueling = Manipulation)
• Move Cleansing Conflagration from Domination to Chaos. (wtf did torch have to do with domination? Stealth = Chaos)
• Move Illusionary Elasticity from Illusions to Domination. (Fits way better in Domination)
• Move Blurred Inscription from Dueling to Illusions. (Distortion = Illusions)

I’ve been trying to figure out a conj build where you use the 60% chance to proc Vulnerability on Crit and the +20% Damage to targets with Vulnerability while attuned to water … but none of it works.

Yeah, that is how beaten down Elementalist have become … that “mediocre” is now viewed as “great” … truly sad times for this class.

This isn’t love … its Stockholm syndrome.

Nor is it in anyway a new play style like every other class has received.

What The kitten.
No new gameplay.
Same old kitten.
Does not compare.
Subpar to DareDevil
Subpar to Beserker
Subpar to Chronomancer
Subpar to Reaper
ect ect ect

Seriously… all this over an ability that has less DPS than sword auto attack + impossible odds?

It’s a shadowstep + blurred frenzy with a larger radius, 1 less attack, less damage per hit, and a longer specced cooldown. OMG NERF!

The ability shadow steps and then does an AE … so after the shadow step you could just move out of range of it via teleport, RTL, double dodge, ect.

Or you could just stand near other people and all the attacks will be split between you.

Mesmer could just spam blurred frenzy every time to negate it … or just turn invisible.
Thief will just evade or stealth ignore it.
Ele: Static Field, Unstead Ground, ect
ect, ect, ect …

Screw it, I’m done … I don’t know if you are just too lazy or too incompetent to figure this out on your own.