Guild Wars 2

My experience when it comes to burst damage specs in general, there are two ways we can deal with them.

The first is the easier way, and that’s to bide your time. When I get jumped react defensibly, (Frost Aura, Teleport, Whatever else), then for the next 10 seconds or so I try to stay just out of range/LOS there attacks. This usually involves switching to water to keep my health up. Most spike/High DPS builds run out of steam after a few seconds, and most people tend to blow there DPS skills quickly, so now if you did it right, you are almost full health and so are they, but there DPS should be reduced for at least 10 seconds, or in the case of warriors a lot longer. Then they are easy to deal with.

The second way is to use our CC and hit them back hard (if you are DPS spec). This puts you two at even footing and elementalists tend to last longer then most classes if played right.

I usually use the second method, its harder to pull off, but since brust specs are made of glass 99% of the time, they go down easy. Just fight them on your terms not on theirs, most people forget that as elementalists we can just leave a fight. Hope this helps a bit.

MarzAttakz.9608:

If they don’t know how we feel yet then they simply don’t care. Historically we’ve been hit with the heaviest nerfs and fewest bug fixes since BWE1.

How about they fix our massive list of bugs with more than “tooltip corrections” or actually test their code changes?

I started out like you OP, positive and well mannered in any posts I made (including the beta forums) requesting some communication or a statement and so far we’ve had amazing feedback amounting to … one comment from a dev mentioning changes to d/d and our downed state.

I guess the next nerf we’ll get may well be cantrips granting regen/vigor. But we still keep on playing our beloved class despite the poor treatment we’ve received.

I think its worth pointing out how I would see this quote if I were a Arena Net. “I want this fixed quick, and I want it tested so it works like intended.” I would guess that testing takes time and if the changes are too rushed…we are right back where we started.

As to your point about communication, I can agree with that. It would be nice to see a few more posts with a little information about how Arena Net feels. With you on that.

There has been a lot of negativity by the people that post here towards the latest patch, some of it justified, some of it not. I don’t think we are helping ourselves by being so negative. I thought it may help to brainstorm a bit. How does Arena Net see the Elementalist as it is now, and how do we as the players see. Hopefully this thread can help both Arena Net know how we feel, and help us to better understand why Arena Net is doing what they are doing. I think list of points would help to get the discussion going and guide things. (These are just my ideas and observations, add your own on either side of the table.)

From The Elementalists:

1) Staff is too generalized. Is it an AoE DPS weapon? If so, its too easy to just evade of. Is it for support? Then why the change to lower the healing and the nerf to EA? Perhaps make Fire/Air Scale much better with Pow/Per, Earth with Con and Water with healing. This allows someone to use it as they wish, without it being able to do everything too well.

2) The DPS changes to Elementalists that happened just before the game went live may have been needed. We have a lot of skills to hit someone with. However people are getting better now, they know how to dodge and evade better, how to counter. This means its harder to actually hit someone with the 6-8 skills needed to match another classes 3-4 to get equivalent DPS. Have you taken this into consideration Arena Net?

To Elementalists

1) Cantrips with the Regeneration\Vigor talent has become a crutch. Yes we can die fast, but if you find all your builds revolve around it you need to look at other options. Sure you become easier to kill, but it allows you other options (kill someone else faster for example).

2) We need to realize that we should not expect to win a 1v3 or even a 1v2 fight. If you spec bunker, you should not expect to be dropping health bars quickly. On the other side, if you spec glass cannon on the lowest hp/armor class, you need to take that into consideration…have a way out. (I don’t mean Mist..I mean always know a way out of any situation).

So fellow Elementalists, what things do WE need to change about how we talk in the forum, about how we play in game to make our class better? What problems are we having that you don’t think Arena Net is seeing? Lets do ourselves a favor and make this thread a clear and civil read for everyone.

Mik.1324:

In all honesty our class needs a huge trait overhall.. it needs to be redone from the group up :/

I don’t think its quite that bad…I think most of us love the quick gameplay that the class offers, but we need to be able to stand out in some fashion like other classes do.

I have to agree, I would like to know what the developers vision for this class is. After trying to be effective with DPS builds I came to the conclusion that it is intended we are more for a support class. Now that our ability to support got taken down a few notches…what do we have left?

I would be interested to know where the devs are going with the elementalist, as right now it feels like we are lost in the sea of classes. We can’t do the spike DPS of htieves or Warriors, nor the Condition damage of Necros, or even have the versatility of Engineers. It seems we are supposed to be able to be versatile, but without being able to shine at anything, we are left lost in the dark.

When I see patch notes like these I can’t help but wonder if the people making these changes actually spend time playing the class. I will be the first to agree that our bunker builds were very effective, and needed to be scaled back a bit. They did just that, but they didn’t give us anything in return.

I don’t think there is anyone that would complain if we got a bit of a DPS increase, or some more survivability when glass specced. Right now to be really effective in high level play we almost need to be a support or bunker spec. A DPS spec is just not really doable with any reliability.

I think the buff to out conjured weapons is a good thing, but how they function needs to be changed before they are worth any of our utility slots. As for the nerf to Tornado, I was not sure if I should laugh or cry.

Why its pretty over the top stringing together a 10 key combo and kill someone in 4 or 5 seconds. When they have a chance to dodge it, when the ele has to execute it perfectly. However it is not over the top to be killed from stealth in less than 2 seconds…or use the three buttons a warrior can kill you with in 3 or so seconds?

I know the ele is a different class than the ones mentioned above…but even with a glass build the damage does not feel there now, and thats assuming you can do what you need to to land all your attacks.

I just don’t want defensive builds to be the only way to go. Right now in tPvP the closer you get to the glass cannon side of a speccing the worse off you seem to be. I know this is likely the case for most classes in tPvP, but we should be able to do some really good damage just like most other classes can.

Even in sPvP when you go glass spec, the damage is just “meh”, its lacking considering most of your points are in your DSP related trees.

I noticed this as well when I thought about why bunker type builds seem to strongest way an Elementalist can spec. While thats good on paper, in practice it can make things very frustrating.

I agree with you Enlight, I think one of our weapons (probably main hand dagger), needs to be changed a bit so we can put up a bit more spike damage. I don’t see it being a problem that out class has a base design of back loaded damage, but we really do need to have a front load option as well.

From my experience so far, what you can take on as an elementalist is based on what you can efficiently survive over time. This seems to be why the defensive builds are the most viable at the moment, and why offensive builds seem to not work as well as defensive ones. We are so squishy and our DPS when specced for DPS is a little lacking. My point is efficient survival is the only way to go at the moment to be totally effective.

I mention the above because its important to realize that when trying to play to your peak. If the thief is giving you trouble, fight it a lot, use different weapons. Personally, I open up with some damage, dodge when it goes invisible, stun it when it comes, then dps again and if its still alive a bit of kiting. Once you can do that, then move on taking two of the NPCs on at a time in different combinations, then on the lord setup. Doing this you can learn how to deal with many situations, and find out where your skill levels sets you in terms of how much survivability you need to work into your builds.

Once you know how to counter certain abilities other classes use, you can turn your attention to managing your cooldowns so you always have the ability up you need when you need it. If you want to give yourself a trial by fire, make a very offensive spec, and try to do nothing but survive. It forces you use your basic defensive abilities to there max, just don’t get frustrated with it.

All that said hopefully we get a bit of a DPS boost when specced for DPS along with the bug fixes. Good luck!

Well if I am to be totally honest, my first game as a thief did not go well. (I went in to sPvP at level 2 after making my thief.) After I looked at what the weapons did, picked two and made myself a decent build (after my second game); I was rolling over people. Rolling over people compared to my Ele, Engy and Necro at any rate.

I think the part that blew me away, was that with no experience on the class I can perform so well. I can see why who has taken the time to learn the thief inside and out can roll over people so fast. Makes me wish I enjoyed the thief style gameplay.

While I think the amount of in and out of stealth that goes on with a thief is a bit much, I can under stand that. I can understand the high DPS. I can even live with some the “cheap” abilities, its what you would expect from the class. What I can’t understand is the 12-16k crits that can pretty much insta kill low base HP classes. I can’t understand being able to execute someone while stealthed. I can’t understand the “speed” combos that do so much damage so fast that you might as well have been a 12-16k backstab.