Guild Wars 2

Playing d/d only here, with that cough cough original build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhMMKc25wnBd0APAC5hv2JKQ5qJfC-TJxHwAJLDM4BAoZ/BAnAAA

I’m playing that kind of build in wvw since release. I do have tested other build but I think Evasive Arcana and the attunement “dance” fits really well with the d/d gameplay.

And now, in PvP, with Sigil of Battle/Energy, with Rune of Strengh, I am fairly happy. I mean, I have plenty of dodge, awesome might stacking, very good heal and decent conditon clean. I admit that some professions are probably better, but I don’t feel underpowered nor helpless against other.

I hate condi though.

Conditions just ignore one of the two mains stats of defense we have. Sounds legit, yeah.

Your post is just saying: stop QQ, l2p. Also, you took the community for a bunch of idiot.

Ele have few design issues but he is not weak, some professions are just over the top.

Tyldor, my god! I wasn’t sure to agree with you at first but after reading it again, I have realized that you are totally right.
I did not know for the dodge. It’s really a life saver, thank you so much! And I will now gladly use my cantrip wisely and stop casting mistform before the impact.
Finally, and I think the ele community will agree with me, many thanks for enlightening us with your knowledge!
Also, thank you for avoiding the pvp subject.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

DiogoSilva.7089:

sorrychief.2563:

What changed about arcane wave? Wasn’t it buffed?

In the elementalist’s forum, if a skill is buffed for almost every single scenario, at the tiny cost of making it slightly less effective in some exceptional or niche situations, the community cries.

Yeah, I will never understand why people think that was a nerf. It makes the skill infinitely more versatile.

As a d/d, the need of targeting is a waste of time. I understand that the new Arcane Wave is more versatile, but for me, it’s not always easy to land it correctly. For instance, during Burning Speed.

I suppose I need more training but I’m too lazy. So now, I’m using a third cantrip…

About sustain, am I the only one who find conditions a bit too powerful? I mean, I can build my character in PvP to have vigor, good thoughness and make up my lack of vitality with my heal, and yet have decent damage. I can say I’m fine with direct damage, but conditions? I do not have enough cleanse. It’s better in WvW but not easy (keep in mind I’m talking as a d/d). I have the feeling that each builds I make are (and have to be) around conditions removal…

What I mean by saying this, it’s that from my point of view, the conditions are the problem to our lack of sustain.

I hate the new Arcane Wave too

Hi, I would like to give you my opinion, as a d/d Elementalist.

Karl McLain.5604:

Elementalist:
Our changes for the elementalist focus on increasing sustain while maintaining the delicate balance between damage and durability. We achieved this by adding more defensive effects to a few main-hand weapon sets.

• Signet of Restoration: Removed the split on this skill so that the signet passive heal amount will be increased in PvP to match the current PvE amount.
• Armor of Earth: Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.
• Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.
• Burning Speed: This ability now evades attacks.
• Frozen Burst: This ability is now a blast finisher.

Signet of Restoration: Nice to see the nerf reverted. Now I think the active heal should be more powerful than the passive, even if it means nerfing the latter. Currently I never use the active heal because that’s not worth the loss of the passive during the cd of SoR. We should have a good reason to use the active heal. And this is either a better active heal or an additionnal effect like a good cleanse. Of course, the signet will be even more powerful with Written in Stone but that’s the point of a master trait.

And I have the same feeling for the Healing Signet.

Armor of Earth: Glad to see the cooldown lowered. I like cantrips, so it’s not a problem for me but there are so many utilities who should be buffed. Or redesigned maybe. I understand that it would take more time. So in definitive, a good change I think.

Water Trident: I’m not playing Scepter but this will not be a big gain of sustain… It will be interesting with Cleansing Water though.

Burning Speed: Really glad to see a buff to one of my favorite skills. Some could say it doesn’t need a buff. I agree it’s a strong skill, but from my point of view, this skill is telegraphed and hard to land against good players without using an immobilization. A nice little buff for d/d.

Frozen Burst: Interesting change. I suppose it’s logical when you look at the animation. Will be nice with Fresh Air: Air > Earth for immobilization > Fire > Water with Frozen Burst > Air.

Karl McLain.5604:

Guardian:
We’re continuing to lower the amount of vigor available to all professions, especially from sources with low trait point investments.

• Vigorous Precision: Increased the recharge from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

Mesmer:
We’re continuing to lower the amount of vigor available to all professions, especially from sources with low trait point investments.

• Critical Infusion: Increased the recharge from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

I’m a little worried. Will you do the same with Renewing Stamina in the future?

Karl McLain.5604:

Our changes for the elementalist focus on increasing sustain while maintaining the delicate balance between damage and durability.

I would like to talk about the Elementalist sustain. The main source of death for me is Conditions.

Elementalist has the lowest base Toughness and Vitality. These are the two main stats of defense. I don’t count invulnerability skills, dodge and heal as main.
You could say that the Elementalist should increase first his Toughness, while less Vitality is not necessarily a problem, thanks to the heal over time that we can produce.

Now the problem with Conditions is that it ignores purely and simply Toughness. Yes, Conditions can be removed but condition removal aren’t something you always have (i.e on cd) and mostly require an action while Vitality and Toughness are always here. So no, the fact that we can remove Conditions isn’t on par with the fact that Conditions ignore the Toughness. And that makes Conditions really strong.

Back to the Ele. Stacking Toughness doesn’t help. But stacking Vitality doesn’t really help either because of our low base Toughness. And our condition removal has been nerfed in PvP. And even in WvW, Conditions give me a hard time. Don’t get me wrong, Cleansing Water and Ether Renewal are awesome abilities but that’s all.

So with our poor base stats, without exclusive defense mechanic, I think we need better condition removal. Or a Condition nerf.

Based on this, I was thinking on a few ideas:

- Make the attunement switch clean a condition related to the attunement:

Fire: Clean Chilled.
Air: Clean Cripple.
Water: Clean Burning.
Earth: Clean Vulnerability.

- In PvP, lower the internal cooldown of Cleansing Water from 5 seconds to 2 or 3 seconds.

- Like Might impacts both Power and Condition, make Protection work against Conditions.

Good or not, I hope this will somehow help!

zanil.1072:

RTL is a pretty bad escape tool. I can’t think of class that cant catch you or keep hitting from range.

RTL is really good for escape… When it’s available. In fact, you can say it’s a bad escape tool because of the unreliabilty of the cd. And even with that, it’s not so bad. But 40 sec cd is annoying.

As a d/d, I don’t really like the change. Ground targeting’s spell doesn’t suit me…
And it’s not exatly instant if I use the “Fast with range indicator” system, which I prefer to use for LF.

It’s a buff overall, probably, but I liked how it worked, it was fine.

About Elemental Attunement moving to the Master Tier, I was thinking: Why not replace Arcane Precision with Lingering Elements? Then replace Arcane Precision with Elemental Attunement.

Arcane Precision would become a trait (and it could be revamped), Elemental Attunement would be availble for 15 points instead of 20 but it will stay in the Master Tier. And Lingering Elements, as a 25 points Minor Trait, could work with other trait like Air training or Internal Fire.

I will try a Cantrip build, something like that: 20/00/30/20/00

Not sure about the runes and amulet (cleric or berserk) though… I’m looking forward to test it!

Hi Jon, thanks for for sharing your thought about the ele and discuting with us about it! Especially the weekend.

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.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

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.

Wow, these changes would be exactly what I was hoping for, after reading the first preview.

Now about the Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery, I would like to give my thought, based on my experience:

I like Soothing Disruption especially with Armor of Earth (with the skill and with Earth’s Embrace). In any case, Soothing Disruption will provide you great benefice as Regen/Vigor combined with Stability/Protection are both convenient for engaging or to get out of a difficult situation.

However, with Mistform and Lightning Flash, I find Soothing Disruption less useful because I use these cantrip mostly for escaping. With my current spec (00/20/00/20/30), I use these two cantrip, Arcane Wave being my third utility, so I prefer Cantrip Mastery over Soothing Disruption.

Now, that being said, I think most ele would choose Soothing Disruption rather than Cantrip Mastery, if they were to put only ten points in Water.

And finaly, I see some ele saying that D/D is weak/trash/blabla… Stop whining, that’s not true. Some other class are definitely strong, and you may say, over the top. But the D/D isn’t trash. -_-

Hello Jon and Anet.

First, thank you for letting us know the balance preview and talking with us about it!

Now, I would like to talk about the D/D ele. I can’t say I’ll be objective because I only play the D/D from the first day and only that. But I want to give you my point of view anyway. ^^

I find many changement interesting but I’ll only talk about the point I really don’t like.

•Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

Well, I normally use 20 points in water with V and IX. I only use two cantrip, so I would rather choose the cd reduction over Soothing Disruption. The V is indeed a powerful trait and I can’t remove it from my build. Sadly, V and IX will not be possible anymore without 30 points in water… But like you said, it may be too powerful combined with the new trait in Fire or Earth. So I can understand the change.

•Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
•Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

While I agree that V is really powerful, and perhaps, have to move to the master tier, I don’t understand why VI have to follow the same way?

Elemental Attunement is too important to give it up. So how we’re supposed to have access to Vigor? With the III Water trait and using a full bar of Cantrip?
The many dodge available with Vigor is a part of the D/D gameplay. We need to dodge for our survivability and for the Arcane XI but not only that. It’s a important part of our mobility in combat.

Well, it will still possible to have the V and VI with 30 points in Arcane but without XI. Sounds like a unnecessary tradeoff.

I’m glad you want to increase the diversity of build but I don’t think it’s a good idea when the new change nerf the already existent spec, which is not even OP and provides great fun. Because the way I see it, It’s indeed a huge nerf to the way I play -and the way I want to play my D/D ele.

In fact, these change destroy my spec…

My Ele <3

Berserk gear and Tanky gear:

Happy that our first gvg was against you DeX!
I’ve enjoyed the fights, even if we got beaten by you really hard. We are far away from your teamplay but now we are even more motivated!

Anyway, nice play and hope to have more fight against you guys

@Kardiamond

I’m talking about vapor form from downed state and you can be root and immobilize. I don’t know if it’s a bug or because of the lag, but it happened to me.

And I was talking about emphasize the fact that players on the rampart are difficult to kill, like a ele with vapor form. They are both in a advantageous position and they can both easily retreat. So it’s difficult but not impossible. Again, you must be near the tower to reach the door with vapor form. Hard to do if the opponents are attacking at long range…

And I think that a D/D ele does nothing more than a ranged dps on a rempart.

You want to nerf Ele because they are unkillable near a tower? Come on…

FYI, I’m talking as a (average) D/D Elem. And sorry for my English, I’m trying my best to write properly.

First, the assailants must be near the gate otherwise it’s difficult to reach the door in Vapor Form. Many times, I’m rooted/immobilized before I can enter in the tower, and I die before I do significant damage because I’ve take too much damage extremely fast… Yeah, I’m talking when the tower is attacked by a tons of players.

But yes, against a small group, you can gain some times and so does every ranged dps on the rampart. And then, how can you kill someone on a rampart when he can backup in his tower? How can you destroy a catapult which is inside the tower?

Honestly, the Vapor Form doesn’t have any impact on a siege. And certainly not enough to have a dedicated topic…