Guild Wars 2

I’d also say that the lack of a real F-Ability gives Eles a huge disadvantage compared to other classes. Our “class-mechanic” is nothing but a simple weapon-swap – and this even has a higher CD than on other classes and gives us no option to swap combat-style (range-melee or offensive-defensive). Our class-mechanic doesn’t improve our combat-experience but is restricting.
All classes have those (mostly low-CD) “oh-kitten-buttons” like steal, all warrior F1s, Death-Shroud, Shatter, etc.

People keep arguing that Eles have their 20 spells but they don’t see that in fact this isn’t even true. Autohits are lacklusters so you can remove 4 of those 20 spells. Some spells are so useless, nobody ever useses them (Scepter Water-2, Dagger Air-2, etc.) – remove 2 further spells per weaponset. So we’re at 14 spells. Now consider that other classes have F-Abilities (about 2-3 on average). So Other classes have 12-13 spells and eles have 14. Not much difference I’d say. The real difference are the huge CDs eles have – on both spells and “weapon-swap”. I’d say this is nothing but unfair. Since we lack real F-Spells we should get and advantage via shorter CDs on other spells and at least same CD on our swap.

This thread’s purpose is to determine all of the current issues with the Elementalist class. Once all of the issues are clearly laid out, we will begin to approach possible changes to our class which directly counter these problems.

This thread will reference many “ELEtism” posts which are located in the Elementalist forums. Conclusions derived from those posts will be summarized in this main thread to help maintain a fluid experience.

I will keep this thread updated with a collaborated response area which will summarize all of points we discuss in this thread and multiple other ELEtism posts.

Collaborated Response: Current Problems with the Elementalist

There are multiple problems with Elementalist.

1. Survivability
Since Elementalist lack basic survivability mechanics (like stealth, mobility, clones, or damage mitigation (armor), we are forced to shape our builds around surviving so that we can actually contribute to a team. If Elementalists do not trait themselves for support and survivability they can be locked down, focused and killed within a matter of seconds before they are even able to make a difference to the team.

Elementalist are pigeon-holed into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to extend to other trait lines. They are also “forced” into running Cantrips which locks out the use of other utilities.

Discuss Lack of Survivability in more specifics here: ELEtism Discussion #2: Ele Survivability

2. Unusable Trait-Lines

There are so many traits which are just plain bad. There are very few traits which I would take into a tournament. Picking traits should be a challenge for the user; it should be a very difficult decision and should make users value each trait that they choose. This is not currently the case, most of the traits I have gone over have not seen any use since launch.

The lack of useful traits is another reason why Elementalists stick to the defensive trait-lines; they synergize well to create the best possible build and that there is nothing else to take which will be as effective as the defensive trait-lines.

The Fire Magic tree does not synergize with anything; it probably has the worst traits out of all of the other trait lines. This tree needs the most work.

3. Unusable Utilities
The only incredibly useful utilities are Cantrips. They are effective in keeping the Elementalist alive. They are almost necessary because they cover the Elementalist’s vulnerabilities. Even though Cantrips are helpful, they are on a HUGE cooldown; other classes have skills which do all of what Cantrips do but better on a SHORTER cooldown.

Glyphs and Signets don’t have very much utility at all. These two need major revamping,;
none of these are worth giving up a Cantrip for because for every Cantrip that an Elementalist does not take, they make themselves a LOT squishier.
(I’m gonna come back and add more information about Glyphs and Signets later)

The lack of effective utilities make Elementalists fall back on the Cantrips which are a sure thing and are effective. The Cantrips also synergize well with all builds.

Discuss all of the utilities in more specifics here: ELEtism Discussion #2: Elementalist Utilities

In order to push us out of these traits/utilities, they have been nerfed terribly but since Elementalists have no other useful traits/utilities to fall back on so they need to stick to playing with the nerfed stuff.

4. Elementalist Class Mechanic – Attunement Swapping
Does this act more obstructive than beneficial?
(More on this later)

To help think keep the conversation going, try answering these questions:

What are some weaknesses that Elementalist have internally?

What are some bad traits? (Useless/Buggy)

What are some bad skills skills? (Useless/Buggy)

Join the ELEtism Community

This is a discussion on low hp in the Guardian forums from a while back.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Why-low-base-HP-might-be-a-good-thing/first

The same can be applied to Ele which probably has it better at low HP then guard since we can be more mobile and apply protection with good dps. You want max protection uptime on a Guard you need to run 2 utilities with shouts or hammer. Really more vit just allows you to make more mistakes and trying to run around for a large part of the fight trying to recover that missing health pool. You won’t really being doing damage if you get spiked you will be trying to heal all the time.

We should be past the phase of getting 1 shot by thieves and that really is the only reason you need higher hp. Mesmers with higher HP or Necros with higher HP just can make more mistakes or have a way to cover up the mis-timed dodge.

Once you blow through deathshroud on a necro or you come across one that doesn’t have life force the fight is completely different and when I run my necro all that extra HP just gives me a slight buffer to try to build up life force if I am at 0% . Most of the terrormancer running around sPvP probably only have 18k anyway which a ele can reach but why would you want to.

More hp means bye bye elemental attunement. They would never raise ele’s base HP and leave all the bells and whistles we are use to exactly the same. They wont just say here you go take 2k extra.

I used to be able to pan around the mini-map, which is obviously very important in WvW. Now I have to come to a full stop, wait a second, and only then can I pan around without it forcefully recentering itself on me. Is there an option to turn this off? If not, it’s extremely annoying. Opening the full map in WvW is a death sentence.

Edit: I just did some testing and it definitely seems to be a bug because it is not consistent, and I can’t find any pattern to what causes it. I’d estimate more than half the time it bounces back to my location before I can move it very far. If I stop moving completely and then start moving again, it often fixes the issue for one attempt, but if I stop and start again, it will likely recenter too aggressively.

2nd Edit: Found a trigger. Sometimes the “headlight” that shows what direction I’m facing on the mini-map will never appear. If that happens it will always recenter on me. To fix it, I have to come to a complete stop for ~a second.

Fade.1743:

The lowest tier should have its HP raised to the current medium tier. And the medium tier somewhere around the 16-17k border. It would cause a lot of chaos for a few weeks as builds rise and fall, but it would be easier to balance in the long run.

I wrote something like this in another thread a few months ago. My idea was to reduce these huge differences and fine-tune all stats based on current performance of classes and their major role in the game. So for example Elementalists should keep their lowest base-HP and -toughness (because it makes sense) but they could get some healing-power and/or power as compensation. So they have lower defense but better support/offensive capabilities which makes sense in terms of game-design and is also fair in terms of balancing.

It’s no miracle that a class that has 1000P worth of attributes more than another class is superior in comparison. Especially when spell-scalings are approximately equal and CDs of comparable spells are significantly lower.

In fact, easiest way to balance an MMO is to give all classes approximately the same base-stats (differences only about 1-5%) and balance the classes through CDs, Scaling-Coefficients, Resource-Management and type of damage done (magic/physical or like in GW condition/direct damage). This is how you can fine-tune balancing.
When you look at GW2 we have classes that have twice the HP of other classes, no resoucres like mana and no resonable CDs on certain spells. Every class has access to direct damage and condition damage-builds so this can’t be used to balance specific classes either.

It looks like Anet was kinda lazy when it comes to balancing. They just give every class everything and randomly distributing attributes – there’s no DPS-meter so nobody really cares about PvE; and PvP seems to have always been just a small side-aspect of the game.

Evolution has played it’s part in Tyria. The weak have been weeded out and those who could not handle the style of play have left; only the strong remain.

It should be a point of pride for those elementalists who still practice their magicks in these harsh times filled with deathly condition spamming necromancers and rampaging warriors while also being regularly smitten by the unseen gods above (ANet).
It should be known that those elementalists who still delve into the arcane and go toe to toe with the other classes have to play on a whole other plane just to match levels with them.
This being so, let it be so that being an elementalist makes you better than everyone else.

If you are a proud elementalist, put this in your signature.
#ELEtism

PS: I have set up the E L Etism[ELE] guild and I plan to use it for productive elementalist business in the near future. Whisper “Gasmic” for a guild invite. (More info on this to come in a later thread.)

P.S.S: This was mostly meant as a joke and in no way is meant to be taken seriously, though it does touch base with a little truth

It used to be a stunbreaker. ANet felt that cantrip builds were overpowered and also wanted to reduce our reliance on cantrips in general, so they spread the stunbreakers around to other utility skills. They also upped the damage Lightning Flash does.

From what I’ve seen, a lot of Elementalists still prefer to use cantrips in general, including Lightning Flash, so I don’t know about that change really affecting much.

Because the map that we’re working with now is only a tiny piece of the world. Because I spent many many years in Cantha and Elona in GW1. I have a deep attachment to many of those places and peoples and I very much want to go back and see what’s happened to them.

Is the Jade Sea liquid again? Has the Echovold Forest recovered? What’s the state of Kaineng City and the Empire? What’s Elona like now that the Elon has been dammed? How is life under Palawa Joko? How is he dealing with Kralkatorik, and did he have any contact with Zhaitan? I’ll bet you he did. I’ll bet you he knows all kinds of secrets. I want to pry them out of him and then put him back in the ground where he belongs.

There’s so much to see and do. Why don’t you want new maps?

I enjoyed Tower of Nightmares, btw, and on my server it saw plenty of players right up until it fell.

Gorni.1764:

Any other class is designed to be effective even when in the hands of mediocre players. So why is it wrong to demand the same effectiveness for eles? Just because SOME players are kinda successfull in certain situations doesn’t mean that the class is ok. A class is ok when it’s on par with other classes and that’s simply not the case. Everyone that’s denying this fact has either never played other classes or is trolling.
I congrulate you if you seriously think ele is ok, but 99% of the rest of the pvp-community thinks otherwise. Numbers speak for themselves. Ele is unpopular and that’s for a reason.

I really have no problem with Ele being more difficult to play than other classes. In large part, that is why I picked Ele. I wanted a class that is challenging but rewarding to play and, for the most part, Ele fits the bill. I did not want to pick a class that I could faceroll to win with…if I did, there were plenty other options.

When you balance things, I don’t think you can look at “well this one is harder to play than that one!” You just need to look at how a skilled Ele performs vs. a skilled whatever. And I don’t mean a straight fight between the two, there will always be some builds that just counter others. I just mean how well each class performs in different situations.

That said, I think that Ele’s are not terrible, but they definitely have a weakness toward condition builds. I’ve noticed that I can beat most classes in duels, but when it comes to condition necros or engies, I normally get wiped out. I only have so many cleanses, and these guys apply conditions so fast that the cleanses hardly matter…I spend all my time trying to survive with the insane condition damage that I can hardly even take the offensive against them.

ANet tried to add the Diamond Skin trait to help with this…but that is 30 points into earth and for most Ele’s, it just isn’t viable to take. What I would like to see is something like this…

1. Make Elemental Attunement a class feature. Almost EVERY Ele takes this, and now this REQUIRES a 20 point investment into arcane. ANet tried to make more Ele’s spec away from arcane with the attunement cooldown change (which was great!) but since Elemental Attunement is more or less required, we are STILL stuck with a 20 point investment into arcane.

2. Make the fire trait line better!!!! This doesn’t have much to do with making Ele better in general…just giving us some more options. I hate that we have a trait line that is almost NEVER used.
I know ANet is trying…but fire just seems like it has never been up to snuff. Fresh Air was a great trait that made Air a very viable trait line for 30 points…fire needs something just as good.

3. Give us some more defenses against conditions. A year ago, the 0/10/0/30/30 D/D Ele was one of the best condition purgers bar none. With the water talents, arcane evasion, and ether renewal → mist form, we could reliably get rid of tons of conditions and escape with ease. And admittedly, this was a bit much.

However now, I feel like I am terrible at purging conditions. I don’t have as many purges, and other classes seem to be able to put conditions back the second they come off so it doesn’t even matter.

Diamond Skin is a good effort, but it’s too all or nothing for me…you either are god against condition builds, but really sacrifice a lot generally, or are decent generally but get destroyed by condition builds. I would like to have a build that has a decent chance of competing against most builds instead of being god-mode against one and subpar against the rest.

In a nutshell, the ascended crafting armor types are completely imbalanced right now, as far as cost of production goes. Light armor is getting the worst of it, by far. We need a lot more Bolts of Damask than the other armor types. Depending on which pieces we’re crafting, we are paying over double the cost. Why not cut back on the amount of Damask needed for heavy and medium and substitute more Elonian and Deldrimor??? For some perspective:

Current market prices-
Elonian Leather Square: 1g12s84c
Deldrimor Steel Ingot: 4g73s98c
Bolt of Damask: 11g65s0c

I don’t believe constant micro-managing of prices and recipe requirements is the answer, but one well-planned adjustment of some of these recipes would serve everyone better. Doing this would also reduce some of the grossly overpriced cloth mats like linen and silk. Whatever the case, something should be done.

I guess it wouldn’t be all that different from carving pumpkins during the two Mad King events, finding those dragon claws and stuff, or transcribing krait obelisks.

But these are really the only achievements I don’t mind doing. They give me reasons to travel and explore the world.

Can’t really add much to this thread.

I’m in the exact same shoes as OP.

Done every LS achievment so far, including Liadri 8 orb, Merc camp capper, and others that probably no one did.

And all I am missing is the Volcanic fractal from Fractured!

I’ve done about 20+ runs during the Fractured! Weeks (mind you, these are usually around 1,5 hours each – some less, some way more), not Volcanic once.

I might add I’ve done over 700 Fractals before the patch, was reset from lv 52.

And just a little spice to my sad little story:

I actually did get Volcanic once. At the very minute before the patch. 3 hours until your application restarts. Alright, that should be enough, no?
Well after failing once on the last boss, a guy got dc-d (or dc-d intentionally, who knows), we waited for him to return to no avail. Then suddenly the Instance owner decided, that he wants to see the new update, so he will just restart his game. So I got thrown out.

End so ends my pityful story. And I’m sad.

I wonder who designed the new legendaries since Kekei is no longer with ANet?

This is a copy-paste of my thread from the Fractured! subforum, since that has now already been archived along with some of the older content updates. I did not find that it ran its course, so here it is again. Seeing that almost every patch, including the current Wintersday brings the usual confusion of “How long does this content last???”, i find that the topic is very relevant, even outside the context of Fractured! itself.

Some people argue that since the achievements mentioned a fortnight! , that makes it obvious that they would be around for two weeks. The fact that Boss Week was around for more than a week makes that point moot for me.

Relevant threads:
Old thread
Paying for Fractals: 1 2 3
Threads asking when the achievements go away: 1 2 3 4
Other requests to bring back Fractured!: 1 2

Original Post
One of the main things I have played for in this game is achievements. I don’t grind dailies or care much about the amount of AP I have. What I care about is actual achievements, of which most have been temporary. And that is okay. Since the Living Story was introduced we have relied on a pattern that achievements were available to do for two patches (~1 month).

I might have missed some information this time, but apparently Fractured! for some unexplainable reason, did not follow this pattern. What I love to have achieved is now gone.

5 hours ago I could say “I have done EVERY living story achievement.” No exception. Every achievement of every release. I carved a load of pumpkins last year at halloween. I murdered those Karka. I beat up Mai Trin flawlessly without getting hit by the cannons. I beat Liadri. I beat her again by throwing 8 orbs at her. I killed 225 dolyaks and 225 sentries to get all 19 WvW achievements. I did 50 merc camps, learning the pattern and timers of the camps. I could go on and on, you get the idea. I was proud, and being able to say “I did everything” was what really kept me going.

This might be my own fault, the info was probably available somewhere. But in any event my achievement hunt is probably over. For me the fun is gone because I will never be able to make the same statement again. But hey, I really want to keep enjoying this game as much as I’ve done so far, so I lose nothing by asking:

Can you please bring back the Fractured! achievements for another 14 days? And for the future, would there be any chance you could add a timer to temporary achievement sets, like you have with dailies, to show us how long we have left?

- A sad Treeline.

Edit: Attached a picture of my accomplishments to visualize how a simple achievement can result in a bad day.

Oh, yes, best buff of the patch

That’s how it has always been in here. Eles can’t ever get a buff without receiving a “compensation” nerf.

It is not the same however, for when we get nerfed. I don’t think we ever received a compensation buff for losing RtL.

Why is ANet so afraid to buff this class? Was ele that op in the 0/10/0/30/30 days? More than the current fotm impossible to deal with condi users / warriors? I fail to see what’s stopping them. It’s also sad that none of them play an ele.

Don’t bother thanks to their brilliant idea of pumpimg elemental attument up I decided to pump everything into arcana. fresh air too. stick to vital striking and if someone is a condition user don’t even bother in staring a fight with them unless is 2v1 in your favor.
Ether renewal works wonders for condi cleanse if you try to stay out of trouble. That is don’t lead the fight.

BobbyStein.2315:

Doggie.3184:

Who does her voice again? I can’t seem to find the thread where Anet said it.

Tara Strong. (The answers get buried sometimes.)

:)

no wonder why i LOVE her voice, tara strong did the acting? kittening a arenanet i kittening love you now!

You can get them from anywhere that drops Ascended stuff.

I think as the situation is now it should not be changed much.

Many people farmed fotm to get their skin in spite of a terrible RNG.

They gave up the chance of precursors and stuff with terrible loot.

Now if they change it any cof farmer in few days could get what fotm farmers have struggled to get…

Not much fair…..

They could just make a recipe like 4 random fotm skins = 1 ticket.
That could go.

I think ticket should be given at level 48.

Copy/Pasted from another thread.

After playing this game for over a year I would like to give an example of what I believe a true living world should be.

First and foremost it NEEDS REAL consequences for failure. If you have centaurs taking over a town when you fail, why must they end there? If given long enough the centaurs can and should take the whole kitten map, enslaving and forcing the npc’s within the areas to be hostile to the PC’s (similar to a flipped keep in WvW). Waypoints, once the map is taken, should all be contested, making the trip to that map impossible save for entering through a nearby map. And why stop there, if the centaurs form an alliance with the dredge they could start controlling even more of the maps. If however they are at odds with the dredge we could form a temporary alliance with one side to defeat the other or at very least see then openly at war with one another.

Large scale invasions like scarlet should be epic in scope (destroying maps/npcs) until rebuilt/defended by the PCs for an extended length of time. Supply runs similar to what we see in Cursed Shore would be a good start, but much more widespread. IF these rebuild actions are not taken by the PCs then they should just lay there rotting (needing more supply runs in the process to repair) until they are done!

I guess my whole point to this post is that without real meaningful consequences we may as well be furniture. Devs please take a page from the way some things in WvW are handled; leaving WvW to the enemies will leave you having to ACTUALLY WORK to regain your ground, and IMO it should be the same in the PvE world. Until it is done in a way that we can and do get hooped for letting things fail, we are no better than bystanders in your game.

Added after concern was posted in regards to day/night cycle and defeat

The day/night cycle would indeed be a pest, however with the extent of data anet gathers it could be handled IMO. For instance they could adjust the events to “fire” only when the server in question has the population to handle the events. The logic behind this could be the enemies have to sleep sometime too. Unlike in WvW where we the players run the show, in PvE it could be made to more suit the population that is in the current area/world.

Also as to the ressing npcs, it could be implemented as you progress into the map. As you free villages/npc’s their militia (a few npc fighters) would come with you to capture the next town and so forth. These npcs should rez the fallen similar to the veterans around the keeps in WvW. As waypoints are uncovered they should become uncontested etc etc.

I’m not saying that there are not many many things to consider with making a living world that would feel alive, but it would be nice if it were to feel less like trying to breath life into a corpse.

Thanks for reading and for opening this topic for your players!

Why have the dragons taken a back seat? I would much rather a long buildup of fending off primordus & jormag while trying to uncover more about the deep sea dragon and the jungle dragon all while kralkatorrik runs amok.

I ask this question in all seriousness. What do you forsee as the lifespan of this game?
5 years? 8 years? 10? It can’t go on forever.

Zhaitan’s corruption is still all over Orr while his minions are still all over the place. There are 5 other elder dragons out there as well.

If the living world built up to each dragon (even overlapping their storylines a bit) over 12~16 months time, that would mean in just six years from now we would be fighting the last elder dragon.

So a 7 year lifespan for the just the dragons. Plus there is so much more going on. Murssat, White Mantle, etc. Plus whatever is unleashed through the mists.

The current build up in kessex hills is sort of what I am talking about.
Oh and if it turn out scarlet is a dragon minion or something… that would not be what I am talking about.

We need to be fighting the dragons and cleansing their corruption, while knowing that is what we are doing.

P.S.
The updates schedule is a little rough. It is so rapid that myself and members of my guild are actively choosing to either not log in or skip the events completely. I truly believe that the 2 week schedule is a lesson for players in ‘be careful what you wish for’ when aksing for more ‘stuff to do’.

I just want in combat weapon swapping for scenarios where I change situations where one weapon is vastly inferior in one scenario and superior in the other and I can’t get out of combat in between. Take for example in wvw, staff gets murdered in 1v1 roaming so dd or sd is necessary when away from the zerg. However if you wish to join the zerg, staff is the best way to go with water fields and lots of aoe. Put the swap on like a 40 second timer or more so one can’t essentially get 8 weapon sets at once but don’t make us get out of combat every time situations change.

First I was happy, then I saw this:

Ozoug.4158:

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

Why is it that when changing something in the Elementalist you always accompany it with huge nerfs to avoid “power creep” and when buffing other classes it’s just a flat out buff with no strings attached?

red.2387:

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

Renewing Stamina is now a master trait, while mesmer and guardian get it as a 5 point perk.

Because.. ANet…

#fail

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

LightningBlaze.4913:

Is there an official announcement stating this removal?

The proposed Dec 10 patch notes. They are moving RS to the master tier, and making it compete with elemental attunement.

This is a HUGE nerf. Not only are you now forced 20 points arcana for ANY survival, but you have to decide between either having vigor, or having 3-4 secs of protection for burst.

And in that exchange we gained no meaningful source of survival besides Tempest Defense, which was already without use since we use cantrips/arcane shield for CC effects.