Totally agree with @DiogoSilva about the small CD added with the new patch. So far i’m quite happy with 0/30/0/10/30 setup to run on WvW and PVE using S/D. Fresh Air actually made me like the Ele again as was quite tired of the D/D good old setup that I’ve used for almost an year.
Yeah I too like that S/D burst is now a viable build, but did they really have to completely gut D/D bunker for that – so much that it’s nowhere near viable now?
That being said although on paper it looks like theres a lot of counters, most builds don’t have those, so it can’t be strong enough where if you -don’t- have that stun/immob the ele is going to win, […]
I see this pretty much as a double standard.
If a dagger thief opens on you and you don’t have a stunbreak ready you’re dead.
If a greatsword warrior charges you and you don’t have a stunbreak ready you’re dead.
If a necro fear-condition-bombs you and you don’t have a stunbreak/cleanse ready you’re dead.
If you don’t bring insane burst you won’t win against a competent bunker ranger.
If you don’t bring stuns, slows and aoes you won’t win against any thief because he will stealth away.
The list goes on.
So why is it always OK to have to bring specific skills and needing to use specific tactics against all other classes, but when it comes to eles that’s not OK and ele needs nerfs until they can be defeated by braindead opponents hammering their face on the keyboard?
I don’t use a stun break against a warrior or thief, i just use raw tankyness to wait out their burst and then melt them with condis (how most condi builds work), or i do this thing called Dodging/Blocking.
I’m sorry but that’s not an option. No matter your toughness or vitality, if you don’t stunbreak basilisk venom ASAP you’re dead against a burst thief, so the rest of your point doesn’t have any substance.
There aren’t multiple ways to get out of this situation. There is no option. You either have the stunbreak and use it, and have A CHANCE to win (though of course the thief still has the upper hand through his opener) or you are dead. Simple as that. It’s a binary choice.
Maybe if you’re an ele, my ranger, mesmer, and engi do not need to stunbreak it they have ways to mitigate the damage while stunned (or prevent most of it). Idk if i can on my ele or not because all my eles builds have a stunbreaker (or two) because of how squishy they are.
Dunno about mesmer and ranger but as an engy you’d have to spent specific trait points to get the damage reduction while stunned to live through that amount of burst even with 1900 toughness.
So again, the point still stands: Why is it OK for classes to have to use specific skills/tactics/traits against the likes of thieves, warriors, etc. to be able to have a fighting chance, but when it’s eles instead of people learning to adapt eles have to be nerfed every single time?
That being said although on paper it looks like theres a lot of counters, most builds don’t have those, so it can’t be strong enough where if you -don’t- have that stun/immob the ele is going to win, […]
I see this pretty much as a double standard.
If a dagger thief opens on you and you don’t have a stunbreak ready you’re dead.
If a greatsword warrior charges you and you don’t have a stunbreak ready you’re dead.
If a necro fear-condition-bombs you and you don’t have a stunbreak/cleanse ready you’re dead.
If you don’t bring insane burst you won’t win against a competent bunker ranger.
If you don’t bring stuns, slows and aoes you won’t win against any thief because he will stealth away.
The list goes on.
So why is it always OK to have to bring specific skills and needing to use specific tactics against all other classes, but when it comes to eles that’s not OK and ele needs nerfs until they can be defeated by braindead opponents hammering their face on the keyboard?
I don’t use a stun break against a warrior or thief, i just use raw tankyness to wait out their burst and then melt them with condis (how most condi builds work), or i do this thing called Dodging/Blocking.
I’m sorry but that’s not an option. No matter your toughness or vitality, if you don’t stunbreak basilisk venom ASAP you’re dead against a burst thief, so the rest of your point doesn’t have any substance.
There aren’t multiple ways to get out of this situation. There is no option. You either have the stunbreak and use it, and have A CHANCE to win (though of course the thief still has the upper hand through his opener) or you are dead. Simple as that. It’s a binary choice.
That being said although on paper it looks like theres a lot of counters, most builds don’t have those, so it can’t be strong enough where if you -don’t- have that stun/immob the ele is going to win, […]
I see this pretty much as a double standard.
If a dagger thief opens on you and you don’t have a stunbreak ready you’re dead.
If a greatsword warrior charges you and you don’t have a stunbreak ready you’re dead.
If a necro fear-condition-bombs you and you don’t have a stunbreak/cleanse ready you’re dead.
If you don’t bring insane burst you won’t win against a competent bunker ranger.
If you don’t bring stuns, slows and aoes you won’t win against any thief because he will stealth away.
The list goes on.
So why is it always OK to have to bring specific skills and needing to use specific tactics against all other classes, but when it comes to eles that’s not OK and ele needs nerfs until they can be defeated by braindead opponents hammering their face on the keyboard?
I’d like it too, but I think it’d make my MM Necro a little too over the top 1v1. Currently running Soldiers, I could easily toss some vit for precision, but it’d be the death of everyone else 1v1.
I’m pretty sure it’s not the amulet that makes necros OP.
The problem I’ve found with Rock Solid + Ether Renewal is that
a) Either through lag or global cooldown I’m never able to start ER at the same time as I’m switching to earth, meaning either the start or end of ER lacks stability.
b) As D/D you need earth as a huge source of damage, crowd control and gap closing, so it’s almost never up at the exact moment you’ll need the stability.
Ele. No other class even comes close to the amount and severity of the nerfs Ele has gotten since launch and even before.
D/D builds have been systematically destroyed from the beginning until now.
As a Ranger who leveled an ele up to level 80 and played through several difficult dungeons with him, and can compare both of the classes, I can say with certainty that you don’t know the MEANING of the word nerf.
As someone who pvps A LOT I can say with certainty that you don’t even know the meaning of what balance means. Go back to your easymode where every class and build is viable.
Now that earth has a proper damage boost d/d users could go more offencive in gear pieces and go 20 in earth for that and rock solid.The stability would help you with those fears,cc let you cast churning earth and ether renewal and of course rezz /stomp.Plus the 10 crit chance you lose from air isnt that much of a deal and with boon duration runes you already can achieve pretty high amount of fury,swiftness
Well lack of swiftness in wvw might be a pain in the kitten but there are ways around it
The problem with any non-fresh-air-burst build right now is that you’ll get chewed up by Necros (who are everywhere right now) and their condition burst spam if you don’t go 30 into water and use 3 cantrips.
I actually think reducing the range to 1200 would have been enough to make it balanced, without the ridiculous cooldown increase. 1200 range doesn’t take you out of combat in pvp, and every class has access to 1200 range skills, most of them (besides ele and thief AFAIK) even can skill for 1500 range.
The main problem with RTL was that it gave bunkers a free out of jail card because it was 1550 range which meant you were instantly out of range of enemies and could heal up. With 1200 range that isn’t possible any more so they really should revert the cooldown to 20 seconds or even 15 like it was at the start.
Ranger, Warrior, etc. mobility skills all have around 10-12 seconds cooldown only. RTL should have that too. If RTL ignoring slow and crippled would have been a problem they simply should have disabled that feature of RTL instead. Although I think ignoring those conditions is a fair tradeoff for not being able to us any instant or utility skill while RTL is active (meaning if you’re immobilized you’re a sitting duck for ~2 seconds).
i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.
Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…
Am i the only one who wants to see the Staff Air #2 skill to be like it was in Alpha? The longer you hold it down the more damage it does, it always blinds, if you hold it to halfway point it’s kitten daze, if you hold it to full charge it’s a 1s stun? That would suddenly make that skill amazing…. again.
Charging up is so air like!
OMGYESPLZ
Yeah and while they’re at it they should change Churning Earth to a real charging spell again, meaning whenever you release the button it fires instead of having to channel for 4 seconds all the time.
I just saw the patchnotes from today, logged into the game and saw that the changes aren’t actually in yet. Is it normal for the patchnotes to be up before the patch hits? Or does Europe get the patch at a later time today?
They’re always up several minutes before the patch goes live
I just saw the patchnotes from today, logged into the game and saw that the changes aren’t actually in yet. Is it normal for the patchnotes to be up before the patch hits? Or does Europe get the patch at a later time today?
There’s only 1 warrior build that gave me some amount of trouble in the last time and that was a particular longbow/sword/sword condition spamming warrior.
To answer your question, I think D/D Fresh Air build is viable. It’s practically the same with a little less bursty (no Phoenix (fire #3) and Lightning Strike (Air #2).
With the added drawback that you need to be in melee range to do damage meaning you’re gonna get a LOT of incoming damage which only really makes bunker D/D viable (and even than 1500 range longbow rangers are frakking annoying after the RTL nerfs).
P.S. I use this pseudonym for more than 10 years now I think
yeah I would hate to move back to the Bunker D/D I used to run :P. Finally something so ruthlessly offensive that wrecks havoc in PvP/WvW…
Are you running a D/D fresh air build in pvp? Can you post a link to your build with runes and amulet? Or did you just switch the scepter for dagger in zoose’s build?
I’d love to have a viable D/D damage build in pvp.
The problems with necros is that their conditons don’t behave like conditions, they behave like burst. Within a few seconds a necro can condition bomb you from 100% to 0% health no matter your spec because they ignore all defenses and nobody has enough cleanses to live through that (not even eles).
If you dont have a warrior you will not understand because all other classes are superior to warrior.
If you have a warrior, you should stop beign a fanboy, it actually hurts the game more than you think it will benefit, beign complacient with mediocre content/balance or whatever other bad things that come when you buy a product will only make that those bad things will increase.
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
I’m saying everything is viable in pve. Also using 30 fire in pvp isn’t viable. at. all. Not even 10 fire is. So you will never have more than 3.3 seconds immobilize in PVP. And that’s what should be balanced around. Not some mode where your level and equipment counts more than your build or skill.
I feel sad for you and your limited view point.
What a miserable experience you must have in this game.
I feel sad for your non-existent pvp skills.
What a miserable experience you must have in this game.
I’m saying everything is viable in pve. Also using 30 fire in pvp isn’t viable. at. all. Not even 10 fire is. So you will never have more than 3.3 seconds immobilize in PVP. And that’s what should be balanced around. Not some mode where your level and equipment counts more than your build or skill.
It takes a PVEer at most a week to get a complete set of endgame armor, yet pvpers need to grind for 2 years for the same? That’s the definition of a double standard.
There are people at 70, and the games not even been out a year.
You’ll just have to accept that you won’t get 80 without serious dedication. Although I agree the gap between the armor/title tiers is too large, the whole point of the system is that 99.99% of players won’t get 80 without a few years play time. It’s not pve.
You’re better off working on your build/skills in tpvp, as people will care much more about that anyway.
The problem is that you don’t get nice gear for playing good and/or playing tournaments, you get nice looking gear for grinding hotjoins like an imbecile for years on end. That’s ridiculous and needs to be changed.
It’s not the fact that you can kill someone in moa, it’s the fact that they cannot fight for real while in it (and will most likely sprint away) turning a 3v3 into a 3v2. THAT is the power of moa.
How are you supposed to get the actually good looking skins in pvp? The ones that come from rank 40 onwards? You need like what, rank 80 or even more for cultural armors? That’s insane. You’d need to grind glory for 3 years straight to get that much rank.
Arenanet REALLY needs to lower either the rank requirements for the armor skins or the amount of glory required for each rank.
I’m waiting for all the bunker ele, OP class only players to switch to troll thieves and get those nerfed. That’ll be at least a couple months yet, but man will it be sweet.
The only people that complained about bunker eles were bad players. Sure they were nasty 1v1, but even at their height of ability were still not even close to where guardians are now in overall effectiveness.
This. A hundred times this. Whenever we have problems with other (seriously OP) classes we get told to “L2P” and that the other player was just better than us. Yet when it was us that was close to OP the other ones weren’t bad players and we weren’t really better than them, no it was simply our class that was OP and needed swift and severe nerfs.
I frakking hate double standards with a vengeance.
I don’t like agreeing with Aether, but he is right. I love the elementalist as a class, it’s the most fun I’ve had in a game in SUCH a long time. There seems to be some double standard when it comes to the class because it has so many options built into its weaponset and the devs are being to careful.
Revert RTL and the class will be fine save for the bugs. Lower the scaling of the heals with healing power, up the base heals. make a person who wants to be tanky SPEC and GEAR for it. Make a person who wants to be a damage dealer be one. The elementalist needs the mobility for it to be able to deal damage.
People who complained “the ele tanked 10 of us and we couldn’t kill him” more often than not have no idea how to PvP. If 10 people can’t kill 1 player, the problem isn’t that player, it’s the group. It just boggles my mind when I see the videos of people taking 10 players and how they just don’t seem to work together to pin/chain CC and just pound the crap out of them. They also don’t realize that the elementalist did exactly what thieves do right now. Distract 10 people so they don’t kill a yak or flip a keep or whatnot. Seriously, blind, chill cripple the kitten ele and they are done for.
Guardians are still tankier and will always be tankier than us.
Even if 2 or 3 people can’t kill a bunker ele they are simply bads. Before and after the nerfs. Take thieves for example, most of them are mouthbreathers who you can kill in a single knockdown after they stun themselves on your shocking aura. Yet yesterday I’ve met a thief in hotjoins that seriously gave me trouble, not only did he have unpredictable movement and stealth methods, he also killed me flat in 2 seconds THROUGH MY 1900 toughness when he opened from stealth and I had no stunbreaker ready.
Yet thief burst never gets nerfed as hard as eles get every single patch.
How bout this.
You bring your PvE armour and stats into PvP!! Its only your accessories and rings etc that get disabled.
But what if I am not level lvl 80?..Relax buddy, it’s ok..you can create a pvp only toon that has access to anything you’ve unlocked in PvE!!
But what if there is some things i have yet to unlock in PvE?..again, it’s all good buddy, you can use glory to unlock any item in game for pvp created alts.
What If I don’t have enough glory?..well my son, you gotta get playing then. You can’t just pick-up any ol’ flavour of the month build off the net just like that. You now have reason to stockpile glory for times you wanna do that.
What happens then once I have unlocked everything?..what do I do with glory now smart guy?..again it’s all good, you can use glory to purchase other rewards that can have benefit in both PvE and PvP..if your PvE toon you’ve hauling butt with in PvP doesn’t have a certain item, you can purchase chests that provide you with a chance to get more rare items.
This sounds a lot like guild wars 1..exactly…why did they abandon that system. This in my mind is my biggest question of all…why did they abandon perhaps one of the better reward systems in M.M.O games?
You need to play every day for 3 years to get rank 80 which doesn’t even unlock everything. PVP rank unlocks are ridiculous and really need to be changed.
Scepter Dragon’s Tooth — Function Issue
Deals no damage if player has been CC’ed after casting it but before it lands.
This is not a bug. Dragon Tooth got a cast time, if you get cc’ed before the cast time ends, of course it will deal no damage. It is actually just a visual bug (it happens if you dodge before cast ends as well)
It IS a bug. The cast has long since ended when dragons tooth still hovers in the air, I can already cast any other spell (like phoenix) and the tooth will do damage. Yet when I get knocked back while casting Phoenix suddenly my Dragons tooth landing does 0 damage. That’s the definition of a bug.
I’m waiting for all the bunker ele, OP class only players to switch to troll thieves and get those nerfed. That’ll be at least a couple months yet, but man will it be sweet.
The only people that complained about bunker eles were bad players. Sure they were nasty 1v1, but even at their height of ability were still not even close to where guardians are now in overall effectiveness.
This. A hundred times this. Whenever we have problems with other (seriously OP) classes we get told to “L2P” and that the other player was just better than us. Yet when it was us that was close to OP the other ones weren’t bad players and we weren’t really better than them, no it was simply our class that was OP and needed swift and severe nerfs.
I frakking hate double standards with a vengeance.
Not only is the trait really bad for a grandmaster, the root of the problem is that ele condition builds will pretty much never be viable unless they change a LOT of things around. We can only bleed in earth, and only burn in fire (signet aside) and that are the only 2 damage conditions we have. We have no spare conditions to blanket those with so when someone cleanses our conditions, 99% they’ll cleanse both burning and bleeding. And then we stand there, having used our fire and earth attunements, not being able to put any condition up for the next 10 seconds. It’s ridiculous.
I agree with the other posters. Fire is so bad a tree that even it’s passive bonuses suck and do nothing at all until you have enough of them for another tick of burn (and even then crit and crit damage are better).
Even if you spec all out for condition damage, use every toughness and condition damage boost available (rabid amulet + undead runes) Diamond Skin still only gives 190 condition damage. Even if it scaled with the few situational toughness boosts in earth (which it doesn’t!) it would only give around 210 condition damage for a few seconds before falling back to 190.
190 condition damage is nowhere near worthy of a grandmaster trait.
This is so true. There already are a lot of traits that classes pretty much need to operate. IMHO all those traits (and future class fixes) should simply be class mechanics and then be balanced around accordingly (but of course that requires some amount of work so Anet won’t do it…). Things like Boons on attunement switch for eles (and a lower default switch cooldown), Clones on Dodge for Mesmers and of course the OPs warrior trait.
Is it intended that Spectral Wall also fears you when you try to dodge through it? That’s pretty ridiculous and I don’t think any other wall type spell has an effect when you dodge through it.
tried some new builds in pvp with all the new traits and found that 0/0/20/30/20 D/D bunker spec (all cantrips+fiery Greatsword and the signet for healing) works best.
12 matches only 2 deaths and quite a few kills. The battles are more fun too!
Currently running Soldiers, I could easily toss some vit for precision, but it’d be the death of everyone else 1v1.
