There hasn’t been a single MMO to date where the stealthy burst archetype was balanced. It just isn’t possible.
We have TONS of active defense through utilities, but the rest is all true…
Which all other classes have too IN ADDITION to the active defenses built into their weapon sets and class mechanics.
Signet of Restoration doesn’t get cooldown reduction from Signet Mastery.
And more importantly, with Written in Stone, Signet of Air only gives the old 10% passive movement speed, instead of the usual 25% which is rather gamebreaking.
If each attunement was capable of being viable at a given role with out attunement swapping. then maybe the decision to limit the overall power of the profession would make sense. That’s just not the case.
This. As I wrote in another thread, eles pay dearly for 6 additional skills over the other classes:
- All 20 skills are individually worse than other classes skills
- All 20 skills have way higher cooldowns than other classes skills
- Lowest base health
- Lowest base armor
- Lowest base damage
- No active defense at all
Just watched the video. When talking about D/D setup he says “there’s a nice mix of mobility, direct damage and conditions here” – the mix of conditions and direct damage is actually bad because you can’t specialize your damage. Also “nice mobility”? LOL before all the RTL nerfs yes, but now it’s nowhere near “nice”.
And the best part: “There’s lots of different D/D damage builds, especially for pvp”. D/D doesn’t even have a SINGLE viable damage build. This video was simply insulting to the ele community, and a prime display that showed that arenanet DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE CLASS AT ALL.
In light of listening to Izzy talk about elementalists and how every stat effects them ect ect. Would a Conditimentalist with something like 30/0/30/10/0 be viable at all? I speaking mostly from a PVE/WvW concept. Rabid gear and or divinity runes…Full Celestial style. Probably grasping at straws atm I know.
If not what would a balanced ele, like he seems to want us to be? What would be our goal to aim for? Mediocrity in everything?I’ve been playing a build that’s close to this mentality for a while. I go 20/0/20/0/30, use Arcane Power, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Shield. The key trait that makes the whole thing work is Elemental Surge. With that I can stack either Burning or Chill easily, and have a 5-chain of Blind or Immobilize for scary moment.
My gear is all Carrion, with Elementalist runes and Celestial jewlery. I also use a Rampager staff for a bit of extra Precision.
The verdict?
The damage is mediocre. The burst is nonexistent. The tankiness is mediocre. The ability to escape is mediocre. The ability to support allies is mediocre. The control abilities are pretty good unless there’s an excess of Shout guardians on the other team. The overall mobility is mediocre.
Why do I run this build if it isn’t good at anything? Because it isn’t BAD at anything.
I also run a Power Necro and a Healway Guardian. The Power Necro does great damage and is very tanky. It’s really good at those things. It has no group support, the control abilities are pretty awful. It’s got mediocre mobility with Swiftness and Dark Path, but the ability to escape is pretty bad unless I can just out-tank stuff while running away.
The Healway Guardian does great group support and is insanely tanky. It does mediocre damage, mediocre mobility, and bad escape ability. Control abilities are also pretty bad.
Both my Necro and my Guardian are terrible at range, and only excel at AoE damage when in melee.
Now, compare that with my Ele.
It does more damage than my Guardian, but less than my Necro.
It does more group support than my Necro but less than my Guardian.
It does more AoE damage than my Guardian, and at long range.
It offers more control effects than either.
It tanks worse than either other class, but since it spends most of its time at 1200 range that doesn’t matter as much.
It has more damaging condition output than either, but less than a Condi Necro.In short, it’s ok at most stuff and fun to play. I’ll never burst stuff down like I will on my Necro. I’ll never tank 5 guys like I will on my Guardian. But I’ll do ok, and can switch gears quickly if circumstances change. There will never be a YouTube video of someone running my build pwning 20 newbies in a row. That’s what “Jack of All Trades” means. It’s always going to be better at what the other guy is bad at.
Engineers are WAY better jack of all trades than eles, and they have higher base health, higher armor AND higher damage than us.
I still don’t understand why we has this trait? Since we can already keep up permanent Swiftness
That is not the point. We can already keep up permanent swiftness by investing in another trait line and constantly casting auras. This could provide an alternative way to have it, giving more options to invest in other trait lines IF ONLY it worked out of combat as well…
IF it worked out of combat it still competes with the vigor on crit trait which is EXTREMELY good for D/D because evasive arcane is so much needed to survive as D/D. So even if it worked I think nobody would take it. It should be completely redesigned.
Seeing as there’s a master trait that gives 10% damage in earth only, I don’t think they’ll give us 10% in all attunements as an adept trait. Other professions can have 10% damage without restrictions, sure, but not eles.
LOL @ them even thinking about nerfed one of our 3 useless elites. Arenanet is completely disconnected from their own game it seems.
Try this as an ele, more then likely you`ll just get 1-2 stuns & die
That & the speed/gap he creates is waaaay more then RTL/Staff 4 gives you…http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=anDVv6CvFTY#t=663s
This. I never understood how a big hunking warrior in plate armor with lots of health is supposed to be one of the quickest classes to get away from any fight at any time becasue all the cooldowns are so low. While eles with the lowest health, armor and damage are supposed to never get away because “lol rtl with 20 seconds was so imba!!1!11!”
Magic doesn’t make sense, nerf Guardians, Mesmers, Eles, Necros!
I can’t believe how many bugs from launch are still there almost 1 year after the launch.
Being able to do needless stuff doesn’t make Car B better, it actually makes it objectively worse, because cars are supposed to drive, stay on the road, and brake.
What part of the elementalist’s arsenal is needless? Is it the damage? The combo fields? Perhaps it’s the group support? Or maybe the crowd control?
If eles want to do damage they don’t have group support or combo fields besides 1 fire field, and even then they do less damage than other classes and survive worse. And their crowd control isn’t better than other classes.
The facts are that eles have so many more weapon skills available to them, with a variety of uses – this is solid fact. They can use these skills in many combinations, due to having lots of them
I’d like to for once and for all dispel the argument that “eles haveso many more weapon skills available to them” as an argument for eles to otherwise be completely sucky:
Every class has a class mechanic. Every class can weapon-swap besides eles and engis, giving other classes 10 weapon skills + their class mechanic. Class Mechanics of all classes are represented by their unique F1-F4 skills on top of their weapon skills. Now how many and what unique skills do the professions have? Not counting transformations or weapon-swap-esque buttons, but counting the attacks you get through using them, how many unique skills do the professions get beyond the standard 10 weapon skills?
- Mesmer: 4 skills: aoe burst skill, aoe condition skill, aoe interrupt, an invulnerable skill not unlike mistform, shorter but you can still fight while it’s active.
- Guardian: 3 skills not unlike sigils with passives and actives – a condition skill, a heal skill, a block skill
- Warrior: 2 burst skills depending on weapons
- Ranger: 4 skills: An attack spell, a pet special skill depending on pet, a pet movement skill, and a pat swap spell that gives them another pet special skill.
- Necromancer: 5 skills from Deathshroud.
- Thieves: 1 skill that teleports them and gives them a new skill upon use
- Engineers: 4 toolbelt skills which can be multiplied by using kits.
So the average amount of unique F key skills on top of the 10 weapon skills is around 4 (I’ll leave engineers and thieves out as outliers, seeing as engis can have up to 25 weapon skills and 4 toolbelt skills, and thieves weapon skills are completely different than other professions weapons)
Eles have 20 unique skills so 6 more than the average. Now what do eles pay for these 6 additional skills:
- Huge cooldown increase on all 20 skills
- All 20 skills themselves are individually weaker than the ~14 skills of the other professions
- Lowest base survivability of all professions (health/armor)
- Worst active defenses out of all classes
How is that a fair tradeoff for 6 skills that are individually worse than other professions unique skills?
If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.
i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff
these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing raindo bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.
each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good
Aha, thank you for actually acknowledging the real buffs, I keep forgetting to bring them up – the Gust and Healing rain ones really are useful to note (woo, more control and mobility!), and meteor shower being better is nice.
If somene has stability up, you should really be taking note of this and just not casting gust until it’s down – if you’re wasting your control effects on the stable, you shouldn’t complain about them… and you have another hard CC that you can use once their stability runs out or is removed by someone.The aftercast/casting time improvements… do count as buffs. Notably Eruption, which is great for laying down then plonking a combo field on top of. You now have enough time (due to a load of aftercast getting removed) to pull off several other skills before you need to lay down your combo field for your blast. You can use another skill, get it interrupted, and still sometimes manage to place that important field. Most of the time this field will be a water one, but 3 stacks of might isn’t to be sniffed at, especially when there’re other allies around that would benefit who /do/ focus on straight-up damage.
You’ve proven that staff isn’t a pvp weapon, and therefore all the little tweaks it got this patch don’t do kitten for overall ele balance.
It’s not a 1v1 weapon, is all I’ve been saying. And even then, it can still be good if used well, just often outmatched by other classes/builds – which is true of most things. They all have counters.
Staff rules for supporting and controlling groups, that’s the entire purpose of the weapon. If you’re trying to repurpose it into doing something else, you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – using a rubber chicken instead of a hammer.
Again, pvp is made up of 5v5, and staff never has and probably never will be a viable weapon there.
Procced skills that usually stunbreak are never stunbreaks.
Is there a particular instance you can think of that would be equivalent? I’m just curious because it should really be clarified with an official response or previous case with a similar situation. Not trying to pine over it really, am just looking for non disputable clarification on the subject.
Ele armor of earth at 50% health doesn’t stunbreak. Neither does the arcane shield procced at 25% health. Both skills are stunbreaks when used as utility skills.
Prove your point that staff isn’t useful in 1v1? Well YES. It’s just not a 1v1 weapon!
If every weapon was good in 1v1… what would be the point in having any AoE at all?
Would you please make it clear which ‘point’ it is that I’ve ‘proved’ of yours? You’re being far too vague, especially with a one-line contentless reply to a post that I mentioned several things in.
You’ve proven that staff isn’t a pvp weapon, and therefore all the little tweaks it got this patch don’t do kitten for overall ele balance.
I like how pretty much everyone is using the, “But hybrids are bad because everyone else can do everything better!” argument, yeah yeah, that’s cute your warrior can out DPS the ele, but can that same warrior also be throwing condis out, and bringing support and control? kitten no they can’t, if a warrior goes damage, just like pretty much every other prof, that is literally ALL they can do.
2 Cars:
Car A can drive 200mph max, has awesome breaks that decelerate it to a standstill in 0.5 seconds and has extreme grip so you can take corners at high speed.
Car B can drive 50mph max, has kittened up brakes that take it 10 seconds to standstill, lose control in pretty much every corner, but it can make you ice cream while driving, has an exhaust pipe that leads back into the car and smells of roses, and it has a button that changes it’s varnish from red to blue to white to brown.
Being able to do needless stuff doesn’t make Car B better, it actually makes it objectively worse, because cars are supposed to drive, stay on the road, and brake.
Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.
Um, yes it does?
No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.
The staff has large range, can have pretty great AoE and lays down movement-impeding conditions and CCs all over the place – and in my re-reading of the patch notes the now, I note that Gust is actually multi-target now, which is a pretty serious buff to it. If you want to deal lots of damage, go with your one-handed weapons – the staff is a large-scale weapon, not a spiking tool.
Staff eles are not nearly powerful enough to do many 1v1s… but a decent staff should be able to at least hold out against most foes until support arrives from either team, and maybe use their CC and mobility to neutralise (or even cap) the point they’re fighting at while they’re at it.
And if you’re at all organised, or even just have a half-reasonable randomly assigned team, you can be wonderful with an ally – the staff ele has the control and support to keep another ally or two up in a larger fight, and deal consistent (if minor compared to, say, spike/burst builds) damage while they’re at it.If you’re desperate to deal lots of damage to one target… you shouldn’t go for an AoE weapon. There just isn’t any way to give them the damage output that you want without either shrinking down the AoE (to, uh, single-target) or making it stupidly overpowered.
So you said all this just to prove my point? Nice.
I had backstabbed butt
Giggedy
Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.
Um, yes it does?
No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.
Aether, two points:
1) staff eles really did get buffed.
I never said anything otherwise. My points still stand.
Actually it doesn’t.
If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.
Here, choke on your own words:
Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything. Ever.
Procced skills that usually stunbreak are never stunbreaks.
All Balance reasons aside (seeing as the game was extremely well balanced at launch and only got worse with every patch I for one have lost all balance faith in arenanet):
For the last year, with every single patch, Arenanet has systematically nerfed, destroyed, punished or otherwise obliterated every single thing that elementalists were good at or that made them fun to play. Also whenever some balance change arises they ALWAYS, ALWAYS take the easy way out of nerfing the thing into the ground instead of doing it the hard way and ACTUALLY BALANCE it.
How they can even think that this is a good approach to a business/game/community is way beyond me. On top of that they prance around making tutorial videos 1 year after launch (lol) or actually go out and say stuff like “the top 2 eles in the world are actually so good at playing that we will nerf the class for everyone because kitten you that’s why” (paraphrased).
Its really sad. Ele is still the most fun class for me to play as, but it’s completely useless outside of spvp, which I hate and never bother with anyway. Cant you guys revert all the nerfs for PvE only? Even people who I’ve been running dungeons with regularly since the start of the game, who know that I know what i’m doing have been asking me to just use my guardian instead. Guardian can do everything ele can do except way better, and do a ton more damage and have better survivability as well. The only time I ever really feel useful is in AC when someone needs an ice bow to kill graveling burrows.
Well, rejoice! For they made eles suck as much in pvp as they do in pve with the latest patch! Arenanet Balance team to the rescue!
“worst at everything”
Man the hyperboles are flying left and right on this sub-forum today. Or are you implying warriors are better at laying down combo fields? And are thieves better at group support? And I suppose guardians are better at condition builds?
Thives have awesome group support if specced for it (e.g. poisonshare), warriors actually can lay a lot of firefields with longbow, and guardians do have a lot of conditions if specced for it (fyi ele condition builds are completely non-viable).
Now go somewhere else with your “that ele once touched me in a dark place 2 years ago therefore they should all suffer my wrath” crusade.
I hope ANET considers keeping this though. This doesn’t seem too broken, but it’s just plain awesome,g iving the engineer a completely new role!
(Only the Engineer is capable of flight!)
Ride the Lightning (ele) was like this a LONG time ago. Trust me, we players can’t have nice things. This is going to get nerfed, and if I know ANET, it’s going to get nerfed HARD.
^ they also have ride the lightning with 20 sec cooldown :P
And it even removes cripples and immobilizes!
Yeah PVP at the moment is made up of necros and their minions. It’s insane.
It only works in combat. ALL of our “+x%” movement speed traits are useless because we have apt access to swiftness or can simply use signet of air.
“jack of all trades” – so it’s ok for example that rangers do better conditions than us, burst better, survive better and have more mobility? I smell hypocrisy.
You seem to know nothing about “your” class:
- RTL is 1200 range 40 seconds CD. Every single class besides maybe mesmers and necros can easily catch you with their own 1200 range 12 seconds mobility skills or low-cooldown teleports.
- These days every class has easy access to swiftness and/or 25% passive runspeed so again they will catch you. On top of that they can simply switch to a ranged weapon and kill you from afar.
- Frost cone, water trident and cleansing water heal for kitten if not specced and equipped for it. Staff is not a pvp weapon.
- D/D is not a burst weaponset because it has no defenses. Staff is not a burst set because it has no defenses.
Of course all this is about pvp. Everything is viable in easymode pve.
There’s a reason why elementalists are extremely strong in pvp. Yes, they are as much a jack-of-all-trades in pvp as they are in pve, but being good at too many things has proven to be competitive enough against being great at a few things, bad at others. An elementalist, in pvp, can run away decently, can heal themselves back to health, can spam boons on themselves, can burst and crowd control with plenty of aoe and decent single-target burst. A specialized burst build might be able to take them down faster – but if it’s unable to, chances are, it’ll lose, because it can’t keep up with the elementalist’s survival.
There’s so much wrong with this:
- Eles can’t run away anymore since the last RTL nerfs.
- Eles can’t heal any better than other classes UNLESS HEAVILY SPECCED FOR IT.
- Eles can’t “spam boons on themselves” UNLESS HEAVILY SPECCED FOR IT.
- Eles can’t burst and aoe at the same time because those are completely different weapon sets and eles can’t weaponswap.
You are arguing semantics instead of addressing his problem.
Not speccing into arcane at all is non-viable because a base 15-second attunement cd isnt playable. Arcane also has blasting staff, which is required for staff elementalists to be playable, and evasive arcana, which is required for D/D elementalists to be playable (because of lack of defensive mechanisms in fire or air).
It is playable. You might not find it optimal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not viable. Blasting Staff is certainly a boon for the staff elementalist, but giving up the traits to get it isn’t any different than any other profession or any other build having to put X points into Y trait line to get Z trait to make their particular build of choice better.
15 seconds attunement cooldown is not playable. That’s a fact.
No other profession has to spend trait points to be able to USE THEIR WEAPON SKILLS because if eles don’t they are stuck using autoattacks for 5-10 seconds.
Im running 0/0/30/10/30 D/D. Full knight armor with healing/vit/power offset. The build is a hybrid, though more towards tank, secondly power and third for healing. It builds around 4 signets and I have 2k tough, 1,6k power, 1,5 prec, 1,6k vit (about 19k hp) and 334 healing. I also have the talent that makes signets active after used. 10 in water provides extra healing and condition removal.
In WvW and PvE I find it quite strong and has enough flexibility to offer a viable group support (though it is more of a solo build). Even in big zergs you have enough defensives to remain at the front.
Very effectrive/forgiving vs thief if you are a newcomer.The cons would be that D/D relies on having constant pressure/being able to use your skills while you attunement dance (especially for the self healing part). Put enough roots etc and you’ll slow the hulk into certain death. Though in many such situations I am in favor with the earth talent that provides earth shield on 50% hp for a quick get away, or arcane shield at 25%.
THe problem with such a build is that Signet of Resto is still bugged and doesn’t get it’s cooldown reduced by Signet Masters
And also the fact that D/D isn’t really built for a condition build because you can’t maintain more than 1 condition at a time
(edited by Aether McLoud.1975)
No because you die like a kitten in pvp with such a D/D build.
It’s simple: we kill the Batman
Give us a new low tier trait (arcane 10 or something like that) that severly reduces staff aoe attacks – or even makes them targeted singletarget spells alltogether – and buffs those attacks to be viable for single target damage.
OP apparently thinks eles can weapon swap in combat…
Just taken in the heart of the mists: with signet mastery, signet of restoration is still 25 seconds cd.
This bug is still active (or again?)!
If you want a frost mage, try a mesmer. Ele in this game is nothing like mages in other games, sad but true.
Don’t listen to this Aether, he loves to hear himself whine.
It’s a fact. If you think ele in this game is anything like mages in other games you’re delusional.
It appears to no longer work with any bonus Toughness, including Signet of Earth. It seems that this Trait doesn’t synergize with Earth attunement as well as I’d like.
Arenanet not thinking an ele change through to the end? Who would have thought.
If you want a frost mage, try a mesmer. Ele in this game is nothing like mages in other games, sad but true.
With the current patch being released today, Fresh Air trait is really caught my attention. Is it just a coincidence or there is something else behind this change? My prediction is in the future, we will see similar Grandmaster trait on Fire,Water, and Earth Tree, maybe something like this:
Grandmaster Earth Trait (name) : When you get disabled (immobilise, Stun,Dazed,etc..)
reset your Earth Attunment recharge rate.Grandmaster Water Trait (name): When you have 4 or more Conditions on you, reset your Water Attunment recharge Rate.
Like I said hunders of time:
- Remove/Rework Intelligence
- Put a “go back to the attunement feat for all Elements”. I would have supported a passive CD reduction scaling on the trait point invested but Fresh Air is also a path.
So eles should be the only profession that need to spend grandmaster traits to be able to use their class mechanic? That’s ridiculous and the whole root of ele’s problems.
No reason for it to get nerfed, maybe fixed to its 5s cd it will still be just ok. Even with the bug its not op, look at thiefs, and retal for op. Most people are liking it cause it gives you access to 2 instant scepter skills quickly plus the 15 minor trait, but AT the cost of putting an entire attunement on cd for that small burst.
There wasn’t a reason for 90% of the nerfs we got since launch, didn’t matter, they still nerfed us. Trust me, fresh air will get nerfed. Probably fast, swift, unjust, and into the ground.
Melee weapons NEED to do more damage than any range weapon, because they have lesser uptime. The whole problem of D/D eles is that their weapon do ridiculously low damage so there isn’t a single viable damage build (and bunkers get nerfed and nerfed and nerfed and nerfed and nerfed and nerfed and…)