Guild Wars 2

Creslin.1758:

Air

Stat Bonuses: Excellent. 30% more crit damage is freaking awesome. Especially considering that you will have a very high crit chance from the perma-fury you will get from Zephyr’s boon.

Minors:

Zephyr’s Speed: Terrible. Absolutely useless, doesn’t stack with swiftness, you will have perma-swiftness, so this trait is null and void.

Electric Discharge: Okay. Doesn’t do much damage, but once again, it’s instant and every little bit helps.

Weak Spot: Excellent. Okay so you’re at least 25 air, you probably do crits all the time…you will be stacking vulnerability like nobody’s business!

Majors:

Zephyr’s Boon: AMAZING. Okay, it’s an adept trait that can give you PERMA fury AND swiftness (with D/D). Oh and wait, that’s not all, if you are an auramancer, it gives perma fury and swiftness to your entire group! kitten

Zephyr’s Focus: Okay. You really don’t channel skills enough to justify this, and Ele’s have better ways of getting endurance.

Quick Glyphs: Excellent. One of your heals is a glyph, and your best elite is a glyph…that is 20% more healing and elite skill use. Good? I think so.

One with Air: Terrible. Much like Zephyr’s Speed, this one is absolutely useless…doesn’t stack with swiftness.

Soothing Winds: Okay. I wouldn’t really take this one…as an Ele, you probably aren’t going to stack precision gear due to the perma-fury you will have, so it seems like it would only be of limited effectiveness…this would be better as a minor trait IMO…replace Zephyr’s Speed with this.

Bolt to the Heart: Good. Great skill to finish people off with, and works in all attunements. Only drawback is that they must be under 25% to do it, and most players are either go to go down anyway when they are that weak, or will heal up soon…still, not bad though.

Arcane Lightning: Poor. It’s only 3% more crit damage, you get that for spending 3 points in air lol…AND it’s only triggered when you use an arcane skill. This is overshadowed by other damage percentile increasing traits.

Inscription: Okay. Seems like a worse version of Elemental Attunement…still, not horrible for a boon stacking build I guess.

Aeromancer’s Alacrity: Poor. Basically same reasons as the fire skill, but I find air to be a more “situational” attunement than fire, so I gave this poor.

Tempest Defense: Excellent. For a build that doesn’t use a dagger in the MH, this is awesome. Staff users are fairly vulnerable to thief burst, and this skill fixes that problem.

Grounded: Excellent (for D/D). For a D/D burst build, this skill is probably a must. D/D’s almost always open with a KD (updraft), so their initial big burst will benefit from this, and 20% increased damage is no joke.
DISPUTED — Grounded may not benefit from updraft, since updraft is technically a “blowout” not a KD…this will need to be tested.

My analysis:

1) Tempest defense = poor, the conditions required to trigger it are too easily replicated, making this trait activate when really not necessary, should be changed to something like activate at 70 % HP and 90s CD

2) Grounded= poor, the moment gale got changed from 3s to 2s KD, this trait become useless, why should I waste 30 pts in air to rely on a single 45s(earthquake) or 50s CD (gale)skill?

I agree on all the rest

Creslin.1758:

FIRE

Stat Bonuses: Okay. Power is alright but you can easily substitute for its absence with gear, might stacking, or food. Condition duration isn’t bad, especially since fire has so much burning.

Minors:

Flame Barrier: Poor. It can cause some burning, but so can so many of your fire skills…and since it is ONLY effective in fire attunement, and you likely be causing burning in fire attunement anyway, I don’t think it’s that good.

Sunspot: Okay. It’s a little damage boost…not much on its own, but it’s essentially instance and every little bit can help.

Burning Rage: Okay. 5% damage increase isn’t terrible, but your foes are not always going to be burning. All in all, this trait is overshadowed by other traits like water 25 that are much, much better. Since this trait is in the DPS tree…I feel like it should increase damage more than the 25 point trait in the healing tree.

Majors:

Lava Tomb: Good for PvE, Poor for PvP. For PvE, this one can be useful just because it gives you a much greater chance of getting up from downed. For PvP, I don’t think it’s very useful at all…most players can heal up that damage fast, and since you will want to move with vapor form, they probably won’t even be in your lava tomb for long.

Burning Fire: Poor. This causes more burning…but only on VERY SPECIFIC utility skill uses, two of which are conjures, and the other two cause burning already! I dunno, maybe it would be okay if you were a condition damage build and were just trying to keep burning up at all times, but a 3 second increase just seems not good enough to me.

Ember’s Might: Good. For an adept trait, 5% extra damage to burning foes really isn’t that bad. If you are stacking power, a percentile increase can be a big deal.

Spell Slinger: Excellent. Cantrips are great, getting might when you cast them is even better!

Burning precision: Good. Haven’t used this one, but this seems like a FAR superior way to keep burning up than the other skills that enhance burning we have discussed so far. Critical hits happen fairly often, especially since many of our skills cause multiple hits, not just one, and a 30% chance to cause burning on critical ain’t bad.

Internal Fire: Good, situationally Excellent. As an Ele, a very large percentage of your damage comes from your fire attunement. So a flat out 10% increase in damage in your most damaging attunement is seriously not bad. Couple this with the fact that you can use a conjured weapon in fire attunement and still reap the benefits and this trait can become excellent.

Pyrmomancer’s Alacrity: Okay. All our skills that reduce cooldowns suffer from the fact that you WILL want to switch attunements, so your cooldowns are essentially governed by the overall attunement recharge rate. Nonetheless, this trait can be alright as it will let you do your big fire bursts like fire grab more often. And if you are building for something specific like a siege Ele that meteors all the time…I would definitely take this.

Conjurer: Good. Right now, conjures aren’t used much…but for those people that DO use them, this trait is basically necessary.

Fire’s Embrace: Okay. Man, this skill sounds awesome for an auramancer. But the fact is that it’s so deep in the fire tree, that an auramancer would have to give up way too much to use this effectively.

One with Fire: Terrible. This is one of those traits that seeks to lock you in an attunement. This is almost always bad. And really, the benefit ain’t even all that great. As an Ele, you really don’t want to let a whole bunch of people bunch you in the face so they get burning when you can just use fire 5 to cause burning on criticals.

Persisting Flames: Poor. I really don’t think this is good. Any player is not going to stand in your field long enough for it to matter…and for a GM trait, it’s just sad.

Pyromancer’s Puissance: Terrible. There are WAY, WAY better ways for an Ele to stack might. This trait is a GM trait and inferior to freaking Fire 4 (adept) in might stacking.

My analysis:

1) Ember’s might= terrible, why should I waste 20 pts in fire to get a 5% increase on direct dmg only? What about increase burning dmg by 50 pts or something?

I pretty much agree with the rest of your analysis regarding the other fire traits

MarzAttakz.9608:

Daecollo.9578:

MarzAttakz.9608:

@Teabaker: Isn’t that the old EA bunker build minus Zephyr’s Boon from the newer Auramentalist build post EA nerf? Regen must be insane with that much healing power though.

Doing the Math, its 230 every second with 800 healing power. (about the same regen as the warriors F6 Heal w/o healing power.)

Normally its 130 HPS, but that almost doubles it.

Thanks for the maths, but I’m a little confused now, are you doing it to say it’s fairly weak or pretty good because you generally seem to hate us and I was in the process of writing a kitteny remark back…

Seen as no suggestions have been given to increase ele survivability without relying on full healing specc with amulet and runes, it can be concluded that any message revolving around “necessary nerfs” should not be considered, they are just fabrication of few disgruntled players who got killed repeatedly by a d/d ele.

Just check for yourself, for the last couple of pages we’ve been discussing against a pair of thief players who run gimmick builds and demands to be on top during every encounter, you haven’t see representatives of any other profession here, likewise only in the thief sub-forum you’ll find whine threads regarding eles ( 2-3 of them). let’s end it here otherwise we’ll fill another page with useless numbers crunching

Sorry but it’s not broken , if you read on top of glyphs icon, you’ll see that they cannot be used while transformed :" You cannot use skills while transformed" what the message say

Lol this is too funny, here thieves call noobs those who die to HS but then somebody specc himself to counter HS spammers and thieves start to complain saying that profession is OP

Gaudrath.6725:

I don’t get all this “we suck at underwater combat” complaining. We have so much choice… just move, don’t stand there like a log. Move and use those kitten spells and you will melt stuff. I mean, if I have a complaint about underwater combat is that NPC pathing is so sluggish, you can literally circle-strafe them to death without even getting hit once.

It’s so easy you can drop all your armor even. It doesn’t matter, few things can actually hit you if you do it right. Combine that with our AoE spells and what’s there to complain about? That you can’t nuke a single target real quick? No, but you can destroy a whole bunch of them at once. Just like on land, in fact.

Do pls show me how you “melt” the face of non-stop dodging thieves, bunker engineers and guardians while in an underwater scenarios

Teabaker.9524:

Sustain D/D is kinda overpowered atm, at least after playing it and playing against it. Nobody says that you wont get any compensation if you get nerfed.

Power/healing/toughness-eles with 0/10/0/30/30 are just insane atm: Tons of condition removals, 100% uptime on regeneration for a long time, extremely strong heals, very strong CC (strongest CC ingame?), good AE damage), 12 seconds of stability and protection (without + boon duration), free protection and regeneration if you switch into water and earth, 27 seconds of vigor.

Though that’s D/D, no idea why the hell he is talking about S/D. Why pick scepter over dagger? The range? The spells are utter kitten on scepter and for most offhand-dagger spells you need to be in melee range anyway. So why?

EDIT: Just play some tournaments and you will see that after winning ~2 rounds you will go most of the time against 2 bunker-eles, which will dominate your whole team. You need two send two people to kill one ele and even then they can easily escape.

EDIT2: I like my ele, so I would be very disappointed if Anet nerfs sustain-eles into oblivion. They just need some tweaks on regeneration-uptime. Perma regeneration with 700 healingpower is just too much :/ Bunker D/D is already the only specc we can run (Or S/D but I think scepter is horrible. Maybe it’s just me?).

Stop lying..you have never touched an ele in your entire GW2 life, I just need to read your post:

- 12s protection without any boon duration increase, how?
Using armour of earth? That’s 6s protection and stability for 90s CD and no 0/10/0/30/30 eles do not use cantrip mastery trait, you haven’t even got armour of earth trait…so where does it come from the remaining 6s stability?
Protection without any boon duration ( meaning no points in arcana) is NON EXISTENT on attunement change, you NEED 10 pts in arcana(10% boon duration) to get the trait which grants you the protection boon(5s) by switching to earth
Same goes for all other boons on attunement switch, you need to trait it! there is no free boons on attunements to start with

-Power/healing/toughness and strong dmg, how?
If they want “strong heal” a 0/10/0/30/30 ele will use a cleric amulet with 798 Healing Power and dwayna runes with 165 Healing Power while having little more than 13k HP, the power level is around 1600
- healing calculation:
E.G cleansing wave = base healing + 0.25*Healing Power
= 1500 + 0.25*1263= 1800+ total healing
For somebody with 13k HP that’s quite a lot I’d assume, but the “good” aoe dmg where is it?….ha at that level of power a ring of fire would hit for around 1k giving you 5s burning if you keep passing through it and the duration is 6s, “good” CC? …ha you keep spamming 2-2-2-2 on an ele with frost aura on, a very visible ball of swirling blue lines which gives 2s chill on hit, same goes for shocking aura

If the 0-10-0-30-30 ele use a soldier amulet and power runes, the healing power calculation will be :

E.G cleansing wave = 1500 + 0.25*300 = 1575

Good healing for a toon with over 18k HP, but the skill is 40s CD, even using EA in water that 3k healing would happen once every 40s, in this case you can still heal yourself for 1575 pts every 10.5s, but again I’m using a master trait so I must be rewarded for using it, if not what’s the point of having a master trait?

-27s Vigor?
Unless you use all your cantrips you don’t get any vigor boon on ele, again let me remind you that there is no cantrip master trait, so I’d assume that an ele would use normal CD cantrips = mist form (75s CD), armour of earth( 90s Cd) and cleansing fire( 50s CD).
And now what will it be? Increase boon duration?
Using all cantrips you’d get 40s vigor duration ( 8s duration of boon *3 *70%)
In all this the stability boon has gone up to 10.5 s duration, still looking for your 12s stability boon where it come from.

Or “amazing healing power”?
Again using all cantrips you’d get 31s of vigor duration, and then you’ve wasted all your cantrips good job for the spectacular playstyle

In the end your obvious lies clearly show how little you know about ele and how much credibility should be given to people complaing about ele survivability

Daecollo.9578:

@Arheundel.6451
Lets link a video from 3-4 months ago before the barrage of 1000 nerfs to the thief class! And another video where 80 exotic thieves stomp a bunch of upleveled opponents in WvW with 2 orbs.

I’m sorry, but this is the now, not the past.

The thief in the video was using a d/d and shortbow..pls do find me the update that nerfed this 2 sets behind any possible use, here the most recent changes seen as the video is a month old

October
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/October_2012
November
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates

Pls just stop trying to offend mine and other people’s intelligence, you know better than me that thief did not receive any nerfs ele style ever( did you ever have a skill reduced in dmg by 60% and increase CD by 50%?..ele did)

LordByron.8369:

^^^
so who thinks is OP just change game?
really constructive post…..
There are really a couple of buildd working the rest aren t even viable in pve….

I just remember you what i already said….in PVP setion nobody cares for ele…
Few thiefs and warriors opened 2 threads because they “i win” button doesn t work against a build….. and now people think sky is falling…

Ignore them as they are baseless and they will disappear…

Seriously:
Look in other forum:
Guardian a post of i suspect a thief cmplaining about guardians NO mention of eles
Thief: ele are OP, guardians are OP, mesmers are OP, necro are OP thief is UP
Ranger: no mention
Warriors: no mention
SPVP NOBODY EVER even try….
WWW a single post….about downed lol…..

Exactly ty, it always thieves the ones who cry the louder when they face a build with many anti-mele defensive skills…after all that Metor guy from esport is a BS thief..no wonder he complained about eles while talking to Jonhatan Sharp

Death Reincarnated.3570:

This discussion is really derailing in circles…

Those who think eles are underpowered go switch class, otherwise, learn to play this class.

Yes there are some (minor) things that need adjusting but discussions such as this blow this out of proprotion.

I believe that with me having 10 QP, rank 42, champion magus and over 500 tournaments won as ele , there is really no need to use these kind of comments.
Who really need to learn to play are those asking for nerfs as so far we only see videos and comments coming from WvWvW player….

-not a single video of these “amazing” teams running apparently with 2 s/d bunkers or d/d for what matter, just fabrication over fabrication
-not a single sPvP or tPvP video of “immortal” d/d ele not dieing to anything or anywhere
-not a single logical explanation why somebody fully specced for survival should not be able to survive
-not a single logical explanation why me as glass cannon with 13k HP, 2300 armour need to rely on a 45s CD skill for my burst, still unable to burst down a target in 2-3s compared to mesmer-thief-warrior while these 3 still pack more survivability even as glass cannon
-not a single logical explanation why an ele player should go the glass cannon way and be slaughtered in real PvP when he can at least specc for survival and find a spot in a tournament match

I play a 13k HP ele even in tPvP if I learned how to deal with professions that deal 3k dmg with the auto-attack only then people can learn how to deal with bunkers rather than crying on forums.

Do you want professions with long boon duration? What about these ones?:

Bunker Engineer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fVjzuwkwY0

Bunker Necromancer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpo0_djDmII

Bunker Warrior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4eLkwVnHkg

Bunker Guardian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COOWfBhkPTg

And finally the “OP” Bunker Ele
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOqv-I5Dafw&list=PLBF2912D72F052EC7&index=17&feature=plpp_video
It appears as you don’t die in this game..if people don’t hit you, amazing!

Anyway long boons duration seems to be quite common among all professions, in the end all I see is butt hurt players who don’t know how ele works and got their butt handed on a silver plate

plasmacutter.2709:

roostapro.9827:

Ele Attunement IS OUR Weapon Swapping, as we are swapping to another element…..

Indeed.

The issue here is you have a bunch of D/D eles in this thread who want to have their cake and eat it too.

This is part of the tradeoff of D/D. if you want to specialize in anti-ranged there are other weapons more viable for that.. in exchange for the perks you lose by losing a dagger or two.

While you make perfect sense with your point is also true that the elementalist is the only profession locked in range and that go against the all “versality” scene, at this point only option for Anet is to change the mechanic for the conjures so to actually make them viable and resolve the range problem

To the OP-
As others have already stated there is nothing wrong with ele dmg, I don’t want Anet to increase our dmg any further, what I want from Anet is to refine the in-built survivability of our skillsets, at the same time they can reduce the healing of water skills so that we won’t have any really unkillable profession.

Furthermore we must be sure that this in-built survivability does not rely on traits to be effective like for other professions

Daecollo.9578:

TwoBit.5903:

Many of those people were bad. They were wearing whites and rarely used cc, condition removals etc. They were also classes countered by d/d eles. Pit us up against one competent Mesmer, Guardian or Engineer and it’s a completely different story; we’d have problems simply avoiding ccs and would often be forced to run away.

Eles cannot get 30 seconds of protection, that’s not to say we don’t have high protection uptime. It depends on how long we stay in earth attunement. With max boon duration we’re looking at maybe 7 seconds of protection every time we switch to earth, and it’s not likely that we’ll switch out without using at least some skills like earthquake or churning earth. The same goes for regeneration.

4-5 eles doing the same thing? It may be a powerful roaming group but in now way would it stop a zerg. But if victory hinged on killing noobs and caravans then I suppose it’d be op.

With Shocking Aura they were getting stunned every time they hit the Ele, and saying they were wearing whites is pretty much an excuse, everyone who is 80 assume are in fully exotic gear, and everyone under that is in green gear, there were only 2 underconned players, the other 4 were level 80, they did not use there CCs correctly, but you cannot tell me that that isn’t insane if there were 2-3 more eles with him doing the same thing, they could ring around the rosey and destroy people in groups.

So people get stunned WHEN attacking the ele who is using a defensive skill whose purpose is to discourage other players from hitting the ele for few secs, what exactly is OP about that? is there something which force people to spamm skills regardless of the situation?

So by following your logic, a group of people killed by dagger storm because they kept shooting at the thief, should be listened in their efforts to get dagger storm nerfed, because it has stopped them from shooting at thief

To me this kind of logic can be summarized like this:
" I want to press 1-2-3 when I see a red name on the screen and the guy must die, if he doesn’t die is because is OP"

Daecollo.9578:

Arheundel.6451:

Daecollo.9578:

The problem with the weaponset Bunker Build is its very hard to destroy and offers amazing group utility as well as survivability while retaining good (AOE) damage.

In WVWVW they are almost invincible, 4-5 ele (which i’ve been seeing more and more) or teams of them can destroy entire groups of enemy players without much effort because they are so hard to kill, provide really good team buffs, and do amazing AOE Damage.

A group of them just constantly heal eachother/constantly lay down the AOEs/Destroy everyone else, there is nothing that even comes close to beating them except a good “well” necromancer, which are rare since its a rarely played class.

You’re wrong!
All you face are burst players with the same old build seen million of times, once you face the exception, you’ll understand the limitation of the bunker build.
There duellist rangers, pro mesmers and more

Eles don’t heal each other constantly that’s a huge lie, a bunker ele run with 13k and 1.3k healing power so each healing skill seems to fill up the HP bar everytime and that’s wrong, simply the bunker build got a lower HP cap to fill compared to a soldier amulet user.
Then many eles may use ether renewal, but given the amount of interrupts on short CD ( mush shorter than 15s) there is really little exuse to let an ele use it constantly, if you’re unable to interrupt a 3s channeling skill…well that’s hardly a balance problem.

There are professions in game which can stack multiple conditions with ease and far too often, engineers and necros can fill you up with bleeding in no time, on top of cripple/fear/knockback/weakness/poison/burning/chill….everything.

The elementalist got already the lowest HP and lowest armour, once you remove the healing and condition removal can you tell me how an ele supposed to survive?
We’ve got no in-build defensive mechanism by default : no reliable pets, no stealth and no clones( this always by the way), no high HP, no heavy armour, no multi CC skills on low CD, no uber dmg .

Basically because of the heavy set of nerfs this profession has gone through, the ele playerbase has been pushed in a corner, try to outlast your enemy or GTFO
At equal level of skill the survival department is all that’s left for eles if we want even be taken in consideration for serious PvP, this profession is so badly designed in respect to the scope of the game

- far too many manual aiming skill
- overly slow spells activation
- overly low auto-attack dmg
- extremely complex combo system
- excessive CD of many vital skill

Especially the last one, it’s the main reason why people stear clear from staff and scepter, given the amount of gap closers in this game to keep range from mele attackers is literally impossible, the staff got CC skill ranging from 30 up to 40s CD while other profession got gap closer with a 15s CD or lower and in meantime the staff skills are so slow and lacklustre that they require heavy snare to hit any target with half-brain active.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBn32Fqm9w

Make me a video that prooves me wrong, this is a video that backs up my case.
Imagine 4-5 Eles doing the same thing, it would destroy raids of people in WvW, because honestly, if you play correctly, nothing can stop that train.

Once I saw the huge amounts of toughness stacked with 30+ seconds of protection and regeneration, with the CC Removal and Immunities I laughed. :>

Low Autoattack Damage?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Whip – Eles Dagger’s 1.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Double_Strike – Thieves Dagger’s 1.
Yours does 47 more base damage with more then twice the range.

There is a reason why Anet does not take WvWvW in consideration regarding balance, a game mode dictated by gear differences, people who never set foot in PvP before and generally people afraid of real PvP

Hey but if you want it that way, here have fun ^^:

WvWvW Thief:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Iir24kHcSk (don’t miss what the thief does at 3:20 – 3: 60 lol)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjq9n96WYKs&list=PLBF2912D72F052EC7&index=15&feature=plpp_video

Ele VS Thief
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beHJkv5gaIU&list=PLBF2912D72F052EC7&index=13&feature=plpp_video

-NOTE: This is not to flame thieves or anything, only want to shows that those complaining about eles are not necessarily some noobs who fail at using this “OP” build which apparently ele got

Do you want to see the real “God of GW2”? here my friend:
[url]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqrZEtKbgVY&feature=player_embedded[/url]

Hmm that’s quite a lot of “unkillable” professions, guess it does always come down to skill am I right? After all you have stated that:“if you play correctly, nothing can stop that train”

Daecollo.9578:

The problem with the weaponset Bunker Build is its very hard to destroy and offers amazing group utility as well as survivability while retaining good (AOE) damage.

In WVWVW they are almost invincible, 4-5 ele (which i’ve been seeing more and more) or teams of them can destroy entire groups of enemy players without much effort because they are so hard to kill, provide really good team buffs, and do amazing AOE Damage.

A group of them just constantly heal eachother/constantly lay down the AOEs/Destroy everyone else, there is nothing that even comes close to beating them except a good “well” necromancer, which are rare since its a rarely played class.

You’re wrong!
All you face are burst players with the same old build seen million of times, once you face the exception, you’ll understand the limitation of the bunker build.
There duellist rangers, pro mesmers and more

Eles don’t heal each other constantly that’s a huge lie, a bunker ele run with 13k and 1.3k healing power so each healing skill seems to fill up the HP bar everytime and that’s wrong, simply the bunker build got a lower HP cap to fill compared to a soldier amulet user.
Then many eles may use ether renewal, but given the amount of interrupts on short CD ( mush shorter than 15s) there is really little exuse to let an ele use it constantly, if you’re unable to interrupt a 3s channeling skill…well that’s hardly a balance problem.

There are professions in game which can stack multiple conditions with ease and far too often, engineers and necros can fill you up with bleeding in no time, on top of cripple/fear/knockback/weakness/poison/burning/chill….everything.

The elementalist got already the lowest HP and lowest armour, once you remove the healing and condition removal can you tell me how an ele supposed to survive?
We’ve got no in-build defensive mechanism by default : no reliable pets, no stealth and no clones( this always by the way), no high HP, no heavy armour, no multi CC skills on low CD, no uber dmg .

Basically because of the heavy set of nerfs this profession has gone through, the ele playerbase has been pushed in a corner, try to outlast your enemy or GTFO
At equal level of skill the survival department is all that’s left for eles if we want even be taken in consideration for serious PvP, this profession is so badly designed in respect to the scope of the game

- far too many manual aiming skill
- overly slow spells activation
- overly low auto-attack dmg
- extremely complex combo system
- excessive CD of many vital skill

Especially the last one, it’s the main reason why people stear clear from staff and scepter, given the amount of gap closers in this game to keep range from mele attackers is literally impossible, the staff got CC skill ranging from 30 up to 40s CD while other profession got gap closer with a 15s CD or lower and in meantime the staff skills are so slow and lacklustre that they require heavy snare to hit any target with half-brain active.

Semprenaviguare.2936:

hello , i am Elementalist Spvp and Tpvp 40 , i have only play elementalist ,
i have + 1000 tournement played
i play a elementalist tank/dps 0 0 10 30 30 with berserker amulet and sigil of energie .
on can trip specialisation .
i am a normal player , i play D/D

99% 1 vs 1 my opponent cannot kill me , and if a player are very good he can maybe kill me after 3 minute .
i can tank a position vs 2 or 3 player + 1 minutes .
i can tank graveyard vs 5 players ( medium player ) + 30 secondes .
i can fight fight and kill in the same time 2 thief without target , just radom aoe , dodge , and can trip survive .
mesmer isn t a problem , aoe party , finish clone
necro isn t a probleme i can remove all conditions when i want
war isn t a probleme , dodge , miss , dodge , miss cc ,
guardien tank not probleme i can /danse he cannot kill me .
guardien spirit is the same of war dodge , miss dodge miss .
engiener not probleme , aoe .
rodeur is not very difficult
i can rez a player on invulnerability or finish him on stability or invulnerability
i can rez himself if a heal elementaliste pet pop when i am on brume .

just elementalist spe who a god spé .
i don t want elementalist nerf because i am very happy play this class

but the reality is only that elementalist is op .
i am not a god , i am just a normal player !

i think too Elementalist D/D spé can trip is op .
because this specialistion have not probleme vs all class .

on pve can farm all event solo
can solo champion
can solo donjon , legendary boss and pack of mob .
on spvp can solo lord with 4 adds
on www can escap a bus , can fight and kill 1 vs 10 players unstuff ( look darkphoenix , is very good elementalist but i know much elementalist who make the same ) .

he have no counter class on 1 vs 1 for kill a elementalist .
and on battle fight just swat elements is a very good support !

You will never be able to tank 1 player of equal skill level who know how the ele works, you’re built for survival while you face people built for pure burst dmg who are unable to recognise how the ele works, give me a single burst profession who know you…and you go down in no time

Of course ele D/D tank got counter….an equally skilled player

From GW2 GURU FORUM:

@Prince vingador
why do people think ele is op? For me is one of the weakest class,i think mesmer are the op class in pvp,i have my share of pvp and eles are not op in any way.

P.S – You holding 2 people is pure bullkitten, take 2 decent players, a necro and mesmer…you last 0.5s, one shatter burst you and the other corrupt boon you at the right time…you are kaboom after 0.5s, Good Luck winning against players of 40+ when they put the matchmaking

So blind seems to be rather effective, will use it to my advantage

Omnio.3652:

Clones are annoying, but if you have damage you kill clone in one or two shots, I always try to find the one who runs around – mesmer. Also buffs and stuff like that helps, for example if he has glory boost, clones are not getting it.

I played mesmer but now I have engineer. As some said, Thief and Mesmer can go full dps unlike others in sPvP. I went with my engineer full dps with gadgets. Thiefs cant almost touch me, unless I dont notice or they are really good – knockback is my friend. And mesmer, if I see him, he goes down fast.

I think there is the same problem for some as was for me in one moba (dota like) game. I thought many characters are overpowered, they were, some more some less, but in random play with random people you are going to see it most. While e-sport players who train pvp a lot had usualy no problem and can adapt etc. Thief is cool with glass cannon build but imagine that same build in tPvP, one stun, focus, thief down. Same with mesmer. Unless he’d take 2 stun breakers.

But yes, I got your point. I think mesmer is incredible in survability. As full dps I used to take mirror images I think it is, two clones and stun breaker and teleport – stun breaker too. Third skill was optional. So with greatsword (pushback), sword + pistol (daze, imobilize, cripple and invulnerability while 2nd spell on sword) it was pretty cool. I could just catch someone in the middle of his “friends” and I had almost no problems killing him. My other build was conditions / tanky – staff, scepter + torch. It has 3 invis (if you take decoy and mass invis), also mirror images for clones. That build was even crazier, 3 times invis does a lot, clones make your enemy go crazy while they kill all of em and still they dont see you (because that invis), distorion thx to clones which I could make without any problem – staff and scepter = 2 clones, mirror images = 2 clones, decoy = 1. Also stacking confusion on my enemy was easy.

Both these builds seems strong. But still, first build dies fast, second kills slow.

P.S. On my engi I don’t have so much trouble with mesmer, probably also because I played him, but I hate necros as hell, condition spread as … and they just don’t die at all. Warriors the same. Seems to me all classes are a bit OP so you really need to learn how to dodge and use your skills properly. Its like Street Fighter kinda, you need to be fast and precise, but you are fighting in 3D enviroment.

Recognize the mesmer is not difficult at all, the problem is that even if you recognize the mesmer nothing change, the moment you reach him, he’ll switch to staff and phase retreat dropping target in th meantime, then he’ll go stealth, then he phase retreat again…in the meantime there are 5 pets stacking bleeding on you.
Basically the mesmer does nothing more than hide for half the time, letting his clones doing the work, he can always phase retreat+chaos field and let’s not forget about illusion berseker which cripple you non stop.
All this is still not enough, they can switch to sword/pistol and chain daze every 20s , immobilize/spike you every 15s with an incredible easy to land combo, during which they become invulnerable ( distortion)

There’s really no counter, destroying clones change nothing as they can be summoned often and with little trouble, to try and catch the mesmer is very hard, so many escape skills, I can’t believe there people complaining about warriors dmg or ele survivability, both these classes must heavily trait in the respective lines to obtain those results….mesmers instead by design got dmg and survivability

Solori.6025:

That was a really good discussion..
Question though..

What build are S/D ele’s in tpvp running that brought on the hate?

I felt when running S/D that it was way to slow vs D/D

Edit: I also love the gentle “L2P” Jsharp issued to people complaining about everything

I can assure you that there is no OP s/d ele build for tPvP or sPvP for what matters, it’s the same old glass cannon s/d build ( which very few people still run anyway) or at most the typical 0/10/0/30/30 “bunker” ele.

In tPvP you still see double guardian ( one offensive and other defensive) with necro, mesmer and thief, few teams run with ele and those are staff water support ( lol) or glass cannon s/d

Yeah Mr Sharp is right…the l2p message is way too good

Gintoki.6405:

in all seriousness though from listening to the chat yesterday between some of the top tourney teams and johnathan sharp, it seems the will be trying to make more viable builds, and small changes per patch in order to not mess with us too much, the last patch wasnt really like tht but you get the idea :P, one thing we can be fairly sure of a nerf however is the downed state we have.. seems like alot of qq about that.

you gotta remember that classes are normally balanced for top end play mostly, and ele is a hard charachter to learn. i can understand why its so hard to balance when its such a complex class.

The fact is I don’t see any Top Players, I only see a BS thief spammer and staff well necro spammer whining because their zerg tactic where they need to press 2-3-4-5 to get kills…can get countered somehow.

C’mon guys how can those two who play such easy mode roles can be considered Top Players?

- One just go around invisible and one-shot people with 20% HP while still invisible…if everything fail: thieves guild the IWIN elite

- The other just sit from the top of an hill spamming wells with his staff, going around with no less than one person..if things get hairy: plague elite followed by full DS bar usage, and of course by the time DS bar is over you’re against 3-4 people

Both get countered by eles specced for survival..so they QQ, that’s all there is to it

Milennin.4825:

You know your class is in danger when the community doesn’t even bother trying to convince the devs to bring the class’s other weapons up to par anymore, but feel it’s more needing to defend the last the decent weapon set they still have from becoming the next useless thing.

Well there are already countless thread with suggestions on how to improve the other weapon sets, they’ve been up for months…not a single answer from the Devs.

Look at the conjures, so many good suggestions and we receive useless buffs as an answer rather than doing the only useful suggestion so far: change attunement skills based on the conjure used instead than losing all 20 skills…but nothing.

Now we’re left only with dagger/dagger set as viable option, we can only try our best to defend it, but I’ve got little hope seeing at the latest round of nerfs the ele suffered.

I’m referring to the nerf to Healing ripple minor trait basically Anet is hell bent on destroying ele survivability while leaving untouched the offensive department, they simply look at the number and say :" Ok ele dmg is very high not need to buff it", but it’s not that we need buff in numbers instead we need buff on the conditions required to that dmg, better to have lower dmg but more consistent ways to apply it.

That’s why people love d/d…you don’t need hard CC to land your skill 2 everytime

Here few comments taken from GW2 GURU FORUM in light of the recent comments in yesterday PvP livestream, I’m again referring to the comments of two “top” players : Metor ( BS thief roamer for esport team) and Loweell ( Wells necro staff spammer for SuperSquad):

@Featherman
I think that’s metor being silly. Like him saying bunker s/d is too powerful, which is understandable since it sort of counters necros and certain thieves. But no, it’s not. Please don’t listen to him Jonathan :[

@DLeague
It wasn’t meteor saying s/d is too powerful, he was just agreeing with the comment along with everyone else. If you actually played paid tournaments you would know ele is currently the most necessary proffesion right now. The current meta is heavy aoe damage which ele has combined with unbelievable heals, aswell as having the only downstate which can avoid being stomped AND survive the aoe spam by removing all conditions and healing half your hp bar.
Did i mention ele also has the second best mobility in the game? Did i also mention ele has the best condition removal in the game?

@MisfitAndy
Did you mention that ele has far worse damage than any other class to achieve those things? You can’t have GREAT aoe damage and have the best condition removal. You can’t have “unbelievable heals” and expect to do decent damage.

So basically, they are going to nerf elementalist, which is already the most difficult class to play effectively. If this happens I am done.

@DLeague
l2p QQ ragequit inc.
fact is ele has the best healing in the game, along with the 2nd best mobility, also has THE BEST condition removal in the game, and still puts out good AOE damage with all this support. We could also go into the buffs and combo fields/blast finishers it provides to the team

@Featherman
He was agreeing with Lowell. No one else was really, except about the down state which is really powerful in the meta. Both Meto and Lowell happen to use classes/specs which are countered by bunker eles so I think it’s funny hearing it from those two and not really anyone else. And yeah I’m aware of the ele’s lists of features, just as I’m aware of their many possible counters. And S/D being too powerful? Maybe if you want to tickle enemies to death or hope that DT lands. S/D has too many drawbacks to be considered “too powerful.” D/D is clearly the better weapon set, even when using bunker stats. Hits harder, heals slightly better, and the tradeoff of range isn’t much of an issue since boon application and healing occurs in close proximity.

But anyway, this type of discussion is best left for other parts of the forums. I’m glad they’re looking into adding in some much needed features such as spectator and custom arenas. Hotjoin gets boring and is only good for testing out builds, tPvP is hard to organize if you don’t want to get farmed, and paid tournaments have a barrier that lock out too many people. There needs to be modes that help introduce players to higher levels of play, not lock them out of it.

@ Blindude
Its logical the class with lowest health to have the best condition removal and if you ve noticed the aoe removal has been actually nerfed alongside the staff nerf.
Its also quite logical that the class with the lowerst armor should have more healing too.As for aoes well its just the current meta.
The thing is that Metor claimed there that playing 8 hours per day made him eligible on fixing the game but imo he can also like everyone else get carried over by his “personal preferences” and kitten other classes.
Pointing out the problem is the easy part ,fixing it without *ing up the class is the difficult one.
(Not to mention that most saying ele is strong , even bordeline op are not playing that class and see the limitations on the gameplay..you cant have an unplayable class for the new player )

It would appear as I wasn’t the only who got annoyed by the recent comments of these players who consider themself to be the TOP just because they practice 8 hrs per day and collected hundreds of QP..all this practice but still acting like your common newb guy who start whining everytime something happen to counter his cheesy build abused for months

From harder to easier, my opinion based on experience for each class:

1) Necromancer
2) Elementalist
3) Engineer
4) ranger
5) Warrior
6) Thief
7) Mesmer – loaded shatter build , jumped in spvp and started laughing hard on how I could kill people with practically zero effort, all I had to do is press 5-3-7-3-F1 and win lol
8) Guardian – first time played guardian, with no clue on how to play one, I loaded a soldier amulet, pump up power, jump in the middle of a zerg with a greatsword, ended up top score (200+) for 3 consecutive matches…that’s all

NaturalPortman.9562:

Arheundel.6451:

Sprawl.3891:

some points for those that cant watch:

opinions from top players:
- bunker eles and ele down state needs nerf
- aoe dmg too high
- they play every day 8 hours a day lol
-two people pulled off private servers for ladders/match making
-pvp/wvw patch some time in jan/feb/march ..
-big balance patch dec 14th for pvp

Correction:

- s/d eles "bunkers"are strong but nothing compared to guardians-
- aoe dmg while ressing others it’s a problem, nothing to to with aoe dmg itself-

Thank you

I believe they said S/D ele bunkers are the strongest bunker atm but isn’t anything compared to the pre-“nerf” guardian. As in the guardian with block bug.

That’s one of my reason regarding my comments on these top players, I dare you to find me right now a video of a top team using a s/d bunker on clocktower or graveyard rather than a guardian, that comment from Metor was kittening absurd…. a s/d ele stronger than bunker hammer guardian..I really heard everything now, that’s a “top player” for ya

So basically from this PvP stream this is what I could understand:

- A thief roamer(Metor) and necro staff spammer(Lowell) complain about bunker eles
- But those complaining use speccs which get countered by bunker eles, isn’t that how meta works?
- Mr Sharp state that even now the “bunker” eles are no their watch list

And this how it goes:

“Dear Anet rock is OP but paper is ok, pls nerf rock.
Your sincerely
Scissor”

Anet- “Dear Scissor you’re right, we’ll nerf rock and tone down paper for you”

Sprawl.3891:

some points for those that cant watch:

opinions from top players:
- bunker eles and ele down state needs nerf
- aoe dmg too high
- they play every day 8 hours a day lol
-two people pulled off private servers for ladders/match making
-pvp/wvw patch some time in jan/feb/march ..
-big balance patch dec 14th for pvp

Correction:

- s/d eles "bunkers"are strong but nothing compared to guardians-
- aoe dmg while ressing others it’s a problem, nothing to to with aoe dmg itself-

All in all it’s funny how people consider themself “top players” while having such one-dimensional points of view, it’s hilarious how the only people to complain about bunker eles are :

1) Metor- necro ( typical bleed/chill/fear staff spammer) from estars
2) Lowell – thief roamer ( BS spammer or trap jumper) from SuperSquad

What a coincidence that those complaining are those who get easily countered by bunker eles at the very least I’m glad that Mr Sharp has mentioned how they watch closely the forum themself.

From people considered as an example by the community I’d expect no less than integrity and transparency, instead all I get is veiled whines with the appearance of genuine questions

Xeph.4513:

Here it is, please feel free to discuss.

I think you forgot to post the link Xeph
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByqoWsnz-I

Psikerlord.2569:

I thank Jericho for his post, he is obviously an experienced ele, but what it seems to suggest to me is that bunker eles are indeed OP: 3 stunbreakers, tons of condition removal, speed/mobility, big healing, control effects… and yet still able to deal reasonable damage… but perhaps it comes back to basic ele class design and the 4 attunements.

Trouble with drawing out a fight against an ele is that a thief only has so much burst, and the ele knows it. A good ele will manage/wait out the shortbow or pistol ranged attrition, negate the burst and then the cycle begins again – either something will come off CD for the next burst – or the fight takes so long that allies arrive (and then it goes the way of superior numbers). But the ele has achieved his purpose of keeping the point and wins by default.

You just described how every single bunker works in this game : a) multiple conditions removal b) high defense c) multiple stun breaker

How is this any different from guardians/mesmer/engineers…and thief condition with traps? I see no difference outside a biased opinion

Curring.9752:

The only thing I see “OP” is the amount of condi removal a D/D has, conditions should really be counter to the D/D builds as they pack a lot of healing and high defense however we have a crap ton of condi removal so even if we get rooted – a direct counter we’re out of it in a heartbeat.

Though D/D now outperforms the other two weapons sets but that is only due to the others being nerfed to a ridiculous point without any forms of buffs. D/D now supports better than the staff can and can dish out better burst than S/D. I hate the fact I am forced into D/D, I’m not the in your face kind of person, I like raining AoEs or being the support, I thought I’d get both with Staff but I got the support and some AoEs that thought they where damage. Now we need either a buff to the other two weapon sets in terms of damage or create a new weapon set that is 1200 ranged DPS so we don’t have to do D/D just to get a bit of DPS.

But if we take all the weapon sets as they stand without any trait , just counting skill 1 to 5; we’ll see that d/d got a single condition removal!

So when talking about “huge condition removal” you should refer to the build itself no the weapon set, on its own d/d got far less condition removal than s/f isn’t that right?

Kardiamond.6952:

@Arheundel

I don’t die to BS thief.(thought I hate fighting an invis ennemy0
I don’t die to shatter Mesmer.
I surely don’t die to HB warrior.

But I die to good player, and have yet to counter Elem D/D. Note that I ddn’t say they were OP, but they for sure got something, since you see them pop like preteen at a Justin Bieber show.

That come as no surprise, think about it.
The increase in number of eles is indirectly proportional to the amount of people complaining about this profession.

At most now you see threads like :" QQ We’re forced to use DD" – “Conjures skill suck” and similar stuff, no more intimidating titles like :" The ele design is flawed" and this because now even your average person who like the mage archetype can make an ele, pick d/d and do fairly good in PvP.

Before you had people picking a staff and getting oneshotted by : warriors-thieves-mesmers etc etc, before you had situations were 2 people of similar exp in game would pick and ele and mesmer respectively and perform greatly different from each other where the mesmer would destroy consistently the ele and this was the reason behind the amount of Ele QQ thread a couple of months ago.

The d/d set is the only set which does not require uber elaborate tactics to land even your basic attacks and that’s why new ele players can enjoy the profession without worrying about memorizing some combo to land basic attack not even talking about heavy hitting skills ( where the all tactic plan talk should exist), me as advanced player can safely land skill 1 to 3 without using some long CD snare which can be saved for the real heavy hitting skills like fire and earth 5, to be used at the right moment.

All other sets should be changed accordingly as I’ve stated before, we have given plenty of suggestions regarding staff and scepter like reduction in dmg for skill 1 to 3 but more responsiveness like not be forced in waiting 3-4s for the skill to activate; I mean how can a developer talk about active combat MMO when a profession is forced to use skills comparable to the ones found in a turn based RPG?

Atomic Sharks.7250:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

LordByron.8369:

We need serious offensive buffs for staff and some general buff for focus….

Aside from being very glassy – would love to get feedback as to why this build isn’t ‘seriously offensive’

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/My-PvE-level-80-Ele/first#post825360

Always feel like I’m some abnormal freak when people say Staff Ele is underpowered and I have no troubles whatsoever.

Here is the secret of why the staff ele is consider UP, it is a very difficult secret to keep because not everyone can do it. its called Eruption, it is the single most damaging move in your arsenal of skills(hard to hit with i know) you just have to get the timing down, not everyone can hit people with this, that is why there is a move called shockwave and frozen ground or if melee just pop it where you are standing. i tested it, on a decently clad warrior if he doesn’t remove the bleed it does about 33% of his total health(i was condition focused soo). but keep it a secret or don’t. that is why staff eles are considered UP, not many can time it right or hit with eruption forget about the blast effect if you need to. even without focusing on condition damage at all it will do a grand total of 3k damage with very little or no focus upon condition damage

That’s why staff is considered UP like the scepter, because you need long CD skills to land your only fonts of dmg and that make you extremely weak when they’re on CD
I know the all frozen ground-shockwave idea, but that’s too much of investment for a moderate result, at full HP you won’t kill anybody with that combo, you just wasted 3 skills to deal something like 7k dmg on a 24k HP warrior who can hit you for 1.5k dmg with his axe auto-attack which does not require any particular skill to actually land

Bsquared.3421:

Kardiamond.6952:

Oh a Prediction : don’t underestimate the players. People hate to be killed, but they hate even more not being able to kill somoene. And if a good DD Elem don’t want to die, he won’t die. So you’ll see the wave of crying popping on the forums. Just give it some time.

Arheundel know too it’s coming, that’s why he is doing this post.

Elem, Brace yourself! Hope that they buff your other spec and not nerf your only viable one!

I hate that first sentiment you discuss, because a D/D ele built in such a way so that he/she can always escape will ALSO have some difficulty killing other players. For example, the 0/10/0/30/30 spec used by dapheonix is tremendously difficult to kill, but it also doesn’t kill others in seconds and dapheonix might be the best Ele in the game. When people whine, “but he got away,” I always retort, “but you’re only whining about that cause he couldn’t kill you either!” (this is not to say D/D Ele’s can’t kill people quickly, cause they can, especially the Aura build varieties.)

And yeah, i’m bracing for the D/D nerf (which is hilarious, cause they just buffed it the patch before last) if only because everyone and their brother is rolling it these days and other players find the spec to be a nuisance, so it’ll get nerfed eventually. Even though it takes a high skill level to play well, and even when done so it can’t kill players as fast as a thief, it’ll get the nerf bat. Of course, they likely won’t address the root cause of the issue, that is we’re ALL D/D cause staff and scepter blow. Staff was only used for because of the EA blast finisher, they should have never taken that away without providing increased offensive power to make up for the loss in healing/survivability.

The problem is that those complaining cannot be considered PvPers, players who smash their combo on an ele using mistform or shocking aura should not even be allowed to complain let alone be the reason behind balance.

To be able to beat every other profession I created an alt for each one of them, learned their traits-combos and animations and now I beat these so called “pro” with a 13k HP ele, all these champions XX/ r++ get destroyed in no time; shatter mesmer-BS thief-100b warrior you mention them, once I hit them for a 4k burning speed+6k firegrab, they’ll start running…and running…on the forums to QQ about eles being too strong.

The class was built around versality, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise if I just adapt to all kind of dangers, kitten that’s what they designed the ele for!

Do people expect me to die 24/7 to a warrior 100b after having faced hundreds of them? Do people expect me to die to a shatter mesmer who use the same rotation over and over? Do people expect me not to use shocking aura against a thief who’s more worried about unleashing its combo rather than check what the target using as defense?

The hell with this bullkitten, I can beat a d/d ele on every other profession…simply because I have played the profession and know how it works.

We all remember when Jon Peters said:" people need to learn to play , you can find a counter for everything", kitten right man!
Does Anet expect me to die to a newb spammer who press 1-2-3 everytime?
It does make no sense at all, so ele d/d tank are “unkillable”? LoL
First I don’t attack when the auras are up, I know churning earth animation and the teleport combo, I know that and this, I time your defense and once down I send you to the netherworld.

Same strategy applied to all other profession:
1) Guardian = I made one and memorized the hammer animation ( to avoid skill 4); memorized the virtues mechanic and how mace/shield works with boons duration and more
2) Mesmer= I made one and memorized how sword/pistol combos work, how to avoid distortion and how to avoid the burst combo with a dodge and punish the mesmer in all kindness
3) etc etc etc

People should stop to kittening complain and make the class themself, that’s why d/d eles are not problem for me, I can even use scepter/focus and and still kill a d/d ele, I spent great amounts of time practicing with my ele and now I should be rewarded not punished because some random guy, who prefer to go and spamm 1-2-3 all day long, lose horribly to me

Yagamy.1569:

u just need a good build on ele and some practise just like in every other class really
only because u have more skills does not mean its more hard or anything
and "
you’d realize that the ele community is left with nothing else than a single weapon set as the rest has been nerfed to the ground "

the only thing they changed with the latest patch was 1 trait that got fixed and they nerfed a bit heals for ele bunkers because it was way too op but u can still play support ele and is not bad at all against heavy condi teams
so u can play ele with staff or D-D with sharing auras really strong aswell or roamer S/D the only useless weapon we have right now is just the focus

they also buffed our downed state and now we’re like the best class in downed state because u can counter everything with mist , and they buffed ether renewal wich is good now against cond so really nothing to cry about ele getting nerf and stuff like that lol

No they nerfed the water 15 minor trait by 50% on healing output and removed the blast finisher from EA so that now a “bunker” ele can get killed easily by any decent player even on his own, not like a guardian where even sending a good player is not enough..you still need at least one more person.

The problem with ele is that all weapon sets should be able to switch role on the fly regardless of your runes or jewels, with d/d you can do that as long as you have at least 15 water you can heal your allies consistently but with the staff…

As you can’t stay on the frontline with a staff because you become an obvious target with your 13k HP and slow attacks, 13k HP because as support staff you want to maximise healing right?! But by that time I don’t see reason for a top team to pick a staff ele over a necro/mesmer support..sorry the time of staff eles is over.

That’s leave us with d/d ..or s/d if you like to lose: shocking aura-frozen burst-ring of earth-dragon’s breath-burning speed only to use dragon’s tooth and phoenix which earh requiring 3s to hit targets( unless you play at mele range and at that point I see no reason to play s/d over d/d)

The time is now to let our voice be heard before it’s too late, I want the entire ele community to join this thread, because I want Anet to know that we will not sit quietly this time in case they nerf our “last” hope for this profession.

I’m referring to the dagger/dagger weapon set, everybody will agree on the fact that this weapon set truly reflect the versality of the ele and that’s the reason almost everybody using it, but now….

The amount of whine threads regarding ele d/d is on the rise, but this time I won’t sit quietly waiting for another round of nerfs, I don’t want to see our last viable set to be reduced to nothing more than a joke, with skills which require an “eternity” to land or show any effect like with all other weapon sets.

In all truth, I’m a 13k HP d/d burst ele who currently breeze through sPvP or paid/free tournaments with not many big problems; I’m not an auramancer, not a tank and don’t have 30 in Arcana but still destroy people who call themself “pro”.

I’ve been playing an ele from day1 of GW1 with GW2 that’s like almost 8 years as an ele player, I won’t play anything else ever( still got alts but that’s more to test other professions and learn their animations) and I’d rather quit if I can’t play an ele

Now I want Anet to take d/d as indication of true balance for eles and buff/nerf the other weapon sets accordingly, what I don’t wnat is Anet to listen once again to whine threads and over nerf the ele, like they did with scepter/focus (GAMESCOM 2011 version with Chaplain’s video , it was very strong and competitive compared to now) and staff ( G-Star 2011 Karl’s video, static field was 4s stun, meteor storm would hit people and fireball was min 1k dmg).

In both instances, we had whine threads created by people who didn’t even try the game and for “obvious reasons” , Anet listened to them and unnecessarily nerfed to the ground those 2 weapon sets.

I wish now for the entire ele community to join this thread and let our voice heard, let’s “scream” so loud that Anet won’t be able to “ignore” us, pls don’t let our last hope be destroyed, Thank you.

Chriswck.6490:

What’s wrong with you, man. Chill out. That wasn’t even the main point of his post.

And yes, last hopes on tomorrow’s Guru discussion

While I understand your point, you should try to understand my frustation, if you’d be an ele player from the start of this game development, you’d realize that the ele community is left with nothing else than a single weapon set as the rest has been nerfed to the ground , to a point where you cannot even seriously consider in using them.

Everytime some “player” start crying on a forum, the ele does get not nerfed but literally destroyed.

Look at scepter focus, when the game first come out , that was the most talked set for eles, but because of complaints from people who didn’t even tried the game, that weapon set got nerfed behinh its original scope:

1) Dragon’s tooth changed from fast ground target skill to the cartoon like parody skill which is now, where you can go and take a coffie, come back and the dragon’s tooth still need to land -_-

2) Phoenix from the the dmg+healing fast travel projectile at 15s CD to the 20s CD slow moving -matrix style – projectile

3) Shatterstone changed from the decent dmg status to the ridicolously useless skill which is now

4) Auto-attack dmg reduced by over 70% on all weapon sets( fireball dmg from 2k using a full powered ele to the current version of 600 dmg with a 30 fire ele)

And the list goes on and on, there was a time even staff was good and not the PvE only weapon which is now, I’m really tired of how this game balance is handled, nerfs are given out without actual testing and based on the comment of clueless players.

These “pro” players whine about ele tanks d/d lol, I use a 13k HP ele and still destroy people: champion illusionist-champion shadow-paid tournament whatever you mention and you know why?

It’s because I played this profession from the start, there was a time where I was getting destroyed 100 times over 100 attempts , but rather than jump on the (lol) mesmer/thief/guardian bandwagon I sticked to the profession and now…r45/championmagus/10 QP, people see me alone on a point ( while having 13k HP) and run away or call for help before even trying.

I spent months training and now I will enjoy my well deserved “pro” status, obtained not because of skills which deal 3k dmg at single press of button ( sword skill2 mesmer, dagger skill2 thief etc etc) but because I learned to twitch in every direction and still hit people consistently from every angle, predicting almost every single move, I don’t count on OP defensive skills, I dodge a lot and I dodge what must be avoided at all costs.

Just go in the ele sub-forum and try to find a “whine thread” about other professions, there are no whiners in the ele community, only people who like to put efforts in things and get the rewards, if now those who preferred the “easy ride” get destroyed by those eles well….it’s not the game balance kittening problem and Anet must realize this.

FuVirus.6398:

I was referring to team fights and how people are forced to use ele’s since you give a team a 7 second aura which they not die on low cooldown. But its nice that you kept it civil. Thank you for your reply.

What about the mesmer portal? Or what about the shadow refuge thief? Or what about bunker guardians?

When all professions bring something to the table I see no reason for people to complain, especially because everytime they touch eles we get nerfed by no less than 50% on something…on the contrary of mesmer whose Cd get …lol..nerfed by 2s max, nothing like eles where everything see reduction by over 50% in dmg or increase in CD by over 75%

Lost 2 tournaments in a row because of loading bug, 3 of my team( me included) had the bug during the 3th map and lost the match from 330-410 for us to 500-480 for them…very stupid

A question which come up quite often these days is why so many eles are using d/d both in PvE and PvP.

The simple answer would be that with dagger/dagger an ele does not need to worry about snaring the target prior to start attacking him, the attack skills haven’t got huge delay or far too obvious casting animations.

In the past people used to favour scepter over dagger not for the sustained dmg potential but rather for the spike potential, unfortunately the DT/phoenix combo is so poorly designed that in practice you will never be able to hit an average player equipped with common reaction time, let’s say that out of 10 players : 2 are bad, 5 are average and 3 are very good.

Now a s/d glass cannon will work only against the 2 bad players ( in the sense of being actually able to kill them on the first hit), against the 5 average players there’s a 60% that the combo will fail and 40% chance it will hit while still being unable to kill them, lastly against the last 3 good players, the combo will never yeld any good results on the contrary

To further aggravate the problem is the fact that a glass cannon ele rely on long CD skills to achieve big number while still being forced into going all out in attack with little concern for defense, the ele lack strong passive defense like a warrior( armour+ HP); mesmer (clones spamming); thief (stealth), all the ele has got is active defense strongly based on reaction times and few “oh kitten” utilities.

Now once realized that burst on scepter is largely impossible to achieve, people tried to use the scepter as sustained dmg weapon…not good luck there also, as said before a scepter user must rely on CC to land the heavy hitting skills : dragon’s tooth -phoenix given their huge delay in activation, this leave the ele with the rather sad air tree dmg or try to apply stacks of bleeding with earth 1; nothing that can be compared to the dagger MH.

The d/d is so complete, it offers everything : all ele conditions – fast travel – great anti-mele defense – great sustained dmg on moderate CD – great spike skills easier to land – faster and more frequent self-healing, what more could you ask for?

It doesn’t come as a surprise that 70% of eles are using D/D, so the question now is : how is Anet planning to change scepter/staff in light of these facts?

The d/d is complete, it got no useless “filler skills” , in every attunement you can use 1 to 5 without a dramatic drop in performance, the only true set which reflect the nature of the GW2 ele : versality!
And this is something that your average non ele player find too hard to counter,this is the reason of the whine threads :" D/D ele too strong QQ!"

Now I trust Anet to make the right decisions when it comes to buffs/nerfs and let’s not forget about the recent nerfs : ‘healing ripple’ minor trait healing halved, removal of blast finisher from Evasive Arcane trait, all intended in reducing the survivability of the ele….and still people complain, but anyway here few ides for Anet:

1) Remove delay from staff/scepter skills, reduce the dmg but remove the delay ( lava font-eruption-lightning surge-dragon’s tooth-phoenix)

2) Increase radius and speed of projectiles ( shockwave-gust-dust devil)

3) Add seconday effects/increase dmg ( ice shards -shatterstone-fire shield-flame wall-static field-unsteady ground)

TwoBit.5903:

25k potential damage to afkers isn’t worth the trade-off of being a useless piece of tissue after spending all your cooldowns.

Curring.9752:

Is it just me or does everyone assume Eles only use D/D? -.-

It’s the only weapon set that was nerfed into oblivion, and unlike S/D you can actually land your damage skills without wasting all your CCs.

Correction- you mean the only set which wasn’t nerfed into oblivion am I right?
If so yes I agree with you, d/d is the only set which doesn’t force you into using signets to actually land your skills.

Scepter focus outside dragon’s tooth and phoenix, lack strong heavy hit skills, therefore people have tried to use scepter as glass cannon weapon, trying to make the most out of those signet = “1 hit for 1 kill or I die”, outside glass cannon no sane ele would take scepter for sustained dmg

No pls..the amount of QQ regarding the ele survivability just keep increasing every day – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/elementarists/first#post875531
last we need is even more defensive tools

condiments.8043:

Arheundel.6451:

condiments.8043:

A well played D/D elementalist is one of the toughest 1v1 classes in the game at the moment. They have so many control options as part of the weapon set they can load up on cantrips and be incredibly hard to lock down. So unless you’re very good at your class and have a build that can handle 1v1 situations, you will not beat a d/d ele.

The toughest classes for when I played my d/d ele were good trap rangers and condition necros who simply overload me with conditions. Of course that could all change if you use ether renewal as your heal. :P

I’d be careful in using terms like “toughest 1vs1 class” just to avoid unnecessary cries, a d/d ele is as tough as you make it be, we possess skills which punish the clueless spammers and make you viable against good players who will know your class.

A great player will be a tough opponent on any profession, a bad player will simply cry ‘OP’ on the forums

I don’t necessarily disagree, I’m just speaking from experience. I can handle 1v1, 1v2 situations with more confidence on my auramancer D/D ele than I have on other classes I’ve played. I actually felt kinda bad for some players as they tried helplessly to bring down my hp bar while I brought them down with sustained damage. Force them to burn their defensive abilities then execute them with a churning earth+teleport, which also works wonders in 1v2 if you can manage it.

Exactly..“players who try helplessly to bring down your HP bar”, there’s nothing to be helpless about, I use d/d mostly but can still easily beat a d/d ele with scepter/focus as I know inside out all the skills…that’s what you need to beat any profession

Kousetsu.1627:

because thieves have two viable tournament builds and not all teams want a condition thief, that leaves them with one build.

ele has a staff, S/D and D/D builds that are viable in tpvp

Educate yourselfs please.

They all play support or babysitted glass cannon, one which is always in company of an engy or guardian.
Condition thief are well sought after, so don’t come telling people that thiefs are cornered to backstab build

STRanger.5120:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Not a single ele specs GC in tourney, yet all thieves do. That’s all the proof you need.

You´ve just made my day, man. Thanks for that

Unless you can prove otherwise, I can say with no problems that glass cannon eles in tPvP don’t exist, not literally because you still meet the odd guild team which like to babysit the ele but 8 teams out of 10 will use of course a d/d thief or 100b warrior.

Those 8 teams out of 10 will use at most a support staff ele or support s/d but never a glass cannon ele.

R40-champion magus-10QP…I dare you to go and prove otherwise

STRanger.5120:

Aether McLoud.1975:

So stop comparing this video to thieves. Thieves do this amount of damage all the time without any significant cooldown inbetween AND they can escape unharmed afterwards because of stealth.

Do you bother to prove this statement? I would like to know how to do this, because I´m playing Thief actually :-)

Don’t need to prove anything…you can see ele coming from a mile away unlike a thief even if he uses lightning flash and again to die to that combo means you’re a glass cannon.

If the ele does kill you before you can react, I believe that’s well deserved, after all : mesmer shatter- backstab thieves- 100b warriors can all one-shot you if they catch you off-guard and you’re a glass cannon

Stop the whining…..

Caffynated.5713:

You worry too much. If they nerf anything it will be the way that + % damage stacks, which would have limited impact on any competitive build.

@ OP: My favorite part of your second video, was when the other ele saw you casting churning earth and just kept walking into it like “hmm, seems an interesting red circle on the ground. I should investigate!” LOL

I think my worries are well justified, now thx to these ridicolous videos, any bad player who get beaten by a well played ele will come crying on forum using these same videos as an excuse while of course the ele who did defeat them didn’t use at all the same unrealistic build, unfortunately we’re all aware of how much of a drama queen people can be if you give them an inch of opportunity…..and know whiners got a full arm of opportunity thx to the OP

What will happen now it’s another nerf on dmg for the already UP firegrab, whose dmg is actually very low compared to its CD unless of course you become a full glass cannon

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

UPDATE: Added a new video. This is using the build I’ve been using since the last patch.
20 30 0 0 20. Regularly hits for over 10k on churning earth, fire grab, and burning speed+ring of fire combo(dmg combined).

- WARNING-

You’re drawing unnecessary attention and all in the wrong direction, those poor players who were trying to complain about the d/d eles have started using your videos to further boost their false claims.

You have already attracted strong hate on GW2 guru forum with your videos-http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/76072-incoming-firegrab-nerf/, right now I’m unsure of your reasons behind this parade and why you’re so bent on keeping it alive.

I think everybody know that you can reach high numbers on any profession if you fully specc in attack, but the profession lack strong natural defenses , therefore that combo never work in real sPvP..let alone in tPvP

condiments.8043:

A well played D/D elementalist is one of the toughest 1v1 classes in the game at the moment. They have so many control options as part of the weapon set they can load up on cantrips and be incredibly hard to lock down. So unless you’re very good at your class and have a build that can handle 1v1 situations, you will not beat a d/d ele.

The toughest classes for when I played my d/d ele were good trap rangers and condition necros who simply overload me with conditions. Of course that could all change if you use ether renewal as your heal. :P

I’d be careful in using terms like “toughest 1vs1 class” just to avoid unnecessary cries, a d/d ele is as tough as you make it be, we possess skills which punish the clueless spammers and make you viable against good players who will know your class.

A great player will be a tough opponent on any profession, a bad player will simply cry ‘OP’ on the forums

Leave water OH dagger alone pls, it’s great as it is, your suggestion is obviously bad, I don’t like focus for a particular reason – offensive spells are all single target.

Many people go d/d especially because of the AoE effect on spells and instant cast, let’s leave it as it is, for the rest I like the suggestions about flame grab , lightning touch and churning earth.

Staff:

1) Lightning surge= CD is ok at 10s, I’d rather leave the CD as it is rather than getting an instant cast
2) Burnin retreat = yes good suggestion
3) Unsteady ground = my idea would be to add 6s cripple + 5 stacks of vulnerability and increase radius
4) Shockwave = make it instant, arcane wave effect and radius ( like it was in GW1)
5) Gust = remove the projectile status, change it to ’ push foes back – 400 knockback – 25s CD’

Scepter=

1) Flamestrike = good idea
2) Dragon’s tooth= increase speed, reduce dmg by 30%, increase radius to 240
3) Phoenix = increase speed, reduce dmg by 20%, 15s CD
4) Shatterstone = increase speed, increase dmg by 30%, apply now 10 stacks of vulnerability 5s duration, 6s CD
5) Arc lighning = increase dmg by 30%
6) Dust devil = increase speed of movement, increase radius

These changes would make the scepter more viable in my opinion without entering in the OP realm

Focus

1) Fire shield = 5s duration, 2s burning on each hit, 30s CD
2) Flamewall = increase duration to 10s, increase width
3) Swirling winds = apply 10s swiftness, reflect projectiles, 6s duration, 30s CD

I strongly believe that these changes on the focus are really needed to make it a real option for sPvP and tPvP, seen as the ele need movement speed skills and can’t change weapon in combat; fire shield with those changes would really become strong, the red ball will send a warning to enemies to be careful

TGSlasher.1458:

I like binding roots, at times, use a cantrip, and bye, just don’t walk to the roots again or you’ll be stuck again. If you use burning speed in binding roots and you have a silly ranger standing in it then he will be hit for silly damage. The thing I hate about binding roots is that you cant hit them half the time.

Shocking aura is countered by ranged attacks, even at point blank I have never noticed a ranged attack get stunned by it.

When an ele is in water he has 2 – 3x regen stacks (signet + soothing mists+ regen) making his attacks heal him ridiculously. Also water 5 (long cd) and water 2 (relatively short). Dps him to half health, wait till you see the blue blast come off him, the the cone of cold, then the 2nd blue blast, once he changes again burst him to the ground, and apply poison if possible when he is low. Don’t start with your burst unless it is a quick recovery to do it again.

Shocking aura hit anything within a certain radius, unfortunately it’s very bugged hence only engy and thief pistol get stunned while using range weapon at mele range, the ranger is the only class which doesn’t get stunned, an already reported bug .

In the meantime I simply use frost aura and watch the silly ranger chilling himself up to death ( up to 14s of chill at shortbow range )

Lightning whip will hit binding roots with a 100% ratio without the need to use cantrips or even dragon’s claws

Aragiel.6132:

its very easy to identify a mesmer.. there are some easy tools how to recognize it

1) knowelage – you need to know how mesmers skills works
2) mark – just mark your mesmer and keep him targeted.
3) blink / decoy are easily recognised
4) clones never kite even they dont move (they attack you only). So the one who is moving.. is the mesmer
5) clones never dodgeroll
6) keep an eye on what weapon mesmer is using against you (staff = phase retreat, sword = swap, greatsword = bouncing attack). When you know what weapon is against you, you basically know when he create clone

.. play a mesmer for 1-2 week. Then you recognize 90% very fast where is your mesmer.

It’s pointless to target mesmers……phase retreat and target drop, and the skill is on a 8s CD lol