Guild Wars 2

Lich also reduces movement speed.

Back on topic, tornado just needs a bit of extra survivability like with rampage or plague. While those transforms make you very tanky, tornado is still super glassy. A damage boost would also be appreciated as right now it simply tickles enemies however the main draw of the elite is the aoe spammable cc so this isn’t as important. Another change that would really help would make one of the skills a pull, so you can’t be kited quite as trivially. Lastly, why on earth does this transform only give 1 pulsing stack of stability? It is the weakest transform by far, the 1 stack was just a slap in the face.

Aomine.5012:

Mattmatt.4962:

Yes it is, it has no damage, lock you out of you weapon skill for ??? Mobility … GG

And that mobility is too high that you could reach enemies’ home point before your enemy actually reach home… Then you can stall on the node, which Ele is extremely good at, leading to 1 node for you and 2 neutral nodes.

Plenty of classes can reach far node before it is capped, you don’t need to be the first to the point, just able to get on it before the full cap. On most maps all you really need to get there in time is swiftness which any competent team can provide a large amount of it at the start and maybe a leap or 2. Seems like a terrible reason to consider the mobility of an elite with a 3 minute cooldown and no other real uses “too high”. Unless you want to give it actually good damage so it is worth fighting with, then mobility should be shaved.

apharma.3741:

Remember, earth elemental can tank Old Tom on level 50 fractals…nothing else can do that afaik.

Everyone loves to hate on them, but bears also do an admirable job tanking old tom.

Well they fixed it on ele lightning whip and necro axe auto so it doesn’t work that way so it seems they don’t consider it an exploit, but rather unintended and should be fixed. Not sure why they have left it on Mesmer though sure they weren’t in as strong of a place in the meta as ele was at the time (still way better than necro axe), but classes should be given the same treatment for similar exploit like techniques and balanced around the end results. Fix it for one auto attack fix it for all, then rebalance if necessary.

Have to agree with ronpierce, making a specific weapon set grant a speed boost by default would not make much sense compared to the other traits that went base line. For example blasting staff being made baseline won’t be out of place because the aoe radii could have always been the increased amounts, it is only affecting the skills. With windborn daggers it affects how you move which should not be affected by base line changes for just one weapon set, especially when the standard pre buffed speed is the same for all classes.

Nos switched to power a while back, so yes he does use wells.

Not sure if this has been covered but I think the only way necro can possibly make it into the dungeon meta is if they get decent mobility and even rediculous damage won’t be enough. Problem is bosses and trash last die extremely fast in record runs and most time is spent running from fight to fight. An ele or mesmer can help with this from fgs and portal respectively but those cooldowns are quite long, and adding more of those classes just takes away spots the necro could be taking while leaving the necro largely a leech on the party. Then again guardian is also slow but does quite well for it self so maybe not.

I would agree with you if your assumption that stone heart and lingering elements actually worked together was correct. But it isn’t so overall still a major nerf. If it actually did work like that it would be a rediculously op combo.

^ that was my point, you may only have a 5% chance on thief to get the kill each attempt but if you don’t over extend and are patient enough eventually the enemy will make that mistake or 2 (of course if you do press too hard you can end up dead pretty quickly). As we all know in a real match this is a huge waste of time for the thief and a win for the enemy as they will likely have held the cap the whole time so it doesn’t really even matter.

Laraley.7695:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Cynz.9437:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Thief counters everything

medi guards say hai

Thief counters them too. In terms of overall gameplay anyway. And thief will beat anything 1 on 1 too. Been that way since release. If played really well.

Wat.

Thief will beat anything in 1v1? Wai do u troll so much.

Well if the thief is patient and just keeps resetting till enemy gets bored and eventually makes a mistake, then yes thief can win any 1v1. They can reset against any class quite easily while no other class can reliably reset against them but this isn’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things other than wvw trolling.

Laraley.7695:

I’m gonna say this once again. You have some idea in your head that all these things are viable and how they should be because of some logic. That’s not how it works at all. At the moment d/d ele is the only spec that is viable in high tier pvp, while staff is left behind. While it might have a bit more support, overall the spec is worse, that’s why d/d ele is picked up by most elementalists.

I have to disagree with you on this in that staff is really close to dd in terms of effectiveness and is used frequently in the esl weeklies. Staff has better team healing/cleansing, is even harder to kill, has at least some decap potential and is just a better group fighter, at the downside is it loses burst mobility focused damage, and can only really stalemate 1v1 (but is even more unkillable in that situation). The issue is that both weapons use 0/0/2/6/6 with just two minor traits switched. This is where ele is pigeon holed at the moment, not with the weapon but with the traits.

Can you make it so that the mini llamas are unlocked for the account wardrobe on acquisition? Right now, if you unlock the llama for the account it gets destroyed so it can’t be mystic forged when other llama’s are acquired. Then if you don’t unlock it, you can’t use it on any of your characters that don’t have it in their inventory. Since it is an account bound mini it would make perfect sense to make it unlocked upon acquisition, just like all account bound weapon and armor skins.

My experience with venom share is the team has a strong opening fight, because the theif can easily share his venoms with the whole team at the start. After that, when the whole team is spread out over the map, the theif has a tough time helping as many allies. So it loses power unless the whole team regroups.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Sizer.5632:

Has it been confirmed that there will be a nerf and nothing else added? If so its really disappointing, if not, well, I guess we will have to wait.

They also said they wanted to make conjures more useful.

It just so happens that when a profession player hears the word “nerf”, they gain a memory loss debuff. :P

They also remember how fgs was to be “compensated” with the targeted fiery rush hit being buffed substantially.

They should make fast hands and cleansing ire compete for the same grandmaster slot because they are very core to warrior and need to be a choice.

(Yes I am salty about the ea fiasco with ele)

Supreme.3164:

D/D doesn’t hold up anymore in this meta, so people must adapt..or they can move to greener( in their eyes) pastures

That is what top level teams are already doing and this change will just secure it. All eles will either re-roll shoutbow for support, cele engi for jack of all trades, or theif/mesmer for burst. Yay balanced.

Laraley.7695:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

It would be nice to have Glyph of Renewal and/or Glyph of Elemental Power changed to elite skills, they would essentially be the elementalist equivalent of Battle Standard and Signet of Rage and would both be useful in PvP.

Hell, no. 3 1/4 sec cast time is far from ‘’useful in pvp’’.

Glyph of Elemental Power is not elite worthy.

I would take Glyph of elemental power over any of the current elites without hesitation, same with any cantrip, signet of air/earth, or arcane shield and probably frostbow all are better than the current elites.

Stone heart may make it tanky, it will not make it a good build. A selfish but tanky build =/= to a support build. There has never been a true tank build be viable in this game because there is no incentive for enemies to kill a tank first when they can kill all the useful members on the team then kill the tank 4v1. There have been tanky support builds yes, but they actually support allies with boons and cleanses, all of which are going to be lost in exchange for selfish tankyness which will kill the build, leaving eles with nothing but a not really viable troll build like pu mesmer.

Would have to agree with thief should have been the hardest to balance due to having some insane strengths that other classes can’t even come close to matching. But for whatever reason necro and ele seem to be giving them even more trouble since thief has been pretty well balanced for a long time now. They are are very strong and people complain about them being op and they are, but not by too much, and everyone complains that everyone else is op.

From watching last esl weeklies I would say the meta is definitely starting to rule out sustain over the past few months. Now teams stealth up, insta down a target and then win the resulting outnumbered fight in their favor. The only thing that can save the target is the vampirism rune proc which almost everyone is running except the shoutbows and cele eles which do get instagibbed in such scenario despite their sustain.

Ranger main hand axe gives perma weakness if not cleansed, but axe is more of a condi weapon.

Engi gets weakness on the elixer gun auto attack so can be perma but again, more of a condi kit.

Staff ele also gets perma weakness by camping earth in staff and auto attacking, but this is just a terrible strategy.

Ele is pretty trait dependent for playing it right as different trait set ups will can completely change your rotations even with the same weapons so leveling is quite different from a lvl 80 ele. Freshair is the most obvious example of this. With that being said, some things that you should work on that aren’t trait dependent are might stacking rotations for all weapons. This is generally going from fire to earth to water to get all of your blasts in your fire field. Staff is an exception because of the delay on eruption you go from e2 > f2 which is the only blast finisher on the weapon.

Other things to work on would be simply learning to use all the utility in all the skills, for example dagger earth 2 is a projectile block that most people don’t really take into consideration (both eles and their opponents). Comboing off of lightning flash is also very important for almost all eles in pvp. Lightning whip is basically your standard melee cleaving auto attack except it has about double the range, which allows you to kite at max melee range against other true melee builds and mobs with some practice.

Purple Miku.7032:

ArthurDent.9538:

With the new update changes and persisting flames being merged with lava tomb, I think the new optimal dps rotation will actually involve going down every 10 seconds or so for the free extra lava font. Not sure if any groups will actively use that.

It won’t be a part of the rotation because first of all you can’t reliably control whether or not you go down and get rallied, but also you’ll be losing your scholar bonus, and also if you go down you can’t cast your normal skills like meteor showers glyph of storms etc.

It is obvious that this won’t be in the normal rotation because it is so situational and getting back up nearly instantly will either take a trash rally or full team support then more selfish team support to get scholar runes back (arcane blast with enough targets will also be sufficient), but for theoretical optimal personal dps a quick down and instant rally followed by a full heal should give a personal substantial increase in damage.

Obviously this is unrealistic in practice and most likely hurts group dps but interesting for pure absolute min maxing. Also kind of worth noting that lava tomb lava font is base 8 second duration 10 seconds with persisting flames, compared to the normal 4 seconds base, 6 seconds boosted duration of persisting flames lava fonts, so a bit stronger than normal. Though that duration may change.

With the new update changes and persisting flames being merged with lava tomb, I think the new optimal dps rotation will actually involve going down every 10 seconds or so for the free extra lava font. Not sure if any groups will actively use that.

If we assume that everything presented in the preview goes in as is, I think it would be a fairly safe bet that almost all cele dd’s will be replaced with shoutbows and bunker guardians. Shout bow is already starting to over take DD in popularity in top level play and is way stronger it at low level and these changes are looking to seal it. Our support, cleansing, and damage are all taking serious hits to become arguably stronger in 1v1 against power builds something the build already is very strong at. All the while every other meta spec seems to be getting some strong buffs without having to worry about things like “Those are very core to elementalists and that is why they need to be a choice” (the hypocrisy behind this comment in conjunction with the changes for the other classes is sickening). I honestly believe that we will be stuck competing with necro for the worst class in pvp substantially bellow the other 6 (7 if revenant is also decent) by a wide margin if these changes go through.

While I disagree with aquatic benevolence being a bad trait I do have to agree it shouldn’t be a minor since it does absolutely nothing for the ele it self. In the many instances of the the game where you are solo you are forced to either not use water, or endure a completely useless trait. Traits that only affect allies should never be forced upon you.

Arken.3725:

Laraley.7695:

Arken.3725:

Isn’t that the point? Having to choose between two strong traits instead of having access to everything? This is what diversity is all about.

Then they should make all classes to choose, thieves don’t for example. The traits are crucial to ele. I doubt it will bring more diversity, it will just kill one of the traits.

Having one example(thief) isn’t a strong enough argument for one profession to have access to a multitude boons, pressure, sustain and CC. There needs to be some give and this will make you choose what’s more important to you.

Edit: and this will still be the case after the changes are implemented.

Every class has something, ele has boons, and sustain, thief has evades and stealth burst and mobility, engi has massive amounts of cc and alot of most things aside from condi clearing, guard has blocks healing boons burst, warrior has high health immunity from stances, massive healing and team condi clearing with shouts and a giant fire field that near permanently covers any point barring mid on foefir, mesmer has portal crazy burst from range, stealth and fantastic kiting ability, ranger has pew pew from massive range or possibly the best 1v1 on point fighting build with condi, necro has tons of health, and some incredible damage just from spamming 1 with dagger, life blast, or deathly claws or massive damage fear chains.

Every class has their things that make them “op” and now some of them get those for free with crucial traits being made baseline. Except ele, the only one I know of who is going to be forced to lose one of the key things that has anchored the class since launch. The double standard is rediculous. If they want to do this to ele they should do the same to every other class, force them to choose between their best 2 traits so no one can have their cake and eat it to.

As for “Ele so op nerf plz”, stop living in the past, top tier teams have slowly been dropping eles as the meta has transformed into something not nearly as kind to them. Perfect example being abjurd known for having two of the best elementalists in the game which both rerolled to other classes. In lower ranks, good eles are quite rare in my experience while medi guards, power rangers, power necros, turret engis, and shoutbow warriors are all a dime a dozen.

Phantaram.1265:

I think elemental attunement should be base line. After making it base line balance from there. Both Evasive Arcana and elemental attunement are really fun and skillful abilities. Why take one away?

Besides that. Let’s take a look at the big picture for a second.

Removing conditions upon gaining regeneration: Dropping evasive arcana or elemental attunement with this trait drops condi removal from 2 every ~9 seconds to 1 every ~9 seconds(everytime you swap to water you gain regen + Evasive arcana for 2 condi removal). That’s a pretty big nerf to condi removal. On top of this we can assume the new “Soothing Ice”, which is the old regen proc trait with frost aura tide to it, will not be a 10 second icd anymore. That’s even less condi removal with the predicted icd being around 25-30 seconds (imo). The only way we’d get regen without healing rain would be from cantrips at this point, which is completely selfish condi removal.

Condi removal is extremely important for survivability these days even against non condi classes. Poison, weakness, chill… they will all be elementalists death without the amount of condi removal we currently have.

On top of all this Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana are both group utility traits. People are already not taking Elementalists for team fights because there are much better group/team fight classes out there. Taking one of them away just greater pigeon-holes ele into a selfish 1v1 category.

I think overall making Elemental Attunement baseline and balancing from that point is a much healthier direction to take elementalist.

Agree with all of this, the interaction with cleansing wave means that elemental attunement will pretty much rule out evasive arcana in most cases. This saddens me greatly as I loved all the explosions, and trying to maximize the effectiveness of the extra 4 skills I got with evasive arcana.

This is a massive nerf, probably a slight buff overall from how the class is today, however with every other class getting massive power creep from what I can tell, Ele is going to fall behind fast. It is like anet doesn’t realize how close to balanced this game’s pvp is and decides to just throw around massive balance changes all of a sudden with Ele getting the only real heavy nerf.

What they are doing would be the equivalent of forcing warriors to choose between fast hands and cleansing ire, or mesmers to choose between deceptive evasion and illusionary persona (lol they got it baseline instead), or engis to choose between grenadier and incendiary powder, thief between sleight of hand and bountiful theft…. Only ele seems to be forced into this choice, while they massively buffed every other class.

There was a forum topic a bit ago about each classes crutches, every class has them. Anet decided to help some classes by giving several classes their crutches for free, while ele now has to choose between its two most important ones.

Please nerf the completely permanent extremely passive and quite op 20% damage reduction trait. Using this to cover the lack of protection, would be a change, but not one for the better. It is a stupidly passive permanent trait with no counter play other than to range. With elemental attunement you could time your protection for when you needed it and had to worry about boon strip making it much more interesting to play. Reduce the trait to 10-15% and give back elemental attunement at master tier or better yet baseline as it should have always been.

Should have given it the Elemental attunement/evasive arcana treatment and put it competing for the same slot as fast hands. You know because need to make choices.

To be completely honest I am in complete agreement that this is an over nerf of turrets and I am happy about it. Personally I feel this is just needed at least for the time being as almost everyone is just sick of them. I would estimate 90% of the population hate turret engis, 9% like them because it is an easy way to farm champion genius title, and 1% actually enjoy the play style. This is why I just think the meta needs a break from the build, then it can hopefully be overhauled into something less passive, more active, and actually viable later. I basically just hope this is a hot fix and not the end all be all.

Thejewishpeople.1367:

Epi necro return confirmed boys! Just stack condis on turrets!

To be fair, the obvious counter is to just not run a turret engi which is fine by me

Tissitra.4153:

I am not sure this qualifies as a SMALL change but generally: EVERY CLASS SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE FULLY VIABLE META BUILD. The most objective measure I know of is the metabattle website, according to which mesmers, rangers and necros currently do not have a (fully viable) meta build. These classes are indeed the least represented ones in tournaments.

I believe that you have misinterpreted the metabattle website and how it ranks “Fully viable meta builds.” You notice at the top of the list of builds is the highest category labeled “META” where you see 5 builds. What needs to be noted is that those 5 builds are the exact same 5 builds ORNG used to win WTS in Boston, so I am a bit suspicious, that that level is simply reserved for the builds that won the last major tournament.

To confirm my suspicion, you click on each build to see what their rating is. They don’t the rating is simply given as "This build also received an overall rating of 4.75 or higher out of 5.00 and thus qualified for the highest category of working builds: Great. " This label is used for both builds in the “META” category, and the “GREAT” category solidifying my conclusion is that the only difference between “META” and “GREAT” is that the all the “META” builds won in Boston.

If this is true, then it is simply not possible for every class to have a working “META” build as there are only 5 team slots and 8 classes to choose from. That means the goal to shoot for would be every class has at least one “GREAT” which still means top tier. Right now, Mesmers have 2 (albeit very similar), ranger has 3 fairly different ones, and necro technically only has the terrormancer but I think that is just a case of lack of updating as powernecro has become more popular as of late at all levels.

Link for reference: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

That build is pretty bad trait synergy wise, the water grand-master is only procced by the water adept since you lack soothing disruption, elemental attunement, or any other sources of regen. Not to mention that combining cleansing water with diamond skin isn’t that great in general since if one of them is useful, the other is generally being wasted completely. Then there is just very little damage as has already been said.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Naked, no-utility and one weapon zerker builds

That build still has weapon skills, traits, and an amulet, with more stats than most other amulets, it just screams op cheese mode to me. Need to drop all those things, and only have access to class mechanic. Ranger being the one exception which has no hard builds as their class mechanic is an op ai that will just carry them to easy wins no matter what.

Cynz.9437:

celestial ele, engi, war been in every single tourney…. anet didn’t do anything

You could say the same thing about thief, but knowing your post history, you wouldn’t.

PvE end game content can be as tough as you want it to be really, you just have to come up with your own challenges.

Take for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R79OYhnFEfQ
and several of the other videos on his channel

Something like this is ridiculously difficult, soloing those four mobs regularly is probably something less than .1% of the in game population can do then to take away the user interface so you can’t see skill cooldowns, and first person view making visibility tough, and I am shocked anyone can actually do this.

So while simply completing all the content in this game is fairly straight forward and easy, there are very difficult challenges you can come up with, you just have to think for your self a bit.

Archaon.9524:

TheFamster.7806:

Arenanet will only nerf/change specs that are played well in the high level competition. For example the stealth FGS rush was nerfed when one of the teams used it in stream tournaments to kill the lord in 5 seconds. Also the nightmare rune was changed when Phantaram was streaming and one of the devs asked in twitch chat if Noscoc was using nightmare runes. Same with might stacks, ele auto attack cancel, etc.

Given all the attention developers pay attention to high level and well known players while almost never listening to complains on forum, it is best for the entire community to encourage all players that attend ESL tournaments to run turret engies so that the match becomes 5v5 turret engie fest. Anet truly believes that balance patch must be done based on high level players, and if high level players do believe that turret engi spec should be done away, the only way to grab attention of balanced team is to actually have as many turret engies in competition to show how broken of spec it is.

I’m sure it won’t happen given the competitive and fair nature of high skilled GW2 players who are outraged because of dumb and broken spec of turret engies, but I feel like organizing turret engi day for ESL tournaments is the only way to actually make anet pay attention to players’ pleas.

don’t worry…turrets are coming to esl…sooner or later..and is gonna be fun..

I remember there was one team that almost beat radioactive with double turret engi. They used the bubbles to counter the liches, and it was an extremely close 2-1 set. First time I ever rooted for a turret engi.

jportell.2197:

ronpierce.2760:

jportell.2197:

You know what I would LOOOOOOOOVEEEEEE to have happen. Moa morph not despawns all Minions similar to engis turrets.

Fixed that for you, friend.

Ai builds don’t belong in a competitive mode in this game. Anything that counters it is welcome. Ask around

I honestly just wish ANET would move the turrets giving boons and turrets do more damage into grandmasters of the same traitline. That way an engi has to CHOOSE either more damage or More bunk. Can’t kittening have your cake and eat it to.

The turret damage trait is already competing with the turret bubbles trait for that grand master slot. That would make 3 grandmaster traits in the same line all for turrets. Which begs the question, why on earth does a single utility type have 3 grand master traits associated with it in the first place? That has to be some sort of record.

People overestimate how strong a premade is just on the basis that it is premade. I don’t have any exact statistics but I can speculate on several reasons why a premade can easily lose to a pug.
A lot of premades are just pve guildies that go into pvp to try it out and don’t want the security of having people they know helping them out. This is how I got my start in pvp and I know of many others who have done similarly. These players, are generally new to the competitive scene, don’t know meta builds, don’t know map mechanics, don’t understand rotations and rolls, and for all intents and purposes should lose to your average pug.
Even for the ones that aren’t as new to the game, I highly doubt that most of them have voice communications or are attempting to optimize their team set up. I suspect the overwhelming majority are just queing with 1 or 2 friends, for social reasons. My experience with guildies, is generally “hey anyone want to q for some pvp?” then a few people write back “sure” they party up and q together, not really trying to optimize their chances of winning, just trying to hang out with friends.

Just because 2-5 players are in the same party, doesn’t mean they are some unstoppable force, and as you said, all your matches were close even though, they were premade, so I am probably not too far off.

You would have loved the old fiery rush, which killed it much faster, didn’t pigeonhole them into using staff, and didn’t need to be glassy for a quick kill.

I have to agree with turret engis followed closely by pew pew rangers. While not op, they are just miserable to play against.

Arantheal.7396:

I really doesn’t matter what you record, it is impossible to reach 10k from the supply-crate.
some moderator please close this as it is not productive in the slightest.
/thread.

I for one would like to see a screen shot of this massive damage. Should be simple enough for him to acquire.

There is actually a purpose you can get out of casting them, Procing signet of restoration. And I don’t really think the class needs hand holding of this type, just make sure you have a target and if the enemy drops target with stealth, then that is basically a dodge and they earned it.

The only things wrong with necro:

Life force causes the class to be way too snowbally and makes many individual engagements predetermined.
A lot of long cast times that still lack distinct animations (hello marks)
Extremely strong passive procs on long cooldowns making them unpredictable.
Lich is just silly
Signet of spite is way too strong when it lands, and long cool down makes it too much of a liability when it misses.

Overall the class is in a solid spot balance wise, just a few things that I am not fond of about them.

Will be interesting how radioactive do in the next few tourneys assuming they are still around.

I have heard that the krait rune proc is undodgeable regardless of which elite uses it

Saiyan.1704:

Banned Bunker Amulets (Settler/Cleric/Magi/Valkyrie/Celestials)

Valk seems odd to ban, sure it gives a bit of healing power and a bit of toughness but it is still pretty glassy.

Arah is the most popular to sell in my experience, as it isn’t too hard solo but gives inexperienced full groups trouble.

Arken.3725:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Arken.3725:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t think you’re understanding the point of my thread, just because a class isn’t used in group setups more often than others, doesn’t mean that the class hasn’t got any problems.

Yes celestial is strong, but so are those that aren’t using celestial, a class doesn’t need to be used more over another in Tpvp for it to be obscenely powerful.

This is why I listed the 3 above. It’s not the amulets/runes that make them strong but rather their trait/skill setup.

I agree, to an extent, for example if you stick a D/D ele in a zerk amulet, they’ll dish out obscene amounts of damage, but they’ll also get wrecked by the blast from a guardians shield of wrath alone.

That’s also false. They still maintain 65% or more up time on most boons which most professions cannot rip.

Edit: Like I said, the amulet helps accentuate the problem but the main issue has always been the professions themselves.

DD ele still had all of those boons before the celestial buff and were complete trash tier. They did recieve a few small buffs but no one thought it would make a difference… until they learned of the celestial buff. Can’t just compare things about builds in a vacuum, every class is op in a way.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Blazinflames.8415:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Blazinflames.8415:

Now all of our elite skills are utterly useless.

Glyph is not useless.

Who is using FGS anyways…..

./thread

That’s the problem. FGS should be the offensive elite of choise.

Uuhm because .. ?

We do have an offensive elite. It is called Glyph of something while attuned to fire.

I don’t wannt to see FGS to return to its previous state where stacking 4 eles was the way to go PvE.

You are completely missing the point. That PVE meta was the product of the damage from stacking the fire trail all on a single point. This has been nerfed to oblivion (for fair reasons) however was expected to be slightly compensated by increasing the damage of the targeted ending leap to a level making it sort of dangerous. This little compensation simply hasn’t happened, a skill that previously only had 2 niche uses, now only has one.