I will have to disagree with the OP. lately I’m trying to see how weird of a build I have to come up with to finally be useless….its surprising.
I think everyone went through the stage where they felt underpowered and overwhelmed by the class. You sit there pew pewing with your little stick pecking away at something’s health while other classes mow things down and you just wonder what is wrong with your damage. Then you put it all together and it’s like :
<NSFW> mild profanity/violence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H91rPIq2mN4
Elementalist has great damage in D/D. Updraft -> Burning speed -> Ring of Fire -> Arcane Wave -> Fire Grab can top 25k damage before your opponent gets up from the knockback. Staff is not a single target DPS weapon. The sooner people accept that, the happier they will be.
Conjures suck, except situational use of the bow for gravling mounds and the hammer for spamming auto attack for blind.
The pets are actually kind of nice. My tanky S/D condition build whips out 2 fire eles and uses them to stack might with their blast finishers and they add about 300 DPS for the lesser and 500-600 for the elite depending on which skills it uses.
Ele damage is basically all AoE and it’s all quite good. We do as much damage with AoE attacks as other classes can with single target. Burning speed, ring of fire, fire grab, phoenix, earthquake, etc. are all reasonably fast casting and hit for good damage.
Ele has some problems right now, but damage isn’t one of them. Mostly it’s weak trait lines outside of water and earth with little utility or survival, long cooldowns and awkward mechanics on some of our abilities like dragon’s tooth and phoenix.
Try speccing 30 water with D/D and you will enjoy the class much more.
(edited by Caffynated.5713)
You can switch to fire attunement while casting earthquake, right after lightning flash. You also have time to lay down a ring of fire before your arcane wave for might and still get off your fire grab before they get up from knock down.
The fire grab damage is fun to giggle over, but the damage you’re doing means they’re under 25% health and triggering Bolt to the Heart. It ends up being mostly overkill damage.
Treating the symptom here: But I think it’d be interesting if Heartseeker was altered to use a mechanic similar to the high-damage gun shot from the Halloween MOBA mini-game. Namely, a ground-targeted ability taking the form of a straight-forward line, a true skill shot. This would be a major nerf to spammability, so perhaps a range upgrade would be in order. It’d remove the ability to shamelessly mash the key while actually boosting the mobility aspect in competitive play by giving more perfect control.
That ability was a lot of fun to use in the mini game, but I think it would be a little sluggish and unresponsive in the much faster paced normal mode.
Changing HS to work like the elementalist ability Burning Speed would make it require at least a minimum level of skill to use and be more difficult to spam, while remaining a valuable tool in our arsenal.
The stacks of might are a measure of intensity. You can only have 1 might boon.
and i still have no problem with backstab thiefs honestly guys come on i run bunker on my ele and i do just fine i have yet to even get killed by a thief x.x if u run with ur sound off on ur game forget it turn it back on.
Dont forget asoon as u hear anything like slashing. use ur mist form and get the hell out of thier. its simple and has worked every single time.
The notion that everyone should spec bunker and run away from a thief on sight is appalling.
Every class, no matter what spec, should be able to put up a fight. Will you lose? Maybe, but no one should die in 1.5 sec.
Actually, the damage in the op would be done in 1/4 of a sec from the first hit to death.
Not joking.
Start casting cloak and dagger at range, hit steal just as it finishes and then auto attack with backstab’s 1/4 second cast time. 23k damage.
People actually defend this as a balanced game mechanic.
While we’re on the topic of crappy auto attacks:
I included thief dagger for a reference point, but I forgot to bring a steady shortbow.
Damage vs Heavy Golem in HotM
Cast time – Ability – damage x hits per cast time.
Elementalist – No equipment – Steady Dagger – No traits
1/2 – Drake’s Claw – 16 x3
1/2 – Lightning Whip – 29 x2 hits
1/2 – Vapor Blade – 14 1% vulnerability
3/4 – Impale – 21 8 second bleed
Elementalist – No equipment – Steady Scepter – No traits
1 1/4 – flame strike – 13 2 seconds of burning
3 1/4 – Arc Lightning 4 x3 8 x3 12 x4
3/4 – Ice Shards – 8 x3
1 1/2 – Stone shards – 6 x3 3x 6 second bleed
Elementalist – No equipment – Steady Staff – No traits
1 Fireball 40 120 radius AoE
3/4 Chain lightning 32 bounces 3 times
3/4 Water Blast 14
3/4 Stoning 24 3 seconds of weakness
Thief – No equipment – Steady Dagger – no traits
1/4 – Double strike 12 x2
1/4 – Wild strike 36 gain 10 endurance
1/4 – Lotus strike 36 2 seconds of poison
The math (3 seconds used because everything except scepter fire/air fits into it neatly)
Thief dagger auto attack damage over 3 seconds
312 damage 8 seconds of poison
Elementalist auto attack damage over 3 seconds
288 drake’s claw
348 lightning whip
84 vapor blade
84 Impale 4 stacks of bleeding (8 seconds)
31.2 Flame Strike 4.8 seconds of burning
77.5 Arc Lightning
96 Ice shards
36 Stone Shards 6 stacks of bleeding (6 seconds)
120 Fireball
128 Chain lightning (256 if it bounces back to hit the target 2x)
56 Water Blast
96 Stoning
*disclaimer – it’s late and any errors are George W. Bush’s fault.
Has anyone looked into a Shaman D/D water/X build that tries to line up Earth/Fire conditions with cantrips and then kite/heal while they tick?
If you wanted to do that, it would make a lot more sense to go S/D with it’s ability to apply burning and bleeding at 900 range.
I’ve been using it in sPvP for awhile now and it works well. 0 0 30 30 10. Arcana for fast attunement swapping isn’t that important because you’ll be using auto attacks a lot to keep your stacks up.
~14k health, close to 3,500 armor, ~1,250 condition damage before might, and a good chunk of healing (I would have to check, but I’m thinking 1,100ish). Only really weak against heavy condition removal guardian/ele (they probably can’t kill you either) and high spike damage thieves with quickness and poison for -healing.
there are some classes that got same damage and is AOE !!! / more mobility then thief , and also got CC !!!
min 2.47-2.57- enough sayd , he burst the thief in less that 2 seconds ? please …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDZNxrRhkQ0
1. He first attacked the thief at 2:54 and the thief was downed at 3:01. Not 2 seconds
2. He used double arcane spells which took a 30% damage nerf back in October.
I don’t think the problem with fire/air is that they lack for damage increases. The traits just don’t really add much compared to other lines.
Right now, 30 water is essential mandatory for a solid build. It’s where we get our condition removal and the bulk of our survivability. I swapped 30 fire for 30 water in my build and my survivability was easily tripled or more with only a moderate loss in damage, less if I keep my boons up.
I would move the Burning rage and Sunspot traits down a tier and dump the adept minor trait. The new Grand Master trait would be Cauterize – 15% chance to remove a condition when you gain might.
Pyromancer’s Alacrity is basically mandatory for a power/crit ele because fire skills and lightning whip are our only real DPS output for scepter and dagger. Earth is all condition and water is survival, though ironically water scepter is the only decent power/crit autoattack option with nearly double the DPS of air. It would be nice if they just reduced the cooldown on fire skills to a more reasonable level and replaced PA with something else.
Air:
Grounded should include immobilized (aka rooted… to the ground) and knocked back in its condition for +damage, or people who are knocked back should be considered knocked down. Either way is fine.
Replace the air adept minor trait with +1 precision per level while attuned to air. We already have 30 ways to grant speed increases. This is just redundant.
Arcane Lightning – this should count as a boon, stack intensity and last as long as might.
Arcana -
Final Shielding – this trait should proc on any attack that would kill the ele and block the attack instead of procing after our health drops below 25%. When I first started, this was always traited and I just didn’t notice it going off frequently enough to justify keeping it over blasting staff or renewing stamina.
You’re take on thieves is very, very off IMO. Your first point is just impossible. You’re talking about taking our class ability (which without traits is basically just a 45s CD gap closer) down from kind of bland to straight up bad. Your suggestion would nerf every single thief build in the game to stop 1 spec, something Anet’s been doing and the thief community has not enjoyed. I wont weigh in on whether or not Instagib needs to be nerfed, but if it does, Anet has to find a way to nerf glass cannons that won’t ruin the more moderate builds.
As for 3, stealth is already limited enough. Its short duration, has a CD (via revealed), and access to it isn’t guaranteed (its on dagger OH for half your standard initiative bar, can be accessed via utilities/one of our heals, or via combo fields). Limit it any further, and you’ll have to buff thieves survivability somewhere else, and we’ll turn into dodgy medium armor warriors.
Concerning quickness, yeah, its silly. Its too easy to mitigate the downsides (Sig of agility for thieves, endure pain for warriors, etc), and it’s just a bad idea.
A free instant cast gap closer is as far from bad as class skills can get. The ability to trait it for a huge damage hit and/or stealth on use takes it from good to amazing. You need to play another class if you think a 1/2 second after cast on an instant cast ability is going to be a game breaking nerf. For most classes that isn’t even 1 auto attack. The ability to trait for stealth on steal means that you could even be invisible while you wait it out.
Your take on stealth just leaves me shaking my head. We have multiple ways to enter stealth, not just CnD. Right now it’s just not a fair or fun game mechanic to play against.
Thief needs a few adjustments, but downplaying what other classes can do doesn’t help your argument.
This was last week against a level 80 warrior in WvW with at least some exotics.
Right now thief has a few very significant balance issues.
The big three are initial burst with essentially instant CnDMugBackstab for damage that can instakill anyone except a bunker, quickness and the ability to repeatedly restealth after unloading on an opponent.
1. Steal has to interrupt any skill that is in use when it is activated and it needs at least a 1/2 second aftercast. This will give people who are attacked about 1 second to register that they’re in danger and do something about it before CnD -> backstab ruins their day.
2. Quickness is a broken game mechanic, not just for thieves but for anyone who has it. You can’t take a game with numerous skill combinations that kill in seconds and then make them happen faster than a normal human can see, process and react to it.
Normal human reaction tests for something as simple as clicking a mouse button when a red dot appears on a black screen is .2 – .25 seconds. Add in the need to identify something specific (e.g. what skill your enemy is activating) and it becomes longer. Quickness lowers the threshold of many extremely lethal actions to faster than a human can recognize and respond to them. That’s a broken mechanic and bad game design. Quickness should not function in PvP or WvW.
3. Thieves should only be able to re-enter stealth if their initiative is full or nearly full. Right now, they can come out of stealth with both guns blazing for 3 seconds, and then just restealth while they regain their initiative and get ready to do it all over again. Their opponent has little time to actually fight back as the burst damage potential of the thief leaves most players on the defensive to begin with. It’s difficult to do a lot of damage when you spend the 3 second revealed debuff dodge rolling and using stun breakers to escape instant death. This change would force thieves to make tactical decisions about how they’re going to handle a fight. They can break stealth and burn their initiative in an attempt to kill their target outright, or they can be more tentative with mostly autoattack and maybe a low init attack or two before restealthing to assess the fight.
Less important is the low skill floor of abilities like Heart Seeker. Right now, HS is an auto tracking never miss when in range easy mode ability. I can literally point my camera away from my target and attempt to run away while spamming 2 and the ability still works 100% of the time. That is the antithesis of skilled gameplay. HS should be changed to work like the elementalist dagger skill Burning Speed. The thief would leap directly forward in the direction he is facing and if his path crosses his target then he scores a hit. This is both more interesting and engaging for the thief player and gives a counter play option to avoid the attack to the receiving player.
Earth II – Signets recharge 20% faster
Earth XII – Maintain the passive efects of signets when you activate them
Fire IX – When you activate a signet, you gain a fiery shield for 3 seconds
Water II – Arcane and signet skills cause vulnerability when activated
Arcana X – Arcane and signet skills restore 25% endurance when used
With Fire IX you gain an aura which will proc your aura traits -
Air I – Auras grant fury and swiftness
Earth V – Auras grant protection
Water XII – Auras are applied to nearby allies
100 blades really isn’t the issue you’re annoyed by. It’s quickness, which doubles the speed of everything the person does. DOUBLES. That is so stupidly overpowered that I actually feel embarrassed for the people who thought it up and signed off on it in a PvP game.
You take a class that deals DPS as high as anyone in the game and then DOUBLE it, and everyone is shocked that it’s brokenly overpowered. Quickness is simply a broken game mechanic that should be disabled in PvP and WvW.
Depending on spec/weapon:
fire attunement, drake’s breath, fire stride, ring of fire, phoenix, fire grab, earth attunement, lightning whip (3 targets), earthquake, frozen burst, cone of cold, ring of earth, water trident, arcane wave, cleansing fire and probably some others that I’m not thinking of right now are all <1 second casts or AoE channels that hit fast.
I love your idea, but it’s potentially more healing per second than Ether Renewal with no cooldown.
I’ve run 30 20 0 0 20 for my staff WvW zerg build since head start and it works amazingly well. You can singlehandedly turn the tide of a battle with your AoE damage. Just never go anywhere alone. Your single target damage is poor, range means nothing with all the gap closers and nobody is going to stand in your eruption, ice spike, and lava font 1v1. Played properly, you should rarely die unless your zerg gets wiped. This build is why I have an alt with bags full of Badges of Honor.
SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.
Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.
I’d much rather have it work on hit instead of cast. Would make more sense since ele is an aoe-based class after all…
That would be so insanely overpowered =D
Imagine spamming fast cast AoE with stacked healing. 350 × 5 for one spell that might have taken 1/2 second to cast.
It just needs to be a little better for weapons that don’t have 1/2 second cast and instacast abilities.
SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.
Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.
I posted before reading the patch notes. I’m not sure what to think right now, but this seems like a rather horrible patch that has just devastated many of the better ele builds.
It really depends on how you want to play your elementalist.
I look at things from a PvP/WvW standpoint, because PvE doesn’t matter.
Bunker – very strong overall
Damage: poor
Tank: borderline imbalanced
Balanced – very strong overall
Damage: good
Tank: good
Glass – very strong in groups, somewhat weak solo
Damage: as good as anyone not using quickness
Tank: worst in the game and not even close.
Bunker and balanced builds don’t really need much discussion; just look at any thread that says ele is fine. Those builds are strong or even overpowered. Most of the people who complain about ele being a weak class play glass cannon and try to solo. It can be a very frustrating experience to die to thieves mug -> backstab instakill (or similar very strong burst damage) when you only have 10,805 hp in WvW with <1k toughness. There is simply no room for error in that build.
Your ability in group play is very effective though. The glass ele has pretty much the same damage output as other classes (again, when they’re not using the ridiculously broken quickness mechanic) but it’s almost all AoE. I’ve jumped into the middle of a big fight and essentially instakilled 5 people before they knew what was going on. The only other class you see pull that off is maybe a thief with dagger storm, and that’s an elite skill with limited situational use.
Beyond the survivability issue with glass eles, there are some frustrating bugs that will get you killed quite a bit. Most notable is Ride the Lightning leaving you frozen in mid air while your enemy beats you to death with impunity. This happens when the ground between you and the target isn’t essentially flat and clear of obstacles, when your target enters stealth after you initiate RTL, when you are CC’d in RTL, and some other less common circumstances.
The other significant issue, is that the scepter ele is a lot like a hundred blades warrior, in that we need the target to be immobilized in order to make them eat all of the pain that we can dish out (mostly dragon’s tooth and the direct damage from being hit by the phoenix 2x). However, ele doesn’t have reliable CC with sufficient duration to get it all off within our weapon skills. That means we have to use utility slots like signet of earth which has a long cooldown and obviously takes up a utility slot. In an organized group, this doesn’t matter as much, because other people can immobilize targets for you and then you can light them up.
Glass staff is a specialist zerg weapon. It does incredibly well in big fights and is one of the best WvW specs you will find for them. Just don’t get caught by yourself. Your ability to deal damage to a single moving target is very poor and you lack the CC and escape abilities that the other weapon sets give you. Outside of a zerg, your range means very little with all of the teleports and other gap closers available.
Overall, I really enjoy my ele and recommend it to other people, despite some of the frustrating moments. I find the playstyle fast paced and rewarding for the most part and I think anyone who puts in the time to master the class will feel the same.
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