The ele will always be a weak profession for people that don’t use or even know about the advantages it has.
You mean for anyone who doesn’t want to play support.
It’s kind of awesome when you’re full-glass…
the downed state in general already feels like cheating half the time
…But this. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m downed I’m dead, and any victory from the downed state just feels rotten.
Thief has the best mitigation in the game, since they have the highest chance and the access to the most tools that allow them to avoid damage entirely
I wonder why there are no thief bunkers if this is true and why it’s dominated by guardians entirely. I guess guardian is OP since every team in MLG use one.
Could it be because thieves make selfish tanks, and their stealth/teleportation becomes useless if they have to hold a point?
Anyway, the real reason is that removing the cooldown adds too much hidden power. It’s the same reason weapon swapping for every other class ever has a cooldown.
How? I’ve already addressed that attunement swapping doesn’t alter our effective range and that we have long skill cooldowns to deal with as it is.
Attunement swapping is something eles need to do just to maintain effectiveness. I get that, say, warriors might take two melee weapon sets and switch in a similar manner, but it’s different in that if both sets perform similar functions then they don’t really lose much by being locked out of one, and if the weapons perform different functions they don’t need to switch until the appropriate situation arises.
Even Fresh Air builds, which probably have the least trouble with attunement cooldowns, still have to swap frequently to get off more Electric Discharges, which means you may very well not have access to that really important Earth skill when you need it.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
Removing the attunement cooldown would make us completely over-powered.
How? I’ve already addressed that attunement swapping doesn’t alter our effective range and that we have long skill cooldowns to deal with as it is.
I’ve said before that Conjures might get more builds dedicated to one or more if they were more like Weapon Kits.
As they are, they are basically severely nerfed versions of Weapon Kits.
The timer is much lower (Weapon Kits CAN run out, but it takes long time), they have charges, which imo needlessly limits them on top of the timer, and their cooldowns tend to take a long time as well.wut.
Have you actually ever played an engineer? What weapon kits are you even talking about, and how is it that having a conjured weapon that buffs you and another person is not as good as a weapon kit? I run Lightning Hammer and FGS, and I keep the LH up like 90% of the time, and when it’s on cooldown, I am generating might stacks and fury up to 30-40 seconds at a time.
Conjures can be quite useful in PvE, but in PvP they’re inferior to kits in just about every way.
Removing attunement cooldowns would be a bigger deal than you realize because chilled would no longer affect it. I have literally died because chilled prevented me from swapping when I needed to.
Chilled doesn’t affect kit cooldowns, yet I don’t see anyone complaining. The important thing is that it affects skill cooldowns.
If you leave an attunement at a bad time, you should be penalized for it. Having consequences for your actions just makes for a better more engaging game. Why should a game not punish you for making a mistake?
Because swapping attunements isn’t a mistake, it’s what you need to do to maintain any degree of effectiveness. You’re saying that if I want to cast Unsteady Ground I have to give up the ability to cast Magnetic Aura reactively; you’re saying that if I want Rock Barrier I have to pass on Earthquake for the next 9+ seconds or use the skills together.
…Not to mention, you’d be taking some control away from the player while making the dumb decision to sit in one attunement more forgiving.
Why should remaining in one attunement be punished when some builds require it? Anyway, I figured it’d just be a 9 second cooldown once you swap away like it is now, and an icon would appear on your bar to show that it’s ready. Clunky, sure, but the class mechanics can’t get much clunkier at this point.
Am I not seeing something that would cause no cooldown attunement swapping to be so powerful that I deserve hostile responses?
I second Infiltrator’s Strike.
This wasn’t a factor in my decision, but it just makes me cry those few times I play a staff ele.
Edit: Awwww maaaaannnnn, we have to fix them? I just wanted to complain.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
Anyone ever stop to think about how those who play supposedly OP classes might feel if they don’t actually LIKE the good builds? I know I didn’t like it when bunker eles were all the rage, because I wanted to play a ranged build focused on sustained damage – a bunker wouldn’t cut it for me.
I experimented with everything I could think of, and some condition builds almost worked out, but they didn’t even compare to s/d burst builds (which had basically no damage after the initial burst combo back then, and that didn’t work out too well because I liked to go for direct, sustained combat rather than OMGWTFBBQ surprise burst).
I build mainly for 1v1s, so once they removed the ability to use Ether Renewal in Mist Form (which was the right move, despite my frustrations) and increased RTL’s cooldown to 40 seconds, I just didn’t have a resonse to surprise burst from thieves and the like. I got so frustrated after a while that I just stopped playing.
Now I’m back, and eles have Fresh Air – it’s not great for sustained damage, but it’s something. Thing is, though, it requires 30 points in Air, and nerfs to elementalists’ self-sustainability make it even harder to survive without 30 Water and Arcana, so now the class is pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum, as there’s not much point in going for anything but max burst (though still no points in Fire, lol).
The class basically took one step forward and two steps back relative to my playstyle. To me, there were never any glory days, it’s all just been bleh.
So please, to anyone reading this, when you call a class overpowered, BE SPECIFIC. Specify the class, gamemode, build, and role, and THEN commence spreading your cry of “OP!”.
I say this because, even if it doesn’t confuse the devs, it’s depressing when no one recognizes your difficulties. :C
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
Why u want no cd on attunements when our skills cd are 30-45 sec long? if u look at Dagger off hand skills almost all are between 25-45 sec cd.
Magnetic Aura? The ability to use a Water Attunement skill without being locked out of my heals afterward? Condition builds?
Because attunements proc
9 second internal cooldown on on-swap effects would solve this problem, as I mentioned in the OP.
cast
What?
and are usually rotated.
Precisely why I want this change. I’d like to use whatever attunement is best suited for the situation, rather than be forced to cycle through them and be subsequently locked out of skills I might want. (Once again, condition builds are a perfect example.)
^Why do we have them?^
Aside from bonuses for swapping attunements (which could easily have been implemented with internal cooldowns), what reason is there for being locked out of attunements? It’s not like they allow us to alter our effective range as with a weapon swap, our skills generally have longer cooldowns and/or are weaker than comparable skills for other classes, the ability to quickly adapt to a situation is supposed to be an ele’s thing…
…Am I missing something? I mean, if attunement cooldowns were removed so many new builds would become viable, and it’s not like the traits of the Arcana line aren’t good enough to justify putting a bunch points in it even without a secondary statistical bonus (and if you’re really worried maybe the Boon Duration it provides could be doubled or something).
Lava Axe is a pretty fast attack, so maybe it’d be nice for Might stacking If conjures didn’t have such ridiculously long cooldowns.
Is this really what we’re getting? Just some bug fixes and borderline pointless buffs?
It would be awfully nice to actually get new build options, rather than minor buffs that won’t change a thing.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
Something like Dire gear with Conjure Ice Bow and Glyph of Storms? No one’s saying the staff isn’t good in groups. Try it in a 1v1 and get back to us.
I have, and it’s still amazing. They don’t stand in the aoe as often as npcs, but it still works.
I have to admit, I have a tough time believing that you were fighting competent players.
I find that as long as I’m not stunned or immobilized (and Shockwave is so slow that I’m not gonna get hit by it outside of melee range), dodging Eruption is absurdly easy to do. It even provides a visual cue for when it goes off, unlike Churning Earth, so you don’t need to memorize the timing.
I just made an amazing staff build with absolute fantastic survivability and damage in about 5 minutes.
Something like Dire gear with Conjure Ice Bow and Glyph of Storms? No one’s saying the staff isn’t good in groups. Try it in a 1v1 and get back to us.
Eles do NOT have the lowest health pool. Guardians do
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health#Base_Health_by_Profession
I’ll never understand why people argue these things before checking the wiki to be sure they’re right.
I’ve never understood the whole “ele is hard to play” thing. Coming from SWtOR, 25 skills is pretty standard, and eles don’t even have access to every skill at any given time.
You just kinda go through your appropriate skill rotation, maybe mixing things up a bit to bait dodges in PvP, and you’re good to go.
I mean, there’s a lot more micromanagement with the Elementalist than the Warrior, but that’s only as difficult as memorizing the skills and their functions.
A warrior that baits condition removal and goes for a Throw Bolas > Killshot combo is doing something a lot harder than going through a memorized damage rotation. Also probably less effective, unfortunately, but that’s another matter.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
All I know is the ele is really bad underwater (or at least I am). I come in against a an enemy at half health and use whirlpool as that seems to be the only way to do much damage, manage to down him, then proceed to be killed by him in the downed state as I fail to finish him since he just swims away from finishers. Eventually he downs me and kills me in my downed state. This may definitly be a l2p issue but just throwing it out there. For the record I kill most people on land as long as I am not out numbered so I am not a terrible player overall.
You play an ele? I had you figured for a necro.
*BA-DUM TISH*
I quit the game for about 3 months and came back just a week ago. I really liked GW2, and still do, but I kinda have this thing where I don’t wanna play anything but an elementalist for roleplaying reasons, and I just couldn’t bring myself to play anymore.
The class has the Fresh Air trait now. It’s not the equivalent of a warrior’s rifle that I wanted, but it’s an improvement on ranged combat, so it’s nice.
That and the change to Persistent Flames are about all the positive changes in that time, though, which is just depressing.
You confuse your own point. Heat has nothing to do with the states of matter, though it, along with pressure, can be used to determine what state of matter a given substance will take. But for our discussion, heat is irrelevant.
Stop confusing Heat and Plasma. Heat, aka Infrared, is only one small part of the EM Spectrum, and is NOT, itself, a measure of energy, but a type of energy. Plasma is, technically, the state of matter where it stops being regarded as Matter and starts being regarded as Energy.
Heat is the vibration of particles – not infrared radiation, which is emitted when heat is lost. With next to no heat, all substances would be solid, as the strong nuclear force and electromagnetic force would face little resistance, with the exception of plasma and perhaps heavily ionized particles, which would be repelled from one another due to electromagnetic repulsion, rather than drawn together.
Energy takes many forms – light, heat, kinetic – but plasma is a state of matter as much as solid, liquid, and gas.
Please either provide your sources, which seem rather contrary to the most fundamental aspects of modern science, or study this matter properly before arguing further.
What is they removed the cooldown on Attunements, but made everything related to Attuning to a certain element have a 9 second CD?
Absolutely fine with me, I’ve suggested this exact thing before.
So far Engy is a better replacement, same sort of high skill, jack of all trades class but isn’t utter fail, I’ll go enjoy my 0 cooldown kits lol, have fun inflating your ego.
For months, engineers were saying “we’re like eles, but bad.” A few simple fixes later, the profession is fun, complex and 100% viable. Eles will be back in the meta quickly, no need to switch or lobby for massive buffs.
And still won’t be well designed and fluid like Engy.
This is what really bugs me. I don’t care about how strong eles are if the class just ends up being the same old clunky bunker or something.
The problem is most obvious with the staff: You just kind of have to hope that the Earth Attunement will be available when you want to use Magnetic Aura; If you just used Frozen Ground for CC and want to switch to another attunement, you have to give up your heals for the next 9+ seconds, which could become really important before then.
I’ve taken a liking to the Rock Solid trait recently, but I can’t effectively control when I get Stability from it – to call that “annoying” would be a bit of an understatement.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
30/30/0/10/0 Berserker’s with Scholar runes is massively OP.
Against golems.
No. The +20% damage steroid traits from x/30/10/10/x gives you more damage than the 300 power from the fire line.
I kinda like the 30 seconds of Fury I get outta Persistent Flames with a scepter/dagger Fire + Arcane Wave combo, but okay.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
30/30/0/10/0 Berserker’s with Scholar runes is massively OP.
Against golems.
Who even cares how many skills we have? It’s not like it’s better than having ten. Worse, really, when you factor in how attunement cooldowns limit the skills we have access to at any given time.
I’d advocate swapping weapon sets in combat, but then we’d get absurd amounts of CC due to the design of our weapons, so at this point I say make conjures like Engi kits and remove attunement cooldowns (adding internal cooldowns for on-swap effects, of course).
Also, I can easily maintain perma-Swiftness with a staff and scepter/dagger out of combat as it is, but that only matters when I’m alone. Organized groups can already stack obscene amounts of Swiftness by blasting Static Fields, so that’s a non-issue.
http://bpc.edu/mathscience/chemistry/images/periodic_table_of_elements.jpg
I demand atleast 100 more attunements, current system excludes so many elements and places kitten in totaly wrong categories.
Please people, stop the pseudosience nonsense.
Fear my powers of plutonium!
That’s a lotta downtime there. Even worse if you have to leave your second Ice Bow behind.
I noticed GoEP was being used, prolly for Cripple condition cover, so that helps the whole “bye 25 stacks of Bleeding” thing eles tend to have trouble with.
Earth > Solid
Water > Liquid
Air > Gas
Fire > PlasmaThe four states of matter represented perfectly. You’re just reaching there. Sorry.
I find it interesting that the ancients seemed to have known a lot more about “advanced” science than we credit them. The four elements are very much in tune with the four states of matter, which are pretty elemental. And, while not ancient, per se, the notion of “ether” is coming back with the omnipresent “Dark Matter”. Everything old is new again.
Heat has to do water as much as plasma, it’s just that not as much is required. In fact, “cold plasma” is entirely possible – if you were to fill an electromagnetic container soley with, say, electrons, you’d need almost no heat to maintain the plasma state, as electromagnetic repulsion would prevent them from bonding with each other.
As for the elements, that’s just a result of simple observation of solids, liquids, gases, and heat. About as basic as observations get. In the case of ether, the idea more closely resembles the dimension of space, the theory of which, from what I understand, actually did replace the concept of ether.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
Goo for poison.
Short of a black hole, I don’t think liquid plasma is really a thing.
Also, fire represents energy in general, while the other elements represent specific states of matter (levels of energy (and a lack of energy in the case of ice)), and as plasma is a state of matter close to that of gas (air), I’d say lightning’s domain of Air is justified.
I wasnt suggesting to go condi at all. The reason I said those 2 traits is because they will give you +10% damage at range. Bleeding is really easy to cause with scepter.
In regard to offense, I get far more from points in Air than in Earth, so I’m utterly baffled as to why you’re suggesting this.
Focus is all about CC focus isnt about damage its about CC and defense. I can’t think of any class in this game that can keep a enemy at range consistently and win.
I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. I don’t care if enemies can get within melee range, I want an option that doesn’t require me to run up to them if I intend to win a 1v1.
An offensive ranged offhand is probably the best way to allow for this.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
The only scepter skill that is more effective within melee would be phoenix (and you can still cast this at range to hit your opponent 3 times if they are stunned or imbolized) or while you are running away.
True, but then you have to consider that the focus is useless for damage, so I have to take the dagger, which means I’ll spend a lot of time in close quarters.
Also, aside from Signet of Earth, I don’t think we have any CC that’ll keep enemies in place long enough for a max-range Phoenix to hit, and you may as well use it for Dragon’s Tooth if you actually take it.
*snip*
I don’t care if my enemy gets close to me, I want to be effective without getting close to them.
Also, ele condition damage builds are pretty bad. They can work, but attunement cooldowns, low healing, and a lack of cover conditions make them rather poor.
This is totally the right subforum for this.
@Powerbottom
so many lectures that you’re trying to give…and you don’t know you can immobilize ele before he uses vapor form?..so what high level you’re playing again?
Between a profession that can potentially kill you while downed and another that may only waste your time for 1s to roflstomp him..the latter is the hardest?…nice logic but I’ll stick to my logicIf my team is capping..nobody care if the enemy team waste time try to ress the ele far away, an ele is nowhere near the level of threat of a generic mesmer…once in a while you get that serious super skilled ele who may possibly pose a threat…but that it’s extremely rare
A mesmer can still deal over 10k dmg while downed, thief can aoe cripple on top of constant 1.5k dmg, guardian can push off entire team from point, ranger can aoe fear with dog, engy can aoe knockback whole team from point…and ele can waste your time for vapor form 1s …omfg ele is the hardest to stomp..
While I may be rather annoyed that, as an ele, I have an extremely low chance of killing my opponent if I go down, I cannot deny that Vapor Form, and the chain-immobilize of Grasping Earth, if I survive long enough to use it, are extremely good in a team setting.
Also, I think the Engineer’s downed state is probably the worst – if you time it perfectly you might get 2 interrupts on one opponent, but you do absolutely laughable damage and are completely helpless against more than one enemy.
That is not balance imagine how stupidly op it would be to be a staff ele in zerker gear and drop someone with ccs and damage before they can even get close.
That would indeed not be balanced.
However, I don’t care about dropping someone before they can get close (relative to other games, melee combatants have fewer gap closers, which is made up for by lower ranged damage), I just want to be able to kill someone without closing distance. Currently, the scepter doesn’t allow that, and the staff doesn’t work in 1v1s, so, yeah.
Better scepter autoattacks and a more damage oriented focus with more hard CC (trading an AoE knockdown for a ranged AoE daze with a small radius isn’t so great) would be an effective solution, but it’s highly unlikely that the latter would ever become a reality, as it would require a complete rework of the weapon.
Maybe we could get a torch offhand or something, instead.
Bringing up the lack of ranged options that are effective in 1v1 scenarios again. (The scepter requires you to get close to be effective; I define ranged effectiveness as the ability to kill your opponent without closing from 900+ range.) Will elementalists ever see ranged capability that can compete with, say, mesmers and necromancers?
This is important to me because I hate playing without without being effective at range, and I mainly roam solo in WvW.
I will not simply play another class, because given the lore and class themes, I can’t justify playing as any other.
lollatenightcomplaintthread
HAHAHA
Standardized gear for PvP was one of the reasons I came to Guild Wars 2. I find the current game mode for sPvP quite boring, so I don’t play it, but I would never set foot in the HotM if gear progression was introduced.
Gah, I like the playstyle of the Mesmer so much more than that of the Elementalist, but I hate the illusionist theme.
That’s something I don’t like about this game – many class choices effectively force a personality on your character due to their aesthetics. (You can’t play a mesmer that forgoes illusions for a general focus on warping reality. You can’t play a necromancer that despises death and uses the energies of the living and the dead to combat it, because the class is designed around embracing death.)
…Anyway, that mesmer wasn’t a very good actor with all the strafing and backpedaling, so locating the real mesmer shouldn’t have been much of a problem. Remember that if they’re not standing still and using an autoattack or running directly at you, they’re prolly the real deal.
Aside from “watch for the Illusionary Leap icon on their bar in your peripheral vision like a paranoid lunatic”, I dunno what to say that hasn’t been said.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
This has always happened to me.
As for the 50% more damage, noticed that jump from 70 to 105, did we? Must be sweet to break double digits.(relax it’s a joke). By the way, hoping that’s not the pinnacle of your forum trolls, because it’s a weak troll if it is.
No, I’m serious, most AR I run into have, like, no Toughness or something. I don’t get it.
You AR people must be wearing holographic armor or something, because I’m dealing, like, 50% more damage than usual.
They don’t, their target is either next to them or they run toward the tooth.
When I try it I see my crit damage go up, so I assume it works.
I mainly roam solo, and in my experience the scepter isn’t the best 1v1 weapon for eles, but I hate playing without a ranged option, so I’m stuck with it.
As for why more people don’t use it in WvW, I imagine it’s because it doesn’t excel at group support or roaming.Wow, I use the same build too (except with 20% cooldown on air skills).
Before anyone directly copies his gear and accessories, there’s an important point to consider – not all slots are the same with respect to crit damage.
Here’s the post, not made by me: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18q7oe/not_all_slots_are_created_equal_dos_and_donts_of/
In other words, it will be better for you to take Berserker Gloves, Boots, and Shoulders, and change the ring to Soldier stats (or anything that has no crit damage).
6,025 supply used to build siege out of 1,000,000.
I’M ON MY WAY
Seems a fine change to me.
However, if you’re lacking mobility, switch to staff, use Windborne Speed, drop a Static Field, switch to scepter/dagger, use Phoenix and Earthquake to blast it, use RtL, turn around and use Updraft, switch to your loadout of choice.
I mainly roam solo, and in my experience the scepter isn’t the best 1v1 weapon for eles, but I hate playing without a ranged option, so I’m stuck with it.
As for why more people don’t use it in WvW, I imagine it’s because it doesn’t excel at group support or roaming.
(edited by Chaosky.5276)
What I’m saying is that every class should be able to trait for 1v1 or team play if they choose. There must never be a class (like thieves) that specifically excel in 1v1s. It should all depend on the set up, gear and traits.
While I disagree that a lack of 1v1 balance is a major contributor to zergs, I do agree with this.
More varied terrain would be very, very welcome. All these open fields result in a general deficiency in flanking maneuvers, and those wonderful cliffs are as scarce as they are defensible.
…the most fun you get out of WvW will not be from how you place siege.
I’m afraid you don’t speak for me – pretty much all my favorite combat tactics involve siege in some manner, whether it be engaging an enemy within range of hidden arrow carts to inflict greater losses, filling choke points with ballistae, or just generally sieging up really weird, hard-to-reach places.
…Unfortunately, I’ve only ever known one commander to get creative with siege placement with any degree of regularity.
Mesmer, Ranger, and Thief, the trio of 1v1 gods.
-Disgruntled WvW Roamer