Please Devs, do not add another GT skill to this weapon set.
What’s wrong with ground-targeting? I mean, it works for engi grenades and necro staves, and it’d be a nice tool I could use to combat stealthed thieves.
Eles are good at surviving and team support.
Thieves are good at killing, and surviving due to stealth and mobility.
Both have their merits.
I’ve gotta say that I’m not happy about the kitten damage eles have, though, and I don’t like the theme of any other class but the engi, so it’s a pretty “bleh” situation for me.
If it turns out to be too much, I’m sure they’ll adjust it just like they did with the skills of other classes.
In a month or two, but yes.
That sure makes me feel better about my scepter/dagger burst build being knifed in the hip.
“Sustain” is not an adjective, guys, you’re thinking of sustainability.
So stop saying that.
I already suggested making the focus the bunker weapon.
:C
Might we get a 3 second immobilize on one of our scepter skills? That’d be great.
Also, please make Phoenix travel waaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster.
Would you mind making Shatterstone less useless while you’re at it?
Oh, we could really use some decent non-condition based damage in the earth attunement, as well.
An overall buff to the direct damage of the autoattacks would be awesome, too.
1: Conjures changed to function like engi kits.
2: Scepter changed to function more effectively as a ranged single-target option.
3: Staff changed to be viable for solo PvP.
4: Improvement(s) to base defense.
Those are my top 4, anyway.
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This build really isn’t optimal. Sigil of Earth’s effect (2 second internal cooldown, one stack of bleeding on application), will only grant you a maximum uptime of 2.5 stacks of bleeding in a perfect scenario in which it always activates, which it won’t. Furthermore, you lack the sustainability to really take advantage of condition damage, and you’ll lose a lot of damage whenever you switch out of the air attunement (which will happen, because healing) due to the lack of sustained damage in other attunements, the decreased bleeding and burning uptime (well, earth won’t have a problem with bleeding, nor fire with burning), and the massive 16 second wait to get back into the air attunement.
Bottom line: This build has neither the survivability nor the burst damage necessary for effectiveness in 1v1s, and due to the lack of damage potential in other attunements, you’ll end up fighting against your class mechanic.
The scepter simply isn’t effectively designed for ranged combat; the best I’ve been able to get out of it is an extremely boring 0/0/30/20/20 signet condition build, and it’s simply a poor choice compared to other builds.
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I’ve been checking out MadSpin’s stuff recently:
http://melementalist.com/category/videos/Granted, his stuff is all W3 which might not be your thing, but there’s no denying the effectiveness of his build/weapons/teamwork. I’m hoping to learn some new tricks from this.
Bleh, they’re in melee range so often they may as well be using d/d.
You are out of your mind. With tools like Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, shockwave, and healing rain (on call large water field with good duration!!) elementalist is one of the core utility classes in a large WvW conflict.
The more I’ve played staff ele in WvW, the more I realize that my job is support first and damage second. This is true even built glass cannon. I still do my large masses of damage, but laying down those crucial abilities that do far more to determine the fight always takes priority.
Good, yes, but that hardly makes up for the staff’s inability to function effectively in a non-support role.
If I want range, I’ve gotta go staff, so that’s a major gripe for me.
Haha u become like engineers!! Nexy upcoming year u will be getting great “fixes” every patch. Enjoy the ride! Pls notice you must be ready to change ur build every patch because the paths devs wild minds walk are unknown.
Hey, look, buddy, I am an engineer, and that means I’ve already got these problems. Not problems like how Acidic Elixirs is some kinda joke trait, because there’s no reasonable way to ever make it useful.
I’ve got practical problems.
For instance, how am I gonna stop some big, mean mother-hubbard from tearin’ me a structurally superfluous new behind?
The answer? Use one of few viable builds. And when that gets nerfed?
Use more flavor-of-the-month.
An example here is a scepter/dagger bunker, not designed by me, built grudgingly by me, and you’d best hope…
…Well, I won’t kill you anyway, so you probably don’t even care.
I really like the suggestions in the OP, and would love to see them implemented.
That said, seeing as all we managed to get out of them in the State of the Game was pretty much, “Yeah, we wanna do something for the staff,” followed by a change of topic, I don’t exactly have high hopes.
When I use a staff, I run a 0/20/0/30/20 (Valkyrie’s amulet/Berserker’s jewel in SPvP, mix of Knight’s, Berserker’s and Valkyrie’s in WvW) build. Even with the nerf to Mist Form I can still survive fine 1v1, and against multiple enemies with allies to back me up.
However, surviving doesn’t mean much if I can’t actually accomplish anything. Staff eles serve absolutely no purpose in SPvP, and in WvW (unless they’re using full ’Zerker’s, in which case they’re a mobile arrow cart used for assaulting/defending structures that the zerg has to keep thieves off of) their utility is outdone by mesmers and guardians, despite support being the only option a staff ele has.
The inability to switch from a ranged playstyle to a melee playstyle is what bothers me more than anything about this class.
I mean, we’re supposedly the kings of versatility, but you could certainly fool me.
The attunements by themselves are nothing without their respectable trait lines. I don’t even want to mention the constriction of the arcane line.
Class mechanics
Necro Deathshroud -Defense/Offense
Thief Stealth -Defense/Offense (backstab)
Mesmer Shatters -Offense/Defense
Warrior Burst -Offense
Ranger Pets -Offense/Defense
Engineer Toolbelt -Utility/Offense/Defense
Guardian Virtues -Offense/ Defense (More inclined)
Elementalist Attunements -Spec for utility
I second this stance, although I do feel that I should point out that engineers don’t really get anything out of their class mechanic without specialization either; engis just aren’t quite as dependent upon their build because they have decent base health, armor, and attack power.
Fiery Greatsword 1 when specced properly will crit up to 6k, and it pierces, that’s far more than my Lich form as a burst Necromancer.
It’s a 2 3/4 second channel, so that’s not all that impressive.
Honestly, I love Siege Wars. Seriously, in every game I’ve ever played, I’ve been that guy who managed the turrets and defenses and stuff. I’m ecstatic that commanders will have more reason to place siege weaponry in open-field combat, and that zergs will have reason to siege structures from range whenever possible.
I mean, I get that it’s a pretty massive buff, but in my experience I’ve been able to comfortably heal through AC fire, and in a zerg the things were barely noticeable with all the healing going on.
Oh wow, RtL is even worse than I expected.
Scepter/dagger doesn’t even have have reliable access to Swiftness, how am I supposed to get close enough to use my fire attunement skills?
Welp, I honestly don’t see the point of taking Mist Form anymore – the equivalent of a 3 second block during which I can’t do anything is simply not worth a utility slot.
Yes, Stealth, compare elementalists to warriors. That’ll get people to sympathize with you.
That said, I think a much more reasonable change to bunker ele mobility would have been to make RtL vulnerable to movement-impairing conditions, decrease the effectiveness of Cantrips (remove the stun-break aspect from Lightning Flash and Armor of Earth, perhaps), and buff the focus.
The focus has no form of advanced mobility, so if it became the better choice for bunkers, that’d take care of that.
It wouldn’t be as simple as that, of course, but the upcoming nerf is clearly made for bunker eles in SPvP, and little thought seems to have been spared for other builds and game modes.
I can hit air 5 and switch to fire and drop DT in time for it to land so I don’t see why anyone else shouldn’t be able to.
Your opponents aren’t spamming their dodge enough if they can’t roll out of the way after being knocked down by Gale – it’s a 2 second knockdown, and Dragon’s Tooth takes 3 to drop.
Curious why you chose cantrip mastery just for cleansing fire.
I’m taking 20 points in Water for Healing Ripple and the vitality and healing power, and I don’t need to heal quite as often due to SoR, so it just seemed like the best choice.
Its still very defensive to use the arcane energy + evasive arcana to dodge like crazy from popping signets (and the heal ability from the adventurer rune). If you use all signets + adventurers, you get 150% extra endurance every 20s (100% w/o the adventurer’s 5th rune). With the 5% recharge rate, that gives you 5 dodges every 20s, or once every 4 seconds. If you are attunement dancing, that is at least 3 extra spells from evasive arcana applying extra conditions. With the vigor on crit, you only get 100% extra endurance for 5s every 9, which is much less.
Renewing Stamina allows me to maintain Vigor pretty much indefinitely due to the 20% increased boon duration from Arcana, and the increased Bleeding and Poison duration seems more useful to me than an extra dodge when I heal.
Running with 4 signets isn’t really an option due to the lack of a stun-breaker, and the duration of Signet of Water’s Chill is pathetic anyway. (I’m not really using Dragon’s Tooth, so Signet of Earth wouldn’t be of much use.)
Hm, y’know, I just went and tried a condition build in SPvP*, ‘cause I’ve had some moderate success with them in the past and, well, I was bored.
Anyway, it went quite well. The last build I tried used Ether Renewal, Signet of Fire, Lightning Flash, Mist Form, and 30 in Water instead of Earth, but in the end I gave up on it because the damage didn’t flow very well – condition removal absolutely destroyed me, and beyond Signet of Fire my conditions were really only in the earth and fire attunements.
This time, however, the decreased downtime from not using Ether Renewal, as well as the blind from Signet of Air and the poison from Sigil of Doom, seem to mitigate those weaknesses to the point that I may run it regularly if it continues to hold up.
*http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhMmYbux4gjDAEFm4y4BIaQSRxM5A-TsAAzCuI0SBjDGDMSYswMq4UxsDA
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If everything is the same, someone will find a combination that is most optimal. Then you would want a buff to underused items.
What fails in all of your arguments is that there will always be one thing that is the best. When have you ever seen something in which options were balanced. So power creep is not a result of over buffing initially. It is a result of the optimal spec out performing the rest.
I don’t think we expect anything near perfect balance, just a greater effort on the part of the designers to make useless skills/utilities/traits/etc. more useful.
Even though I agree with the changes, I can understand why mesmers are complaining. Eles on the other hand, I don’t get it. I thought most of them realized that their survivability and combined offensive capability was OP.
Bottom line: The bunker builds are the ones that are considered overpowered, and the change to RtL doesn’t affect bunkers much (because they can facetank damage), but severely reduces the survivability of non-bunkers (because they can’t facetank damage).
It’s not necessarily the end of days for non-bunkers, but they were in a bad place before, and it sure doesn’t promote build diversity.
how does it reduce their survivability? are you escaping from the same fight with RTL twice in 20 seconds? You only need one RTL to disengage if played properly.
You mean escaping twice in 40 seconds? Well, like I said, I like to run Berserker’s scepter/dagger, so yes, in open field combat disengaging frequently is essential. Granted, it doesn’t matter as much in SPvP because there are generally ample opportunities to break line-of-sight, but in WvW the change to RtL could potentially be a spec-breaker.
People played glass eles?
Nobody does, but they pretend they do (unless they consider the valk’s build GC, lol).
I do sometimes, ‘cause it’s the only way I can get decent ranged damage.
I say “sometimes” because it’s kinda disheartening being useless when fighting more than one enemy. (You get focused, you die pretty much instantly unless you manage run away.)
and eles talking about lack of builds? LOL, try to play an engineer and see how well off you are as an elementalist
Hey, as an engi I have HGH, TANKCAT, and Static Discharge.
Not great, but it’s better than dagger/dagger or scepter/dagger bunker/semi-bunker and scepter/dagger arcane burst, the latter of which was hit pretty hard by the new changes.
Bottom line: The bunker builds are the ones that are considered overpowered, and the change to RtL doesn’t affect bunkers much (because they can facetank damage), but severely reduces the survivability of non-bunkers (because they can’t facetank damage).
Why do you guys call them “bunker” builds. These “bunker” builds are Dps, bunker, roamer, aoe cleanse, aoe healer all in one build. You guys are being very misleading.
We’re talking about Cleric’s eles, right? Valkyrie’s amulet/Berserker’s jewel d/d eles are a bit much, sure, but if they were the issue it wouldn’t have been mobility that was nerfed. As far as I can tell, RtL was changed because it allowed the super tanky Cleric’s eles to zoom around SPvP maps.
I don’t use a mainhand dagger, though, so I’m not the greatest authority on the subject.
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Even though I agree with the changes, I can understand why mesmers are complaining. Eles on the other hand, I don’t get it. I thought most of them realized that their survivability and combined offensive capability was OP.
Bottom line: The bunker builds are the ones that are considered overpowered, and the change to RtL doesn’t affect bunkers much (because they can facetank damage), but severely reduces the survivability of non-bunkers (because they can’t facetank damage).
It’s not necessarily the end of days for non-bunkers, but they were in a bad place before, and it sure doesn’t promote build diversity.
Do we really need an Attunement Recharge Rate stat, anyway? Why can’t it just be a base 10 seconds like most other forms of weapon swapping?
All the long base cooldown does currently is lock us into spending at least 20 points in Arcana, and it’s not like bunkers would get anything more out of other trait lines if they had the option.
The standard 0/10/0/30/30 build should still be fine – just swap out Mist Form for another Cantrip.
If you want to avoid boon duration, I can recommend some damage-oriented builds, although avoiding boons themselves is an exercise in futility:
D/D: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vm33;0J0BJkU0-5sM-Z0;9;59-TT;10;324A45ALo0;0o0-sV2DsV2D4BO
S/D: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vm34;0J0BJ-U0c4sM-Z0;9;5J-TJ;159;204A04-SJ;1o0-sV2DsV2D4BG
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They make good bunkers with d/d and s/d.
That’s about the only thing they’re worth taking for over another class.
It seems like a better solution would have been to remove the stun-break aspect of Lightning Flash and Cleansing Fire (also implementing the Mist Form nerf, as much as I dislike it), as well as Fury from Zephyr’s Boon (to limit bunkers’ access to Vigor).
Then they could have improved the focus so that it became the go-to choice for bunker builds, which would have solved the mobility issue given its complete lack of mobility. (Yes, they could still have switched to an offhand dagger out of combat, but ele bunkers aren’t the only ones capable of that.)It wouldn’t be an ideal solution, but it wouldn’t gut just about every other viable elementalist build, as well as mobility in other game modes.
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EDIT: question? The common thought is that you can’t hit anyone in PvP with scepter attacks. If more are running this, that can’t be true, eh?
It’s more that Water Trident, Rock Barrier, and the two blinds provide a good deal of defense. Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t hit (unless you use Signet of Earth or you manage to follow up with Earthquake or something), Phoenix doesn’t hit at range, and so on.
From what I’ve read on the forums, the “balancers” are only 2 people, who play Thief and Warrior. We’re getting about what one would expect from that.
Interesting perspective, seeing as those classes are generally considered to be at the bottom of the barrel in SPvP.
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BUNKER ele deserves some nerfs. These nerfs do almost nothing to address BUNKERS. It just hits non-bunkers and makes them even less useful than they are now. It’s like saying condition necro is too strong so we’ll remove your direct damage.
That’s because ANet wanted to nerf two facets of the ele they found not working as intended. First the excessive mobility of the class allowing it to contest far points at the start of the game even before they get captured. Then, the bunkering itself. The former case is mostly “fixed” with the RtL nerf. The later is waiting to see if the Warrior and Thief new boon hate mechanics counter sufficiently well those bunkers first.
Then the nerf on mist form, which actually also affects the engineer which isn’t exactly a strong bunker class itself is more of a side change.
It seems like a better solution would have been to remove the stun-break aspect of Lightning Flash and Cleansing Fire (also implementing the Mist Form nerf, as much as I dislike it), as well as Fury from Zephyr’s Boon (to limit bunkers’ access to Vigor).
Then they could have improved the focus so that it became the go-to choice for bunker builds, which would have solved the mobility issue given its complete lack of mobility. (Yes, they could still have switched to an offhand dagger out of combat, but ele bunkers aren’t the only ones capable of that.)
It wouldn’t be an ideal solution, but it wouldn’t gut just about every other viable elementalist build, as well as mobility in other game modes.
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Staves are designed to function as support weapons in this game.
This is mainly a problem for elementalists, who can’t swap to other weapons in combat for more single-target damage and defense and such.
-Elixir S: Can no longer use utilities and heals while active
-Mist Form: Can no longer use utilities and heals while activewhy Warrior’s Endure Pain doesnt get the same treatment?
Endure Pain doesn’t grant invulnerability, so you can still be CC’d.
Eh, unless they ninja-buff signets to make them stun-breakers, I don’t see any new builds becoming viable – believe me, I’ve spent a LOT of time trying to make unorthodox builds work.
you can pop your heal before popping mist form…
I do it all the time with F1 medkit with elixir s.
Well, we don’t yet know if Mist Form will interrupt our heals with the change, but that’s a fair point. If it works, though, it’ll probably be changed.
Yes eles, you can’t heal for free now.
That’s the point – glassy eles kinda need the free heal.
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The primary complaints about eles are in regard their self-healing and condition removal.
Yet the Mist Form change affects builds that can’t facetank damage far more than those that can, and RtL was only a complaint due to the class’s healing capability and because it’s unaffected by Cripple/Chill.
They didn’t have ANY sort of compensation ready for these nerfs, so they may as well have just introduced the boon-hate for thieves and warriors and left it at that for this patch in regard to elementalists.
-Glyph of Storms air and earth durations slightly increased
I mean WHY? WHAT IS THIS?!
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The more Flame Rams you build, the more favor you gain with the Flame Ram god, who bestows a blessing upon your computer accordingly.
@To All
All this now means is, if a D/D ele beats a player in a duel, they will think “Hm, what a skillful player.” Rather than, “LOL, figures he needs that OP spec.”
If they’re running boon hate, maybe. The changes didn’t really affect Cantrip bunkers beyond taking away a couple get-out-of-jail-free cards, and providing potential counters for thieves and warriors.
so ele are now like everyone else? what an outrage…
You don’t get it, the bunker hasn’t really been changed (I guess they won’t be able to run away as often, and only get 1 guaranteed channel of Ether Renewal instead of 2, but I don’t see that hurting them terribly in the game mode that caused the nerf), but other builds took a far more painful blow.
where thay may not have been changed directly the changes the the thief/necro/warrior will all nagativly effect the ellies bunker build.
Heh, true. It’s getting late and my mind’s getting foggy, what can I say?
That’s the sort of thing we’ll need to wait on to determine the effects of, of course.
so ele are now like everyone else? what an outrage…
You don’t get it, the bunker hasn’t really been changed (I guess they won’t be able to run away as often, and only get 1 guaranteed channel of Ether Renewal instead of 2, but I don’t see that hurting them terribly in the game mode that caused the nerf), but other builds took a far more painful blow.
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That seems incredibly hard to believe. Especially since I’ve played tPvP for a very long time and never seen/heard of anything like that.
Seriously? It’s where I get most of my gold.
Testing Armor of Earth in place of Mist Form for my ‘Zerker s/d, because I honestly don’t see the point in a 3 second invulnerability if I can’t do anything during that time and I have other stun-breakers to choose from.
It’s not as good for “OH ****” moments, and it has a longer cooldown, but it has the bonus of allowing me to get off Churning Earth and such.
If you’re relying on MF to get your heal off if you pop mist form at low hp you’re not taking advantage of the invulnerable period you get.
Because we’re always at 100% health until we’re hit by burst combos, right?
Well, maybe bunker eles.
what burst combo cant you react in time at atleast 70% health?
I… What?
The point is that I run a fairly glassy build, and the ability to heal while invulnerable is invaluable for avoiding interrupts and not dying before I get the heal off.
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If you’re relying on MF to get your heal off if you pop mist form at low hp you’re not taking advantage of the invulnerable period you get.
Because we’re always at 100% health until we’re hit by burst combos, right?
Well, maybe bunker eles.