Guild Wars 2

Weapon Swapping? I think once conjures get a few more tweaks and trait support, we should see them being used to give range versatility to the elementalists.

@ Xrylene, good post. I feel like professions like the elementalist should be easier to play, while still being equally hard to master (although honestly, this can be achieved with a few buffs, because outside of our defense and attunement swapping, we’re pretty simple), while professions like the warrior should have extra mechanics that would add slightly more depth and complexity behind it. Something like f2-f4 dedicated to GW1-inspired stance dancing, where you get more efficient at specific tasks (caughting opponents, dealing damage, healing) at huge costs. This would have made warriors so MUCH more interesting to play.

Scrap the high recharge, win button frenzy with its little armor drawback. Give us something like “33% faster attack, take 50% more damage”, “33% faster movement speed, 50% slower endurance regeneration”, etc. I would even play a warrior for that. I love juggernauts/ soldiers that rely on brute force, while still requiring intelligent and profissional battle stancing or some other thing.

Baladir.2736:

@DiogoSilva No, I wouldn’t say Pve is hard. Some have a harder time of it until they do learn to attunement swap and put together synergies but that’s not hard to pick up. sPvP is a better barometer of class equality and that is where attunement swapping, I believe, becomes critical for success.

I have learned about attunement swapping, and have been practising and perfecting for every single pve battle through my way to level 80 and further. Believe me I’ve taken attunements (and not only that) into consideration.

Attunement swapping is absolutely critical to do anything in spvp at all. I know that from experience, as someone who has consistently worked hard to end at first rank or close during spvp.

I still think elementalists who have good knowledge and practise on attunements are still underpowered. Making best use of the attunement system allows you to win against the newbs, but the moment a good player will go against you, it’s a timed defeat. They will destroy you because their skills are designed to deal more damage than yours in a single swing, while being available far more often than yours, while having more utility than yours, while activating faster than yours. They’ll win because they have time in their favour, both short-term and long-term time. You’ll have twice the skills, but in practise they are twice as simple and weak as normal skills, and that only means you take twice the time to do the same thing your opponent does to you, until you blow out all your recharges, where by then you’ll have no sort of chance against the infinite 5k-11k damage spamming machines.

Cause you like the work.

Harder/ more complex work should give better payment. Liking the work doesn’t means much here, because if you can enjoy an “easy” job as much as a “hard” job, then you’re much better off with the easy job. Most of the people who are willing to work harder, do so because it gives them a more confortable position in life.

Sorry for repeating what everyone else is saying, Mr. Jonathan, but as a fellow level 80 elementalist that tries his best to attunement swap, dodge, use active defenses and use subtle cross-attunement synergies, and don’t get rewarded enough for that, I’m afraid.

I perfectly understand that strong builds should be toned down, and honestly, I love elementalists for how active they are, so healing tanks are a bit… bland, in my opinion.

What I’m afraid, however, is that most of the best builds for elementalists so far come from water (+ arcane + earth) traits. Those traits are fun, and give me a chance to do something at spvp, unlike that very questionaly fire traitline. I’m afraid that some of our most interesting traits and traits synergy are at the risk of being nerfed to oblivion for the sake of being “decent”/ “acceptable” on boring, healing tanks.

I think it’s clear to a lot of people that elementalists are lacking in power builds. They take far too long, require far too effort and have absolutely no margin for error to kill anything (that doesn’t hits them), and in just half the time that it would require for them to set the burst, they’re already being downed in 3 hits in 2-ish seconds, unles they sacrifice their damage to pop out active defenses that only delay the inevitable. Likewise, their non-power/ non-condition builds can’t damage, at all. I wouldn’t mind taking a bit away from healing tanks defense for a general power boost, to make the healing tanks less passive, and to make power builds worthwhile, as a whole.

Anyways, I don’t want to fill this with suggestions, so I’ll stop. But, as someone who has been begging for scraps at the elementalists’ board, it makes me nervous that the next change will possibly be to nerf a specific build only, that comes at the risk of nerfing most of the aceptable spvp builds too. And, of couse, a fiery storm will take place on their boards, judging by the morale of my fellow elementalist comrades. :P

“I don’t like spamming auto-attack with all other 7 professions”.

I’m going to make a serious question: do any of you seriously think that 7 of the 8 professions in this game were designed for noobs, and only 1, especially one whose flavor is very noob-friendly and its skills are very simplistic, was designed for extreme hardcores?

The elementalist’s attunement system is complex, but outside of that, the elementalist is a simple class. It has a lot of hidden synergies, a lot of obscure combos, but overall the skills are simple, the utilities are simple, the traits are simple. There are no traits that demand you to time your skills right to interrupt enemies. There are no utilities that rely on anti-play, rupting, or other abstract mechanics. There’s almost no skills that are not extremely simplified.

A Mesmer is harder to learn, by far and away. Why do you think newbs have an easier time with Mesmers?
A Thief has more complex skills, individually, and their steal and initiative mechanics are full of hidden tricks. Why do you think newbs have a FAR easier time with Thieves?
An Engineer with kits is pretty much an alternative to an Elementalist when it comes to high skill count. Why do you think newbs have an easier time with Engineer?
PvE is so easy most of the time, that you can ignore most of the subtle details out of most professions, and rofl-stomp through almost everthing without weapon swapping. Weapon swapping is so important to other professions as attunement swapping is with the Elementalist. Why is it so easy for the others?

The Elementalist is, in comparison to most other professions, weak. This is the truth.

It’s not that every single other profession was made for noobs, so they can rofl-stomp through pve. It’s pve that’s easy enough that you can rofl-stomp with other professions. That’s the thing.

Make pve far harder, and I tell you, you would have to play most other professions to a degree of mastery as high as you have with an elementalist at their current situation. Make pve far harder, and other professions will no longer rely on spamming 1 or 2 attacks. Make pve far harder, and elementalists will be laughable stock.

If you already have to attunement swap like crazy, and fight for your life, at every pve encounter, especially for Orr, then imagine what would it be like, if Orr was truly hardcore.

Hey, hey, I want to make an answer that makes me feel like a pro, too! Here’s my attempt:

“l2p”

Look at me, I’m so cool. I mean, I totally have said that. Let me try again:

“The elementalist was not meant to be good with your builds, it was only meant to be good with MY builds, because I’m better than you.”

Whoho! I’m getting the hang of it. Let me try again:

“You think a profession designed to burst like the elementalist was meant to burst? Really? L2p or go Warrior.”

“The elementalist was only meant to be good at combo fields, party support, etc. If you think elementalists have any other weapon outside of the Staff, you’re delusional and should pick a Warrior.”

And to complete the set:

“Whaaat, you play with a staff? What were you expecting for spsp, to win anything? Staff was not meant for 1vs1. L2p or re-roll a Warrior.”

On tonight’s news:
- “Noobs simply can’t comprehend the subtle complexibity behind their traits synergy. In-depth explanation”;
- “RTL+Updraft+RoF+DT+Phoenix+FireGrab was meant for party support and direct healing, not for burst, you noob!”;
And,
- “Tornado vs Moa Bird. The subtle differences between a suicide button and a win button that noobs can’t simply grasp”.

madatom.5218:

elementalists contrary to popular belief are not the wizards of this game

mesmers are, elementalists act more like shamans

Mesmers are the least traditional mage class in GW2 by far and away, and I don’t even know how can this be argued.

Unless you think traditional wizards are magical duelists that rely on trolling the opponent with anti-play tricks, or going all out with ninja tricks, while blocking with their blades or spreading psychological chaos. I don’t think so, too.

Bsquared.3421:

Also, I haven’t seen Arenanet state that the Ele isn’t a support class?!? Considering how much we bring to the table through groups buffs, condition clears, combo fields, and healing, it’s fair to say Anet intended the class to accomplish quite a bit of group support.

We have very few combo fields outside of staff and we have little group support outside of staff. A D/ D elementalist plays like a highly-mobile glass cannon, the Scepter is mostly filled with “traditional” aoe or single target burst spells, and the Focus is mostly about self-defense and crowd disruption, all exceptions aside. At the very least, S/ D or D/ D are very focused on damage, with the former relying more on direct defenses while dealing damage, and the later relying more on mobility while dealing damage too.

One day, GW2 will be dynamic enough to show the consequences of this tax in normal-life healthcare, and events will chain from that.

Objective: “Protect the children and the old people from the Risen!”

Soldier: – “Hello, hero! We’ve build homes for those who were affected by this war, all thanks to Tyrian’s taxing contributions by civilians like you. But I admit we’ve build these houses in a rather inconvenient place. It’s riddled with Risen! Please! Don’t let your money go to waste! Think of the poor people!”

As a non-guardian, I’ve noticed that I get KD’ed by the line just by being near to it, I don’t even need to touch it. An AoE crowd control that doubles as a KD and a rupt is very strong, can caught people off-guard (so they won’t have time to react and dodge), and even when they waste a dodge to prevent it, it’s not all that bad (makes them more vulnerable).

We aren’t praising Anet for being gods nor saying that everything is perfect. We know the elementalist has a lot of problems, but we are being realistic: the elementalist is not “junk” with the best builds out there (even though I consider power eles to be completely junk), it’s not at the worse state at the moment (necromancer is/ was), and bugs and nerfs to OP attacks are clearly the highest priority right now.

I sure am expecting buffs to our class someday. But I was also expecting this patch to revolve around nerfs, bug fixes and necromancer changes, just like the previous patch, and seems like I was right. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the next one focused on the same issues.

Having gotten buffs to MH air dagger, especially for pve, was a pleasant an unexpected surprise.

As I’ve mentioned before, the devs have made it clear that general bug fixes, general nerfs and necromancer changes were the priority now, and that’s what’s happening.

We’re still getting bug fixes (look at a few other professions: they haven’t even got changes in the last patch), we actually have gotten one buff or two, and several OP skills from other professions, due to functionality or due to bugs, were toned down or fixed, especially for two of the strongest classes at the moment, guardians and mesmers.

Blowing this out of proportions and saying that our changes were meaningless is ridiculous. The skills that were buffed were never used, but can’t you understand that is exactly the reason why they were buffed? MH air dagger is actually meaningful for pve now. If you never used it before there, then its time to start use it. If you never used D/ D before, then that doesn’t means no one else uses it. Likewise, the auto-attack on conjures ups the DPS overall. Will that make conjures worth using? I don’t know, but I know my FGS dealt about 2k-3k worth of extra damage thanks to auto-attacking while I was kiting and waiting for the best moment to use all other four skills. A 2k boost is a lot in a profession that can barely deal 500-1k damage per skill with their current best pvp builds.

Finally, elementalists actually do have a few good builds to use for pvp. They might not be your style, but they’re better than nothing. A 30 water/ 10 arcane regeneration/ cantrip/ condition removal build, with 20+ earth for even more defense and good condition damage, and the amulet that greatly improves toughness, healing power and power makes an elementalist very hard to kill, while having really appealing 6k-10k+ condition damage from several spammable skills individually. I can stand against any profession with that, going S/ D or D/ D. I’ve heard of the vitality/ tank healing staff build, but haven’t tried it, and from my experiences, a signet/ aura build is acceptable too.

In comparison, the necromancers had about one good build (condition damage), and tell me, did our fellow elementalists ever had trouble battling against a necro, as they have with thieves/ mesmers?

As a D/D elementalist, I’m always at close range in pve, and about half the times I’m going against two or more mobs. Lightning Touch was honestly a decent defensive skill against a single target, but it was pointless to waste time using it when mob’ed. Lightning Whip is decent to use while you have Shocking Aura on, your enemy is weakened, and you’re waiting for the aura to end to updraft, for two-three rupts in a row. It keeps a single target or a small crowd on check, but once again, the single-target effect of the first two skills made this strategy weaker when against more than one enemy.

Kromica.2831:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Line of Warding also interrupts the moment you touch it, doesn’t it? I’m not a Guardian player, but against Guardians, I always found it a bit strong for too long. :P

Lol learn to run around it?

Not when it’s put in a door, a stairway, or any place where the skill is best used at. I was actually thinking of those contexts when I made my comment.

And when I want to run around it, it’s not the duration that is going to stop me, honestly. And if I can dodge through it, well, yes, I can, if I’m willing to waste a dodge for this. I don’t know, it seems fine to me.

Line of Warding also interrupts the moment you touch it, doesn’t it? I’m not a Guardian player, but against Guardians, I always found it a bit strong for too long. :P

I do agree they should make an official commentary. So far, they have only talked about the state of the professions in one of the boards: the necromancer.

Laivine.9308:

A company has to deliver a non faulty product to customers. If the customers are unhappy with the services of the product, the company has problem. Simple as that!

A company also has priorities, issues that are more pressing than others. There’s a clear intention of fixing the necromancer before the elementalist. It’s perfectly justified.

We are in the elementalist’s board. Like as typicall seen in any profession boards, the people of said profession think they are the only victims and everyone else is better than them. Oh sure, we elementalists are one of the most underpowered professions out there, but the necromancers have have been broken with 90-100+ bugs, and overpowered skills from other professions affect the entire playerbase (include us eles which will give us a better time against illusions and guardian’s retaliation), while the underpowered skills of the elementalist only affect the elementalist’s fanbase. It’s perfectly understandable why those matters were given priority.

The necromancer is the most broken profession, and is clearly getting the most attention. Out of all those changes, most of them were bug fixes or nerfs for all professions, while the necromancer was the one who actually got meaningful skill buffs/ changes. Not only that, but mesmers and guardians have gotten some interesting nerfs.

Meanwhile, our MH Dagger skills are aoe now, which is seriously relevant to spread weakness when we’re being ganked by mobs, and saved auto-attacks on conjures should make them interesting to keep our dps up when dedicating our time kiting from foes. Blasting Staff affecting Lightning Surge is interesting for a more efficient blind spreading, especially for WvW.

It was a bug fix.

Eruption and Churning Earth are interesting as they are. I think eruption should have a shorter casting time (NOT animation time), and I think Scepter/ MH dagger (or even OH dagger) should give more instant-cast support to make sure Churning Earth works AFTER you started channeling it.

I’ll doubt we’ll ever, ever, get a (midcombat) weapon swap for the entire duration of GW2’s existence. If elementalists are already hard to balance as they are, they would have been a mess with 4x the skills of other professions from normal weapons alone.

What seems to need to be fixed here is the usefulness of conjures. IMO, conjures should be one of the most important utilities for the elementalists, much like how arcanes and cantrips already are, because conjures in theory solve several of our problems: gives us flexibility in range, give us “easy to use” skillsets, and gives us single-target damage when we don’t have it (usually with staff), etc.

Polish how conjure weapons work (IMO, make them instant-cast like kits, to start with, and much better trait support), and we’ll probably be at a much better state.

Complaining posts are always a bit repetitive, but that shows how many people are affected by the same things. It should make it easier to identify the main problems, imo.

The weekly monday patches has been usually up at 0.00 am PDT, that makes it about 7-8-9 am tomorrow for europe. I suppose the same will happen here.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised with some nerfs for other classes, but I don’t think we’ll start getting buffs this early. The devs are still fixing bugs while waiting for the meta to estabilish before making big changes, and the elementalists feel like they need something big (as in, changes to a lot of things).

Isn’t that what conjure weapons are for? They just need to be more polished. No way we’ll ever get 40 skills without conjures.

I believe toughness is only viable against many small hits, and weak against big hits.

As a reminder, this is the staff.

A blind reducing the number of hits from 22 to 21 is completely pointless. A KD only lasts two seconds, and gust is already clunky to use right and hit by itself. Snares only serve half the purpose, because they don’t help preventing ranged damage at all. They’re nice to keep the ranger on the place so I can cast my fire fields, but that only happens every 10 seconds due to attunement recharges. With magnetic aura, with mist form + heal, I still get hit about 22+ times, for a total of 10-15k damage, while their pet is consistently hitting me for 2k-4k damage.

If only I could kill faster than them when I have Magnetic Aura on, but even when they suck and lose over half of their hp from reflection alone, they still heal and quickly out-dps me. I have to get out of fire to snare them, but out of fire I barely deal any damage, and without the snares I barely hit them.

Sure, I can change my entire build, but I don’t want to change my entire build because of a single auto-attack! The staff has been working decently so far against everything else.

I understand how it goes from a ranger’s point of view, but against a staff ele, who cares if they can’t escape, they don’t need to escape, because crossfiring is an automatic longterm win button and no ammount of cc will decrease its effectiveness in a meaningful way.

But it seems like this problem comes from crossfire being op to compensate the lack of damage from the other 4 skills, and it’s up to the devs to nerf it and buff the damage of the other 4.

I have done something like that with the staff, Zilcho. The thing is, crossfire hits really fast, so a single blind is pointless. KD delays things for, what, 2 seconds? My main tool really is the aura, but even when the ranger goes kamikaze, he somehow still beats me by spamming crossfire the entire time. I can never out-dps him, and most of my CC skills are pointless because the target is ranged and not melee. The exception is to use the CC (+ eruption) + fire, but that’s only available every 10 seconds. I know toughness deals best with many small attacks, but it’s still ridiculous that an entire build (+ mist form, arcane shield which does not work very well here, arcane wave for self-regen) is completely put aside by an auto-attack.

A single auto-attack can outdps 20 attunement skills, ignore most of the staff’s cc skills, and I spend too much time defending myself at the cost of fire attunement’s recharges, or setting up snaring + fire whenever I can at the cost of my utility’s recharges, while the ranger is hitting me, hitting me, hitting me. They don’t even need to activate half the effect of their skill, but if I get too close to them, it’s much easier for them to bleed-spam me too. Of course, they still have 4 more skills, and at the hands of better players, the occasional poison spam and the occasional rupt hurt a lot.

My best chances for survival are the aura and the aura only, and that’s only against the newbies who are not taking attention to their own self-suicide. Against newbs, the aura goes as far as taking out 1/3 or half of their hp, which is quite a lot for a single skill, but what surprises me is that they simply counter it with their heal, and then they and their pet make a massacre by auto-attacking. :/

I don’t feel like going x/ focus for a single build, but I know focus is excellent at anti-projectiles + disruption, and even its crappy fire shield with its crappy duration should apply enough burning to the foe, if I’m close enough to them.

The thing is that staff’s cc is excellent against melee, and the chill stacking of frozen ground is excellent against non-thieves, but this is the first time I’ve seen a non-thief spamming an attack without recharge, and being ranged makes the difference.

So, I’ve seen plenty of shortbow rangers lately spamming their auto-attack Crossfire on me. For those who don’t know it, it’s an extremely fast auto-attack that deals bleeding if I’m caught at the sides or behind.

The bleeding doesn’t matters, because I can prevent it easily and remove it. But I seem to take 10k damage out of crossfire’s direct effect constantly. As a staff user at the moment (yes, staves can do decent work at spvp), Magnetic Aura is the obvious solution, but the rangers keep spamming crossfire on me, even when they lose over half their hp this way until the aura ends, heal themselves somewhere in the middle of their noob kamikaze, and spam some more crossfire for 10k damage while their pet keeps hitting me for 2k/4k+.

Dodging only takes me so far, and they dodge too out of some of my spells. I keep their movement controlled the best I can, so I can go crazy with fire and/ or eruption + fire, but I never seem to kill them faster than they kill me with their auto-attack spam, even when I connect most attacks and I am under the aura. My speccs are on air and arcane, a critical build working decently enough, with power/ precision/ lots of vitality amulet, so I don’t have big defensive problems (17-18k health while still dealing good damage, even thieves/ warriors I can work hard to have any chance against, as long as I keep them far enough from me), but I simply see no solution for Crossfire spam. Air’s Blind is pointless and slow, water’s chill does not affects auto-attacks’ recharges, and I don’t think staying on earth spamming weakness will let me go far.

Anyone help? :/

Design-wise? We are very well-designed, but our traits are not. We have a few skillsets that overall feel a bit unfocused/ shallow/ lacking, and the mechanics for conjure weapons are not polished well enough to flow well with the class, but overall we’re at a pretty good spot here. But traits do need to be rethought a little.

Balance-wise, we’re mediocre. I won’t say bad, because we’re viable enough to achieve all the goals we can set to achieve. But still we require double the effort and double the time to achieve the same thing as other professions. That’s why we have to work so hard for spvp, and then any profession can come in and beat us, sometimes even without swapping weapons, while we must swap between all four attunements like crazy. When you lose in pvp and check the battle log, and you notice that one or two skills took out 6k-8k out of your HP each, including auto-attacks, then it’s very disheartening.

Which top players find this profession to be balanced? I see a few “pros” in this board claiming the profession is perfectly fine, but whenever they give us advice, they tell us of the most obvious things we already know about. And the pros in the videos either have an easier time and better success with other professions, or edit them to only show the victories against the weakest players.

Regardless, I think it would be better for our profession if we could indeed focus more on two attunements. However, I am completely against the idea that this should be an inferior playstyle. Do keep in mind that even for people who would focus on two attunements only, they would still have to swap to the other two when needed. Using all four attunements is always going to be relevant.

What I think it should exist, is the ability to have two of them more available at the cost of the recharges of the other two. For example, master major/ grandmaster minor traits that decrease the recharge of their own attunement. Investing in two would mean you would not be able to invest on arcana (as much), especially when you would want to go for 30 points for each of the attunements invested on, to make sure you make the best use of them.

I think conjures, as a whole, should have their mechanics tweaked. Engineer’s kits are pretty much the more sophisticated and funnier version of conjures, but they also fit better their profession.

The problems with conjures are the same as a whole.

• They are environmental weapons, so they are limited to the restrictions of all environmental weapons.
  They could act like secondary weapon swaps, considering they solve the range problems we have, and it would be really fun for us to swap to burning greatswords or lightning hammers on the fly for combo fields/ finishers, etc; but:
• They have a casting time, which disrupts the rhythm of the entire profession’s playstyle.
• The moment you swap them out, and want them back in, you’ll have to catch them on the ground, which is a rather cool idea, but everyone else can also get them up and screw your plans.

I think the solutions for any conjure, not just for the elite, should be to fix those issues instead of making them crazy single skills that give 20 skills.

General solutions:

• Have them be instant-cast. Not through traits, but as an inherent mechanic detail. This makes them less clunky, and the time not wasted is valuable.
• Have them create an weapon on the ground that only you can use. Give us a trait option to create an additional weapon that only allies can pick, in addition to an extra effect.
• Improve our current conjure trait by also making the skills of each conjure 20% recharge faster.
• Add a stun-breaker trait like we used to have before in beta, so we’re not forced to take cantrips. Add an extra effect to that trait.
• Add an arcana trait which gives an initial effect to each conjure, depending on the element or the conjure.

It would also be much easier to balance and design than to create 15 new skills for a single elite, while all other conjures would remain lacking.

I would love cross-elemental synergies, but I’d prefer more subtle ones, instead of “if weakened: burn”.

For example, cross-elemental strategies that would make Churning Earth more effective. We have utility (lightning flash) for that, but what else? Shocking Aura, from MH air daggers, is cool. It interrupts whoever hits you, I believe, although the range is unfairly tiny. With Earthquake, the cripple from Churning Earth’s channeling, and S.Aura, I think the opponent is only left with dodging away, unless their range is far enough, I suppose, to bypass the aura’s stun.

But what else do we have? Frost Aura is within the same set, but does nothing. In fact, by itself, it’s already highly conditional, it’ a poor 2s chill skill that requires you to get hit, mostly useless for pve where you don’t want to get hit and enemies are slow to attack, and rather mediocre to great for pvp when enemies attack too fast, but even then, it’s not like you’re going to let yourself eat away a Hundred Blades so the warrior can be chilled out for a good amount. Chilling Aura is a long-term investment, more fitting of a necromancer than an elementalist. And for Churning Earth, it just won’t do no matter what. We have also Blinding Flash from Scepter, for an instant single-target blind. Still, it would be interesting if we could get some extra interaction with C.Earth, maybe more utility skills that indirectly help it out, or traits. Stability for auras, in addition to protection?

And from an elementalist trainer, no less? That’s beautiful.

Whoever said that elemental traitlines should half the cooldown of their respective attunements, I completely agree. Either as a grandmaster minor trait, or fused with the master traits that reduce skill cooldowns by 20%.

Efaicia.3672:

@Rack, that defeats the entire purpose of the class.

But does it?

What is the purpose behind attunements? a) To adapt to a situation and stick to it, until the situation changes and you adapt again; or b) to dance between attunements like crazy to be able to do anything?

Because let’s be honest, with the way the elementalist is designed, it seems like the devs wanted at least both situations to be viable, although it seems they focused more on the former, honestly.

For point a), each attunement has a very specific role, so if you want to nuke mobs and you are not being targetted, then there’s little reason to leave fire, outside of recharges. Of course, you can switch attunements for CC or party defense, but some of those skills are only truly effective with the right utilities and the right traits. Likewise, air is nice to set up bursts, water is nice when you need to fill your health back in, and earth is nice for when you don’t want your health to go down too fast (or for bleeding as a secondary effect). And talking about traits, they seem to be designed with that in mind, where you directly boost the effectiveness of one or two specific attunements you want to stick the most to. Finally, only one of the five traitlines makes crazy attunement dancing a truly fluid playstyle, while four of them are about the player specializing in their favourite attunements.

Tolmos.8395:

We have so many utility skills that more than make up for our lack of damage. I’m absolutely LOVING ele in sPvP so far. Out of my Ranger, Warrior and Mesmer I feel this class, and it’s absolutely amazing heals and support utility, is the most rewarding to myself and my team.

Other professions have utilities too, so the point becomes moot. :/ And I do love playing elementalist the best, but I don’t see what’s so rewarding about it.

Pandemic.1032:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Pandemic.1032:

DJSkittles.7196:

Staff ihas come pretty easy for me. I have yet to use it in spvp, but its amazing in PVE and anything with group presence. Just make sure you grab arcane wave and evasive arcana. You will have 6 blast finishers. I can heal myself and everyone near me back to full health in a matter of seconds, and keep a permanent stack of 9-13 stacks of might for anyone in range. I can get way more stacks of might with my scepter (sometimes in the 20s) but I don’t get as good of group heals. Ever since I have switched to my new build, I have been able to tackle all skill points solo easily. many veterans that had once given me trouble go down easily. I am level 70 right now, and I have yet to pop my heal in anything other than WvW, and one meta event since switching to this build. I even got my monthly survivor today. You all can say “well your not even level 80 yet.” True, I might be in for a tough time in Orr, but I feel im doin pretty good right now, and I feel pretty strong and fearless when I can just run into any mob and take them all out, I don’t mass damage, but I never die.

Where are you getting 6 blast finishers from with a staff? Earth eruption is 1, Arcane wave is 1, and Evasive Arcana is 2. Thats 4, what are you using for the other 2?

Earth skill #4 and #5.

Ah ok; you mean on a dagger. soz thought you meant on the staff.

No, Staff’s 4th skill is a combo finisher too. I actually thought the 5th was too, but it seems not.

Let’s look at it:
- We are the squishiest profession in the entire game. Obviously, we have good defensive skills, but so does a lot of other professions. We have the worst passive defense, the worst HP, and no stealth/ virtues/ clones/ pets/ death shroud/ anything to compensate.
- As a compensation, we used to be one of the best bursting professions in the game, until we were nerfed big time during beta. We actually could burst as high as, say, a HB warrior, although with more effort. But hey, we’re still versatile, right?
- Not really, we aren’t as versatile by having twice the skills as much as people think. We are greatly restricted by range, which is huge, and our skills are usually simpler than the skills from other professions. We usually need to use 2 skills, sometimes 3 or 4, to get the same results as a single skill from other professions. Think Focus’ Obsidian Flesh is awesome? Love your fire bursting skills? Look at Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy: burst and invulnerability for 2s, available every 8s. Oooooh.
- We have countless other drawbacks. Higher recharges than normal, higher casting times than normal, easy to avoid bursts, etc.

We can change to earth anytime to defend ourselves, but that’ll take us away from almost anything else. We can change to water to heal ourselves, by sacrificing everything else. And so on. But look at a Guardian’s staff: good healing, good movement control, decent-good damage, and they still have the virtues and better armor to boot. We can change to fire to deal mediocre-decent damage at the cost of everything else, we can change to air for more mobility and to set up bursts. Hmm, let’s look at Guardian again, now with Sword+Torch. Teleport + aoe blind every 10-12(?) seconds, projectile-protection-while-bursting, strong auto-attack, strong burning that can be thrown, and yet another burst+burning skill (that can heal conditions from allies!). Oh yeah! With better armor, virtues, better traits, better elites, better downed state and much better underwater, to boot.

Pandemic.1032:

DJSkittles.7196:

Staff ihas come pretty easy for me. I have yet to use it in spvp, but its amazing in PVE and anything with group presence. Just make sure you grab arcane wave and evasive arcana. You will have 6 blast finishers. I can heal myself and everyone near me back to full health in a matter of seconds, and keep a permanent stack of 9-13 stacks of might for anyone in range. I can get way more stacks of might with my scepter (sometimes in the 20s) but I don’t get as good of group heals. Ever since I have switched to my new build, I have been able to tackle all skill points solo easily. many veterans that had once given me trouble go down easily. I am level 70 right now, and I have yet to pop my heal in anything other than WvW, and one meta event since switching to this build. I even got my monthly survivor today. You all can say “well your not even level 80 yet.” True, I might be in for a tough time in Orr, but I feel im doin pretty good right now, and I feel pretty strong and fearless when I can just run into any mob and take them all out, I don’t mass damage, but I never die.

Where are you getting 6 blast finishers from with a staff? Earth eruption is 1, Arcane wave is 1, and Evasive Arcana is 2. Thats 4, what are you using for the other 2?

Earth skill #4 and #5.

Mesmers… have limited AoE, although their (great)swords handle several mobs nicely while you’re kept protected by pushing them back, or by blurred frenzy, etc. Warriors, however, if I’m not wrong, their greatsword hits multiple foes, and they probably have more weapons for aoe too.

Thing is, an elementalist can have good aoe options, but you require to waste so much time doing so many skills, while still interrupting your damage combos to survive, that sometimes fightning so many is plain suicide.

Let’s keep in mind that general pve is easy, that’s why non-elementalist professions breeze through most of it. When things start to become hard, mostly against the risen, or for dungeons, then the situation changes. Enemies start to have too much HP, which means you’ll blow out your bursts and have to wait for their high recharges, and they’ll sometimes stun/ immobilize/ push you to them and disable you. Although there are specific skills we can take against that, those skills are under high recharge, and whn you’re up against 3-4 enemies at the same time using stuns frequently while taking big chunks of your HP, it’s pretty much suicide.

And then we see our fellow warriors, with twice our hp, an inherent 20% defense bonus from heavy armor, that can deal higher aoe damage than us for half the time, with skills that recharge in 8 seconds, and it becomes disheartening to use an elementalist.

Honestly, allowing us to weapon swap between our “normal” weapon and our conjured weapon would be pretty cool. Give it a normal weapon swap recharge, so it would be different from kits. Keep the charges too, but have them get spent with the normal weapon’s skills, so that the player doesn’t want to swap between weapons unless absolutely needed. Forget the idea of having them pop up in the ground, because this system would make it impossible for other professions to use it, unless only you could pick the grounded weapons, which by itself is already a good idea, as we don’t always want other people to pick our conjures.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

Weak at what? The only way in which we are potentially weak is in sPvP. PvE does not seem to need any changes. Even sPvP is debatable. How do you feel weak? If you’re playing staff while soloing, then you’re not playing to the strengths of your class. Staff is, quite obviously, a better choice for group play. D/D and S/D are much better options, but you’ll have to be quick with your fingers.

Aside from a few bug fixes and our downed skills, the main thing that needs changing is that people need to know that the Elementalist is HARD.

Weak in the sense that everything you do, is done faster and better with other professions. BTW, I use D/D and S/D. I’m specced offensively, and it takes me about twice the time to kill than a warrior. The elementalist is weak when it’s compared to other professions. Try to play any other, and you’ll be able to finish most enemies without even weapon swapping. That’s why elementalists are rarely seen at spvp: spvp is the format that directly puts professions against each other.

The elementalist is hard to master, but it’s not that hard to play. A mesmer is possibly harder to learn and about as hard to master, and it gets far better results at spvp and pve. Sometimes I take my Guardian or my Mesmer for pve, and there’s almost no single enemy that survives the full 5 skills of a single weapon. It’s crazy, and happens especially often with the Guardian. guardian also requires some degree of skill to master it, and I’m far from mastering it as much as I am with my elementalist, but I don’t even need it. I press 3 buttons, and I’m moving to my next enemy. The moment I come back to my elementalist, here I am, swapping through all attunements, bursting with RTL + Updraft + Burning Speed + Ring of Fire + Arcane Wave + Drake’s Breath + Fire Grab + Earthquake + Churning Earth, and the risen enemy is still left at about 1/3 of his HP, and I’m left to survive while my skills recharge, while the warrior next to me deals the same amount of damage with a single Hundred Blades and Whirlwind Attack, thrice as fast, and with no worries about defense.

What should determine the difficulty of pve is the content, aka, the enemies, the dungeons, etc. Not the profession. Elementalist is supposed to be pretty easy to play with. Their skills are straightforward, their utilities are straightforward, their traits are straightforward, and their downed state is so straightforward that it automatically kills you (ya, couldn’t resist). They’re hard to master, but they’re not hard to play. Even a mesmer is harder for a newb to grasp, with all their indirect, anti-play or disruptive skills.

Vanisher.9216:

I would rather see others downed state nerfed to our state rather than us buffed to theirs.

But yeah our downed state is bad.

So, you want downed states to be completely pointless? By that point, might as well remove them entirely from the game.

Shockwave.1230:

What I keep seeing behind the text, is a want for people to feel more effective as an ele. Like people are seeking buffs. I’d like some buffs too, but I don’t want the class to be OP. I just want them all to have fairly equal viability. The ele may not be as viable as other professions even when played at a high level and it’d be nice to be able to get more out of some of its skills, but I have no issue with the class’ design.

It is true that people want more effective skills, but let’s be honest, the elementalists skillsets are not the most polished skillset in this game.

Some of them do not feel unified/ coherent. Let’s look at scepter’s water: you have a single-target auto-attack skill, an aoe skill that applies vulnerability, and an aoe skill that heals. Tell me, what the hell is the strategy behind this skillset? You have two aoe bursts with fire and two burning skills there, you have all three air skills focused on single-target damage and control, you have two earth skills with some sort of defense. But what is the strategy behind water scepter? It feels like it has a bunch of random skills thrown together. You’re not going to use it for single-target damage because every single other attunement does that much better, you’re not going for aoe damage, because it’s redudant and weak compared to fire, and you’re not going to apply vulnerability two or three times, because it’s so easy to dodge, and makes you waste so much valuable time. At best, you change to water for OH effects and the healing of water trident, and quickly move out of this mess.

Some of them do not feel like they hit the “right key” to serve the purposes of the weapon the best. Let’s look at D/D defenses. It’s the weapon that most needs defensive skills, because it’s going to be right in front of your foe. You have two “leap” skills that only go forward, so they’re not defensive except for very specific situations. You have KD/ knockback skills to keep foes rupted/ controlled for 2 seconds, that’s fine. And you have a direct 2s chill effect to avoid attacks more efficiently. But then you have a generic heal skill that could very well be put into staff/ scepter/ focus without losing any effectiveness and by gaining some (at least at range, the chances to get hit are less, making the heal more reliable), you have a close-range heal skill that doesn’t allows you to dodge, two auras that are not going to mitigate the upcomming devastating hits, and a defensive MH air line that offers no defense with its auto-attack and is completely redudant with fire’s damage).

Some of them are downright bad, compared to even other elementalists options. Focus fire. Who’s going to prevent themselves to cross that fire wall for the sake of 1s burning? How are you going to combo it with your scepter’s drake’s tooth, unless you put the flamewall in your place? Who’s going to stop attacking you for the sake of fire shield’s 1s burning for 3s during for 40s recharge? Even if the fire aura was stronger, why is it there? Aren’t the daggers the weapons that most need melee-range effects? If you can keep your distance with Scepter/ Focus, Fire Shield would be a dead skill even if it were any stronger.

There are more examples I could give. Especially when it comes to misplaced or redudant auto-attacks.

Is the elementalist a little weak? Yes, I agree, it is, and I agree that it won’t need drastic changes (when it comes to buffing, because traits/ downed state could very well get something more drastic). People usually get the idea that the elementalist is very weak because, while it is indeed weaker than normal, there are other professions that are stronger than normal, and people directly compare the worst with the best, giving the idea that the elem needs a much bigger buff than it truly needs. But in reality, a few general buffs for the elem and a few general nerfs for the best professions sohuld be enough to make things more fair, imo,

Nick Danger.9821:

@DiogoSilva First, thanks for the polite and well-reasoned reply!

Second, while I digest your post (it merits taking the time for this), one question…

DiogoSilva.7089:

Anet thinks the Warrior is the best example of balance for this game…

I’ve seen this said but haven’t found the citation, could you (or someone) provide it please
? I’m curious when it was said, what changes may have been made since, etc., so as to put it into proper context, as it’s an important part of your argument.

Thanks!

It was said by Jon Peters, I believe, in this forum, during beta. He said that the warrior was “where the design team wanted him to be” (or something very close to that). I don’t have the exact quote, I’m sorry, and I can’t find it on google either.

The higher the number of skills, the harder it is to focus on designing each of them the best you can. That’s why a game like GW1 has thousands of skills, but more than half of them are useless or boring, and GW2 has fewer (weapon) skills, but each of them plays a very important role.

I think elementalists are suffering from this, much in the same way that utility skills (across all/ most professions) are suffering from this. There’s several skills that definitely got plenty of attention by the devs, and several others that feel like they exist for the sake of filling in the remaining slots, and should only get truly fleshed out in the future.

For now, the elementalist is an example of quantity over quality. Instead of the more minimalistic, clean skillset of other professions, we wished for a more ornamented skillset, but got a bloated one instead.

Although the descriptions do not mention it, attunement swapping should be affected by those sigils. This was something the devs added in during beta.

Nick Danger.9821:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

…Why should I have to fight people against lower skilled players than my own just so I can compete?…

You shouldn’t.

…And I honestly think there needs to be a damage increase…

The problem most often cited here is that some classes can mindlessly spam 2-3 skill and win vs an equally skilled ele — ie that ele is ‘harder’ to play.

Serious question — do you think it is Anet’s intention that a class can mindlessly spam 2-3 of their 10+ skills to win vs an equally skilled foe?

If you answer ‘yes’, we’ll have to agree to disagree.

If you answer ‘no’, the any fix has to start with changing the ‘easier’ class(es).

Any changes to ele would have to be considered after the changes to the ‘easier’ class(es).

So your belief in the need for a damage buff is premature at best, and not the best way to address your perceived problem.

Anet thinks the Warrior is the best example of balance for this game. Although they have their popular Hundred Blades, it’s actually an ability that requires skill to connect against good players. In comparison, I’d say thieves and mesmers are stronger than normal, and elementalists and necromancers are weaker than normal. Interestingly, the first two were buffed right before the release of the game, and the last two were nerfed right before the release of the game. There was clearly an overbuff and overnerf respectively, imo. Those four professions actually used to be at opposite situations.

I also want to add that 2-3 burst skills out of 10 is not unreal. Keep in mind that all other 7 professions might also have about 2-3 defensive skills, 2-3 control skills, and 2 auto-attacks. That’s between 8 and 11 skills, out of a maximum of 10. For example, the GS warrior has the HB burst, but they also have means to be more mobile, to catch targets, etc. In other words, with GS they have their HB as their meat burst skill, and other skills to make sure the target is always there for HB, as well as to add additional damage. There’s a strategy behind the weapon that is about finding or creating the best moment to use your 1-2 burst skills.

Also to keep in mind that against good players, no one is going to spam 2-3 skills all over, unless they are clearly broken. This only happens between newbs, who are still unaware on how to counter those skills with their own skillset.

Although I think some of the strongest classes need to be toned down, it’s very clear that the elementalist is also a bit bellow to the Anet’s “best example”, the Warrior.

And finally, I don’t think buffing the elementalist would dumb it down. I’m not asking for a single skill that deal 10k damage. I think general, small buffs to several skillsets would be better. It would still be a challenging class to play, but at least the people who’re mastering it can dominate newbs, as they should have been in the first place.

It works with attunement swapping, I think.