Guild Wars 2

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

Demented Yak.6105:

Azure.8670:

Nah bwe2 I face tanked and destroyed everything on my tempest but people called me a troll and said tempest is garbage go away

It was garbage in bwe2. You’re a troll.

Wasn’t really a garbage it’s a strong word… but Eles were “misunderstood” back then

It is a pretty strong word but it is quite fitting. Overloads without stability are a big “interrupt me” button and it was a major drawback. In addition, overload air and earth were vastly improved in BWE3 and they are so much better now. Finally, the stunbreak is just amazing and really helps with the flow of the tempest.

Axialbloom.8109:

Sceptre buff would be nice, so that we can use it as a Tempest.

Scepter isn’t as bad with warhorn as I thought it would be, but it still needs proper buffs to compete with dagger. Both the warhorn and the scepter are a bit too slow for what they do, if they were a bit faster they could be pretty good options.

Supreme.3164:

The warhorn offers something no other weapon set offers : pull and knockback( well staff gust not that great really), I live wildfire and dust storm, cyclone and the rest…I just hate lightning orb

I guess that I should give the warhorn another chance then. And yes, lightning orb is really, really bad. It is one of the worst skills that I have ever seen.

I have to admit that the improved overload air is pretty good. I’d go as far to say that it is my favorite overload right now. You can even add it to a staff build to get some decent damage while outside of fire attunement. The damage is even mobile and can be combined with the CC of air attunement, which covers one of the staff’s fatal weaknesses. I have some problems with the overloads as I posted in the feedback thread, but they are almost where they should be now.

There are some shouts that I really like. “Feel the burn!” and “Wash the pain away!” are pretty good in my opinion.

Still, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. The traits are simply not good enough and need to be improved before release. Fixing the traits is the most important thing because you have to take them. There are some good major trait options but there also some very lackluster ones. None of the minor traits are at the level that they should be in my opinion, but Karl has at least shown the willingness to buff Hardy Conduit, so I’m looking forward to that.

As for warhorn, it feels really clunky to me. I don’t know if I am just really bad with it or if it is just terrible, but it doesn’t feel like an option to me except if I need some really good boon sharing.

Overall, I did have a surprisingly good time with the tempest this BWE. If I take this spec, I don’t believe that I would want arcana in most cases.

P.S. Next time please try to give us a spec that gives the elementalist something that it doesn’t already have. The tempest will always suffer from redundancy even if it manages to be released in a very polished state.

I haven’t had much time to play so far in BWE3 because of time constraints, so I did a quick PvE test on SW and VB mobs and some test dummies for about an hour. For this reason, my feedback will be limited and won’t be too specific, but hopefully I’ll be able to test more in a day or two.

Overloads are almost in a good spot now but there are a few problems.
-Overload fire has a tiny radius which forces you to risk too much while using it. Increasing the radius of the fire overload should be a priority, in order to make it more appealing. The animation should also be changed to make it look like an actual firestorm, it’s pretty small right now.
-The one stack of stability should make overloads good enough in PvE if you are not careless, but I’m not sure if it holds up in PvP.
-I don’t feel that good about the double penalty of having a 20 second cooldown and a 5 second delay before overload use. I believe that these need to be slightly reduced.
-I feel that earth overload could use slightly more damage, but I’m not so sure about it, maybe I’m just asking for too much in this instance Edit: Please ignore this, after toying around with it a little more I believe that the damage is fine.

Traits need more improvements because they are not competitive with other trait lines at the moment.
-There are some decent options for majors but there are also some majors that are almost useless.
-Renewing stamina would be the best example of a useless trait, especially since it goes against the gameplay style of the tempest.
-The biggest problem is with the minors. Swiftness on overload is incredibly redundant because the elementalist is the king of swiftness. I honestly didn’t even notice the swiftness because I have swiftness up almost all the time and even if I don’t, there is still the 25% speed boost from the air line.
-Hardy conduit does need a bit more of a kick to it but it is better than speedy conduit.
-The stability from harmonious conduit needs to be consolidated to one of the minors because it will be mandatory in every single game mode in my opinion.

Shouts are a bit of a mixed bag.
-I really like “Feel the burn!” and “Wash the pain away!”. They won’t be used everywhere but they are solid and definitely have potential use in a variety of situations.
-Rebound is kinda niche and I didn’t really get to test it, but it might be useful.
-“Eye of the storm!” needs shocking aura because what it offers simply does not justify its cooldown and I would never slot it in its current form.
-"Shock and aftershock! and “Flash-freeze!” need to be instant as they are clunky to use with overloads. The tempest doesn’t have that much synergy with the rest of the elementalist, but it should be at least capable of good synergy with itself.
-Why don’t we have a 20% cooldown reduction for shouts as part of Tempestous Aria?

The warhorn is pretty trash if you exclude the yet to be nerfed Heat sync. Heat sync is the only thing that warhorn has going for it, so you’d better fix the warhorn if you want to nerf heat sync.
Most of the abilities either take too long to cast, have too long of an after-cast, or both. It reminds me of how clunky the scepter is and why I never use it. Lightning orb must be the worst ability that I have ever seen in the game, if I just use my lighting whip auto I will do much better damage and it will be more reliable as well. I seriously struggled to use the warhorn for more than 5 minutes so I can’t really say much more about it or specify its problems. It’s really not a fun weapon right now and I wasn’t one of the warhorn complainers that wanted a sword, just check my post history. Both the warhorn and the scepter need major work to reduce their cast times and delays. As long as they remain this clunky I won’t be going near these weapons.

Maris.3164:

SkiTz.4590:

Jesus christ some of you are ridiculously bad at understanding LOWEST HP + LOWEST ARMOR = INSTA DEAD WITHOUT SUSTAIN FROM WATER/ARCANA LINE

Yeah so without water and arcana eles would be like thieves.

You mean thieves without stealth. Just think about that for a moment.

Artanis.4963:

What happens if I put an ascended rune in each of my legendary armor pieces?

Yeah, it wasn’t a good idea. You should still need a full rune set and the runes should be difficult to acquire.

latinkuro.7304:

You know I love how in PVP you only need the one rune for a complete setup so…..

Here it is a.net,

Exotic rune upgrading.

Take the following to the mystic forge:

6 x superior runes of the same type.
1x elonian wine
1x crystal
1x mystic stone

And out comes a single account bound ascended quality rune of the same type you put in.

Now you might ask, why is this an ascended rune ?

- Well you only need the one rune to get all benefits.
- This rune can be taken out and replaced w/o the need for salvaging, but is only usable on legendary armor

There you go, now build swapping is so much more convenient in PVE as it is in PVP.

Why only make these usable on legendary armor? Make them usable on ascended gear as well, because ascended can also be stat-swapped with mats. I also think that it should be more expensive to get permanent account runes than what you are suggesting.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally I found several problems with it.

#1: The trait line is sub-par. This is the big one, because you have to take the trait line to be a tempest. The traits are extremely focused, in that they deal with a handful of specific things. This means that they don’t have good synergy with other specs, and aren’t any QoL upgrades as a whole. With how good fire/air/water/arcane are, there is a lot to sacrifice without a lot to gain by going into the tempest line.

#2: The warhorn lacks the necessary tools for the ele. Sure it has some nice buffing effects, but what keeps the ele alive is high movement speed, high control, and high blocks. Dagger off-hand has mobility and control, focus has control and blocks. Warhorn has just buffs, which leaves the ele relatively helpless. This creates the rare “glass buffer” situation. It is rare because it doesn’t work.

#3: The shouts are average. Many of the things they try to do are already accomplished by the arcane line in PVE and the cantrip line in PVP. They work to spread auras around, but auras aren’t that good.

#4:Overloads are tricky to use and are situational. In PVP frequent attunement swapping is how the elementalists exists, and it goes contrary to that nature. In PVE overloads aren’t as bad, but will still be frequently interrupted.

End result, the only thing in the tempest line that I want to use is Fire Overload in PVE, and that is it. I don’t want the traits, weapon, utilities, or the mechanic.

Your post is spot on. It is especially #1 that hurts a lot, because even if everything else was as good as current options, I wouldn’t be able to justify taking a half-effective trait line for it.

Retsuko.2035:

Don’t quite understand the fixation on aura’s. I don’t think aura’s are the answer to solve the elite spec since aura’s are relatively pretty weak (except magnetic aura). Powerful aura trait change was a nice one but that won’t change that much.

I’d rather see some tempest traits with more synergy with different weapons instead of only traits that push us on warhorn and shouts. Right now, tempest lacks diversity and purpose. Other classes have elite spec traits that offer synergy with their excisting weapons, why can’t ele have the same?

I absolutely don’t see any reason why I should run a warhorn right now, so that automatically rules out the trait line as well, and using shouts would be pointless too then. None of the current trait lines I’m using now I’d give up for tempest, be it PvP, PvE or WvW. Simply because I don’t like to handicap myself, since choosing tempest traitline feels like a half traitline or less to me.

The original purpose of my suggestion for adding an aura trait was to use it as a way to augment auras, so that they aren’t weak. If a good trait that gave auras additional effects was added then maybe they could be good.

Wolfs Shadow.7234:

SPESHAL.9106:

The nerf was definitely needed, but the fact that this went live to begin with evidences a problem internally that doesn’t bode well for Rangers.

It didn’t even take a super experienced Ranger to notice the ability to stack perma quickness within a few hours of the patch being live.

The fact that NOBODY noticed it internally tells you very few of them know the Ranger class that well and they must do almost no testing of changes prior to these patches going live.

In one respect, you have to give Anet kudos because overall the patch was pretty good…especially if they did limited testing…but it’s boneheaded mistakes like this that make you scratch your head and wonder how on earth it got live.

You do understand there are skills to remove buffs?
You do understand killing a rangers pet makes heal as one only apply self heal and doesn’t transfer anything?

I do agree the quickness needed to be addressed, but now they over nerfed it. It is absolutely useless to use in pvp.

Simply put this nerf was unjustified, untested, and unless you violate ToS, you’d need to use AutoHotkey just to be able to apply boons properly. The timing needs to be perfect to share boons with pets now.

This kinda reminds me of the overnerf of the Tempest heat sync even though it hasn’t been released yet. Tempest is one of the worst elites and yet they nerfed one of its few good things to oblivion.

I think that the devs are really afraid of quickness getting out of hand and simply swing the nerf hammer hard at whatever seems to generate too much of it, even if the nerf guts the ability in terms of other boons as well. Making quickness into a boon was a mistake.

Alekt.5803:

Conncept.7638:

Alekt.5803:

Please define “attunement overwriting” because I clearly do not understand it.

Sorry, by the time I got back to the forums this thread was long off the front page, never even thought anyone responded.

I mean that when you cast a conjured weapon utility, its will replace the attunement you are currently in for the conjure’s duration.

Example, you are a scepter/focus fresh air elementalist. You decide you have no need for earth attunement, so you slot Lightning hammer on your utility bar, attune to earth, and cast lightning hammer. You now have lightning hammer as a second air attunement in earth attunements place.

Additionally, while in ‘lightning hammer attunement’ you will get all the passive bonuses that come with being in air, and get the on attunement bonuses from attuning to lightning hammer that you will also get from air. Any spells you cast while attuned to lightning hammer will be considered air spells for the purposes of procs and effects, such as with glpyhs.

It would basically be as if you have no earth attunement for the duration of lightning hammer, but have a second air attunement instead.

So if I use Earth Shield, I am stuck in Earth Attunement? No swapping while in earth shield to get air super speed?

You can’t rework conjures to make them good if you keep all of their functionalities the same, something has to be sacrificed. The only way to rework them and have the attunement swap procs that you like would be to make them exactly like kits. I can’t see engineers being happy with that while they have no weapon swap.

Narlack.3198:

Ardid.7203:

Daredevil only need an adjust in the timing of the new dodges (so they actually happen when you input them, and not a second later), a few tweaks to the numbers and a better staff AA animation.

Aside from that, the spec is really good IMO. It has a proper “new spec mechanic” you can use every time (Unlike Scrapper, who uses his mechanic only if playing PvP, and even then not so frequently), a nice sinergy with some areas the Thief underutilize because of “stealth-stealth-stealth”, and some realy useful utilities, wich in the right hands could be even scary.

The new dodges are a fine idea, but 3 dodges is not a new mechanic, and the new dodges are the grandmaster trait choice, so there is hardly a “new spec mechanic”. Not to mention warriors deal damage on dodge and eles blast finish AND damage on dodge as grandmaster trait.

Warrior and ele dodge traits are not even in the same league as Daredevil ones. They are much weaker and the ele one has a cooldown.

Arctarius.2649:

D/D cele ele was broken to hell… Please don’t complain about a completely fair balance change. Ele was previously capable of 3v1 and coming out on top in spvp. I don’t want to hear this woah is me when your class was literally complained about by pro teams saying running all ele was the meta….because that’s real balanced huh?

I like how you bring up D/D cele ele when the thread is about Scepter, a completely different weapon that is very under-tuned right now.

akaCryptic.2389:

This community surprises me sometimes. One of the most commented bug posts to date is not on Icebow linecasting (thankfully fixed) or some other gamebreaking thing but rather on a missing idle animation for a specific race gender combo. Just wow…

Fashion wars is the true endgame, so this is not surprising at all.

I was expecting a video where you were trying out the buffed skills but couldn’t hit anyone with them to see how they improved. I’m very disappointed.

Alekt.5803:

I like conjure very much the way they are right now, I mean, mechanically speaking. I just wish the picking up was not so slow and clunky.

As for the conjures themselves, they need help in a certain way in their abilities or cast time.

The problem with the current design is that it is never good to take a conjure unless it has a completely overpowered skill. And then you just use that skill and drop the conjure. Even if they did somehow get decently balanced, you would still just blow all the conjure skill cooldowns and drop it, because it’s terrible to stay there and just auto-attack when you have so many weapon skills to choose from.

Also, picking them up will always be clunky. That’s just how bundles work in this game. The existence of a cast time is also pretty bizzare as well and contributes to the undesirability of conjures.

kirima san.3760:

I actually like them and would like to use them more. My only real problem is that they are a trade off for another skill I could have used instead and that I only can have them for a little while and constantly have to re-drop them.

I would love to be able to have some weapon switch mechanic where you get them and actually have them as long as you want to. Perhaps even as a kit or something.

I wouldn’t mind having a spec in the future that lets us wield them as a real weapon without charges. If not with all 20 skills, let each one have at least 2 attunements and focus on something.

We shouldn’t need a new spec to make conjures usable. Especially since a new spec would support a new type of utilities.

Conjured weapons simply need to be reworked into a permanent option with no charge limitations and a swapping capability. The charges need to be removed, as well as that clunky bundle mechanic. If this change is to happen, Anet would have to remove the option to share coonjures with allies, as offering support to allies while getting unrestricted access would be OP. This is not a problem because the ele has tons of support option anyway and we are getting tempest as well.

There are 3 general ways to rework conjures:

1. Make them exactly like kits, which means that you can swap between them and weapon skills whenever you want. The problem with this is that giving these options to a profession with 20 weapon skills and having no cooldowns could facilitate some very broken combos. Engineer also has no weapon swap and kits are designed around that.

2. Make them be accessible through the weapon swap button when equipped and make them have a coodown. In this instance you would be able to always have 1 conjure as an alternative weapon that you can swap to, but if you want to use another conjure you would hace to put your current one on cooldown. This reduces the possibility of broken combos while maintaining the capability of using a permanent conjure alongside your attunements. The problem is that conjures would directly compete with each other, making it difficult or even impossible to have a conjure-focused build.

3. Make conjures replace their respective attunement while they have a cooldown to prevent rapid swapping. In this case using an earth shield would replace your earth attunement skills with those of the earth shield. If you want your earth attunement skills back you will need to wait for the cooldown of the conjure. The primary purpose of this would be to replace the skills of any attunement that you don’t like, which would increase build diversity. It is not designed to give you 40 skills which is why a lengthy cooldown would be in place or even the inability to swap between earth shield and earth attunement in combat. However, it could allow for full conjure builds that replace every attunement at the same time, while giving the ele more build options like professions who can choose what weapons to swap between in combat.

Hey Karl,

I believe that the replacement trait should some sort of augmentation to auras. Auras don’t look that amazing at the moment and I think that they could use a way of making them better. Especially if it helps making them more unique in functionality when compared to other mechanics.

As it is, all auras except frost aura give boons, conditions and other effects that can be obtained elsewhere and that makes them directly compete with these other options. At least frost aura gives a flat -10% damage that cannot be applied by any other effect and can be used alongside the protection boon.

Unfortunately, I haven’t though of anything specific as of yet because I just saw your post, but I wanted to get this out there. Hopefully, other posters in this forum will come up with good ideas for an aura improvement trait.

Finally, I believe that the entire elementalist community would like to know if auras are supposed to stack in duration or not. Frost aura does stack in duration while the others do not. Is this intentional or not? Will it ever be fixed? The full potential of the tempest cannot be accurately measured if auras don’t work properly.

posthumecaver.6473:

ZDragon.3046:

Its kinda funny that only eles think this change is unfair.

While im sure this hit zerker hard it did hit cele too. The reason it hit cele is because cele was still good damage with much less risk and with the might stacks your damage in power and condition could get kitten close to Mara, or Carrion type damage. While allowing you to be fairly defensive and heal like a boss. Ele was a god any time it ran into 1v1ing another profession. This should never be the case for any profession. Ele is becoming just as it should be for what it can do.

Im gonna be proud to stomp eles who continue to try and bs their way around with d/d come Tuesday. Instead of raging you could go ahead and spend time using other build options >.>.. Vigor uptime should have been nerfed long ago and they said that was happening across the board on all professions who had traits like that. So im sure it just wont be ele.

You are the person whining here.

D/D Ele will still running around with Perma vigor and 8s ICD of BA isn’t really changing a lot for D/D, for me, I don’t care less I was not using the traits that is nerfed anyway.

What is hit really hard is glass cannon Scepter/X Ele and I am sorry for you but you will only see more of urs hated D/D Eles around, that will be only effects of these nerfs.

Yeah, it is true that the vigor nerf affects non-D/D ele builds more. If they really needed to nerf vigor, they should have nerfed soothing disruption instead because cantrips are must-haves atm and it’s not healthy. I guess that they probably did not want to nerf cantrip traits twice in the same patch and they went with this instead.

The scepter is going to need some godly buffs if it’s to become an option after this. If it somehow receives these buffs in the patch it won’t be so bad, but I have my doubts.

Markin.9167:

Probably in the next expansion ele will get a cond spec i hope so

That’s they best way to go about it imo. The best that we can get is a decent scepter rework this Tuesday that will make it a viable burst weapon and then get a condition based elite spec in the next expansion. This spec could introduce conditions that are now unavailable to the ele if the theme is right. All that it needs is some creativity.

Noxious fumes from a volcano inflicting poison is an idea that I have seen recently. It can come from the air near a volcano or even from the water. Torment can also fit in there somehow in the earth attunement, since it involves damage to the lower body which could be inflicted from earth spells. I don’t think that confusion would fit thematically though, but it’s ok since the addition of poison and torment is enough if the spec supports conditions and offers new ways to apply existing elementalist conditions.

Swiftwynd.1685:

I’d love to summon the holy spirit of our lord and savior Irenio, first saint of the Church of Collin, dropper of the heaviest of mics, to see what he thinks about this type of a rework.

Understandably, this expansive of a rework will take time and resources, and not something I could imagine happening near the release of HOT. But, sometime over the next couple months after HOT is released and more time is available to review the core specializations, I’d love to see some work put into each classes sets of lesser to never used abilites, such as:

Elementalist: Conjures, Tornado, and some Glyphs (elementals in particular)
Engineers: Turrets, some specific kits
Rangers: Spirits
Thief: Traps
Guardian: some of the never-used healing oriented utilities that are SEVERELY undertuned.
Mesmer: some of the Phantasms and some never used utilities (Mimic was an awesome rework example)
Necromancer: improved Pet functionality, such as healing out of combat, fixing the crap with Moa setting them on cool down (at least, if they HAVE to be desummoned, let us resummon them right away after Moa!), and a few other QoL buffs to some less used skills.

One very important thing that you left out for guardians is spirit weapons.

Jski.6180:

Malchior.5732:

Idk why you keep arguing for Tempest being a Healer. If I need someone to Heal my team, I’ll probably take a Herald for +50% Boon Duration and like 15-30 seconds of Projectile Destruction when necessary along with good healing AND still maintaining good DPS or I’ll take a Druid to completely surpass your own Healing while also bringing a bunch of control options.

Because that IS what a tempest line dose. Even if you like other healers or not that you feel are better at it. From a real stand point do you think the tempest line and shouts are made for dmg?
Btw Herald +50% boon duration for a pt is game breaking and its going to need to be fixed or the last 3 years of balancing of boon duration was for nothing. If you need an op effect to play the game so be it but do not relay on it for being there too much longer. Druide’s problem is its an 1,200 ranged wepon where most of its heals are center on it self and only 300 ranged so as a pure support it works but it dose not fit for a full ranged support and dose not have the tools to stay in melee.

I never recall Karl saying that tempest is a healer, but I clearly remember Irenio saying that druid is a healer.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Taldren.7523:

Azel.4786:

The Icebow nerf to Skill 4 was justified. It was OP, you knew it, I knew it, we all knew it.

The problem is though that after just mentioning the nerf and doing a gesture that I consider to have been just a middle finger to all elementalist, there is no mention of fixing conjurers.

Conjurers are still crap tier utilities (even more so with the nerf), except for FGS that has a single use of being a mobility skill.

In the face of this gigantic issue to an ENTIRE skill type, what does ANET do? Gut one more of the skills in the category and move on as if the job is done.

kittening classic ANET stuff.

No we did not know it. It rooted us, the lowest hitpoint and armor class in the game, in PvP which is both high risk and high situational. Abilities like that are SUPPOSED TO BE powerful.

Exactly. The only way you can wreck a player with IB4 like you wreck a boss in PvE is to root them long enough, and then also create a situation where you yourself can afford to be rooted for the cast.

In most games, that’s more than enough to even justify an instakill.

Ice bow was nerfed because of PvE, it had nothing to do with PvP. In PvE it allowed the ele and an ally to do insane damage, especially against bosses with large hitboxes. This could also be further amplified with linecasting.

Ice bow did need a nerf, but this nerf was larger than what was warranted for most ele players. The reason for the over-nerfing was because of the linecasting exploit which should have been fixed instead.

Whatever the case, conjures have always been clunky utilities that were only ever used if they had an OP ability or two. Their entire design is extremely flawed and Anet should either rework the entire set of skills or scrap them like they did with guardian tomes.

My opinion is that they should not be shareable with allies and and should replace their equivalent attunement skills permanently when activated. For example staff ele could use lightning hammer as a permanent melee option for their air attunement by giving up a utility slot like engineers give up a slot for a kit.

However, because the elementalist already has many weapon skills from attunements, swapping between lightning hammer and air attunement skills should have a 40-60 second cooldown. Unlike kits, conjures would serve as semi-permanent replacements of their equivalent attunements instead of being swappable whenever you want. This would also make full conjure builds possible as you could substitute every attunement with a conjure. Of course the skills of every conjure would also need to be rebalanced.

Animo Omega.3190:

Okey, that will get conjuration out of my build in PVE. Anybody knows any good build for PVE that uses any conjured weapon and not just for very circumstantial situation?

Don’t use conjure weapons anywhere except if you need that FGS for some mobility. If you want a pure damage build just run Glyph of Storms, Signet of fire and something else. Maybe you could get Arcane Wave for the blast finisher. This is of course assuming that you don’t want to abuse the linecasting bug to try and make ice bow viable. For soloing in the HoT regions you may want to include some more defensive utilities in your setup as well.

Vissarion.6509:

All Conjures are officially Useless now, thx Anet

Maybe in 3 years we may see some buffs or something, who knows.

Conjures don’t need buffs, they need a complete rework.

Senario.2038:

Triflux.8027:

I don’t mind having 1200 range, and it dealing no damage.

Mesmer’s blink is so much better than ours. Breaks stun, 1200 range, shorter CD

I would also be ok with this as long as it matches Mesmer’s. That is if they truly believe in normalization rather than just using it as an excuse for a change.

Be careful there because what you just said may result in Mesmer nerfs instead

Valento.9852:

Nike.2631:

In what content over the last 3 years have you ever been called on to do nothing but heal? Elementalist has always been, and has always excelled as a class that can shift roles on the fly mid-combat. A heal-speced Druid heals… and if they use their on the fly role swap… they STILL HEAL.

If you can’t figure out how to bring more to a situation with 4 attunements and 20 weapon skills Elementalist probably isn’t the class for you in the first place. But if you can weave the elements and damage, CC, withstand, and heal as needed the prospect of being a mono-healer ought to look pretty kitten dull even with the shiny new FX. (and you can do it all without the stupid pet AI….)

Well, I know, but the nature of the class (attunements) is preventing the spec from becoming something somewhat refreshing in terms of gameplay. I pretty much wanted to see more focused roles with Tempest. Chronomancers for instance, got a particular buff, I did believe eles would have it to differentiate from the base class, but they’re still playing around the very same scheme we always had, we’re just delivering the effects from a different angle. It doesn’t feel different at all.

There was a good suggestion in the tempest changes thread about a volcanic themed spec that would do damage with every single attunement. You could have a 2-handed weapon that gives you the set of spells for this. A good example of an ability for such a spec was noxious water from volcanism that inflicts damage in addition to poison.

It is very possible to make elite specs that have a singular focus with the ele. However, it requires a 2-handed weapon or at least a main hand. I can’t see an off hand having such major influence on the spec.

Nike.2631:

In what content over the last 3 years have you ever been called on to do nothing but heal? Elementalist has always been, and has always excelled as a class that can shift roles on the fly mid-combat. A heal-speced Druid heals… and if they use their on the fly role swap… they STILL HEAL.

If you can’t figure out how to bring more to a situation with 4 attunements and 20 weapon skills Elementalist probably isn’t the class for you in the first place. But if you can weave the elements and damage, CC, withstand, and heal as needed the prospect of being a mono-healer ought to look pretty kitten dull even with the shiny new FX. (and you can do it all without the stupid pet AI….)

To be fair druids might be able to make some sort of hybrid build out of druid. After all they can take 2 additional trait lines and they can take a 2nd weapon as well, or even replace staff if they are feeling like experimenting.

I don’t see them becoming as versatile as an ele but they may be able to provide something else besides healing if they build for it. It depends on the balance changes that will come and on the practical application of these experimental builds. It’s quite difficult to predict if druid can work in different ways and I look forward to trying this.

Tempest was never supposed to be a pure healing spec like druid. This was obvious since its reveal and is nothing new. Tempest is simply a failed support spec that relies on sub-par auras and does nothing to actually make them good. Tempest also brings some healing and boons as a bonus, but they are not enough to make it competitive atm.

Bartosz.2013:

Ganathar.4956:

Bartosz.2013:

Hmm i wonder why icebow 5 skill is not nerfed, boss fights are kinda stupid because of it

It doesn’t need to be nerfed because ice bow will never be used now. Besides, nobody will care about the dungeon meta in HoT. Dungeons aren’t even supported by the devs anymore.

Yes, but fractals will be

Fractals are going up to level 100 and they will have new mechanics. I really doubt that Anet will make the same mistakes that allowed icebow 5 to be so powerful before, but we will have to wait to see about that I guess.

Bartosz.2013:

Hmm i wonder why icebow 5 skill is not nerfed, boss fights are kinda stupid because of it

It doesn’t need to be nerfed because ice bow will never be used now. Besides, nobody will care about the dungeon meta in HoT. Dungeons aren’t even supported by the devs anymore.

morrolan.9608:

Ganathar.4956:

Ice bow really needed a nerf so I’m not bothered with this. Now for that conjure weapon rework..

Why not do it at the same time? Instead of rendering them completely useless until they get around to doing a rework.

I would guess that it has to do with the devs being very busy with the elite specs. A proper rework would require quite a bit more than just changing some numbers or adding a very basic functionality.

Olcon.9506:

To piggy-back off what ItIsFinished is saying:

Meanwhile, in the other profession subforums:

-The elementalists are claiming the Druid outperforms both the water and earth attunements.

-Engineers are muttering both about the Druid’s lockdown potential and also Irenio’s apparent favoritism. (I actually feel for them on this one and hope they get some support, I’ll readily admit Irenio seemed waaaaay more enthusiastic about the Druid than he did the Scrapper. Hopefully he gives our engineer brothers some love, god knows they need it just as much as rangers do.)

-The thieves have listed the Druid as their number 1 kill priority and may or may not be having a nervous breakdown.

-Nothing about the Druid in the warrior subforum, which isn’t exactly shocking as warriors and Druids are literal polar opposites. I’m a little surprised they haven’t put together a “how do we kill this thing” thread, though.

-Mesmers are eyeing the Druid warily but aren’t really concerned.

-Necromancers are muttering about the Druid’s “Life Shroud” and how it retains its utilities when the Death Shroud does not.

-Revenants are outright questioning Ventari’s relevance.

-And lastly, the poor guardians may or may not be having a profession-wide existential crisis. Their main Druid reaction thread is blatantly questioning the guardian’s continuing viability and there’s even a second one asking Irenio to redesign the Dragon Hunter. Granted, that second one may very well be a joke, but something tells me they might be serious.

From what I’ve seen and browsed, most, if not all of the other professions (at least the subset of players that post of the forums, which, granted, is a small amount) agree that the Druid is a top-tier elite specialization that could very well shake up the PvP and WvW scenes, and none of them are writing it off as worthless or a “pile of garbage”. I myself am 100% going to be pulling my ranger (my first character! squeeeee) off the shelf and experimenting heavily with the Druid and what it has to offer.

So yeah, it might be you.

I was really concerned at first that druid would end up being a pretty bad elite spec, but after the reveal I really like it even though I’m not much of a healer fan. Most of the complaints from other profession forums are 1-dimensional and do not take into consideration every factor that is needed for balance.

For example, a staff ele can do enormous damage while doing some healing and giving boons at the same time. They even have a little bit of CC that will hopefully become more useful in HoT content. Also, necromancer’s shroud has a second health bar and thus doesn’t need to have utilities accessible. While some would argue that celestial form’s healing is the equivalent to the 2nd life bar, I would ask them how I can deal damage equivalent to that of death shroud.

Fortunately, most of the posters were reasonable and quickly pointed these things out in the druid-related threads of other profession sub-forums. However, the guardian sub-forum seems to be somewhat of an exception.

Personally, I am really happy that you guys are finally getting something good after so many years and I hope that you enjoy it. Irenio should also keep up the good work with the ranger balance changes, because more will be needed for sure.

Luindu.2418:

Hi, ele main here, i spend time reading the forums but this is going to be my first post.

IMHO and trying to be constructive, the elementalists has a problem being a “jack of all trades” when its stucks elements to the same role forever and the specializations should be the solution changing the way we look the elements.

One example of this would be something like making a “core/magma” specialization that use sulfurous waters (adding poison, losing healing), Fire with Piroclasts that make strong CC (like gw1 meteors) or Earth for mobility (digging charges like a Dredge).

PS: English isn’t my native language, sorry if i made any mistake.

Your idea is pretty good, but I don’t think that it can apply to any elite specs that don’t give the elementalist a 2-handed weapon. Hopefully, the next elite spec will incorporate such an idea.

Ice bow had to be nerfed, but now that all of our conjures are useless, except the FGS for mobility, we should get the long overdue conjure rework. They are extremely clunky skills and are very hard to balance properly.

Ice bow really needed a nerf so I’m not bothered with this. Now for that conjure weapon rework..

The water line did not become useless just because of the druid. Have there ever been any effective elementalists that have only provided healing to their group before? Of course not, healing has just been a part of the versatile elementalist toolkit and even the water spec has plenty of traits that have nothing to do with healing.

The only effect that the druid reveal has had on elementalists is that it highlighted that the tempest is not a healer spec. It’s supposed to provide other means of support, likely focused on auras with a little boon and healing support on the side because the 4 ele auras are simply not good enough to make a spec on their own.

Auras have plenty of problems atm and that is the downfall of a spec focusing on them.

-The biggest problem is that all of them except frost aura do not stack in duration which is incredibly counterproductive and makes it extremely hard to make a proper build focused around them.

-Tempest itself doesn’t have enough sources of aura application. There either needs to be more aura application incorporated into its skills or something that extends the duration of auras.

-Most auras do not have unique effects and can thus be directly compared to boon and condition application or even reflect fields from other professions or specs. Only frost aura, which gives -10% damage on top of any other reductions is completely unique. The other effects of the auras usually come short of other methods of application.

For my final point, the tempest will likely need some trait that gives auras something else that is unique. Otherwise, the tempest will only ever have a chance of being useful in raids. The reason why tempest might be useful in raids regardless of the mediocrity of auras is because I suspect that there will be a lot of fights with many quick attacks that don’t deal that much damage. These kinds of fights make dodges and blocks much less useful and reserved only for the one-shot mechanics, while making druid healing mandatory. Such quick attack patterns also means that auras will constantly provide their effects, potentially competing with direct application of their effects from other specs and professions.

Necromancers don’t really need any buffs except for ones targeted on specific weapons. Robert Gee has only mentioned buffing scepter and axe so far if I’m not mistaken. However, what needs to be done are significant changes in PvE content in order to make the necromancer’s strengths more noticable.

The only profession that desperatrly needs radical reworking and very big buffs is the ranger.

assassin.7895:

Omega Zoa.3859:

You are a troll…I just saw you on warrior forums stating basically the same thing.

No, absolutely not.

assassin.7895:

assassin.7895:

…while ele can pull off huge damage from 1200 range, which no class is able to come close to, without relying on Ele? (because Ice Bow and Meteor Shower bypass 5 target rule)

tl;dr why does ele do 100 times (sometimes) the damage other classes, such as thief, mesmer, ranger etc. do, without involving any risk and effort?

Not true. You’re wrong, because actually engineer has the potential for higher sustained DPS as long as the hitbox of the enemy isn’t huge. Engineer also has comparable burst too, so should they be nerfed?

You’re also incorrect about the target limit bypassing, just saying.

And your tl;dr deserves no other response other than that well you’re flat out wrong.

Ele has some of the highest damage, no doubt, but it’s not even technically the best in PvE other than for burst. Sustained DPS it’s still near the top but it’s not even the absolute best, let alone even close to twice than the output of other classes.

Show me how you pull off Ele damage at the breach & VW bosses, at Tequatl in first phase, versus veteran mobs when they spawn at VW while defending. Oh and do that with 5 buttons please.

If engineer is able to do that plus do it from 1000 range without any risk and attack involved, yes I think it should be nerfed as well.

About the target limit bypassing: I think only Ele + IB are able to do huge damage on so many targets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vni6gLHvraA&feature=youtu.be

Bean Muncher.5197:

I agree wit OP.!!. i play only open wolrd pve (other game mode too hard LOL!) and ele too gud there. need nurf pls.

In all seriousness, I lost it when the OP said he was talking about open world pve.

Bruh. Open world pve. At least try to make it sound plausible.

Open world PVE is the most played gamemode right now, the gamemode which has received the most attention from Anet, dungeons & fractals are just a niche gamemode for some people (currently). Dungeons also are completely abandoned and bugs won’t be fixed for months or never (unless they are gamebreaking). Even in dungeons Ele is really good. Just use 3 eles + thief, do massive ice bow burst and chain freeze boss. If your party is good you don’t need 3 eles, because ele burst + IB is already enough to kill most bosses.

Really have to love the ridiculous target limit bypassing argument. What do you want meteor shower to do? Maybe it should just pick 5 random enemies in its circle and damage only them. If some of your meteors strike a side of the circle where none of the 5 selected targets are bad luck, they won’t even damage the enemies that were there and would have got hit. That’s some pretty awesome design right there…

Seriously MS has a target limit but it is per meteor, which is as it should be. Also do keep in mind thst staff is a very slow weapon. If it did less damage like other options it would be useless because the other options can hit much more reliably. Who cares that it’s a very good damage option in some situations such as world bosses? Every weapon should have its own merits and this goes for all professions.

warrior shapper.6502:

Well i think Dilligat wyt confirmed what i was after, when i say stack i dont mean duration or in my bank/inventory/bags etc, i mean when activated i can have them activated both at the same time so i can get 100% exp ( 50% from) both boosters since i have 100+ of the old boosters just make experience gain in HoT a bit easier to get masteries

You might want to convert your old xp boosters into the 20 minute versions of the new xp boosters instead of stacking them with other boosters that you have. If I am not mistaken the new ones affect xp from everything you do. This means that they should affect xp from crafting, exploring, events and even competing personal story steps.

If you aren’t intending to only grind mobs, it would probably be better to have +50% xp from everything + the killstreak bonus of the new boosters for 20 mins rather than +50% monster xp for an hour.

Frost.1503:

Ganathar.4956:

Frost.1503:

Flumek.9043:

In all honest, even when i enter a PVP tournament again,

I would unbind my normal deathshroud F1.

Thats how much better Reapershroud is and I unfortunately cannot support this idea. The reaper specialization feels just perfect the way it is and i think the solution for ranged is the upcoming work on axe.

This is why the Ele is so strong and the Necro is the last profession. In the Elementalist forum they continue to ask improvement!!! The Ele have always his attunement but if he likes the new Elite Specialization he can overload the attunement. Why the Elite should remove the death shroud? We can reach the enemy, immobilize, ecc the enemy and at least use the Reaper.
Explain to me how you will fight a ranger with 1500 of range?

You should really roll a tempest if you think that it’s so great. All that I’m going to say is that quality > quantity.

Personally I will play the hell out of my reaper come HoT.

I never said it before!
The reaper must be a improvement!
In this way it is very situational.
How is possible you don’t like have the possibility to switch from one to the other one? If you don’t like it just stay in Reaper. I don’t understund sometime if is my English (is really bad) or are the people….
I give you at same price the Ferrari with full optional or you prefer without any optional?
With F1 and F2 the Necromancer will not become OP becouse he needs 3 years of improvement for be like the other.

A better analogy would be that all professions start with a common car as a profession mechanic, except ranger which gets a broken model. The reaper gives up his old car for a Ferrari while most other professions simply get a second but different common car. Thus my saying of quality > quantity applies pretty well.

The reaper shroud is obviously superior to the original death shroud. If you take a berserker, you will see that their primal burst skills aren’t really stronger than their normal burst skills. A tempest overloading is not more effective than an elementalist cycling attunements, though he is probably more effective than a tempest who cycles attunements.

Elite specs are supposed to be balanced with their new mechanics in mind. This means that there is always a price for the mechanics. Reaper pays with his death shroud, while tempest pays with the enormous focus that their trait line has on overloading, which btw make overloads no longer optional if you don’t intend to waste your traits.

This is my view on the matter, but I will say that necromancers do need some ranged weapon buffs. If Robert makes these buffs happen, the reaper will be able to have some decent ranged options.

There are quite a few professions that have only a single underwater elite. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that Anet will bother with this until they decide to revamp underwater combat for the water dragon expansion. Hopefully it will be the expansion after HoT because the revamp is sorely needed.

Frost.1503:

Flumek.9043:

In all honest, even when i enter a PVP tournament again,

I would unbind my normal deathshroud F1.

Thats how much better Reapershroud is and I unfortunately cannot support this idea. The reaper specialization feels just perfect the way it is and i think the solution for ranged is the upcoming work on axe.

This is why the Ele is so strong and the Necro is the last profession. In the Elementalist forum they continue to ask improvement!!! The Ele have always his attunement but if he likes the new Elite Specialization he can overload the attunement. Why the Elite should remove the death shroud? We can reach the enemy, immobilize, ecc the enemy and at least use the Reaper.
Explain to me how you will fight a ranger with 1500 of range?

You should really roll a tempest if you think that it’s so great. All that I’m going to say is that quality > quantity.

Personally I will play the hell out of my reaper come HoT.

Hammerguard.9834:

On to the chill topic, no. Attunements are a profession mechanic as well as a weapon swap. As with any classes profession mechanic, they’re affected by chill. Elementalists have enough condi removal to make this slight downfall trivial.

The ele class mechanic is what gives them access to their different skills. All 20 of the ele weapon skills go on increased cooldown when chilled. There is no reason for chill to double-dip when used against an ele.

This also likely means that alacrity benefits eles more, though I haven’t tested this. If that is the case this interaction should be removed too.

The problem is that overloads share cooldowns with attunements. I have no idea how the devs could make chill affect overloads while not affecting attunements.

Pretty good changes so far Karl, if we include the updates in the new posts. The only disappointment is how heat sync has been gutted. Don’t get me wrong, I know that it was a very OP ability that practically carried warhorn by itself. However, might is incredibly easy to share as an ele so it needs something more to become more worthwhile. Maybe this ability could also increase aura duration like sand squall increases boon duration?

I really like how you started listening to feedback. I also like that you are trying changes that you think might be too strong, like the stunbreaks on overloads. This is a beta after all and not the live game, so it’s ok to try stuff that might seem a bit crazy. If it turns out to be too strong you could just remove it.

WEXXES.2378:

Time to quit OP, rofl.

If that’s the reason to quit, the problem doesn’t lie in engineer getting new AI based stuff.

I haven’t seen any AI-based Forge spec. I have only seen an AI-based elite spec called the Scrapper. I guess that the OP has no reason to quit after all

Sadly, I’m not surprised at all about the druid being last. Ignoring the ranger seems to be a standard practice in this game. I’m truly sorry about this turn of events. Just do yourselves a favor and main another profession.

This can’t be that hard to fix, right?

Zalavaaris.5329:

Diovid.9506:

Elite specializations are meant to be a sidegrade that changes the way you play. This would make the reaper much more of an upgrade. If you want to stay out of melee range, then you just don’t choose reaper as one of your specializations.

Chronomancer, berserker, herald, and tempest disagree.

It’s not the same, because with two shrouds a reaper could rotate through the abilities of both of his shrouds before he spends all of his life force. There would have to be some pretty big restriction in place.

To use berserker and tempest as examples. The berserker can use his adrenaline on only one of his burst skills every time he builds it up. The tempest overloads take a major time investment to pull off, which means that you cannot use any abilities with a cast time during their channels and this is not taking into account the rest of their severe drawbacks.

Reaper is one of the best elite specs atm, they really don’t need to have both shrouds. Also, berserker and tempest are not upgrades at all, even though they add mechanics. Not sure about chronomancer and herald.