Guild Wars 2

This thread is based on the premise that DD ele will receive nerfs sooner rather than later. Please do not discuss if you think this is justified or not. The point of this thread is to propose some intelligent ways to nerf it, since there has been a history of far-fetched ways to nerf obvious problems from Anet’s side.

Numero uno:
Nerf ring of fire. This skill is the main source of burning, and consequently the main culprit when it comes to catching out players that are not fully aware of how ele works. This skill is not fun to use, since you completely rely on your opponent to not know/pay attention, and not fun to play against, since it’s counterintuitive for this one mediocre particle effect to apply more burning than an entire channel of drake’s breath for example.

This skill is way out of line, and I don’t understand the reason why they chose this one out of the entire ele skillset to buff so hard when the burning changes hit. Proposed change: Change burn stacks to 1 and/or add a 0.5s icd on getting burned by this skill.

Number 2:
Nerf cleanse on cantrips. This one might seem a bit far-fetched, but let me explain.

There used to be a lot of play to watching an eles attunements with regard to condi application. You’d time your condis (particularly chill), until after the ele left water, screw up his rotation and thus gain the upper hand by intelligent decision making. However ever since we got the new water line, the amount of cleanse ele has outside of water attunement is incredibly high, which has more or less led to this depth being lost. We’re talking cleansing fire+traited cleansing fire+armor+lightning flash for a total of 10 cleanses not tied to water. 1 more if you count regen+frost aura when critically hit.

Number 3:
Nerf shocking aura

This one is specifically aimed at WvW, where running -33% air cooldowns with lightning rod turns shocking aura into a monster. Especially since it goes on cooldown when used, not when it ends, which means shocking aura uptime when traited is nearly 25%. Same reasoning as with ring of fire, it’s not a lot of fun to have so much of your damage rely on your opponent making a mistake (in this case hitting you with shocking aura up)

Number 4:
Revert attunement cd reduction.

I would be sad to see it go, but I don’t think it was ever justified. Rotations are slightly awkward now, especially if not running an alacrity trait.

My thinking exactly. Also, holy moly this forum moves fast. Half an hour and you’re off the page o.O

I’m curious to see what the general consensus is on the new mechanics that are going to be added with HoT.

Personally I’m a bit bothered by the large amount of issues that seem to be connected with them.

To list some:

- Displace moving immovable objects (bloomhunger etc.)

- Displace + conquest. I mean someone must have thought of this right? Can’t be countered by stability and moves people off point in random directions, along z-axis at times(clocktower)

- Can’t evade or block taunt. I’ve heard people say this is intentional, which simplifies the matter. Beastly warden is utterly overpowered then.

- Taunt scaling with condition duration

- Other cc’s not canceling out taunt like all other cc’s. Meaning a daze for example won’t break the taunt but stack with it

- Inability to retarget while taunted, making instant-cast abilities unusable (e.g. steal, blinding flash, signet of air,…) Inability to use certain instant cast abilities that are not stunbreakers. If intentional same as above.

- Slow extending leap distance, evade/block duration, …

- Slow being overtuned due to additive stacking with quickness, instead of more logical multiplicative stacking. By this I mean that logically, since quickness = cast time/1.5, slow should be cast time * 1.5, whereas it is currently cast time * 2, which is a bit too much imo. Similar to how the 100% quickness efficiency turned out to be too much.

I realise this might sound a bit whiny, but I’m slightly concerned that these mechanics are overpowered and unfun by nature, yet are sneaking into the live game unnoticed.

Bloodlust will up your damage by 9%, since it adds 9% to your power. Cruelty will increase the damage of your critical hits ONLY by 7.5%.

That’s how bad a stat ferocity is. Power is better at amplifying crit damage than crit damage itself.

For what it’s worth, Tornado still grants the 916 precision they supposedly removed. That’s 45% crit chance.

Haven’t checked recently but I assume it still works. Did a couple weeks back.

Been stuck with this bug since yesterday. Says I’m in match. Would appreciate an unstuck.

Kry.1697:

I rarely comment on videos but this made me dust off my old elementalist again, realize that I have no idea what I’m doing and level up a new. It’s slowly coming back now =D

Thanx Gokil.2543!

Thanks a lot for your kind words!

For what it’s worth, the actual radius is still the same. It’s a visual bug.

Need confirmation on this but I’m pretty sure.

Nephrite.6954:

Any recommendation on fighting this particular build/class on power thief? I was roaming a few days ago and just couldn’t seem to pack enough punch to bring a good cele ele down. I can easily take out the inexperienced ones but the good ones are obviously a different story. Should I turn the other way when I see this class taking my base? Like how I turn around when faced against a medi guard. Surprisingly I find this guys tougher than Med guards to fight against.

It’s an awful matchup for thief. The air variant in particular. Worse than medi guard even. Raif gave some good tips, but I’ll add, assuming you’re D/P, to punish long and hard whenever the ele is not in fire or air. Multiple seconds of straight auto’ing. Poison at the end of the auto chain helps a lot. Dodging fire is mandatory. If you play close attention and assume the ele will use it pretty much right away, you can dodge earthquake as well.

Nephrite.6954:

Any recommendation on fighting this particular build/class on power thief? I was roaming a few days ago and just couldn’t seem to pack enough punch to bring a good cele ele down. I can easily take out the inexperienced ones but the good ones are obviously a different story. Should I turn the other way when I see this class taking my base? Like how I turn around when faced against a medi guard. Surprisingly I find this guys tougher than Med guards to fight against.

It’s an awful matchup for thief. The air variant in particular. Worse than medi guard even. Raif gave some good tips, but I’ll add, assuming you’re D/P, to punish long and hard whenever the ele is not in fire or air. Multiple seconds of straight auto’ing. Poison at the end of the auto chain helps a lot. Dodging fire is mandatory.

OneKlicKill.4285:

Are there servers where roaming just happens more? Cause I feel like I spend 1-2 hours and get maybe 1 fight roaming and all the rest either run to keeps or camps or a zerg rolls over or w/e. So I just stick to spvp… but I want fights where they just commit everyone’s a pansy and just runs…

Not sure if you’re on EU or NA, but over on EU I think rank 5-6 is best for roaming. It’s been rather bad lately though. Certain servers will literally have the full map in a single blob. Most of the fights in the video are either provoked, by poking a large group and running until I can take what remains, or very late at night.

Thanks a lot Raif and dank!

@Schmendrick, ‘Real’ PvPers kinda hurts. I’ve done plenty PvP, but still find that the open environment of WvW can be a lot more fun (plus the build variety), but your point is true. These players are for the majority quite terrible. I don’t really know what to do about that though, I feel like if I uploaded the duels versus good players I’d catch a lot of criticism for playing the overtuned D/D against them. So I just upload the 2-3v1s versus (evidently) sub-par players.

@Notsoperky I dunno, I never liked the design of moa. There’s nothing as frustrating as that skill for a roamer, because at least 50% of the time it gets you killed, no matter how good the fight you were having was. And yes, the players are bad. That’s why there’s more than one of them. I agree D/D ele could use a bit of nerfing, if only to get people to stop complaining about it.

Krasex.4950:

Very nice video.

FrownyClown.8402:

nice gameplay. This build def isn’t for the average eles.

Thanks guys. Seriously means a lot.

Taldren.7523:

A link to the video in the message itself would be useful :p I am going to guess it can be found by navigating your youtube page link in your signature, but its a bit unorthadox to not offer a direct link :p

Also, your build link doesn’t work … the one hidden in the about tab of youtube. I am guessing your ye-ole Air – Water – Arcane setup. I really wish there was some variety to the class … I’d like to see a fire build roamer … someone? anyone? please?

Anyway, nice fights as always.

Im utterly stupid… Thanks for correcting me. Twice. Couldn’t seem to get the link working on the about page, so I removed it for now. Build is in the description of the video however.

As for fire roaming. I run it from time to time, but air cooldowns are hard to drop :-/ The one-trick fire burst is sweet, but not worth the tradeoff in my opinion. I’ll probably feature it extensively once I start the duel series I’ve been planning though.

Hey all,

Some D/D ele roaming is medically proven to alleviate tempest complaints.

Dare I say the quality is a tad better this time? A man can dream.

This one was hard work. Between the nonsense golem week and some awful matchups, it’s been hard to get footage. Hope you enjoy nonetheless!

All feedback more than welcome!

I’m thinking staff tempest will be completely ridiculous aoe presence (it’s already top-tier). It won’t be as intensely used as other elite specializations i think, but overall I really like the flavour.

Looks really solid. What’s up with the random apothecary and cavalier’s piece though? I’d swap those for either zerker or knight’s.

Omnomberry and leeching are great. I just can’t drop my -condi food. Just can’t. I think I literally die half as much with it than without.

Only real problem is that your power is low. Especially when you have such nice crit chance and damage, it’s a waste to leave it so low. You won’t be stacking all that much might with pack rune either.

No Remorse.5869:

Gokil.2543:

Hey all,

I’ve been having an absolute blast since the specialisation patch and decided to share.

All feedback very welcome, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3rN3Q_YMbU

Top vid mate, really enjoyed that with some great fights and skill in there.

Thanks for sharing, great work.

Thanks a lot!

Some well played fights in there. Enjoyed watching.

Meta for what though? Roaming? You’re so much slower than standard D/D. This build doesn’t even have perma swiftness. Can’t really roam if you can’t disengage.

I suppose it’s better in certain 1v1s, but the world of 1v1s is plagued with too much bullkitten to make it worth speccing for.

Hey all,

I’ve been having an absolute blast since the specialisation patch and decided to share.

All feedback very welcome, enjoy!

Valin.6873:

Oh wow, that dosnt sound good. Any one have any advice? Ive been D/D for almost 2 years now, i would like to keep using it.. if anyone can help please do..

I updated the metabattle guide for now. I’ll probably be updating it repeatedly over the coming days to perfect it.

oZii.2864:

Valin.6873:

Hi people!
So I’m a D/D main ele.. I’m not out of work yet so I’ve yet to be able to play with the new builds. My question is.. can we run similar builds from before the patch? The one I was running was Celestial or Knights armour with traits in arcana/water/earth. Is this still viable? If not is there any suggested builds you guys are running? I like to roam in WvW so I tend to like full knights as it can sustain and hurt hard. Any suggestions? Ty for all the help!

-Valin

It seems decent you would just grab one of the previous unattainable full lines. I tried fire briefly, but no swiftness was a no no. Soothing ice is great.

I picked renewing stamina, elemental contingency, evasive arcana, water traits for condi removal, and air with fresh air but I think bolt to the heart is the way to go to ramp up damage.

Everyone else got buffs also with theives stacking 3 hours of fury from auto attacking(bug) and mesmers can stack like 30 seconds of stealth now(intended with new PU). It’s going to take a few days maybe weeks for things to settle again.

I think medi guards in roaming will become much stronger now. I hopped on my medi guard and zeal+honor+virtures is really strong for roaming/dueling now. Still no swiftness access, but it’s strong.

Trust me, lightning rod is the best pick out of air grandmasters. Give it a try and I’m sure you’ll agree. Be sure to absolutely maximize your shocking aura effectiveness by not updrafting until it’s done, not popping it out of range etc.

I’ve been feeling utter godmode on air/water/arcane. Either it’s completely broken or people haven’t caught onto good builds yet.

The stat decoupling from traits is a huge buff to us. 33% reduced cooldown on air skills coupled with lightning rod means you will never ever lose to a power build again.

As I said, maybe if people think of some better builds, but for now it feels blatantly op.

Valin.6873:

Very cool.. and interesting.. any new build u recommend to run as a major WvW D/D ele? Which traits are u thinking is best? Any builds? Would love to know. Thank you!

I’m thinking Air/Water/Arcane at the moment. Going zephyr’s boon + aeromancer’s alacrity + lightning rod, soothing ice + soothing disruption + cleansing water, renewing stamina + final shielding + evasive arcana.

If the roaming landscape becomes substantially more dangerous, and the amount of defense we currently use just doesn’t cut it anymore (because of crazy powerful condi burst/boonrip/…), we’ll have to go earth/water/arcana. With elemental shielding/geomancer’s freedom/diamond skin.

Laraley.7695:

Wait, how did they nerf renewing stamina?

They nerfed vigor to grant 50% increased endurance regen, rather than 100%

I’ll do a bit on the WvW D/D ele we all know and love.

Arcana:

- The vigor nerf hurts us slightly more than average(cause evasive arcana). Renewing stamina is still best in slot for the adept tier, but I’d advise everyone to get yourself an energy sigil if you don’t have one already.

- The master tier is a bit of a wasteland now that elemental attunement is a minor (kitten yeah). Both final shielding and elemental contingency seem to be looking equally strong. Which will become the preferred choice will probably depend on the prominence of boonrip and the overall threat a thief poses.

- Evasive arcana>bountiful power, make no mistake

Water:

- Soothing mist radius nerf is quite a big hit to ele in small teams. Especially since we lose lingering attunements as well, which drastically cuts the uptime of this buff on allies allround.
- Soothing ice is really kitten strong. It’s a bit of a shame we lose some cleanse now that the icd is up to 20s, but frost aura more than makes up for that.

- Soothing disruption seems like the obvious pick in the master tier. Whether the regen and vigor will be applied at the start or at the end of ether renewal, and whether it will be applied at all if the skill is canceled/interrupted will make a huge difference. If at end+not when cancelled, signet will still dominate. If at start, ER looks to take over.

- Soothing power is interesting, but gets outperformed by both other excellent grandmasters in solo or group play.

Here it gets interesting. All three other lines seem to offer some serious value. I’m currently leaning towards air for general purpose, but both others are worth glossing over.

Air:

- Zephyr’s boon is the obvious choice in adept slot

- While tempest defense + lightning rod looks very alluring, I think aeromancer’s alacrity will be the better choice here. 17s shocking, 13/27s rtl, 27s updraft are hugely impactful. Since the damage boost from tempest defense doesn’t work on updraft, even moreso.

- The grandmaster is a tough one. Lightning rod seems to be the winner. The weakness will be even more impactful now that vigor is nerfed, and the damage is very respectable.

Earth:

- Elemental shielding+soothing ice is amazing

- Geomancer’s training + – condi food + hoelbrak is snare immunity. The cdr part isn’t really that important though.

- Diamond skin looks like the best choice in gm. The fact that you have very good upfront mitigation with frost aura+protection(+geomancer’s defense) means you’ll have little trouble popping back above 90%. Too many people view this as a trait you are meant to constantly maintain. It’s more of a trait that filters out a good percentage of condis here and there, so your cleanses go a longer way.

Fire:

- Burning fire is amazing

- Pyromancer’s training is hard to judge. In theory it sounds amazing, but in practice it changes your rotation quite a bit. You’ll be in fire for a very short time, so you can be back in time to catch the 10s recharge of burning speed and ring of fire. This might hurt your overall pace. Burning speed also no longer aligns with every lightning flash, making its dramatically lower cooldown not as big a deal as it could be.

- Fire gms aren’t great. If you have a respectable amount of condition damage, persisting flames is best in slot, since ring of fire now inflicts 3(!) stacks when crossed. Meaning a moment’s negligence might cost an enemy 6-9 stacks of burning.

Yes, all other classes are getting buffed, so situationally we’re not that much better off if at all. However we were utter gods in WvW up to this point, winning 90% of 1v1s and going 2v1 with unparallelled ease. We have plenty leeway for some other classes to catch up.

Supreme.3164:

I’m do ask myself what we will lose in return for this change, if they touch arcane precision…I’ll go Ape kitten on the forums..I swear, like arcane precision is off limit.

Half the reason to go arcana is for that minor trait alone, now my fears are rising…

You can’t be serious.

The reason aquatic benevolence functions the way it does, is because it allows them to crank up the numbers a lot higher this way. If it affected yourself too, even 10% would be in the ballpark of OP. So their only way of making support through healing feel substantial is by making it only affect allies.

This also adds the classic ‘focus the healer’ element, which is, if nothing else, a bit of added depth. If it boosted healing universally, your healer would be the hardest to kill of the whole bunch, which makes for an awkward situation.

To address the point you raise, there are plenty “useless” traits that are entirely group focused. Think of tactics revive traits, venomshare, phalanx strength,…

Traits like these are meant to be taken in team comps where your team takes appropriate support to cover for your loss in self-sustainability. You know this.

Cleanses that proc on gaining a condition, such as burning fire and transmute often (perhaps always) seem to only remove one stack if multiple stacks of a single condition are applied once.

I’ve noticed this pretty often but never had it recorded, but I caught it happening in wolfi’s video. At 3:21, you can see transmute converting 1 stack of confusion from a prybar into retaliation, while leaving the other 4 untouched.

Heavy focus on positioning and single target pressure.
Slightly lower dps than dagger mainhand, more distinct focus on mono-attunement playstyle, but not exclusively.

Air: (targeted) port, blind, weakness on auto
Fire: burn, dash, execute ability, fast auto to justify pyromancer’s puissance
Water: heavy vuln, evade
Earth: hard cc, block, reflect

Posting here for future reference. Wanna see how many I get right.

Edit: 4th of june. Probably at least one cooldown reducing weapon skill. Best guess is one in air attunement that reduces attunement cooldowns globally to synergize with fresh air.

Sounds good.

Problem with making it an aura or buff-like effect is that it’s not specifically assigned to a player. It’s an AoE that doesn’t move after you place it.

Least cluttering and thematically fitting animation I could think of would be the effect when you hit a magnetic grasp. It’s a pretty subtle circle of rocks flying up with a very recognizable sound effect.

Frankly, the build itself is not very good, but by far the biggest mistake is not picking up lightning rod in air GM after going 5 points deep into air.

Unless you solo roam on D/D in WvW, close to zerk will be optimal for literally everything you do.

ionix.9054:

Thanks for the response. Lot’s of good analysis in your post I think.

Just want to provide this info:
Armor 2629
health is @ 14,960 with no stacks
healing power is 300
———
crit @ 30.8%/precision 1489
toughness 1709
attack 1940
ferocity 488

Build is on meta battle roamer, though I am not using celestial.

I think biggest thing I take away from your post is that I might not be smart enough with armor earth.

Vitality is pretty important in larger scale combat. The couple thousand extra hp will often be the difference between actually getting your skills out the door or having to completely break rotation and run.

If you take a 12k thief combo(sigils, mug, backstab, auto) when you only have 17.5k hp, you’ll be in panic range. Not so much with that solid 20k baseline.

As for healing power, I suppose it’s not THAT important. Would still recommend getting some celestial but you could do without.

Don’t forget to run -condi food with your hoelbrak set. Makes a huge difference in freedom of movement.

Purple Miku.7032:

Comparisons between our heals to show how much hp/min you heal with them (assumption of 0 healing power):

Arcane Brilliance:
3,560 every 25 sec * 2 = 7,120 in 50 sec
10/25 = 0.4, 0.4 * 3,560 = 1,424
7,120 + 1,424 = roughly 8,544 hp/min (with 1 target)
~6,835 + 8,544 = ~15,379 hp/min (with 5 targets)

Glyph of Elemental Harmony:
4,894 hp every 20 sec * 3 = 14,682 hp/min
in water attunement add 12s regen to each use of heal (1,560)
1,560 * 3 = 4,680, 14,682 + 4,680 = 19,362 hp/min

Ether Renewal:
625 * 8 hp every 15 sec = 5000
5000 * 4 = 20,000 hp/min

Signet of Restoration:
with nothing but Lightning Whip autoattack,
60/0.75 = 80 casts/min, healing per cast = 202
80 * 202 = 16,160 hp/min

There’s a couple things wrong with this data in my humble opinion.

First off, the arcane brilliance number for one target is actually the number for 0 targets. Which makes the healing per minute for target cap 17088/60s, exactly double.

Glyph cooldown is 25 seconds, which means the numbers become: 11746 in any attunement + 3120 worth of regen in water attunement

Lastly, not considering ‘effective cooldown’ (meaning cooldown+ cast time) is generally acceptable, but in the case of ether renewal it heavily skews data. The effective cooldown of ether renewal is ~19s, which makes its HPM ~15789.

If correcting the other heals for the cast time inaccuracy, they’d go down by about 5%.

So first off, ensure you have an optimal build. Especially in group combat, half-assing it just doesn’t work. For the 0 support trio you run with, you’ll need:

2500 armor (up to 2700)
20k hp
500 healing power
Signet of restoration, armor, mist, flash (not shield)

All the tips I’m about to give only really work with this solid baseline in mind.

Some general stuff:

As DD vs multiple opponents, you want to strip down your rotation to the bare minimum. You cannot compete with natural frontliners for very long. You mostly go ham in bursts of 6-8 seconds, racing through attunements, after which you lay low for about the same duration. Spamming lightning whip where possible, peeling for allies maybe. When burning speed comes back up you repeat.

Armor of earth is your 6 seconds of godmode. Be very conservative about using it. You don’t want it to be on cooldown with the fight still in its early stages. This is the biggest difference when comparing 1vX to XvX. The way you try to conserve armor of earth.

Mist form is there for whenever things don’t go your way. People often pop armor to feel ‘secure’, which is a mistake. Use mist early if you’re getting focused and zoom out of the danger zone with the increased movespeed. Make sure you learn the difference between when a situation calls for armor and when mist is the appropriate answer.

Don’t get caught up stacking might in the middle of cleave. Being alive and healthy to use more skills will beat out having more might to do fewer skills every time. It’s fine to stack it if you’re not under pressure though.

Vs thieves: shocking aura. Utterly shuts them down. Use wisely. Also earthquake can turn momentum 180 degrees. Treat the thief’s hp bar as his resource bar. As long as he’s healthy, you’re in trouble. Burning speed flash/earthquake flash,.. make his life miserable. Admittedly, this is mainly your thief’s responsibility.

Vs mesmers: again, mainly your thief’s responsibility. Mesmer gets shut down hard by having someone babysit him. Although they’re hard to kill and can be annoying to focus, their output is pretty much nullified by throwing some pebbles at them here and there, forcing them into defensive use of cooldowns.

TL;DR: Save armor of earth, mist early when pressured, hunt thieves to avoid getting hunted.

Edit: Camping fgs is a perfect way to survive for an extended period without cooldowns. Make sure to swap in and out of water efficiently to recover.

I don’t get this. Staff ele is already obnoxiously hard to kill. I’d agree with a few tweaks to air attunement maybe, but this is way out of scope.

A 1200 range 20 second cooldown teleport with AoE hard cc causewhythehellnot. Seriously?

The only thing staff ele lacks atm is the niche air attunement is supposed to fill. Respectable single target pressure.

Buff air 1 and/or 2 and/or 3 and we’ll be gold. Even outside 3v3+

Full celestial isn’t great. The metabattle spread is better. Fill out your gear so the total spread matches the metabattle one.

This data has been most useful to me as of late. Figured I’d say thanks!

Did you manually time the aftercasts?

Consider updating the lightning whip data. I’d help out but I’m not sure how to go about testing. It feels like the aftercast is very low now, whereas attack speed IIRC is 1 per 0.9 seconds.

Also, gale knockdown is in fact 3 seconds instead of the listed 2.

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

Aktium.9506:

Xillllix.3485:

1900 range pewpew that does 18k damage rolling your face on the keyboard, like the ranger.

That’s nonsense. I’ve never hit for more than 13k + AirFire procc with Rapid Fire in PvP

I don’t think I’ve ever hit 13k in pvp…I might have a 5 digit flame grab screenshot somewhere though (it’s on a troll 6/6/0/0/2 D/D build).

http://imgur.com/k3Lru3E

Let’s just say that was a bad day to be the light golem.

dietzero.3514:

Tempest will be getting sword, most likely. Hard to kite with that.

Sword is always a positioning-centered weapon. Across all professions.

Been a while indeed!

You run 00446 still (if my memory serves me right)? What’s your experience with signet over ether? I ask ‘cause that last fight was a really good example of a situation where signet would have done you a lot more good. The all-in potential of ether is just sooo much lower. I used to run ether for the longest time myself until I took an arrow to the knee really learned to appreciate what signet can do. Biggest downside is it forces you to run 6 water, and you might have a slightly harder time getting away, but it’s so much more fun.

Feels like you’re twice the ele. So much more output.

Anyway, welcome back, give moar pls.

Try limiting your criticism to the traits that are especially out of place. There’s a lot of “I don’t like it/this is weird/i’d replace it with this” in your post, makes it hard to read. Not every trait needs work.

My main disagreements with your assessment:

Burning precision is a fine trait. Perfect for adept level.
Pyromancer’s training also fine-strong.
Blinding ashes is a strong trait with 3s ICD. Unrivaled blindspam.
Persisting flames fine
Pyromancer’s puissance terrible (possible synergy with sword tho)

One with air is potentially 60% superspeed uptime with fresh air. Very strong

Stone heart doesn’t work with lingering attunements
Piercing shards idem, it’s meant to be a pve centered trait and is fine for that purpose

(You seem to have completely forgotten PvE when making your assessment. A great deal of traits make perfect sense for that purpose)

The point of this thread is to round up the most important feedback to the specialization changes.

We all know that agreement and cooperation are not very common on the (ele) forums. Let’s try for once to work towards a compromise, for the sake of the profession and game we all love.

This thread is a discussion thread. In a day or two we’ll take the most important conclusions and condense them into a neat little document that carries a good bit of weight, so we can be sure at least that gets heard.

I’ll get the discussion going. MAKE SURE YOU POINT OUT WHAT YOU AGREE WITH, NOT JUST DISAGREE.

High-level impressions:
Fire magic: This line has a clearly defined purpose and multiple viable paths

Air magic: This line seems to have lost a fair bit of appeal, mainly due to lost raw damage and flimsy adepts.

Earth magic: This line again has a clearly defined defensive purpose. Geo defense is incredibly strong. Multiple paths possible. Some possible compensation for loss of stone splinters?

Water magic: Strong, versatile line. Well rounded. Clear purpose.

Arcana: In need of a viable master trait. Only one currently viable and well-defined path.

Close-up: Traits worth commenting on.

Pyromancer’s puissance in its current version has no real function. This may well change depending on what mainhand sword fire attunement brings. All other fire magic traits seem fine. Conjurer’s viability is heavily tied to lightning hammer’s though. I’m unsure why they feel like the hammer needs nerfing. Power overwhelming is quite bland but can live with that.

Ferocious winds, aeromancer’w alacrity and bolt to the heart are worth commenting on. I get what you’re trying to do with ferocious winds(zealot’s 66060 dps staff ele that can camp fire as well as water), but fact remains it’s a pretty bad trait overall. Adept air magic could really use a solid trait since both others have quite niche usefulness. Main comment on aeromancer’s alacrity is to please add air training to it. 150 ferocity is 50-70 percent less damage than a 10 percent modifier would be, which seriously hurts fresh air builds both in pve (d/f) and pvp (s/f). Bolt to the heart really needs to be brought up to executioner/close to death level.

The addition of many incoming damage modifier traits beg the question of whether or not they’ll stack multiplicatively or additively (I believe they’re additive atm). If additive, geomancer’s defense will be problematically strong, if multiplicative it will just be strong. Only other things worth commenting on are the loss of stone splinters, which was incredibly strong but kind of makes sense to not have in earth magic anymore.

Soothing ice is very strong. Its current version of 4s frost aura feels incredible. I believe 12s would make a bit more sense. It would be an excellent source of proccing aura traits without providing the incredible uptime of frost aura.

Elemental contingency needs some minor tweaks in order to have an option worth taking in master tier. Swiftness when hit in air and/or regen in water would go a long way. I wouldn’t mind losing the retal for either or both. I think most of us are not a fan of the ‘when hit’ mechanic but it might be a necessary evil to distinguish from elemental attunement. Making the revive aura trait work with aurashare would be quite nice too.

Elemental attunement becoming grandmaster makes swiftness availability very problematic to almost all traditional pvp builds. I’d hate to have to run traveler rune/signet of air just to get around. I don’t feel like ele is one of the classes that was meant to lack swiftness from a balance perspective such as necro/guard/mes, so I hope you’ll either give us windborne dagger somewhere reachable or give us an alternative way to gain some swiftness. Maybe windborne dagger baseline.

The standard cleansing water path got solid buffs. Soothing ice + soothing disruption +cleansing wave = what’s a condi?

Water magic has always tried to provide a hybrid dps+vulnstack+healer niche. I guarantee you the moment the content calls for a healer of sorts, zealots 66060 will pop up everywhere. Staff with Piercing shards, Aquamancer’s training and bountiful power. Camping mainly water attunement. Stacking vuln and doing reasonable dps with Ice spike spam, providing excellent sustained healing with water auto, burst healing with Geyser.

With stats and traits being decoupled, what will happen to boon duration? Will there be a new (slightly more viable way) of gearing for boon duration?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/D_Roamer

I added a bunch of stuff We’ll see how much they decide to keep.

Metabattle is nice, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.

The reason most D/D builds don’t use it is because not having perma swiftness is not an option, so they’re forced into 02066. If you have some other means to fill the gaps in fury/swiftness uptime (rune of the pack for example), stone splinters becomes an excellent, if not the best option.

I’m talking from a WvW roaming standpoint. Dropping 2 in arcana is a no-go, and dropping 2 in water won’t allow you to take advantage of the magnificence that is signet of restoration.

Kodiak.3281:

Gokil.2543:

It’s really tempting, but I wouldn’t want a Kodiak vs Zelyhn 2.0 so we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I’ll likely put up a video sooner or later to back up my opinions on fresh air in tPvP. See you then.

I was having a good read here too

It’s just that I’m pretty sure I won’t get anywhere. It’s very clear that he’s made up his mind, which I can’t blame him for. 66002 sounds like a gimmicky yolo setup at best, but it’s not imo. I’ve named most of my arguments, all I’d be doing in the next 10 posts would be rephrasing them or arguing about what a ‘real game’ looks like.

It’s really tempting, but I wouldn’t want a Kodiak vs Zelyhn 2.0 so we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I’ll likely put up a video sooner or later to back up my opinions on fresh air in tPvP. See you then.

It sounds like you’ve made up your mind already so I probably shouldn’t bother convincing you otherwise. But I’m stupid so here I go.

06044 does no damage. All you can do is decent spike damage, but your sustained dps is really low. Obviously a bit of a hyperbole but still. The difference in damage (and to an extent cover condi pressure) is massive vs 66002.

A zerker’s most important job is getting stuff done in +1 situations. Classic fresh air doesn’t do that nearly as efficiently as the standard medi/shatter/panic strike.

The sustainability gained from traiting into water and arcana is still just a patch on the 1800 armor ele you’ll be running. Blinds will likely mitigate more damage than the sustain could ever bring you, especially when you’ll have a dd ele, shoutbow or probably both on your team to cover your basic sustain needs.

Hydromancy does over twice as much damage as a fire proc, further increasing the lethality of your actual kill combos, while losing a bit of free cast random damage in the process. It doesn’t take much away from your offensive pressure if at all, while still bringing you the self-peel you so desperately need.

One cleanse per 10 seconds is outclassed by a triple autocleanse before you even realise you needed it.

Talking about matchups is a bit silly in my opinion because that’s not the kind of role you’ll be playing in conquest. Your sole focus is trying to stay on top of the thief/medi/shatter jumping game. You don’t just push far cause you think you can.

I hate to have to add this but this comes from extensive experience trying numerous fresh air setups in the highest regions of MMR.