I’ve already mentioned it but since ER is basically all you need to deal with conditions you can also put 2P from water into earth for Rock Solid. Then you won’t have to worry about being interrupted anymore ^^
Why in the world do you run signet of air? It’s such a waste of a slot. Armor of Earth is so much better in almost every situation. Not to mention since you have air dodging for spot blinding, you can’t really rely on the active.
On-demand instant blind that is not bound to a specific attunement and can be used while chaneling other spells (perfect for stomping)
lowest CD stunbreak on ele (and also very low CD compared to stunbreaks on other classes)
gives staff the mobility it lacks (best utility in Spirit-Watch since it works when carrying the orb)
also deals damage
I’d rather call Armor of Earth a waste of the slot if not traited for reduced CD and regeneration/might on activation.
more than twice the CD of Signet of Air
only works via boons that can be stripped/corrupted/stolen
protection uptime is already good via elemental attunement
stability is the only benefit left but that doesn’t justify the 75s CD → Rock Solid is way better when you want stability
There is a chance of 5 people being bad on the enemy team and there is only a chance that 4 people are bad on yours… (if you’re saying that you’re no bad) so in that case u will lose some but win more
If that was the only factor it would be ok. But there are 4v5s, bad team compilations (yesterday I played against a team with 4 necros and 1 ranger … GG), trolls, people playing with alts that they can’t play as well as their mains or trying new builds, afkers and so on.
What are the chances of you getting one or three of them on your team?
Completely random.
pretty much this.
@Kitt: I didn’t disagree with your post. I just meant that when you take a look at the current scoreboard (I should’ve mentioned that) and don’t follow it over large periods of time it’s pretty much meaningless because of this randomness. I’d rank myself somewhere between 200 and 250 (that’s where I am on average), however most of the time I am above or below that ranking. Just one day not playing and the decay drops my rank by ~70 …
That’s why I think the leaderboard needs a rework.
Let me tell you why that happens.
As you had consecutive wins, it means your rank definitely goes higher right?
Then you will be matched with people around you, whose ranks are also higher. It means they are HARDER to win. that consecutive wins never happens but you lose. so it means you are kinda NOT QUALIFIED to become a higher rank. that’s what happened to you. you were like the one threatening noobs, but it didnt work on higher ranked people. GG
You’re assumung that I’m matched against equally skilled players only at a higher ranking? If that would be the case I’d also have to be matched against similar skilled players at lower ranking, making these win-streaks theoretically impossible (yet, they happen very often, as I already said). That’s why – in my opinion – luck and other factors like the day-time you’re playing seem to be more important than skill in terms of ranking.
Or how would you explain these win-streaks, when you say that I’m too bad to play up there? Since I’m not the ultra-pro player carrying the whole team the only explanation left would be luck – and that’s my point.
And I also had these win-streaks at rank 100-150 placing me at ~40 at the end of the day, or 9-9 at rank ~100 (that’s how it should be). So I also wouldn’t say that I’m not qualified to play up there.
You yourself said that "getting into too100 is meaningless. you could get into top100 by luck or something. "
I didn’t say that all of the players up there don’t deserve to be there but you also said that most of them are there because they avoid playing or by lucky win-streaks – that’s why in general the leaderboard is meaningless.
Things like these (attachement) happen way too often and it shows that leaderboard-ranking is at least 50% luck based on maps, played class, team matchups, 4v5, afkers and so on.
Would you say I’m a noob based on the 6 looses on one day? Would you say I’m a pro because of the 7 wins in a row? I was lucky yesterday with the team-compositions – I could almost certainly say before the start of the matches that my team would win. Based on these wins/losses (and the resulting ranking) one can’t really say that I was the the factor that caused the losses or these wins and if I’m a good or a bad player.
My win-ratio is stable at about 55% but still I’m jumping up and down more than 500 ranks a week due to good or bad luck.
And trust me, being highly rated in solo q is no fun. It is long queue times whilst all the 30-200 ranked people get matched together and you are stuck waiting in the mists. And then when you play troll builds to try and lose and lower your rating you get flames from your team. Great community.
Its clear to see you havent played soloq a lot as of late. The matches filled with 30-200 ranked players are a myth these days even during peak hours. They only way to do that is by sync queueing with 5-10 ppl.
If you dont its more like this :
1 x top 50
1 x top 200
1 x top 900
2 random low percentage dudes.
During my first three games on this new US account i fought Caed, Hiba, and Kensuda. If i check my screenshots from my main accounts i see the same trend; totally new players matched with ppl who have been topping the leaderboard for the last two yeras.
^ this. Anet removed the lvl of the players in the scoreboard but you’ll still recognize newbs.
There is no skill in a gamble if your teammates/teamcomp sucks or if you are 4/5 or not.
everybody has to deal with those problems to the same degree though.
And to be honest … we all know that leaderboards say nothing about skill. You can differenciate between players that are in top 1000 and the rest maybe, but that’s it.
Win- or loss-streaks of only ~5 games can easily bring you 400 ranks up or down in the ladder. Just 1 day not playing and you’ll drop 100 ranks down. You can’t really compare players based on the leaderboard-ranking as it is right now.
You do realize that the nerf from 7% to 5% more damage is something arround a 28,5% nerf and you can’t even compare that to the 8% healing signet nerf?
Also you should prolly learn to dodge earthshaker.
ups forgot about that. so -2,85% means 4857.5 dmg now.
Thank god. I always ended up dying but with those 150 extra hp, i wont get kicked out of deathshroud
lol .. I was running exactly the same build pre-patch – except celestial amulet (I used berserker or clerics depending on enemy/our setup) and sometimes I took Rock Solid from earth instead of 30P in water to make sure my ER always gets through all ticks and to make stomping a piece of cake. I forgot which runes I used. I think it were the ones which summoned this dog-pet. Despite the the rather defensive build you can even win 1v1s thanks to frostbow.
Signet of Air gives staff the mobility it lacks and it’s also a 30s stunbreak + additional blind which helps when stomping guards, warriors, engis and rangers.
I managed to get into the top100 soloQ (!) with this build and also stayed there until the patch hit. (Afterwards I jumped on the D/D train again )
This is a really solid build, even for soloQ. However, with a coordinated team (especially when using frost-bow!) this build is even more efficient.
If there’s no thief in the enemy team you can have some serious fun with staff (especially when you take zerker-amulett and run a more offensive build) ^^
You say it’s not hard to implement, yet you fail to bring foreward suggestions how to do it.
And as I said in another post: I can live with having only 2 sigils as an ele. I just wanted to clarify that in my opinion this isn’t because of balancing-issues but due to the design of ele and engi and therefore I can understand people that say it’s an unfair disadvantage.
The problems with stealth:
- its an offensive ability
- its a defensive ability
- its an escape ability
- its an engage ability
- spammable, not just a one trick pony
- you can trait it for extras
However, my personal opinion is that stealth in addition to the basically unlimited amount of teleports (like infiltrators strike) are annoying. Either of those two should be nerfed in some way. Stealth is perfectly fine on mesmers … but on thief, it’s just too much and too spammable.
It’s for sure not a l2p issue alone. I know the spells, I know their durations and how they work. Yet what do you want to do against a stealthed enemy, or an enemy that keeps blinking away at 600 range or even up and down a cliff?
did you read my post? I brought 3 logical explanations …
Yes, I’m still waiting for some sort of source. So far it’s just you saying “of course” etc.
I don’t see how it would be very hard to add in another slot for specific classes if that is what they wished to do.
so how would you do it for ele?
and keep in mind … Anet thinks of the community that people are too stupid to understand that for example 2 sigils that proc on weapon-switch don’t work together so they changed it …
and btw: when you’re talking about sources. Give me a source that says it’s a balancing-issue.
and removal of this anoying amount of stealth and teleports from thieves in addition to the amount of invulnerability from warriors (and guardians) would make it more fun
(and I could finally try to play GC ele once in a while …)
guardians have 2 seconds(lesser than a warrior if i recall) but u can aplly conditions to thetarget.
some ideas to balance stealth make stealth counterable/easier to deal with (just a short list of stuff that I read here, or that came to my mind):
make stealthed players visible for a short amount of time when damaged (“blur”)
conditions and/or direct damage break it completely
less radical version from second suggestion: add more counters in addition to “revealed” like for example thiefes can’t stealth when standing in fire-fields or get revealed when standing in fire-fields ore are burning, etc. (propably add a GM-trait that makes them “immune” to fire-fields)
make stealth a buff that reduces incomming AoE-damage by ~90% and makes the player untargetable; still half visible though as long as the player is infight and CC can be also applied
add an inner CD of ~20s (easiest solution)
add a DR (~20s until reset; good solution in my opinion but is likely to be regarded as too complicated for players to understand by Anet)
reduce the overall acces to stealth (e.g. remove combo finishers)
make stealth only available when not in combat and infight just via combo-finishers and some long CD-abilities
remove stealth by any action of the player except movement-keys and dodges (also by movement-abilites like short-bow and similar spells that deal no damage)
stealthed players can see each other
lower the duration of stealth or adjust corresponding traits
add a ~1s animation of becoming invisible (duration-timer starts not before totally invisible)
given numbers/durations are open for discussion of course and would have to be tested
Blocking/evading doesn’t take a necro out of DS or Lich Mode. It doesn’t take Eles out of fire mode, and it doesn’t cause Engineers to drop their kits. So why should it take a thief out of stealth mode?
dat logic… this is the most hilarious argument I’ve ever read
Thief attacks: gets out of stealth, because attacking and staying in stealth would be “kinda” OP. Stealth is temporary and can be broken
Ele attacks: why the heck should he leave his attunement? It’s a permanent state that can’t be removed by anything
just imagine the scenario in real life a thief sneaks up from the shadows an leaps at the guardian. He manages to block the attack but still can’t see the thief … lulz
making attacks out of stealth unblockable for example would be logical design, even balanced I guess. But not revealing a thief when his attack is avoided by blocks or whatever is just stupid
Guardian have a passive aegis…So even if i surprise him, if the fact of blocking a stealthed attack revealed me he would have a passive hard counter to 100% of the backstab build and i could do NOTHING for it…simply nothing.
just as any other class can’t do anything against your backstab from stealth … simply nothing.
I’d say there is no best class in 1v1. It’s more like rock, paper and scissors. Especially when you take specific builds into account.
This is partially true, but if you want a chance in every 1v1 with very few rock to your scissors matchups I would say warrior with axe/sword lb celestial strength or thief. Those two have very few actual counters that make their 1v1s unwinnable and the counters that do exist can be outplayed.
I wanted to avoid posting specific classes but interestingly the same two came to my mind immediately, when thinking about it.
I wouldn’t recommend S/D for (competative) PvP atm. It only works with a glassy fresh air build but as GC-ele you will get roflstomped by hambows, thieves and many other classes/builds. It’s burst may be nice but is still not enough in this bunker-meta. So D/D celestial is the way to go here. (Of course, in hot-join you can play with any set you want)
PvE: play what is most fun. Damage should be best with a GC-staff-build (or lightning-hammer-build) though. For leveling D/D is propably easiest, followed by S/D. Staff for large-scale events.
WvW: haven’t played WvW for ages but staff is always the weapon to go in larger groups. For solo-play I’d strongly recommend you to take D/D.
As for my personal preference: I’ve never really liked scepter because of its extremely weak autoattacks and some lackluster spells like water-2 and its general clumsy spell-responses/animations. Focus may have its benefits in certain scenarios, however as offhand it’s overshadowed by dagger. Staff is always fun to play in all areas of the game (though its effectiveness in PvP is strongly skill-dependant). Therefore I usually play with Staff and D/D.
@Aberrant: Of course it’s difficult to implement. How do you want to add sigil slots to weapons that don’t exist without making it too complicated (and Anet always wants to avoid complicated things at all costs).
Where is the connection between having 40 spells and access to sigils? This connection only has been made because (like I said) everything is justified by that 40 spell argument. This argument is just made up out of thin air.
If a class seriosuly has to be denied access to equipment that ist standard for other classes, then something has to be really really wrong with balance.
@DiazKincade: I think the more important aspect of your idea is the availability of a second weaponset for example in s/tPvP :P . The sigils would only be secondary here.
nah .. I usually don’t go with the general opinion but thieves … you simply can’t fight an enemy you can’t see. Even more annoying are thieves that keep porting up and down a wall what makes it impossible to deal with them. It’s like the old DD-ele that just RTLs away heals up and engages the fight again.
I didn’t say that it’s broken, but it’s annyoing since there isn’t really a counter to it. A PvP-game needs interaction between players and thieves (as well as skyhammer ^^) bypass that interaction. Thief attacks out of stealth, vanishes again or blinks away and I can only guess where he left to and this can be repeted endlessly without any constraint. Of course a thief needs stealth for its survival but there should be more ways to deal with it.
but I’m drifting into OT here …
I didn’t want to critisize your post (in fact I agree that compared to the dhumfire-patch the game is way more balanced now). I simply wanted to state that balance doesn’t always means fun.
It’s the same with diamond skin for example: it may be needed for balance but (though I personally think it’s crap) this trait is ridiculously boring/annyoing and lazy design.
And as I said, staff ele players have done extremely well in solo queue recently, along with plenty of other non-cheese builds.
dont say stuff like this or all this champion legioneres play for the next weeks staff ele and make this game even worse^^
only some people can play this …..
staff eles can kick kitten in team-Q but are usually unplayable in solo-Q because they simply can’t fight alone and everyone in your team will ignore this fact. People also rarely utilize your (water-)combo-fields which could be game-turning.
I’ve had some nice games where I was roaming together with a thief for example and engi/guard holding mid and close but usually I end up having to defend points on my own since nobody else cares and then I (as GC staff ele) get rofl-stomped by nearly every class.
One of the best games I’ve ever had was together with another staff-ele. Was one of my most glorious victories ^^. However as said before, coordination and teamplay is important when you want to run such builds… and it’s called SOLO-Q for a reason ..
and removal of this anoying amount of stealth and teleports from thieves in addition to the amount of invulnerability from warriors (and guardians) would make it more fun
(and I could finally try to play GC ele once in a while …)
You guys are trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
Not being able to swap weapons and not being able to take advantage of a few of the sigils is a limitation of the Ele and Engi classes that is accounted for by the incredible utility of having access to DOUBLE the number of weaponskills as compared to every other class in the game.
I’ve been playing an Ele long enough to understand this.
Since release of the game people keep justifiying every single nerf and drawback of eles with this (ridiculous) argument. They keep babbling about it because everyone says so and nobody can think about it on their own. It’s like the 10th time I’m reading that in this thread without ever hearing a reasonable different argument.
As someone said before, classes should be balanced by their spells and mechanics of their own – not by additional stuff like availability of gear, runes or sigils.
I’d actually like to hear an Anet-statement about this. They gave the second sigil slot to 2h weapons to make it more balanced in comparison to classes/builds that use 2 1h instead. In principle this is the same with eles/engis compared to the rest. Like I said before this isn’t an intentional nerf to those two classes but instead it’s due to the fact that 2 additional sigil-slots are difficult to implement because of the 1-weaponset-design of those two classes, therefore a design-flaw.
Elementalist elemental elite is now changed to “insert fancy name here”, this elite is a signet which gives +10% boon duration passive and doubles all current boon durations when activated (does not double stacks of boons) for example if an elementalist has 3 seconds of regen and 5 seconds of protection it will be doubled to 6 seconds of regen and 10 seconds of protection. This elite has a 60s cd and a 2s cast time.
While I like the idea of the sigil itself, the 2s cast time is way too long. While casting it you’re losing boons or at least duration of your boons.
Let’s say you have 3s stability – you would get additional 3 if it’s instant cast.
But with 2s cast-time you have only 1s left which will give you 2s stability after the cast – less than before the cast. Activate ability would therfore be useless for short-duration boons which are usually more important. Furthermore while the downtime of the signet I think you’ll get way more out of the +10% boon-duration for boons like might or regen/vigor than out of the +50% from the active.
Since it’s a niche-elite (not all ele-builds make use of many boons) I’d increase the duration to propably 15% and active could be for example a transfer(copy) of boons to allys (not full duration though).
+1 for Aiuris
Furthermore procc-sigils are only a small fraction of the sigils available. It would be absurd to justify the lack of sigils on ele/engis by that…
and as I stated before: I can live with having fewer sigils as an ele, but some of the arguments I had to read here in this thread are beyond ridiculousness
The thing that makes this map not fun at all is that you spend much of your time dead on certain classes without any PvP-interaction.
You stand on point and suddenly out of nowhere get gripped and fall to death? Is this PvP? – No, not really.
You’re having a nice 1v1 duell on point and suddenly get oneshot by a lazer that can’t even be dodged. Is this fun? – No, it isn’t.
Against some team-compilations (5 engis lulz) you spend more time dead than alive without having any real duelling. That’s not what PvP is about. If I wanted that, I can go to PvE-Maps and do jumping-puzzles or something …
Both ele and engi have;
The most weapon skills in game.
Both have been described as a-net as , “Kings of versatility”
Both either pulls/push/knockdowns or all of the above.
Both have reflects.
Both blocks.
Both have universal immunity.
Both have the ability to stack multiple boons quickly and maintain them.
One has stealth.
Both have stunning team support
Both have access to 3rd party AI pets.
…but you feel they are weak because you don’t get additional sigils..wow. Just wow.
taken aside that some of your points are a joke from an ele-perspective (especially the last one made me giggle) what do these things have to do with sigils? Other classes have stuff too that eles or engis can’t do.
Btw: for beeing the kings of versatility we have surprisingly few viable builds?!
The fact that eles and engis can’t have two sigil-sets has nothing to do with balance – only with general design(-flaws?) which is the reason why people think it’s unfair. And I somehow agree with them. Warriors for example benefit as much from sigils as eles/engis do if not even more. They are certainly OP atm yet, they get 4 sigils? Doesn’t make sense in terms of balance. So your argument or whatever you wanted to state with your list is invalid.
@VaaCrow: this is a PvP-Issue. I think noone here cares about PvE where the most effective builds for eles are GC-Staff or LH where you don’t swap attunements anyway. And your statement "And all other siglils are basicly worthless anyhow. " led me to the conclusion that you’ve never played PvP yet …
An argument could also be made that with more skills you have more ways of continually hitting your target which would proc the on crit/hit sigils more. You don’t get as much variety, but you do get more frequency. Seems fine to me.
Eles may have more spells but they also have higher CDs so again: no. And there are always autohits (which are usually much stronger on other classes) that can procc sigills. So again: nope.
Your complaint is nonsense because you know as good as everyone, that Engineers and Elementalist compensate the lack of 2 sigils with a massive amount of more Weapon Skills/ Utility Skillls through Kits, than any other of the Classes have.
With 2 Weapons at any given time, Elementalists could spam through whopping 40 Skills in less than a minute !!
I’m so tired of this argument. Poeple will propably never understand that this is more of a drawback than a benefit.
eles have no 40 spells in total
autohits are so weak that we have to avoid them at all costs (made points in arcana mandatory – thank you Anet for adressing at least this point in one of your patches )
each weapon set has spells that are utterly useless
there are also many redundant spells that do basically the same and could therfore be merged into one spell with lower CD
eles lack F1 spells which are very strong, versitale and game-changing on all other classes
5th traitline boosts F-spells which (on ele) is basically just a faster weapon-switch. While other classes get a direct reduction of the CD of their key-abilities we only get a higher accessability to our standard-spells which other classes have anyways due to standard 9s CD.
> eles have higher “weapon-swap-CD” meaning that they can’t acess the spells they need as fast as other classes
the potential of our class is divided into 40 spells compared to 20 on other classes making each spell weaker in comparison, yet most of our spells have higher CDs.
eles have many traits that only boost one element instead of one weapon = boost for only 1/4 of the spells and not 1/2 like on other classes
lack of weapon-swap means no adaption to ranged or melee / offensive or defensive combat (this is an aditional problem to low base-defenses which we have to compensate with defensive builds and utilities)
builds that specifically focus on one aspect (healing for example) make many spells that don’t answer the purpose of the build weak and useless. This may be a general problem, however other classes can handle this issue by chosing a second weapon-set that also fits the build.
last but not least the issue which is discussed in this thread: less sigils
I don’t demand an infight weapon-swap for eles … however, people should consider these points when talking about “OP 40 spells” …
Yesterday I had the problem that I was extremely lagging at the beginning of an sPvP-match and my position always got reset when I moved before the game started. Afterwards during the whole game I was invulnerable to all kinds of damage (even Hammer-Laz0r). Only CC could be applied. I however, could play normally with the exception that I couldn’t tap points… was kinda weird
I’d provide as much information as possible and maybe make the interface customizable, so that more experienced players can see addtitional stuff if they want.
In return the current point-system (5P for Kill, 10P capturing point, etc.) should be completely removed from the overview since it encourages especially newer players to just farm those points without caring about the game as a whole.
So here is the stuff I’d like to see:
what’s most important are K(direct stomp/last-hit in downed state)/D/A-stats (that’s what pvp usually is all about)
second comes total damage done/recieved as well as healing done/recieved (also including the heal from rezzing players)
third would be stat’s that you can already see like points captured/neutralized/defended (however, this kind of information is pretty much meaningless since skilled players usually fight on points and once the teamfight is over immediately leave and don’t get the credit for neutralizing or capturing the point) -> shortening this information may help to improve gameplay in hotjoin
what I personally like to see is the number of applied boons (to allies) to underline the importance of support-builds
the amount of rezzes should also be shown
and last but not least map-specific objectives like NPC-kills, Trebuchet-Hits and so on
some optional stuff:
differentiation between condition/direct-damage
number of CCs
time spent on captured point (so that players defending points won’t get flamed for having low stats)
Hmm, I don’t really see how it’s blinding ashes that won you the fights. I think you’d have just as easily won without the trait. Especially in the last few fights you blinded them like one or max. two times in total?
Though I’d also suggest that you go and play another game (I think you came here from WoW like I do) I also stated some of your points in a balancing-discussion a while ago. Especially the arguments about mana-resource and differentiation between magic and physical damage. These two things that don’t exist in GW2 make it extremely hard (if not impossible) to balance. Yet it would be easy to implement them without changing the unique playstyle of GW2.
I’d like some stunbreaks back in the cantrips so I can run zerker more viable again.
Try Signet of Air. It’s better than one would expect. 30s CD for a stunbreak is pretty neat and the blind always comes in handy too. The movement-speed is a nice extra.
If all it takes to kill an Ele is a chill/immobilize, then I’d tell that Ele to get better at gw2.
Of course it doesn’t kill an ele automatically but it’s the best way to deal with them 1v1. Time a root well (when water attunement is on CD) and the ele can really get into trouble. It has always been a good counter against eles.
Yes Actually Ele does have the sustain of a warrior..
While also being able to chain CCs (built in)
The burst healing of an Ele is Pretty legendary.
Burning bro; the burning will eat you alive.
Yes it can disengage with RTL BS perma Swiftness Vigor, Evadespam.
No It doesnt have high toughness/vit.
Ranger is a b tier class at best.
D/D has 2 CCs with 40s CD and a third that can easily be avoided. Uncomparable to Warrior or engi.
Burst-Healing, yes because we trait into nothing else but heal (5P water, 15P water, 30P water for stats, evasive arcana, 2-3 traits that grant regen), still a guard has way better sustain and also better healing.
Burning can kill you over a very long period of time but I wouldn’t call it condition-burst.
RTL 40s CD when used as evade. Perma-Vigor and Swiftness are nothing unique to the ele. And which evades do we have that can be spammed? Every class has acces to dodges if you meant that.
Why do people even consider nerfing the ele itself? Haven’t you learned from what happend last time? Ele is finally viable again and just because it can kill a warrior (OMG!!!!1) it’s broken? What makes a D/D ele OP? Can it heal as much as a guard? Does it have the damage and CC of a warrior? Can it apply condition-burst like a necro? Can it decap and hold points like an engi? Can it disengage from any fight or evade-spam like a thief? Does it have as high toughness/vit as a warrior? Does it have the sustained damage of a ranger? The answer is no, to all of those questions.
Poeple just seem to have forgotten how to play against eles and what’s their weaknesses.
A few words about rune of strength: the 45% might-duration could also nearly be achieved pre-patch with a combination of 3 10% boon-duration-runes (which, to make up for the 15% less might duration, also enhanced the duration of other boons). You could’ve also chosen runesets which enhanced only might-duration by 20% (if i’m not mistaken you could’ve even reached 60% might duration this way) The only thing new is the boosted/fixed? 7% damage (2% more …) and the more frequent procc. Not that much of a difference if you ask me. Also the arcana-traitline isn’t only chosen because of elemental attunement, and evasive arcana … we actively trait for that boon-duration.
20+ Stacks of might were possible pre-patch, even solo in PvP and it has always been an important aspect of ele-playstyle. You maybe had to use more combofinishers to achieve that or spec 10P into fire but it was far from impossible.
high constant healing and condi-cleanse with the right spec (therefore the only viable spec)
good support with the right traits and weaponset
best CC in the game (with frost-bow when used right)
good AoE-damage potential
Weaknesses:
prone to condition-burst
slow animations and high CDs
low sustained damage
unreliable burst damage
low base-defense
no weapon-switch -> no possibility to switch from melee- to ranged combat
very reliant on boons for both offense and defense
dies very quickly in team-fights when focused
Basically our kryptonite is the need for a defensive spec while playing a class that seems to have been designed as a GC. It prevents build-diversity and forces eles to play lame bunkers that deal near to zero damage (I could’ve chosen guardian if I wanted this playstyle). The whole class is balanced around this build – and sadly still the only thing that makes eles viable atm is celestial amulet and strength-runes. Initially eles were told to be the jack of all trades but what really defined the ele from the very beginning are the arcana and water-traitline: we’re boon-stacking, passive-healing cannon fodder/killing machines depending on the patch.
On the contrary though usually THE glasscannons in MMOs (this is how I think they should be) GC-eles aren’t viable at all (too clumsy and unreliable spells to be effective and in general has to trait defensively to survive more than a few seconds due to lack of active defense-mechanisms and/or kiting-options) this is what disappointed me the most when I started playing PvP.
And also what Linnael said. Not much to add here. Don’t just change numbers for balancing. This is boring and lazy. There are so many great ideas out there. Especially for ele there is an unlimited potential for interesting traits and interactions. Be creative and make the game a bit more complex by designing spells that can be individually used (new Fire GM-trait for blinds on burn was a good idea for example, however the internal CD and the randomness killed it). I won’t post ideas here because it’s the wrong thread, but maybe think about it.
Dagger autoattacks have activation time of 0.5 or 0.75s but their attack speed (activation plus aftercast) is 1s in fire/water, 1.04s in earth and 1.15s in air which makes it much less than 468 hps.
I’d say eles are in a good spot now. Not overpowered at all as it’s still hard to win against hambow for example (although you won’t loose either) or turrent-engis. Conditions have always been a hard thing for eles to deal with due to low HP-pool so also fear-necros will be able to kill you easily if you have no stun-break ready; same goes for Zoo-builds. You also can’t do much against perma-evasion-thiefs since they can reset the fight anytime they want. So basically you can loose against any class if it’s played well but you can also beat them which is how it should be. Also in team-fights the ele is easily downed with a little focus-burst from two players due to its low life-pool. Therefore eles are far from unkillable like Guardians or those pesky engineers…
A few words about damage: In my eyes ele-(pvp)-damage is still quite low compared to other classes. Even more when you take the huge CDs in account but Runes of Strenght ensure now that also eles can kill something with a rather defensive spec (fitting into the current bunker-meta). The runes might be OP but they’re available to everybody so that’s not for discussion here.
The unnerf of Signet and the water GM-trait were the right thing to do. People even stopped complaining about RTL so I guess ele is really fine atm.
I don’t know if this was already mentioned, but another idea would be to randomly provide 3 maps (or only 2) for the decision and players can pick one of them. This way more popular maps will be played more often but others will propably still see some action (except skyhammer ^^).
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