Guild Wars 2

Zelyhn.8069:

LordByron.8369:

Being stuck in one single range

Staff range: 0-1200
Scepter range: 0-900
Dagger range: 0-600
Weapon sets requiring to be in melee range (150): 0

Bloody hell it’s so unfair we have no weapons to get stuck into melee range! Nuff ! Berf !

One spell with 600 range doesn’t make dagger a ranged-weapon. If you see it like that GS from warrior would also be a ranged weapon… D/D is still played at melee-range even if it has a bit more range than most other melee-weapons.

And besides you totally missed his point there. Usually melee-weapon-sets are superior to ranged weapons in Guild Wars meaning that you’re rewarded with more damage when running around with melee-weapons. Having a range of 1200 and playing it at melee-range would be utterly stupid in PvP because you don’t get any benefit for it whilest losing the comfort of playing at safe range. Therefore you are more or less stuck at ranged combat. Other classes can switch to play either at a safe distance with the drawback of dealing less damage or if the situation allows it they can use melee-combat to make more damage.
Or why is it that ele staff sucks in PvP and D/D thieves onehit everything?

LordByron.8369:

because ele is not supposed to have mobility…..Mobility is the drawback for versatility.

though it’s just a game this somehow makes me raging ..

risenlord.2035:

Enough with the
OMG I just saw a 20 foot invincible warrior pwning 8v1
threads please.

Either put up a video of these legendary feats or it didn’t happen

same was said about ele … ele got nerfed to the ground. However, Anet plays warriors not eles so it’s unlikely that warriors will recieve nerfs as ele did.

Littlefeather.8623:

1v1 Tourney’s. Loose once you’re out, win, keep going.

seriously I don’t want to join a 1v1 tourney just to face fotm-class after fotm-class or some bunker-trolls… 1v1 is so ridiculously unbalanced, please don’t even consider making a new game-mode revolving around it. Just add duels or something.
What I’d love to see is either a classic capture the flag or maybe a 3v3 team deathmatch.

ThiBash.5634:

Nikkinella.8254:

We need an elite that changes the tide of battle. Not just one that’s good for running away, since we need to run away a lot because the class is so underpowered. that’s our elite skill, running away. Yay! No, we need an elite that nukes the hell out of the enemy and makes them regret ever attacking us. Something powerful that completely shifts the battle in our favor, like Moa Morph, or Supply Drop. THOSE are elite skills.

Judging from that post, I’d say you have no idea what the elemental summons do. Through your elite, you get an ally that can cast ice fields, heal you, cripple+weaken the target, or spam a ranged stun every 10 seconds. That’s pretty powerful. Just don’t use the fire elemental, because it does the least of all summons.

judging from that post I’d say that you’ve never done competetive PvP.

Everyone can own scrubs in WvW, regardless of which 4th utility you choose. The problem with elites however is mostly a PvP problem. Every good player will fokus the elemental and kill it in 2-3s (or it dies even faster in AoE), in the time you’ve summoned your GS you will be dead and tornado is lika a big, huge “please hit-me I’m freekill”-sign on your back. (By the way fire elemental is the only really usefull one) Normal utilities at least offer some usefull things to PvP that can help you, therefore I’d also support the idea (not to remove elites, but to add the option to chose normal utilites in your elite-slot).

a t s e.9614:

So a caster that throws fireballs from 1500 range should have a
higher mobility than a melee class? What a joke

1200 range and fireball damage can be outhealed just by using healing signet and going afk. A warrior having the same range as caster has higher mobility than anything else? What a joke.

Remove proccs and boons on switch or add appropriate inner CD and I think it wouldn’t be that overpowered as one might think. Maybe even staff would be viable with that.
Anyways I’d be happy with a reduction of the CD to at least ~10s standard.

/vote 4 testrealm to test ideas like that

katniss.6735:

I would say boon duration if you need to be tanky dd / support staff.
2xTraveler, 2xMonk, 2xWater+30 arcana = 70%. Then battle sigil to bring up the dps loss of pvt as your might and fury uptime will be increased.

I’d also pick those. Stacking might/fury is easy with it.

General PvP-Tips:

• though it’s rather obvious you should always try to combo Lava Font or Ice Spike with a CC, best are Frozen Ground and Unsteady Ground, Shockwave or Signet of Earth
• never waste your earth #2 by trying to do damage with it (it won’t hit, even if you try to CC) – use it for explo finisher only
• try to place your AoEs strategical in a direction your enemy is running

Pro-Tip:

• Casting Lava font with Arcane Power and switching to earth causes Lava-Font ticks to immobilize your target with Elemental surge for the whole duration while doing nice critical damage

KrisHQ.4719:

Well. The problem with the current state of the game, is that most builds are without weaknesses (general condition problem). This means that pretty much all of the current meta builds excel at all the roles described, at least a lot of them. The biggest difference is mobility.

Can’t agree more. Every class can heal, every class can support, every class can DPS, every class can tank and every class can do direct damage and conditions. These are the things normally distributed on different classes based on the holy trinity. Guild Wars is lacking this, therefore all classes are kinda the same and should in theory be viable. There’s just the problem that Anet completely messed up the balancing with too short CDs, overpowered traits, too high amount of damage or heal and other things. They can’t even get this right. But well that’s a different topic…

Overall I still think that some classes are better at specific things than others and like the OP said it isn’t even about who is better. It’s about what a class can do and HOW it can do these things. This helps newbies learning to PvP in general.

S/D GC is viable in hotjoin and maybe even solo-Q (though it’s still frustrating against some matchups) but anyways I think that you won’t have much fun with it in tPvP …

Lavadiel.6231:

>Just spam everything and you’ll be king.

and you will loose any tPvp match against advanced players

Have you ever watched tournament streams? Nobody that watches a team fight can tell what players are doing since there is so much stuff flying around. Commentators can’t tell, viewers can’t tell and the players themselves can’t tell. What are you basically doing when engaging a teamfight or trying to down a player with damage? Spam as much bullkitten as possible in the middle of the enemies. Rangers send in pets and hit autohit, warriors spam LB-spells until all are on CD, eles will place all their AoEs available, necros spam marks and wells, etc. etc. There isn’t a need to safe CDs or time them – on the contrary: it’s even worse if you save your spells and don’t set everything that deals damage on CD immediately. You don’t have a drawback when casting a spell, no resource that is wasted and like always you can just cast it again in a few seconds. Of course there are some spells that should be safed for specific situations but these are exceptions (mostly on ele since they all have high CDs – that’s how it should be). An ele actually has to think if he uses RTL to engage a fight or safe it for later to disengage, he even has to consider if he joins a fight at all, he has to check the enemy’s boons for stability before using a CC, he has to apply burning before casting Firegrab, he has to get into safety before channeling his 4s heal, he has to think in which combo-field he uses his blast-finisher, he has to immobilize or CC before he uses phoenix or dragon’s tooth… A warrior runs in and presses 1-5, and sadly is more efficient than most classes regardless of the enemy’s skill.

Lavadiel.6231:

> There are no resources lika mana or energy

because those are not needed when there are cooldowns

every good mmorpg has resources AND CDs. Resources are a way to avoid mindless waste of skills and therefore mindless waste of resources which are limited. Players would have to deal with the problem of resource-restriction and builds could be far more complex and difficult to balance for the player itself. Resource-restriction would avoid players rummaging 24/7 without the need to stop for refreshing resources (like a thief has to do from time to time) or the need to think if it’s a good idea to invest resources.

Lavadiel.6231:

>Every class has a heal so basically mitigating damage isn’t that important

yep, healing for100% tank builds is too big, healing for dps is OK

healing for DPS is not OK. DPS should be DPS, it should be squishy and players should avoid damage via utilities, class-mechanics (like good mobility or stealth) and good gameplay, timing of spells and knowing when to engage a fight and when not. What they lack in heal and defense should be made up with more damage. On the contrary if a class has good CC, high Vit/toughness, heal or utility it shouldn’t make too much damage. That’s basic logic. This is also the reason why support builds ore healers are unnecessary and therefore pure supporters are useless – they simply lack damage while there is no need for their support since any class can survive and buff on its own for an unlimited amount of time (autoheal, see above).

Lavadiel.6231:

> just run away and heal yourself or get automatically healed

the problem of beeing healed automatically is that you don’t get punished when you leave a fight and lost most of your HP. You can just start a new fight nearly immediately without any restrictions. The efforts of another player against whom you maybe just won a 1v1 were in vain because you just get healed up automatically without any restriction or use of resources (like healing pots, eating food or something like that). Again: no restrictions, spam/fight 24/7 without need of tactical play.

Lavadiel.6231:

>dodges are mostly random

random dodge players dont live long, even in totally broken pve

I just said that many or most spells (especially on asura which seem to make up 90% of all tPvPers) can’t be seen (also due to the huge amount of spell-effects in larger fights) and therefore can’t be dodged. You even agreed with that. So basically you have to guess when a spell will arrive but you can never be sure if one is beeing cast or which one it is. So you can’t dodge specific attacks – therefore dodges are random. There’s also the problem with dodge-spam via vigor, spells (thief) or sigill of energy. I don’t see a problem in PvE though, most bosses have 1-2s or longer animations, huge red circles or you just know the encounter and therefore can predict spells.

Lavadiel.6231:

>CCs have low CD so do defensive mechanics

and here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elementalist-A-PvP-Perspective/first#post3091988
you wrote:
“too low CD on strong spells, no reasonable CDs on defensive spells”

LOL

LOL

>So CC doesn’t require any timing at all.

good cc timing is important

I don’t see a problem here. What do you mean? Both times I wrote that CCs and strong spells have too low CDs and defensive CDs often don’t really suit the CDs of CCs (take a look at elementalist: warriors can basically perma-CC you and the average CD of an ele-stunbreak is 63s; eles in comparison have CCs with an average CD of about 35s and warriors stunbreaks have an average 46s CD) CC should have high CD, so should have stunbreakers. So CC has to be timed and chained well from different players and stunbreakers shouldn’t be used mindlessly on weak CCs or in situations where you’d die anyways so you will have them ready in the next fight. Most classes aren’t punished at all if a CC misses. Because they can try again a few seconds later. Nobody has to care if a player has enough stamina to dodge or has stability up, etc. Just press all the buttons and if it fails press it again 10s later. Knowing CDs of other classes is basically not important since low CDs will let you face the same spells in an intervall of 10-20s anyways.
Another problem here is perma-evasion or perma-stealth – it’s borderline-broken. Stealth itself is ok, so is evasion, but players shouldn’t be able to spam it without restriction. No thief has to care about when exactly he’s going to stealth since he can just restealth anytime he wants.

It is shallow. It lacks the basic things that PvPers usually have to take care of. There are no resources lika mana or energy (with thieves as exception but that’s because their class-design with no CDs at all requires a restriction). Every class has a heal so basically mitigating damage isn’t that important either since you can just run away and heal yourself or get automatically (!) healed as soon as you’re out of combat. There are no cast-bars, many instant-spells and often no obvious animations (asura) so dodges are mostly random. CCs have low CD, so do defensive mechanics like stealth and also most stunbreaks -> CC doesn’t require any timing at all. There is no DR either so just spam everything and you’ll be king. If you want to prove otherwise then tell me, how can you show your skill in this game?

It’s the core mechanics of the game that make balancing impossible, even for the DEVs. The current state of balance resembles alpha-state of a game. Drastically different base-stats, no differentiation between magical and physical damage, no pure rangers, no pure melees, no healers, no supporters – no specific roles for classes, no need to time spells right, too low CD on strong spells, no reasonable CDs on defensive spells, overpowered and unbalanced traits and pet-AI, downed-state, heal on every class, no resources for spells (mana, rage, energy, etc) leading to permanent spamming, …. the list goes on and on. It seems like they roled a dice when defining base-stats instead of play-testing classes and defining their stats and spells right down to the detail correct to a single HP or percent of damage.

It’s a pity that class-balance and -design is so bad in this game since overall GW2 is a pretty solid game with a beautiful environment. They should’ve invested more time to make classes a bit more complex and define their roles. It seems that class-designers where too lazy doing a good job. Where’s the point in different classes when every class can do anything anyway? Maybe they kept it simple to adress more casual players that regard spamming AoEs in WvW as competetive PvP. Maybe they wanted to try something new or revolutionize class-design but in my opinion they failed. Classes aren’t even balanced in PvE – you don’t need a DPS-meter to recognise that.

FrownyClown.8402:

I wouldn’t consider us underpowered at all. It is the fact that if we build glassy we die way too easily as opposed to other classes. This is partly do to our lack of weapon swap. Thieves would be cake if I could switch to d/d.

Compared to other classes we’re definitely underpowered. Just compare our weapon-sets, our traits or our utilities to other classes … it’s ridiculous.

Tempest_Defense - Unsuspecting_Foe or Merciless_Hammer

Mist_Form - Endure_Pain

Signet_of_Restoration - Healing_Signet

Pyromancer’s_Alacrity and Burning_Rage and Ember’s_Might - Burning_Arrows

Cleansing_Water - Cleansing_Ire

Piercing_Shards and Aquamancer’s_Alacrity - Sundering_Mace

Geomancer’s_Freedom - Dogged_March

Arcane_Mastery - Physical_Training

Evasive_Arcana - Reckless_Dodge

Signet_of_earth - Throw_Bolas

Armor_of_Earth - Balanced_Stance

Cleansing_Fire - Signet_of_stamina

CD-Reduction from 23P in Arcana equals Fast_Hands in addition there’s also F-spell CD-reduction on warriors

Warriors have more HP and more toughness, eles have no F-spells at all which are extremely OP on warriors. Warriors have better mobility through weapon-spells, more reliable burst, better CC and better healing.

Same comparison can be done to other classes. You won’t find (m)any traits or utilities that are much better on ele than their counterparts on other classes.

I agree that some classes should be better in some points (and also worse in some points) than other classes. But warrior has everything an ele has, just better … a lot better.

Icetrinity.3804:

Would something like the following be more suitable?

Elementalist

• Burst: 9/10 (picked a number)
  Scepter/Dagger with Fresh Air and 10% damage Modifier-Traits (+Scholar-Runes), Arcane Utilities; one of the best (instant) AoE- and Single-Target-Burst but relies somewhat on CC.
• Point Defense: 6/10 (again, just a number)
  Dagger/Dagger (or staff when defending large areas); 30P Arcane 30P Water + Cantrips; nice heal and boon-generation (stability, protection, regeneration) but low base-health and toughness – prone to immobilize and high burst-damage, therefore inferior to guardians and engis.
• Roaming: 8/10
  Dagger offhand (Ride the Lightning), Blink and easy access to swiftness creates great mobility.
• etc.

Note: I feel that the traits that make the greatest impact to a profession fulfilling any given role should be mentioned instead of saying the number of points in a trait line (again, more “noob-friendly”). E.g. Necromancer Sustained Pressure: Dagger, Axe, Spite XII and Soul Reaping XII, etc. (I don’t play elementalist, so I can’t comment on them much).

perfect
I agree that listing specific traits is better than just the amount of points in a traitline but in case of the ele there often aren’t real key-traits that are worth mentioning (except Fresh Air, since the whole build revolves around it) or the choice is obvious. Water is traited mostly for the 5P and 15P traits and passive stats (Heal+Vit). It’s the same with Arcana. Most people take the same traits but they can be varied (maybe except 30P evasive arcana) – but again the most important thing you get from Arcana is boon-duration and lowered F-spell CD.
I wouldn’t add too much information because people can find guides and builds on the class-forums. However I can provide more detailed information about traits if you want.

oZii.2864:

If you look at Avliss earlier videos (popular warrior youtube guy) alot of his fights where winnable 1v2 at most 1v3’s. It was alot of running away disengage waiting for healing surge to come up. That is how warrior use to be.

That’s also how ele used to be. They nerfed ele, but buffed warrior… how does that make sense?

Also compare Unsuspecting Foe (10P trait if I remember correctly, wtf) to Ele’s 30P trait Tempest Defense. Tempest defense adds 20% damage to stunned and knocked down targets (the other effect is rubbish). We have one stun (Shocking Aura, 25s CD) which lasts 1s and can easily be avoided and one 2s knock-down (Earth Quake, 45 CD). Meaning that the time where the trait is active is nearly zero.
Now Unsuspecting Foe: The Mace F-spell alone will stun targets for 3-4s with a 8s(?) CD. And the trait adds about 45% overall damage to stunned foes (nearly 100% crit-chance overall and approximately 50+40% via traits and amulett=190% damage on crits -> 50% of your spells will deal 90% more damage). It’s ridiculous in comparison. And there are tons of traits and utilities which are same in design but far better on warrior than on ele. Additionally warriors got highest armor and base HP and eles lowest armor and HP. Don’t know what Anet was/is smoking when balancing classes.

I think key-words about weapon-set, essential traits and utilities will do. Maybe an additional sentence to specific strenghts and weaknesses.
Something like

Burst:

• Ele: Scepter/Dagger with Fresh Air and 10% damage Modifier-Traits (+Scholar-Runes), Arcane Utilities; one of the best (instant) AoE- and Single-Target-Burst but relies somewhat on CC on the target and has zero defense, only mediocre sustained damage due to high CDs

Point Defense:

• Ele: Dagger/Dagger (or staff when defending large areas); 30P Arcane 30P Water + Cantrips; nice heal and boon-generation (stability, protection, regeneration) but low base-health and toughness – prone to immobilize and high burst-damage, therefore inferior to guardians and engis

Roaming:

• Ele: Dagger offhand (Ride the Lightning), Blink and easy access to swiftness creates great mobility in addition to nice burst-damage

Utility:

• Ele: Conjured weapons (rarely used though because weak), many combofields (most with staff, Fire-Field for might on every weaponset), good boon spam, boon-removal + heal via traits mainly in arcane and water (Aurashare); efficient heal-spells on every weapon-set

However, a problem is that newer players don’t really know how strong specific things are in practice (since any class can do literally anything to some degree). Therefore (though you don’t like it) I would suggest to add something like a 1-10 scale for efficiency.

I don’t really know what you mean but with people swimming around it’s quite difficult to target the spell right when not in earth. There’s also the problem with range when you have to target the ground.

That’s exactly what I wrote.
With 0 points you have 1s CD reduction each second: 16/1 = 16s
With 1 point you have 1,02 CD reduction each second (2% increased rate): 16/1,02=15,7
and so on

No, the calculation on wiki is wrong. Just measured it myself to make sure I calculated it correctly.
It doesn’t lower the CD but increases the recharge-rate.
10P -> 16/1,2
20P -> 16/1,4
30P -> 16/1,6

arcana gets worse the more points you spend in it

then it’ll be 13,3/11,4/10s

Switching attunements also counts as casting a spell on signet of restoration
I would also mention confusion

Mist form can be used to guarantee a stomp if you cast the stomp animation right before you click on mistform.
also nice for ressing downed players

Attunement swapping also counts as switching weapons.
mention weapon swap sigils

additional stuff:
Standard Attunement-CD is 15s and can be lowered to 12,5/10,7/9,4s with 10/20/30P in Arcana.

Combos also work underwater

Attunements can be switched while weilding a conjure, Attunement-specific modifiers (like +10% damage) work with conjures.

Though the changes don’t make much difference on land, rezzing people under water has become extremely difficult with ground-targeting (and the utility was rather nice under water). Can we have a revert on this at least under water?

Reading your definitions, the categories seem to be fine. I wonder if it would be clearer to make the list based on the categories with all classes as sub-item in each category (and maybe highlight classes that are better at it) instead of analysing class by class. Like this:

• Burst
  • Ele: S/D Fresh Air + Arcane Utilities, etc.
  • Warrior: Mace+GS
  • Guard: not so good at bursting
  • Mesmer
• Utility
  • Ele: Conjures, Heal, Combo-Fields, Aura-Share, etc.
  • Warrior: Banners, Rezz
  • Thief: AoE-Stealth, Venom-Share

And as overview maybe a list of all classes with just their strengths listed but without further details. Like

• Ele: Roaming, Burst (Direct AoE-Damage), Utility, Point Defense
• Guardin: Point Defense, Ress-Secure, …
• Thief: Burst (Direct Single-Target-Damage), Roaming, Point Assault
• etc.

compare it to ele grandmaster trait that cleanses a condition every time you get regeneration-boon with an internal CD of 5s … once again ridiculous balancing

Burst: Another speciality of eles. Fresh Air (30P Air) in Combination with S/D, Arcane-Utilities and traits like Stone Splinters, Vital Striking or Air Training give you a ridiculous amount of single-target burst. If there’s enough CC or Immob and you can land your fire-spells and maybe even Churning Earth you’ll get the best AoE-Burst in the game.
Even D/D does a good job here, but I think it’s too squishy to survive group-fights. Staff-berserker adds a kittenload of AoE-damage too which makes point-assoult in team-fights a lot easier. It requires good positioning though and a team that backs you up since it sucks 1v1. When focused, staff-ele is rather useless, therefore I wouldn’t recommend it in competetive play.

Direct Damage Pressure: Look above.

Condition Damage Pressure: Though eles have access to a wide range of conditions and seem to have been designed to be a hybrid between direct and condition damage the application of conditions is weak and inefficient compared to other classes. Your spells/attunements will always just apply one or two types of conditions (commonly with low duration/stacks; note that fire-traits are crap in PvP so you won’t get Condi-Duration through your build either]). This means that you lock yourself out of certain types of conditions as soon as you switch out of a certain attunement. Signets to cover your conditions are too weak to be used. Overall I’d say Elementalist is crap with conditions.

Boon Creation: I think Eles are quite good in this role. We have automatic boon-spam via 10P Arcana or 20P Earth and a huge amount of combo-fields + finishers. Staff can stack swiftness at the beginning of a match. S/D and D/D can stack might before group-fights. Aura-Share with D/D will provide swiftness, fury and even protection if specced. Staff has AoE-regeneration.
If you let AoE-Boons aside you’ll get an even higher amount of boons on the ele itself. Cantrips can be traited to give you vigor, regeneration and might. Renewing Stamina will give you nearly infinite Vigor. Might can be easily stacked via Sigill of Battle. Points in Arcana are usually standard so you’ll have additional Boon-Duration.

Boon Removal: non-existant

Stomp Securing: Mist form is excellent for this. Same goes for Armor of earth and Arcane Shield. (Instant) Blinds from Evasive Arcana, Signet of Air and Scepter or Glyph of Storms will also make stomping easy.

Stomp Prevention: There’s some kind of CC on every weapon-set (Dagger-Offhand might be best though), so you’ll always have one or two interrupts. Could be better but could also be worse.

Resurrection Securing: Again Mist-Form and Armor of earth are good for this. Glyph can ress up to 3 people but has a too long cast-time to be usefull. Wouldn’t say that this is a strenght of eles because of its squishyness when not moving.

Ressurection Prevention: See stomp prevention.

Body Cleave: AoE? See Burst/Direct Damage Pressure

Peeler: You already mentioned Aura-Share though I would just see that as CC or condi removal in general. Don’t know what to add besides that. Knockbacks? – also CC. Condi-Removal may be a point that is worth mentioning seperately, so I’ll write about that. Condition-removal is quite good on eles though it mainly comes from traits and not from spells. 30P in Water will remove conditions everytime you grant regen. 10P Water will remove a condition everytime you switch to water. Evasive Arcana or #5 in Water with Dagger offhand will remove conditions too. So does Staff with it’s healing rain (especially good with 30P in water).
Condi-Removal on the ele itself is extremely nice with Ether Renewal, Cleansing Fire or traited Cantrips and 30P in water. Fokus will also clean 3 condis every 25s.

Lockdown: CC in general? Already mentioned that.

Team Utility: Support in general? See boon creation. Besides that there isn’t much that eles can do except Conjures. It’s my personal opinion but I still think that conjures are too weak to be viable, even in coordinated play. Maybe Projectile-deflection on focus is worth mentioning.

Roaming: See Mobility and Burst/Direct Damage pressure

Healing: Very nice on ele. We have efficient AoE-Heals on every weaponset. Staff may be best due to its heal-combo-fields. Traits offer good AoE-heal too: There’s Healing Ripple and Soothing Mists in addition to Evasive Arcana and Regeneration from Elemental Attunenment.

I still wouldn’t bloat it too much. Especially new players which need this most will get confused or deterred by too detailed information. Writing my list for eles I realised that there are several redundant categories (see below). I would make the list as follows:

• Point-Defense (Damage- and CC-Mitigation)
• Ress-and Stomp-Securing (may be similar to point above, but there are additional things that help like stealth; direct ress-spells may be a thing that don’t fit that category perfectly since they don’t secure stomps but I wouldn’t make an extra category just for that).
• CC (including Point Control, Lockdown, Stomp- and Ress-Prevention)
• Mobility
• Burst
• Sustained Damage
• Condition Damage
• Direct Damage
• Boon-Creation and Utility (things like Mesmer-Portal, AoE-Stealth or Ele-Conjures, etc.)
• Boon-Removal
• Condi-Removal
• Healing and Damage-Mitigation (Peeling?) on other players (things like AoE-Blinds or Projectile deflection)

There are still some overlapping categories but anyways, it’s your list and so I’ll just try to add some details to Bsgapollo’s post on Eles with the categories in your OP.

Point Defense: D/D is still good to fullfill this role but since the massive nerfs ele is quite inferior to guardians. 2 times stability through armor of earth (traited + utility), maybe even traited Rock Solid for stability every time you switch into earth + Boon Duration from Arcana and Runes will still get you lots of protection and stability. Lightning flash and mobility skills like RTL, Magnetic Grasp and Burning Speed will bring you back on point fast if you get CC’ed out of it. Vigor through Renewing Stamina and Energy-Sigill will let you do a ridiculous amount of dodge-roles which can help too. Nice heal and condi-cleanse through regeneration and Water-traits. But rather prone to extreme spike-damage and well-timed immobilize due to low armor, low health-pool and rather weak 5-heals.
Point-Defense with staff is only good on large capture-points like mid in Foefire since you need room to kite your enemies. This also applies to D/D but not to such an extent.

Point Control: Not much options on Ele. We have Knockback on Lightning Hammer (nobody uses it), Staff (Immob and Wards) and Updraft (Immob) on D/D. But they all have high CDs – we won’t get a player off a point if he has stability. Another Option is the AoE-Pull from Earth-Shield, but still this won’t be enough. Only good spell to decap a point is the Tornado Ulti. But nobody uses that either because it’s the only situation where this elite shines.

[Point Assault]: Sounds to me like roaming which consits of mobility and good damage. I’ll split that up:

Mobility: This is where eles really can shine in my opinion. Dagger offhand has great mobility through RTL and has also access to swiftness via Updraft (or Healing-Glyph and/or 10 points in Arcana and/or 10P in Air). Lightning Flash adds additional mobility. There’s also good mobility on Staff which gives you swiftness and has a “Leap” via Burning Retreat (which can also be found on Flame Axe Conjure). Signet of Air adds the standard 25% Speed if you don’t get much swiftness from your weapon-set or traits.

[continued in post 2]

Why do you want to differntiate between such a huge amount of categories? Many of them seem to be quite the same.
What’s the difference between Point Defense and Point Control? Burst, Direct Damage Pressure and Condition Damage Pressure are also quite the same. I would differntiate between AoE and single-target damage instead. Boon Removal is usually just one or two specific spells on some classes. I wouldn’t list that as a general strength of any class that can do it, since it happens rarely and boons are replaced very fast. Nobody will judge a class by its ability to remove boons. Stomp Securing, Stomp Prevention, Resurrection Securing and Ressurection Prevention all need mostly the same requirements.
Don’t know what you mean with Peeler; I only know it from WoW but it’s definition in WoW wouldn’t make sense in GW.
Though there are several types of support I think that Boon Creation and Team Utility are also quite the same.

Don’t make it too complicated.

Arcane Power is quite an unreliable trait because it proccs on many things that are rubbish. Best example is Burning Speed which you want to use it with. Just one Burning Speed might consume all of the 5 charges from Arcane Power because of the Fire-Wall-Damage. Same goes for many other skills like channeled 2 in Fire or Water with D/D and if I remember correctly even the cripple-ticks from Churning Earth (not sure about this). Also missing (blinded), blocked, immune or dodged attacks will consume charges. If you accidentally cast an auto-attack in fire 3 charges will be gone, with Evasive Arcana even dodges will consume charges.
Due to the spammy nature of elementalists I also doubt that you can make good use of the procc from the talent. Once your opening-burst is over you’ll be busy surviving and you won’t be able to time the procc with the right spells.
The utility may be usefull (would only take it with scepter though) but I’d never take the trait. Depending on your gear and enemy it’s like a random procc … and nobody likes rng. Wiki also says that it has a 90s internal CD which just isn’t worth it.

this deserves more attention

Ranked by efficiency:

Bunker / defensive Support:

1. Guardian
2. Engi
3. Warrior
4. Staff-Ele (maybe even D/D or D/F)

(note that nearly every class can bunker, but they mostly just survive for a longer period of time and don’t offer good support or CC to compensate their lacking damage if there’s a group-fight)

Roamer / Spike-Damage: (good mobility + (single-target)-DMG)

1. Thief
2. GS-Warrior
3. S/D-Ele

Pressure in Group-Fights / offensive Support:

1. Nekro
2. Spirit-Ranger
3. Shatter-Mesmer
4. Warrior? (easy acces to stability -> good for rezzing (maybe even banner-rezz) and stomping)
5. Ele

• Note that eles can fullfill all roles but is always only last choice. That’s why nobody plays with ele.
• Guardian, Nekros, Rangers and Warriors are the most common classes in tPvP atm. Nearly every team runs one from each of them and any of those 4 may be even picked twice in a viable team:
  • Guardian is the best bunker+supporter -> first choice for bunkering, every team needs a bunker
  • Nekros and Spirit Rangers are OP in team-fights and also 1v1 -> seen in every team, mostly even 2 or 3
  • Warrior has insane mobility and overpowered CC+damage or can be used as pure bunker -> seen in every team
• One or two spots are left which are commonly given to Engi, Mesmer or thief.
  • Engi has great support while doing good damage and adding nice CC to a fight. Can also replace Guardian or Warrior bunker.
  • Mesmers deal nice damage and most importantly have portal.
  • Thiefes deal extremely high spike-damage and therefore are the best roamers.

DanSH.6143:

the thing is, most warriors have 30 points in Defense traits, meaning they are off-tanks. so you can’t complain about them being bunker glass cannons.

Bunker glass cannons?? wtf

Bunker-eles used to have 60-70 points in defense, had to use defensive amulet and also defensive runes and sigils. The damage was and is still laughable with such a spec – unless the enemy is 100% glasscannon you can’t kill anything. As for survivability: you can’t blame a real bunker for tanking one player or two players for a longer period of time but if that bunker runs around with berserker-amulett, perma-CCing any other class, tanking 3 people for a minute without problems and is still doing good enough damage to actually win a 1v1 there’s something wrong. Yes, Ele bunker was strong. But they had literally all of the traits and utilities they used nerfed:

• Lightning-Flash: Stun-Break removed
• Mist Form: can’t use spells in it anymore
• Healing-Signet: passive heal lowered
• Cleansing Water: internal CD added
• Soothing Disruption: lowered duration of granted boons
• Evasive Arcana: removed explo-finishers (ok, that was buggy and overpowered, but what about berserker-stance?)
• Renewing Stamina: added internal CD
• Boon-Duration Runes nerfed from 15% to 10%
• RTL CD doubled
• Healing Ripple: heal nerfed
• Bountiful Power: changed from 2% to 1% bonus-damage per boon
• Zephyr’s Boon: Bug-fixed

That’s 12 nerfs for a single build (remember: our only viable build), without any buffs at that time.
By doing so Anet also completely destroyed other ele-builds by taking away the last bits of defense we had. → Eles either play kamikaze-bomber or still run around with that now useless bunker-build (or stopped playing like most of us).

Warriors are in a far better position now than eles have ever been. So where are the warrior nerfs? Haven’t seen a single one yet.

Stalefish.7615:

This would only result in one thing: No more mace warriors, every warrior would run Hammer/longbow since the bursts in it are reliable. It would remove 100% of the warriors diversity. So even if there needs prehaps too be some changes for the better of balance, such a thing as this is not the way to go at all.

So you basically say that only huge AoE-Spells are reliable and all those skiller warriors won’t be viable because they would have to actually think about what spell they use and time them right and can’t mindlessly spam them anymore?

any other ideas?

looks like a standard fresh-air build to me … I use exactly the same build except the utilites (signet of air, lightnig flash and signet of earth [experimenting with it], elemental as ulti) and scholar runes.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmcbzx3gjEIEFogJMK0BiHWgDwhlCzAA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscN+4QxsAA

Hmm, what should I say. I haven’t read everything, but for sure there are some really great ideas on your list. However, the problem is that there are tons of ideas and threads like yours, especially here in the ele-forums. People make videos, make polls, make class-comparisons, post well thought-out ideos on specific mechanics … Anet either doesn’t read it or a CM reads it and writes he makes sure that the DEVs will read it.
Then you wait 4 months until the next major “balance”-patch, you hope for the best since Anet always states that they listen to us and “considers our ideas” or “is working on this and that” and “definitely has that on their list” blabla and what you see … is warrior buffs and useless conjure-buffs or nerfs for ele – a slap in the face.

Anet is either terrible at balancing or has too little resources to get the job properly done. What about the bugs that are in the game since release? They don’t listen to the community either … I doubt that their collaborative developement will have any impact at all. I admit that there are some efforts to actually change the current situation. But the changes seem to never really be thought-out. It’s like some DEV comes up with an idea that sounds cool and they implement it regardless of what impact it will have on PvP, PvE and WvW.
Anet thought that Necros were too weak – so they decided to add a whole new condition to the game and also give burning to Necros. Problem is: Necro-damage was fine, it’s their survivability that was lacking. What we have now is condition-spam all over the battlefields. Really great balancing.
Anet thought that eles had to much survivability. So nerf mobility, nerf heal, nerf boon-duration, nerf condition-cleanse, nerf stun-breakers (regardless of eles having worst base-stats in the game). All at once (while buffing other classes – escpecially conditions whose cleansing has been nerfed on eles). The real problem was that defensive builds were the only viable option for eles since offensive builds just didn’t work. I talked about that on the forums, even before the first RTL-nerf. I said that buffs to sustained damage would lead to players using more offensive builds (like S/D now). However what we got was even lower survivability and the worst sustained damage in the game. In short: they nerfed bunkers bacause they had good survivability; just because the community demanded it. Makes sense, right?
They tried to compensate this with fresh air – but due to our survivability beeing nerfed into oblivion this build is just some kamikaze-build that doesn’t add much to a fight.

• Eles completely vanished from tPvP and also mostly sPvP
• Condition-spam all over the place
• Power-Builds driven out of the meta
• Warrior-survivability buffed tremendously so that they can go afk and still outheal ele-damage (I know this is exaggerated but you get the point)

That’s what Anet has accomplished with their balancing so far. Real problems like AI doing the work for players, CC being far too strong on some classes, perma-evasion or -stealth etc. have never really been adressed. I don’t even want to talk about general “PvP-Changes” like skyhammer and custom arenas. The reason why they don’t shut them down is because custom arenas are the only way for them to make money out of PvP. All together everything Anet tried to balance went down the drain. Classes that never recieved major buffs or nerfs have always been and still are viable. I hope they never lay a finger on guardians since I think it’s one of the best balanced classes in the game.

Sorry for OT … just had to get rid of that. Maybe I’ll ad something on topic later on, when I’ve read all of your list. But like I said I’m afraid that all your effort will be in vain.

General tip: post suggestions on the PvP-forum. Nobody will ever read it here (and the suggestion-forum doesn’t recieve many replies from the team as well)

Couldn’t agree more with OP. Currently the more complicated your class is, the less effective it is in PvP (even if it’s perfectly played) -> ele worst, warrior top-tier. Sadly, Anet has this policy of keeping classes easy and simple to play. I don’t know the exact quote but some DEV once said that eles are using two attunenemts only because it’s most effective and everything else is too complicated for players anyways (I guess he got that impression from PvE). They also said that more pet-control for rangers is something that players can’t handle. It’s obvious that they design their game for casuals – since most of their player-base consists of casual-(PvE)-players. Spell-changes would also have effects on PvE and though PvE in GW2 couldn’t be any easier I don’t think that Anet wants to make it more complicated (even though many PvE-players want more difficult “content” too). It’s kinda weird that on one hand they want easy play for everybody and on the other they want competetive play and E-sports etc. These two philosophies can’t go hand in hand.

it’s ridiculous when you compare Incendiary Powder to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Precision

It would be useless to think about such details – that’s Anet’s job. All we’re trying here is gather some ideas that Anet can consider to implement. Since their two attempts to make conjures viable in PvP failed I think it might be a good idea to give them some hints.

I really hoped that they would tone down conditions and CCs (they were talking about it constantly?) but there was nothing in that direction except the bug-fix of the sigil. Until they take care of that we’ll propably never see the full potential of eles. DEVs said it on their own: “elementalists are propably ok for the most port once we tone down condition-spam and cc-spam”. I want to believe that, but honestly I don’t want to wait another 4 months to see what happens next.
The buffs partly went in the right direction, I love the new unsteady ground, I appreciate their effort to make conjures viable. But overall the “great balance”-patch really hasn’t changed anything. Conjures may need further testing but like I stated in another thread they will never be viable until they change their “on-demand accessibility”.
Why did they (slightly) nerf support (boon-spam)?

I still think that the real problems are located within the core-mechanics of the game. Maybe I’m just prejudiced by other games but GW2 is my first MMORPG where PvP is really really horrible. Thinking back even RuneScape may have been less frustrating. I don’t like half-baked things, so maybe they shouldn’t have implemented PvP at all – they would have less flame on the forums

shimmerless.4560:

A lot of stuff in the game needs brought down to the level of conjures, not vice versa.

That might be true in general (I think ele is a fairly well balanced class – not OP but can kill when properly played), but I think with their current spells conjures won’t be OP in PvP regardless of how much you buff their mechanic. My plans are to make them viable, not OP

Though I’d love to see it more often your idea of coordinated team-fights is an utopia. Just take a look at the meta: Stunlock-Warriors which spam their spells, Condi-Nekros which spam their spells, Spirit-Pet-Rangers which just press autohit …
I watched some fights of the official tournaments so far … not even once I saw a good combination of CC from one class and damage from another or a combined CC-Chain. Everything is just spammed (even ele-playstyle is this way) – because this is the most rewarding playstyle. The game is too clunky and random to seriously combine spells. Even combining your own spells often fails – that’s why staff is bad at 1v1.
So like I said I really wouldn’t expect other players to use conjures coordinated (not even in tPvP) not speaking of balancing them based on coordinated team-play.

Finally, on a less serious note, conjures finally let eles troll properly in skyhammer. LH knock-back, earth shield pull/daze, fortify (to stall for another pull) and tornado are great for super-smash bros!

haha, yeah that’s great. I use staff though for Air #4 and Earth #3, #4 and #5 (magnetic aura makes rangers kick themselves off the cliffs ^^)

edit: Air #3 of course :P

@BlackBeard:
I already said that the spells themselves aren’t the problem – they’re strong and can be used extremely well in specific situations. But the conjure-mechanic or let’s say their implementation prohibits a good use of the spells (take a look at my earth-shield example). I get and also like your idea of using conjures mainly situational (like frost-bow #4 in AC). In fact, that’s the only way they should/can be used in PvP. But especially this is the problem – you can’t use them this way. If you want to situationally use a spell you instantly need access to it in the right situation and not after 2s when the right situation is over. Therefore I suggested to make them insta-cast and/or to be able to swap to the conjure (of course also instantly) which is basically the same.

The reason why I want them to be permanent is the following: Why would I conjure a Frost-Bow only for #4 when I can just take glyph of storms instead? Why would I use an Earth-Shield for #5 when I can just use mist form instead? Why would I use a Flame-Axe for Mobility when I can take Flash instead? All other utilities can even be boosted by traits. Conjures only have “conjurer”, which is pretty useless in PvP.
Therefore I don’t really like your idea with the short lifetime (and shorter CD I assume?). It would also destroy the popular LH-Build in PvE.

One problem with conjures being permanent might be that they will exceed the popular cantrips in efficiency. That’s why I suggested them to overwrite 5 of your basic weapon-skills as a “drawback”.
I’m also taking into consideration that in theory you get all the spells from your conjure x2 because of the grounded weapon. But in practice the weapons are never picked up and the ele itself rarely needs the second weapon or even gets the chance to pick it up.

I seriously tried playing with conjures in PvP, with many different builds but it’s just too slow and clumsy. Everytime I encounter an ele-player who uses conjures (extremely rare though) I’m thankfull for the freekill. Never forget that you’re not only giving up 20 spells but also an utility-slot that are extremely important in PvP.

I agree though that conjures can be much better when used in a coordinated team-fight … but to be honest I wouldn’t balance conjures around tPvP since there aren’t any eles anyways (but that’s a different topic :P). Thanks for the feedback though, I’ll add the idea with auto-attacks not consuming charges.

btw: I’m wondering if engis would use their kits if they had the same mechanic as ele-conjures, I somehow doubt it. ^^

PvE:
1. class-balance / class-design in general (discrimination of certain classes (“warrior or guard only”) or specific roles (support))
2. holy trinity
3. Living world being mainly a farm-feast not a real challenging change to the world

+1 for your idea btw, great direction you’re heading with this.

PvP:
1. Class-Balance (mainly spells/traits/skills but also base-stats!)
2. Game Modes
3. Stat-Variation / more gear-options

1. zerging vs solo-play or small-group-play
2. long-term-motivation / rewards
3. lag

Thanks for your responses. I added your ideas. Keep in mind that the mechanic shouldn’t get too complicated since Anet won’t implement such things. This may include the idea of eles having 25 spells available at any time (that’s the reason why I suggested to replace one attunement with a conjure). A DEV even stated before that according to his experience most eles only use one or two attunements anyways … I know that this is not true, but we should keep it in mind if that’s the way Anet thinks of eles.

Hey, I just made a similar thread to yours (with mostly exact the same ideas) in the sPvP-section, since DEVs seem to be most active in that sub-forum and propably nobody will ever read it here. I’ll add your ideas if they aren’t already on my list.

-> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Feedback-Ele-Conjures/first#post3042737