Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

“They have that, its called going full Zerker. Though one blocked/missed skill and you are going to be dead. Unlike other classes that have plenty of defence CAN go full Zerker and still haven plenty of defence be it from health/Armour tier or from stealth, immunities, blocks, invuls and others.”

I guess its just not quite the way I’d like it to be, I’d like to be able to go 30 in air for example and still have a decent shot at survival with d/d in mind. without 30 arcane and 15 water its just too hard to keep up with the rest.

Karl, I think you should consider having an option for d/d ele to do a great amount of damage with the draw back of being very squishy, but also having skills if timed right, that counter condis and dmg. That would make my world <3

Heres an idea! the beginning of this debate is going to deal with auto attacks,

Elementalist only has one real optimal auto attack with d/d currently, (Lightning Whip).

Upping the amount of dps on vapor blade a tad bit plus increasing the amount of vulnerability would do wonders for Eles. Water 1 then lets the potential dps increase after swapping out of water attunement and swapping into a trait that does good dps if the opponent doesn’t clear vulnerability condi.

Lowering the cast time for Impale and upping the bleed dps would help quite a bit as well. all other auto attacks on Ele can hit multiple targets, Impale hits one target and has the slowest cast time (3/4 seconds compared to 1/2 auto atk cast speed.) Eles condition dmg is below efficent right now, Impale is probably the 2nd to worst auto attack to use currently (IMO), Vapor blade being the worst (unless you need that tiny bit of extra range I suppose).

I’ve said this before but I think Dragon’s Claw, which is Fire1, should be Eles main auto attack, I also think there should be a catch, Dragon’s claw has three fire balls that launch from Eles front arc and then spread apart until they vanish, depending on how many of those fireballs land, I believe the % dmg should increase. So for example, (I’m not saying these numbers should be implemented.) 1 fireball = base dmg 2 = 10% dps increase and landing all 3 fire balls with a single attack = 20% dps increase. Landing all three can be quite a struggle as you may know unless you are right in your opponents face.

I think it would be fair to have the attunement recharge have a standard reuse timer, Arcana line shouldn’t reduce the time of attunements and instead up boon duration and something else useful instead. Lowering attunement cooldowns across the board to ~6 or 7 seconds would give the elementalist a chance to use more defensive traits such as Lightning Touch, Magnetic Grasp and Frozen Burst. I feel putting 20% reduction to all skill CDs for all attunement lines in Arcana line for Masters trait and moving Elemental Attunement back to Arcana’s Adept slot would fix a lot of problems with the elementalist having defensive dilemmas. Protection and regen are a must for elementalist, these attunement CD changes would increase the amount of might ,regen, swiftness and protection ever so slightly compared to the current attunement CD with 30 points in Arcana. (Roughly 1-2 seconds less CD time).

Lets say elemental attunement gives ~ 6 1/2 seconds of duration to regen, protection, swiftness and 19 1/2 seconds to might. (This is current duration with 30% boon duration (30 in arcana = 30% to boons))The elementalist has three other attunements to work with so that doesn’t mean you’re going to always have, for example, protection or regen up every 7 seconds, so in my opinion a change along these lines seems reasonable to me. There is still plenty of reason to go 30 in arcana with the suggestions I made, not to mention Evasive Arcana is almost mandatory.

Armor of Earth in my opinion should have a much lower CD timer, I also think the trait in water to give vigor and regen to cantrips (Soothing Disruption) should be moved back to Adept in water.

The d/d build requires a lot of points spent to up our defense, this leaves not many points for increasing our DPS, which without critting with high crit dmg can be kind of low. I don’t think crit dps should be nerfed across the board, instead I’d create a point at which you get diminishing returns for classes that are hitting too hard with specific weapons in mind.

In order for 30 earth, 30 fire or 30 air to be optimal, I think Elementalist needs some Grand Master traits that improve our defense, I’d really love to see more diversity with traits in mind…

I know I’ve already said this as well but can we please see a valid reason to use more glyphs?!

Dalanor.5387:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwKNkwcEZo

LOL, Dalanor I love you

I think it would be an interesting idea to see ranks that allowed you to tweak how a skill worked or obtain a new skill that could be swapped for an old one on a weapon.. Something of that sort. If we had game changing perks to be unlocked we would have a real goal to achieve in spvp

If crit % gets nerfed it should only be nerfed at the higher levels of crit dmg, a diminishing return after a certain point if you will

Rather than posting more thoughts about the classes I love playing I’d like to share my thoughts on how class balance should operate for all classes. The reason I personally like gw2 PvP and wvw is class diversity. Now with that being said I do like I like the idea of all classes having a tank, glass cannon, or some build in between, ect… As long as two different classes are not feeling like the same class. I think in order for gw2 PvP to keep the torch on passing, we really need to see at least one viable build for every possible role on all classes which feels optimal. That being said I think the community should share the way they enjoy playing their class so that these play styles we all enjoy can be implemented into the game. I’m going give an example for you all:

I like to think of d/d ele as a daring glass cannon, compensating low HP and defense for high burst for quick kills. Skills to counter conditions and DPS needed to play like this.

I think longbow ranger is a fun class to play as a sniper like role, pewpewing from a distance, it seems to make sense that you would do worse in melee and better at a distance if you are a sniper build, but also have a ways to regain that distance.

Warrior I like to think of as a heavy tank that has many options to block incoming hits as well… If they are on top of their game using skills at the right time.

There are other ways I like playing these classes but I’ll stop b4 it gets to tl;dr

More thoughts on Elementalist:

- give us a reason for 30 in Fire magic line, the two current Grand Master traits are garbage unfortunately :/ No Grand master traits that force you to stay in one attunement plz, thats now how this class was designed to be played. Honestly the entire Fire tree needs a total revamp IMO.

-Buff all signets, lets see a reason to use signet builds, this means you should probably fix Fire Shields to actually provide might and burning on every hit we take since elementalist can get a trait to activate a fire shield for every signet used.

Signet of Water: Make this cure conditions more often

Signer of Earth: Make this provide more toughness

Signet of Fire: Improve the crit rate enhancement passive and also change the active to provide something more useful.

-I think the conjure weapons should be revamped to give us a new set of skills in each attunement, so for example the fiery greatsword could be turned into an elemental sword that gave new fire, wind, earth, air skills for a different kind of playstyle.

-remove the water 15 trait and make our current weapon heals stronger to compensate.

-Make glyph of elemental power work with lingering elements, so for example: I’m in fire attunement, I swap to water, I hit the opponent and now it has the chance to apply burning and chill instead of just burning.

Glyph of Storms: Make this a single target cast that applies the storm on an enemy, make the ability have to be aimed and not just point and click.

Glyph of lesser elementals: Make this ability summon a pet based on current attunement that focuses on supporting the elementalist and less about dmg.

Glyph of elemental harmony: Allow the boons you get with this heal to work with lingering elements and increase the duration of the protection boon on this skill.

Arcane Power: Instead of giving 100% crits on the next 5 attacks, make this ability have a chance to proc a direct damage spell when you crit your enemy.

More on my thoughts of Elementalist:

ARCANE TRAIT LINE:

I like that you recently made it less viable to get 30 arcane by making the attunement swap cooldowns less of a cooldown over all, but then you moved elemental attunement up to the Master trait, we kind of need that trait to survive currently… Ele depends on protection and regen boon too much!

FOCUS WEAPON:

This weapon needs to have a serious look at, some of these abilities are unfortunately so useless its mind blowing.

Flame wall: Yeah I think you already know how useless this thing currently is, elementalist are not very good when it comes to condition dps, we already have other great ways to burn targets fairly easily as well…

Fireshield: 40 second cooldown on an ability that doesn’t even seem to actually provide a might stack for every hit taken… Skill needs a revamp.

Freezing Gust: Elementalist lose RTL with focus weapon, this ability should have a much lowwer CD timer in order to catch ppl IMO.

Comet: Interesting idea of a skill but it takes too long to finally land for how well it works…

Gale: 50 second reuse for a single target knockdown that does no dmg…. lowwer the cooldown timer please.

Swirling winds: Awesome skill, maybe reduce the cooldown timer by ~5 seconds?

There is nothing that needs to be changed about the earth 4 and 5 ability when it comes to focus IMO.

I believe the focus weapon needs some form of mobility or skill to teleport to your enemy while making it harder for them to run. No RTL when using focus weapon hurts…

HOW TO ADD VARIETY TO ELE BUILDS:

In the current meta, the elementalist is forced to get at least 15 points in water for the heal upon swapping to water attunement (Healing ripple) and 30 arcane for the uber dodge ( Evasive Arcana). Some would argue the elementalist needs 20 in water now for cleansing wave (which used to be an adept trait). If you could somehow remove these mandatory trait points the class would see a lot more opportunity to run other builds.

I hope you take my information into consideration Anet. Thanks

Here are some changes I personally think would make elementalist a viable class once again:

SHOCKING AURA/AIR ATTUNEMENT SKILL 3 (Dagger Main-hand):

Shocking Aura should either last longer or allow an opponent who is not paying attention to get stunned more often.

RIDE THE LIGHTNING/AIR ATTUNEMENT SKILL 4 (Dagger Off-hand):

RTL reuse should be set back to 15 seconds if hitting an enemy, its very easy to dodge the big ball of lightning and set the cd to 40 seconds so I also think if you land near an enemy the cooldown should also be 15, but if you use it and are not near an enemy then the skill should have its current 40 second reuse timer. (its currently 20sec ruse if landing the ability and 40 seconds without landing it)

DRAGON’S CLAW/FIRE ATTUNEMENT SKILL 1 (Dagger Main-hand):

The auto atk skill in fire attunement (Dragon’s Claw) should be the strongest of all elementalist auto atks IMO, to land all three fireballs requires you to stand very close, leaving you very vulnerable since fire has no current crowd control or evade until burning speed gets that evade attached. This auto atk is nothing compared to Lightning Whip. Fire is all about dps for d/d, you are very vulnerable in Fire attunement due to a lack of “get out of jail free card” abilities, so shouldn’t Fire 1 dagger skill(Dragon’s claw) hit the hardest when landing all three fireballs? (Which isn’t always so easy to do since they spread apart as they travel.

CHURNING EARTH/ EARTH ATTUNEMENT SKILL 5(Dagger off-hand):

This ability needs a complete revamp IMO, the skill takes far too long to cast (3 1/4 seconds) on a class that is extremely squishy, its almost not even viable to use in PvP unless comboing it with lightning flash. Its so easy to just count to three and then dodge this skill… I vote that this ability get turned into a point blank blind cloud with some initial damage and immobilize.

MAGNETIC GRASP/EARTH ATTUNEMENT SKILL 3 (Dagger main-hand):

This ability seems to miss more than it should! I vote a protection boon be attached to the leap.

IMPALE/EARTH ATTUNEMENT SKILL 1 (Dagger main-hand):

The auto atk in Earth Attunement should be less physical dmg based and more condition based, making d/d condition ele more of a possibility… I don’t think the bleed stacks need to exceed passed 8 stacks (currently can’t exceed 8 stacks unless gaining condition/bleed duration). I vote the cast timer be lowered from 3/4 to 1/4 or the amount of bleed stacks for this ability hit 8 bleed stacks quicker.

VAPOR BLADE/WATER ATTUNEMENT SKILL 1(Dagger main-hand):

Vapor blade is almost non viable. It can be semi-viable with piercing shards trait (20% more water dmg if vulnerability is also applied to enemy). I vote vapor blades purpose should not be damage, but vulnerability stacks, the amount of vulnerability this low dmg skill applies should be increased and the range should also be increased to 900, giving main hand dagger elementalist some form of ranged atk with dagger in mind. (its the weakest auto atk out of all 4)

Hi I’m the Elementalist Astro Blackfire and I test elementalist traits and skills out as if it were my job! I test traits, weapon abilities, and gear stat combos out on: test dummies in the mists, people in duels (sPvP 1v1), actual spvp matches, and WvW small number fights. I also try and test how well every specific trait and skill synergizes with each other. I’d like to share my thoughts on Anet’s changes.

ABILITIES:

Healing signet: I’d like to see a reason to use this ability, perhaps to clear some form of crowd control and/or conditions. Other than that, I like where this ability is headed.

Burning speed: Awesome, I’m glad Burning speed is going to have an evade window, Fire attunement has no form of defense until this implemented. This was needed.

Armor of Earth: This skill is almost seeming mandatory to me lately, I think the cooldown should be decreased to ~40 seconds, The cantrip mastery trait in water would allow Armor of Earth to be lowered to 32 seconds. Note that elementalist can also get this ability with 10 points into earth. Once they hit 50% hp thats another Armor of Earth activated, which could make a potential of ~18 seconds (with boon duration and 30 arcana) of protection and stability. I think its completely reasonable to have protection and stability “half” of the time on a class that is so squishy, especially since you have to spend 20 points total (10 earth and 10 water which are both defensive traits) and 30 in arcana to do this. From my Spvp experience (which is an unhealthy amount) if the elementalist has any form of stun or immobilize, they are usually dead in a matter of seconds (if your enemy is not a complete noob). Having stability half the time while depending on skills and dodge to evade attacks the other half would not be imba on a class with such low hits and defense IMO. Especially since it would be a 20point investment in defensive traits(10 earth 10 water) and 30 points in arcana to get this 18 seconds of duration.

Water trident: Adding regen is an interesting thought I suppose, Will cleansing water get the hidden reuse timer removed from spvp now?

Frozen burst: I like the idea of this ability being a blast finisher! I also think the radius should be increased to some extent since dagger has very short range abilities…For the most part.. Ride the lightning is every 40 seconds now when not landing on a target so…