Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

No it had a skill treadmill and people grinded levels to level up their skills. So on a skill it’s okay but on gear (that makes less of a difference and you don’t actually need) it’s okay?

PUG AC Path 2 naked with white non-max weapons. Or any dungeon path really. Or survive one of Scarlett’s invasions. Nobody grinded levels in GW1 to level up their skills. There was nothing to spend skillpoints on other than the occasional conset (contrast the cost in skillpoints of just one GW2 Legendary), and in the metagame most builds were very similar, such kitten Nuker Necros or Panic Mesmers, which meant with the number of skillpoints accrued via natural leveling and gameplay one could possess most of if not all meta builds easily.

Plus, if ANet wanted to re-balance the meta, they simply altered some skills, leaving weapon damage alone. Continually adding higher tiers of gear when a whopping amount of actual skills are still bugged/unbalanced will only exacerbate the balance issues in the game. I mean, a full year after release and the trait system, the BASIS of GW2 builds and gameplay diversity is still broken and bugged to some extent for all classes, and some really get the shaft.

ANet needs to stop adding crap like Rox and Braham into the game (honestly who cares about her stupid devourer?) and fix the bugged class features and get a semblance of real balance going so that classes like Engineer, Elementalist, Necromancer and Ranger are brought up to par with some of the more recognized dominating classes, across all game modes, which means fixing the Warrior in sPvP and the like. But as long as ANet keeps pumping out stuff like the SAB (OOH SHINY) we’re distracted like raccoons with tinfoil, with coincidental associated items in the Gem Store that all of a sudden provide a distinct advantage (Infinite Continue Coin).

Remember how in GW1, you could be competitive in every game mode with a sword purchased for a few grawl scalps, and armor that while not the prettiest you could easily obtain a maxed set of by the time you hit the level cap?

In fact, people still play GW1 (I occasionally do as well) and swords still do the same 15-22 damage today that they did when the game was first released.

IMHO, Ascended weapons should have been a skin, the patch should have addressed sigils on 2 handers along with basing the power of skills like Engy kits and Ele Conjures on the equipped weapons, and encounter dynamics should have been adjusted (i.e. the Tequatl fight) to be more challenging not due to larger HP pools but varying and interesting mechanics.

Of course, its much easier and cheaper to institute a gear treadmill while tricking game media and the playerbase into not believing your game deserves the moniker of Grind Wars 2. I’m assuming the same people who thought up Ascended Crafting were the ones behind PvE skills in EoTN and the LOLGRINDY speedbooking of titles, or having to re-do the same vanquish a hundred times.

Confirmed Bachelor.3508:

It’s difficult to justify compensation for Celestial items. Statistically, they’re “better” than other items even without MF. You may have purchased it for the MF, but unlike if you purchased a bunch of Traveler’s gear, you’re no worse for wear for having it removed. That’s probably why Anet didn’t provide compensation for Celestial items.

Celestial is only better when one doesn’t understand the concept behind stat weighting and budgeting. Why do you think everyone and their dog pushes full Berserker even on the squishiest classes?

For the layman, yes Celestial gives overall more total stats, in some cases significantly so. But the value of each stat is not equivalent. When you’re talking about high level PvE, such as fractals where the mechanics of gameplay include one hit KOs frequently, then it doesn’t matter in terms of survivability how much vitality, toughness or healing power you have, if you get hit you die. Conversely, stats like Power, Precision and Critical Damage indirectly contribute to your survival simply because the faster you put down the target the fewer opportunities it has to OHKO you, and the less time you the player has to coordinate dodges, blocks and invulns.

And one thing that gets repeated but apparently no one listens to, the MF sets included the MF in their stat budgets, which is why speedrunners and “1337” players disparaged sets like Explorer’s so much, because you sacrificed a lot of guaranteed party contributing power for a RNG stat that only helps your own wallet.

Now, the sets other than Celestial that had MF now give stats like Boon Duration or Condition Duration, which means previous MF sets had their stat budgets adjusted to include new combat relevant stats. Celestial got no such consideration, hence all the QQing. Honestly, Celestial is supposed to be the “all stats” armor, so any stat available to armors in GW2 should show up on Celestial. Meaning that Celestial, if no adjustments are made to the existing stats to compensate the loss of part of its stat budget should at the very least get the addition of Boon Duration and Condition Duration, but at the relative Celestial stat weighting so as not to eclipse armor sets like Giver’s.

And the rest of the Celestial items should follow suit. Seeing as how for some builds for Eles and Guardians rely on boons, Celestial could shine quite a bit there with native boon duration, freeing up the need to run dual Water/Monk, or the new and quite expensive version of Traveler runes. As well, a Condition Duration stat might make Celestial attractive to Necros who are also multi stat users, and in a condi meta could work out quite well. I on my Ele for example have a full suit of Celestial armor (among other sets) , Celestial weapons (also some Knight’s and Berserker’s) as well as a combination of trinkets, including Knight’s, Cavalier’s and Celestial. To say that anyone who purchased Celestial trinkets through Laurels should just suck it up and deal is kind of rude and harsh in the face of all other MF gear getting not only a stat boost to make up for the MF but a free change if you want something else.

Fuzzion.2504:

Just need a giant air bison /yip /yip

That’s why ANet doesn’t want to do mounts. Appa would outclass his rider.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Seriously, what versions of these games are you playing?

We all have a broad range of experience with Atari – current games. I cut my teeth on NES Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden et all. When I reference one of these games I’m not saying “SAB is exactly like this game in every way.” SAB is a homage to ERA of games, not a single game or genre. SAB is LIKE Metroid in a couple ways. Like Ninja Gaiden in a couple ways, like Mega Man in a couple ways. We have items in shops you have to buy to progress like Zelda, we have instant kill spikes and pits like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. You can point to all the classic games that do things differently and say “See, that’s how you SHOULD do it.” The we we DID do it is based on the unique chemistry of our team and what we liked in old games and what we wanted to experience. Your milage may vary.

The main difference is those other games didn’t require you to either A: farm a different game for continues or B: purchase an item that allowed you unlimited lives; C: no matter how much you spent buying the game or how much you loved/hated it, someone you never met was going to take it away in 30 days, and the material rewards of the game were there to help you beat it, not purchase skins for the other game you were farming continues for.

I realize SAB is free content added on, but if you’re going to ask me to stop referencing “slapping players in the face” you might want to stop doing it.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Not sure where you’re getting the impression that I don’t. I wouldn’t be here interacting if that were the case.

Not trying to (continue to) be snarky, but replying with “protip” to players’ legitimate concerns is why I at least respond snarkily in kind.

My simple question is, why is World 2 the way it is? World 1 design was great. The “advanced” difficulty with World 1 was getting some of the more difficult achievements, such as the Doctor of Secrets achievement that required some tricky jumps (such as the tree roots six inches above swirling black clouds of death). One could get through World 1 with basic effort, but to complete it all required some skill and practice.

World 2 punishes players, plain and simple. I get thakittens supposed to be more difficult, but the design is such that any mistake is instantly fatal and very frustrating. Mere hours after the release you have videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKyKyJzfjXM which should give you a good impression of players’ annoyance. The same people who could breeze through the basic level design of World 1 should be able to do the same in World 2, but make the extra achievements difficult to acquire.

Then, removing the ability to farm for bubble baubles by making digging sparser, fewer rewards, while keeping the same cost for the increased number of account bound, non trade-able skins is sort of a slap in the face. Unless of course you’ve quadrupled the drop rate of rare versions from the end chests, but I doubt that. The only way for people to obtain all of the original skins was create/farm/delete, between work and school I farmed for a week solid and got two rare scepter skins and was able to buy five of the green skins. The idea behind SAB should be the same as behind any of the dungeons or Fractals, a permanent mode that people can spend a lot of time in to get the skins they desire.

For people that have purchased extra character slots and play multiple characters, moving this to an account based once a day farm is also a slap in the face. I get that ANet wants to push characters into other areas, but when you release time gated acquisition of IMHO some of the neatest skins from a game mode that only lasts 30 days while STILL probably needing another week to work out the bugs is just ridiculous.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘noclip’. But we would have to be pretty stupid to test the difficulty of our content using dev commands. My current guess is that the problem is 1. Lag makes rapids/waterspouts too hard. 2. People aren’t familiar with the content and once they learn the tricks they won’t find it nearly as hard. 3. We devs play constantly so we are more practiced at the content. 4. Our alphas must be better than average as well because we didn’t get anywhere near this amount of complaints over the difficulty during our alpha tests.

My goal is to make Normal Mode more fun than frustrating for average players, so it looks like I’ll have to tone it down to meet that goal. But I still need to give it a few days to make sure 1 and 2 aren’t the primary issue.

Odd that as a games developer you wouldn’t know what “noclip” is, seeing as how its been made famous by online competitive FPS right alongside Aimbot.

As I said above, 1. is not the problem. Its not lag, when people in the States on broadband connections with pings under 70 are having the same issues as everyone else. 2. is also not the issue, as many of us that are very familiar with SAB World 1 were completely taken aback by SAB World 2. The difficulty increase is completely obvious to anyone not involved with disguising the shilling of Gem Store items. 3. may be part of it, but your most hardcore playerbase frequents the forums, and I’d put up some of the hardcore PvP guilds against a dev team any day. Amount of time played does not translate to skill. As for 4. well its a pretty obvious truism in business that the larger your test audience, the quicker you will identify potential issues. I don’t know how large your alpha team is, but problems with content can be MUCH more quickly identified when thousands upon thousands of avid, hardcore players are tearing through your content.

Bottom line is, trust in the players, because they not only know what they’re talking about, if you fail to make them happy (or at least lessen the acute frustration) then you don’t have a successful game. As for my comments about the Coin and the Gem Shop, one need only look at the parallels of recent GW2 design philosophy with the atrocious mess that was SWTOR. That game was supposed to be the second coming, but due to executive meddling and the desire to eke every last drop of blood from the stone that was the playerbase, its now a mediocre free to play MMO, where most of the content will never be experienced precisely because you now have to pay for everything.

Ivonbeton.6814:

So how do I afford things like the candle (which appearantly you need to progress)? I’m using a lot of my bubbles on coins. What’s the best way to get some extra?

As in all things, the answer is the Gem Shop.

banana.9038:

It’s the first expansion. Infinite coin provides unlimited access to tribulation mode. Normal coins will only allow access temporarily.

Until September 30th when the Box is gone and your 600 Gem item becomes useless.

RvLeshrac.2673:

Already wondering why the hell I enjoyed any of this. What the hell is the deal with the turtles in World 2 being in unreachable locations? Can’t jump on them alive because I get knocked back by the water. Can’t hit them because THEY’RE IN THE kitten ED WATER, OUT OF RANGE.

The reason the devs are so good at it is because they can play with “noclip” on, perhaps they forgot that players don’t have access to the development console?

Ursan.7846:

Kaleban.9834:

Login Tokens are the next big thing, at least if ANet continues the trend.

Literally speaking, your original purchase is the login token.

No no no, not what I meant. I meant that at some point in the future, to even login to the game, you will need to purchase tokens off the BLTC. One day of play per login token. So Anet will get their subscription fee without technically charging a subscription. GENIUS! So people who don’t wish to buy their tokens will have to spend every hour in game farming stuff just to make enough money to keep buying tokens to keep farming…

Seriously, its like ANet hired a bunch of meth dealers as business consultants.

Login Tokens are the next big thing, at least if ANet continues the trend.

So an Infinite Lives Coin that’s only useful for a limited time for 600 Gems? That’s an extra bank slot for forever, or for 200 gems more an infinite gathering tool that ostensibly will always be useful in perpetuity.

Is there some reason that the Box can’t be a permanent feature? Its a video game/XMen training area for Asura, no reason why it can’t be permanent. You guys at ANet are starting to get ridiculous with this temporary for the sake of it content.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Fhaeris.9237:

@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

We made it so that it’s fun to play. It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player, but I doubt it. I want it to be fun. If MOST people think it’s too hard to be fun then I’ll reduce the difficulty. But like I said above, we don’t have good numbers on that yet.

How about the part in World 2, Zone 3, where to progress you have to drop 400 baubles on the torch upgrade, but you don’t find out til you get there, and the cost in baubles is so high due to using bombs to get there in the first place that unless you hoarded all your baubles from the first go around its very likely you won’t have enough. And that’s on INFANTILE mode.

On top of that, now SAB is account bound and time gated, meaning you can’t farm the baubles you need to buy the upgrades, not to mention the stuff Moto actually sells.

Yes, you MAY just be better at jumping games than the rest of us, but expecting us to have the ability to see the future, and infer run ending problems like the torch with no advance warning is ridiculous. Even the hardest 2D platformers don’t require the players to be psychic.

You want to make it more fun? Here:

1. Make the arrow boxes more visible, with sparklies or something.
2. Reduce the number of hits certain enemies take, World 1 was at most two I think, World 2 ‘s trash mobs should be three at most.
3. Remove the once per day restriction on digging for baubles, so that it doesn’t take weeks for players to acquire the necessary upgrades to actually be able to just complete the world. End chests can still be once per day per account.
4. Fun /= Frustration. You must be aware of all the innuendos flying around connecting the difficulty of World 2 with the “coincidental” appearance of the Infinite Lives Coin in the BLTC. I was able to solo World 1 with some practice, and get good enough at it that I both enjoyed it, and was able to stockpile some lives. World 2 I still haven’t finished Zone 2, and have spent almost 50 lives. Most of those lost lives are due to instant death mechanics, that makes the “hearts” moot.
5. Length. More is not always better, the quality of designed content can usually make small games/mini-games much better than a bloated mess. Take Liadri, was a very difficult fight for many, and I beat it on my Ele. Part of that was trial and error yes, but I was able to quickly kitten my mistakes and try again. Taking Zone 2 of World 2 as a good example, the zone is incredibly long, with few scattered checkpoints tucked in between tons of instant death frustration. One small mistake can erase a lot of progress, which amounts to more frustration. Its the old notion of “one step forward, two steps back” which should not be a primary design mantra of FUN games.
6. Bugs. Per above, the ninjas seem to be able to knock me much further when it would result in an instant death, and I get hit and take damage frequently even when they’re nowhere near me. Maybe its lag, but I have a stable connection, and many is the time so far that I’ve dodged an attack only for them to hit me while my character has “EVADE EVADE” over them.

In the old days, where games were at most eight hours of content, some of the best parts were the insane difficulty coupled with bugs that required thoughtful ingenuity. But Mario didn’t have to beat Bowser a thousand times to get a new skin for his backpack. If you want to reduce grind, great, but simply stretching out the time taken to grind out a skin or weapon from a couple days to weeks or longer isn’t reducing grind, just giving the illusion of such. And the addition of an infinite lives coin for gems with the addition of an insanely difficult “regular” world is a pretty obvious payto win ploy.

No worries, just go buy the Infinite Lives Coin. Then instead of a nice, fun and gentle grind, you get to play Nintendo hard jumping games that are still an RNG nightmare, oh and are account bound so even if you’d like to repeat them there’s no benefit in doing so.

Its like ANet WANTS to get people to leave their game out of frustration and poor design.

Account bound dig sites.

Fewer baubles.

No access to old blue weapons.

Just a few issues there. First, I loved being able to zip through World 1, digging up the +50 baubles and such. Problem was, I didn’t really get into SAB until the end, so even with some hardcore farming I was unable to get all the skins I wanted. Fair enough, I can always TP them or get the Tribulation mode ones, but is it really an issue? Obviously the art files are already in the game, so what exactly is the rationale for NEVER having the original SAB skins come back? Seems silly.

Compound that with a bunch more items to acquire in World 2, and the inability to farm baubles by digging, AND its all account bound so only one run through a day!

I mean, seriously, I get that ANet is trying to push players into other areas of the game, but what about people who’d like to kit out all their characters with holo-weaponry? It’ll take longer to do that (IF SAB remains permanent) then assembling a full suite of Celestial or Ascended Gear. Seems to me that re-enabling at least unlimited digging would fix multiple issues, just make the end chest of each Zone Account bound so that people aren’t creating and deleting characters zillions of times a day.

Alys Florent.1359:

It’s meant to be used offensively. .

Its relatively useless in PvE because mobs don’t flee from CE very well. Its not great anywhere else either, because that means to land one of your hardest hitting weapon skills you have to combo it with a utility skill.

This kind of restriction and hamstringing isn’t seen on any other class in the game. Utility skills are supposed to bring utility and augment the class abilities, not be depended upon to make use of your primary weapon skills.

A good fix would be to switch LF and RtL. Make LF the number four skill on offhand dagger, remove the damage component, and give it an AoE blind, while lowering the CD to 30 seconds to keep it in line with CE. RtL can become a utility skill, give it damage equivalent to say Arcane Blast, keep the odd dual CD if they must, and make it break stuns. I would also make RtL do damage to anyone it hits in the path, and do AoE damage at the end.

That way, you channel CE, switch to Air and LF to the target. Makes for a much more organic and smooth playstyle. RtL as a stunbreaking gap closer/opener makes much more sense as a utility skill, adding damage as its not a teleport like Blink.

Anyone play D2? Make it like the Druid’s Hurricane, an AoE aura that moves with the player, doing its effect in the entire AoE. Here’s a list of the other changes:

1. as above, AoE aura. Does not lock out skills/utilities.
2. primary effect of Tornado is dependent on Attunement, but unlike Elementals, the effect changes as the Elementalist switches. For example, a Firenado would inflict burning on whoever it touches, an Airnado would inflict blind, a Waternado would chill and an Earthnado would cripple.
3. other effects of the ’Nado would include the Stability, which is a nice “clutch” boon to have, and since its Elite is likely only to be able to be used once or at most twice if its a big or important fight. All Nados would also keep the Blowout and Whirl Combo Finisher.
4. add projectile destruction (not reflection) to the Tornado. It makes a lot more sense that arrows and such fired into a tornado are redirected or destroyed then reflected right back at the initial firing point.

I’m sure there are other possible changes, but those are the few I could think of.

With the MF, its a decent all round PvE armor, with enough stats and damage (if you focus on Air for Precision and use Cavalier’s of the Valkyrie trinkets/back) that you won’t notice too much of a slowdown in kill speed, as well as a buff to general survivability.

I like having a set for the simple fact that as ANet buffs and nerfs builds, skills, traits and gear weights, the Celestial will be the one armor set that will always retain SOME effectiveness. Call it insurance armor if you like.

That being said, once ANet removes MF from Celestial (and especially with no other additions to counter the stat loss) its appeal will lessen some, but will still act as a good buffer against game changes. For example, if ANet ever makes condition damage on an Ele the meta, Celestial will allow you to use the build while you acquire Carrion or Rabid (or even Rampager’s) gear. But in high end PvE, where 1 hit KOs are common (i.e. high Fractals) it makes sense to always run full Berserker’s with Ruby Orbs or Scholar Runes.

I can login in to existing characters just fine. However, when trying to create a new character, I keep getting the “login servers are down” message along with the error code in the title?

Whats up?

I posted about this around two to three months back IIRC. The problem is not attunements themselves, but the skills. To be “masters of versatility” the Elementalist would need four attunements with clearly defined roles. Fire as AoE, Air as single target, Water as heal and CC, Earth as protection and condition.

But as it stands, each attunement on every weapon offers a hodgepodge of damage skills with certain “flavors” that makes you think ANet originally intended the Ele to be versatile, but due to time and budget constraints we got the current version.

To be clear, by having 4 attunements that in general all do some damage, with a design that encourages quick swapping and non-specialization, build variety will be lax and players will always be disappointed by the sub-par damage. This design absolutely encourages meta-gaming and min/maxing to eke out every last bit of damage to compare to classes that only have ten skills to work with, and trait lines that are complimentary to each other, rather than exclusionary as the Ele’s are now. This is compounded by the problem of the weapons also not having a clearly defined role, for example Staff Air is quite counter-intuitive to the other three, with much less AoE, again compounded by Staff Air being very CC oriented, despite supposedly being the high damage single target attunement.

If ANet wants to “fix” the Ele to truly be a nuker with a high risk/high reward style of gameplay, while keeping the lowest base armor and health, than the attunements need to be made useful for specific situations, rather than having to use all four on every mob. Fire should have five skills per weapon that are all high damage AoE attacks. Air should have three skills that are high damage single target attacks, with the remaining two being mobility oriented (Updraft as a combo of CC and Swiftness is a great template). Water should have only one damage skill, the AA (Water Blast is a great example of a good dual purpose skill) with the rest being heal and/or chill and other CCs. Earth should have two high damaging condition appliers (Dust Devil being a good template, but eliminate the direct damage and instead make it apply blind and bleed) with the rest being hard CC and protection. Making many of the skills sequence skills like Rock Barrier→Hurl would also greatly enhance versatility, such as giving Flamewall some sort of burst sequence similar to Temporal Curtain, or Frost Aura a sequence allowing you to manually detonate it chilling nearby enemies and giving Frost Armor to up to 5 nearby allies.

A design like that would give each attunement a more clearly defined role, allowing the Ele to switch to each attunement as needed, rather than being forced to utilize twice as many skills to still perform at a sub-par level to other classes. So the Ele would stay in Fire while blasting a Skale burrow, switch to Air when the den mother appears, switch to Earth once damage starts to mount for protection and blinds, switch to Water to heal and slow down the enemy, and if all else fails switch back to Air to escape.

By not putting damage on every skill, ANet would not have to worry about Ele damage ramping up over every other class via attunement dancing while still preserving this style of play with smart trait design that takes advantage of it. By giving each attunement a clearly defined role, you open up play to both the attunement dancers (primarily for boons and trait benefits, not direct skill damage), and the specialists who choose one or two elements.

Long term you might want to look at all Celestial as a possibility, since its been said that ANet will be removing Magic Find thereby buffing up the remaining stats a bit to compensate.

I think a few people have done the numbers, and Celestial, from a min/max perspective on all traits is clearly superior. yes, its not focused into three traits like Berserker’s or Rampager’s, but from pure total stats Celestial is clearly superior.

Point is, a base of Celestial gear, then mix and match other gear to suit is not a bad long term goal (given how fused quartz works). In PvE, you can do fine will all Zerker and Ruby Orbs, as long as you pick the right traits (such as Vigor) and can dodge and manage CC options well. In WvWvW, you can even run the same if you NEVER leave your zerg, as being caught out in even a 1v1 with no Vitality or Toughness is almost a surefire ticket to Downed state.

I plan on getting all Celestial at some point, primarily armor and then weapons, and use my trinket and back slot to switch out for what I need most. IME, a base of around 1400 Toughness in PvE, and 1600 in WvWvW is necessary to be viable, and shouldn’t be too tough to get. With easy access to Fury and Might, not to mention Bloodlust sigil and then switching out to Force, damage is usually not too bad even in full PVT gear, since Power is our best offensive stat by far. But IIRC, even with a full Celestial setup, you’re not losing out too significantly on Power, and you acquire a boatload of critical damage. Since the new hot builds utilize 30 point in Air, adding some crit chance in trinkets, and making sure you can access good Fury uptime will sort out your damage issues.

If the only thing ANet did was to change the Staff Air #1 skill to an Emperor Palpatine AoE Lightning Storm channel, we’d be set.

POWAH!

Maximum Extreme. Because the Ele is simply the most awesome profession.

Go full Berzerker, get a staff (also berzerker), and follow the zerg. Point your big circles at the enemy, get bags. Apparently it is ANet’s intention to make Eles into fragile, low damage, AoE capped Arrow Carts.

Sadly, the trend of Ele balance is quickly following the GW1 style, where the only competitive build was the ER bonder/healer.

SharadSun.3089:

Elementalist was not meant to be a roaming profession. They were meant to be the versatile, glassy damage dealers; i.e., mages. Being able to 900-range gapclose three times and completely shut down any opponent without stability AND having that much spike damage AND survivability makes the Elementalist, in many players’ opinions, the single most powerful class.

Now, that may not be true.

You contradict your own argument and expect credibility? The arguments above are very poor, and not based on evidence.

The build that caused the issue was the bunker build, which had/has very low damage compared to any other profession. The hardest hitting ability is a 3.25 sec cast time AoE that is hugely telegraphed and easily avoidable, not to mention low damage.

The only way for an Ele to have damage that is an actual threat is to build very glassy, which means high attunement CDs, no survivability, and the damage is STILL subpar to many other builds on various professions.

The misconception of Ele OPness is based on two factors:

1. Bunker builds holding points in PvP, which is a function of survivability, not damage. Guardians always did it better, but I guess the idea of a clothie being a tank is anathema to other players. If a player builds a profession to be a tank, the community says he shouldn’t have that option, and it gets nerfed? WTF. Why even have toughness, healing power and vitality on the Ele at all then, if bunker is not supposed to be viable?

2. The 0/10/0/30/30 builds in full exotics and ascended gear pwning scrubs and uplevels in WvWvW, making videos of said slaughter, and then the community believing that what is actually taking place is between equally geared and skilled players, leading to the misconception of the Ele being OP.

2b. Player’s opinions. People are always looking for the path of least resistance. When a profession like the Ele, built to survive and bunker comes along, it certainly takes away the ability for whiny tweens to get their free kills and stroke their kittens. Whenever I read comments about Ele’s being OP, it always is in that voice of the teenage kid playing Counter Strike while bunny hopping with the AWP and using aimbot saying over chat, “ITS A LEGITIMATE STRATEGY!” Just because a lot of people, who are not very smart, all get together and agree that they’re right, does not make it right. An argument from authority or popularity is one of the most basic logical fallacies, and people who cite this as their reasoning usually lack critical thought processes and certainly have no idea what they’re talking about.

Benji.9203:

Play 30/30/x/x/x easiest build by far. Just yesterday I had a 1v10 with this build. Health didn’t even drop below 70%. After the massacre I took on an incoming zerg. Was able to down half before another zerg came in to contain me. I’m telling you man 30/30/yolo build is so OP and so easy its ridic. Did you know the number 11 grandmaster fire trait has a 50% chance to instantly kill opposing players IRL I don’t even know how this trait wasn’t nerfed by now. IMO it should be reduced to 25%. Hopefully then well see some real balance.

Tragically, this is the thought process and standard of evidence provided by people asking for Ele nerfs. Captain Hyperbole is the mascot for the “Ele is OP” crowd.

Ralathar.7236:

You say that, but if allowed to free cast I can quite literally down entire zergs of people. Meteor Storm, Glyph of Storms, Fire Burst, Ice Bow (same story as meteor storm only far more concentrated, eruption, ice spike. If I cast this on a zerg, people go down. I’ve done it time and time and time again.

It isn’t a question, it isn’t a guess, it’s a certainty that a single ele can wreck an immobile zerg even if they heal. The damage output in an aoe is really high and when you end in water you not only continue to regen the hp of people around you but you throw 3k ice spikes on their head every few seconds.

Its funny. I read this and think “must be lower tier WvWvW, for surely no one is dumb enough to sit in the same spot for 30 or more seconds to let this ‘burst’ damage occur.”

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion, that the Ele is a profession that is absolutely unforgiving and completely depends on player skill. Unlike certain other professions, such as Guardian or Warrior, which many have said can win with auto-attack, the Ele will not play well unless the player plays the profession to the hilt.

Makes a lot of sense. And then it brings me to the balancing arguments in the first place, the idea that Thieves troll the Ele boards for more nerfs and easier kills, that Eles are OP in some fashion, etc. The majority of Ele nerfs have their origins in PvP gameplay, and these nerfs carry over to PvE, which in many respects might as well be two different games, given the differences of human ingenuity as compared to somewhat weak AI.

So using one player’s WvWvW experience on a lower tier server has about as much bearing on tier 1 play as PvP experience has on PvE play. And this is something the community needs to get its head around, and stop making false assertions, comments based on zero evidence, hyperbolic arguments designed to draw heated debate over non-issues, etc.

Personal experience and bias cannot be the yardstick of balance, every time I see a thread whining about ANY profession being OP, it makes me gnash my teeth a bit, precisely because 100% of those threads have nothing more substantive than “Profession A ganked me, I am teh awesome, must be A is OP, NERF NAOW!!1”

Coming up on a year, every profession has major bugs STILL, professions like the Ele and Engy have been hit hard by the nerfbat with no rhyme or reason, and rather than focus on balance to make the game both enjoyable and e-sport capable, we see more BLTC items, more stuff added to RNG boxes, and stuff like Canach’s lair which honestly was completely underwhelming. If this game is going to survive in the MMO arena, ANet needs to get its act together and fix the foundation before adding more fluff.

Still, a mix isn’t bad. I’d advise not focusing on condition damage as an Ele, our damage conditions (burn and bleed) are either easily maintained duration wise, or outperformed by others such as Necros.

So focus on direct damage, with enough survivability to do said damage. Knight’s is good because it gives you that defensive boost along with power and precision. Valkyrie is also good for the added vitality, along with the critical damage synergy to precision.

A nice mix is to go Knight’s on the armor, Berserker on the weapons, and Celestial on the jewelry. With the recent nerfs to Ele survivability, Azurite Orbs might go well with Knight’s armor for the vitality boost.

PistolWhip.2697:

If this is the case, then wouldn’t the best form of balance be making sure that every class has the same level of skill capping? Just a thought, I find this notion interesting.

Impossible.

Case in point, I was watching the SOAC tournaments on YouTube, specifically the Guardians Vs. Mesmers.

Everyone agrees more or less that Mesmers are exceptionally strong bordering on OP. The Guardians roflstomped the Mesmers repeatedly, with an entire match seeing only one Guardian get downed, but not stomped, even when three Mesmers were working together.

Commentators agreed on a few points, that the Guardian team was experienced, and had a great plan, whereas the Mesmers had not really worked together before and their “coach” gave quite poor build advice prior to the match.

But watching that video, if you ignore the comments and were just looking at it as a spectator and possibly being a dev with an eye to balance, would probably conclude that Mesmers are extremely underpowered and need a significant buff to bring them in line with even just Rangers.

And that’s the problem with the game, the balance devs, the players (especially the ones on these forums) and the class design. A class that is technically OP can still be crushed by skilled players, whereas underpowered classes can still be used to dominate if played by skilled players, and the problem is that the aforementioned groups can’t tell the difference. To people who’ve been schooled by an Ele, ALL Ele players are daphoenix. To people that have been roflstomped by Mesmers, ALL Mesmer players are osianic. They take one experience due in large part to their own inadequacy, proceed to rationalize it to protect their fragile ego, illogically conclude that the class that beat them couldn’t have done so because the player was better, it HAD to be an OP class, then come to the forums to complain about it until something is done.

The best form of balance is to get a 20 or so group of devs or interns, make their job nothing but playing all professions equally, then report back. Playtesting and balance should have been hashed out prior to release, not still being ham-fisted whack a mole patch releases coming up on a year later. That the playerbase hasn’t abandoned the game entirely due to such a debacle is a testament to the loyalty of the players, not ANet’s game design.

Ralathar.7236:

Pure speed over a long distance is not the same as constant in fight mobility. Ele’s are certainly not out in the cold for long distance mobility being middle of the pack in your statement. Meaning you can go alot further before being caught if you do it right.

False. Wasn’t true before the recent nerf, especially not true afterwards. The Ele’s movement skills are on some of, if not the, highest skill cooldowns.

They also have really good in fight mobility, beaten out by thief but warrior mobility outside of combat and warrior mobility IN COMBAT are two different things. Warriors and rangers are far more susceptible to CC effects for example and combat also means weapon swap timers apply. You also won’t see Rangers and Warriors applying chill, cripple, and stun to their chasers without so much as missing a step.

Ele’s can be CC’d as normal in all but RtL (and yes some CC works even then), which is now on a crazy CD, and still buggy as hell (RtL a vet karka and 7 out of 10 times I should have hit but do not). Out of 20 skills on Staff there is one movement skill, and backwards at that. None on Scepter or Focus. Only one on Dagger that doesn’t require a target (Burning Speed). Shortest CD is Magnetic Leap on a 12s CD, but 9 times out of 10 misses the target.

Chill and Cripple don’t last long enough to make up for the deficit in movement skills. And saying the Ele has really good mobility in either in or out of combat when compared to professions like Thief and Warrior is both patently false first of all, and second you’re comparing mobility on a profession (Ele) with the lowest health, armor and no inherent profession defense (i.e. Stealth, Death Shroud, Aegis, etc.) to other professions that do have MUCH better defense which alleviates the need for mobility both in and out of combat. The other reason Rangers and Warriors don’t need Chill and Cripple is because their movement skills work much better, tend to not bug out on terrain or obstacles nearly as much, have significantly shorter CDs in many cases, and have much higher innate defense (armor, health) along with profession mechanics or design that helps them survive.

juno.1840:

This is not the same as swapping back and forth between two attunements of course, but consider that we effectively have four weapon sets. If you could switch back and forth between any two as fast as a spec’d out warrior can on his weapon sets, that would be a little much wouldn’t you agree?

The marginal utility of being able to swap from Greatsword to Rifle is much greater than switching from Earth to Fire. Just the range difference alone is a huge benefit.

Ele’s really don’t have four weapon sets, what we actually have is one set of skills that is divided damage wise into fourths, and each fourth is a palette shifted copy of the others, with a few differences here and there for flavor.

ThiBash.5634:

There’s plenty of versatility, but it’s hidden in the combo fields.

Versatility should not be hidden. Combo fields and finishers should add to the usefulness of a profession, not be the defining factor on its effectiveness. Nor should a class be balanced around making efficient use of every combo field all the time.

This was my gripe with the EA nerf(s). Not every build took it, and yet when used properly it was quite effective, ADDING to the Ele’s versatility. Then it was whine-nerfed into marginal usefulness, because people don’t like the Ele’s sole defense mechanism, healing.

If a complete re-design is not an option then how about something like differentiate the type of attacks by weapon, but vary the ranges? So Daggers are PBAoE weapons, Scepter is single target, Focus purely defensive, and Staff ground targeted AoE. Then vary the ranges by attunement, so an Ele can melee in Fire and Earth, but Water and Air are longer range attacks. That way, no matter the weapon an Ele has options at differing ranges, then the choice of weapon boils down to what you’re going after, such as Scepter/Focus being excellent in sPvP but also good in 1v1s and 1v2s in WvWvW, whereas the majority of PvE and WvWvW would be better served using Daggers or Staff. Heck, it would be awesome to change Dagger Air AA to an electrical Nova type spell, and be able to port over the Nova-Sorc from Diablo 2 lol. Or having a skill like GW1’s Starburst in Dagger Fire, where hitting more than one opponent would refund Endurance or something.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ok, so basically the problem the Ele is running into, with respect to build diversity, is that you’re too squishy if you don’t go bunker. You HAVE to spec heavily into defense just to operate at a baseline level. Consequently, raising the Ele’s baseline defensive capabilities (while proportionately reducing how much defense you get by speccing bunker) would help open up build options.

Yes, that’s exactly the problem. But how do you raise the Ele’s defensive capabilities? If you do it via traits, then bunkers will get it too. If you do it via skill nerfs or buffs, then bunkers will get it too. Basically, anything you do to the Ele affects the strongest builds the least, while marginalizing the weaker builds that don’t spec for defense. That’s my entire point really is to come up with a viable alternative way to design the class so that multiple builds are in fact viable, which would require giving every build active defense options in the skills, and reducing the amount of defense inherent in traits. Which will require a big re-design, because at the moment the Ele’s defense is centered healing through damage and cleansing. The Ele needs a LOT more options for defense, such as Smoke or Dark fields, more access to Magnetic Aura via skill combos and Auras in general to give bunker spec a run for its money.

The Ele is not alone in being able to do everything (Damage, Control, Support) all the time. Everyone’s built like this. It’s a cornerstone of the game that every single character can provide a measure of all three aspects regardless of spec. You can certainly focus but no one gets to shunt all their Damage into Support or all their Control into Damage. Abilities in GW2 are messy and complex precisely to allow them to be big and flashy without resulting in Assassins that instagib squishies or Dervishes invulnerable to virtually everything.

But each profession does it differently. A Warrior doesn’t Bleed with Axes, and doesn’t engage in melee with a Rifle. Each weapon on other professions has a relatively specific function, and while some overlap (bows and axes on Rangers for example) that’s due to them having access to many more weapons and combinations. An Ele only has access to four different weapon types, with very polarized ranges and design. The fact that the Ele has four swaps on each weapon combo should be a hint that there needs to be more specialization on skills to enable the Ele to actually deal with situations as they arise.

So, the Ele’s weapon skills have their foci per Attunement but keep the foundational complexity on which the system is built (which leaves room for high skill ceilings and personal expression). To put it simply, Churning Earth doesn’t have only 1000 base damage because it has so many other aspects to it. It has so many other aspects to it because it’s not allowed to have more than 1000 base damage.

Having all skills do a little damage, a little CC and a little of everything else doesn’t make for complexity, or a high skill ceiling, it allows players to mash buttons and still do okay. An Ele should play out like a chess match, always a few steps ahead of your opponent, not a noob button mashing on a fighting game. And fighting games are a great example actually of how I’d like the Ele to play out. In many of those types, you’ll have four to six basic moves, but how you chain them together determines a lot, and there are special moves and other things you can do, all from those six basic moves.

Knowing how to get the most out of those six basic attacks determines your skill with the game. And they can be pretty darn complex, with very high skill ceilings. However, the Ele plays exactly the opposite of this, since all available skills in general have a little bit of everything on them. No matter what attunement you’re in, you’ll be able to do some damage, some CC, some fields or finishers, etc.

I mean, what’s REALLY the difference between switching between all four attunements to maximize DPS, and staying in Fire and doing the same? Just pushing more buttons, using artificial complexity to try to approach the same baseline that every other profession has. Why even have four attunements and four skill bars per weapon set when they all generally do the same thing? Why not differentiate them as is done on other professions? Especially when you consider the Ele has no active defense built in as other professions do?

Heard of a guy here in Florida who at a local fair spent over $3000 on a carnival game.

He started out with $30 or so, lost it all, hit the ATM, lost that, got infuriated so went and raided his savings.

Lost all of that, eventually complained and the fair manager returned about $600 to him along with the prize he was trying to win, an XBox.

Of course the guy tried to sue and lost in court, incurring more costs.

Point is, people are stupid, ANet knows this thanks to marketing and statistics companies, and like any company will prey on the suckers for guaranteed cash flow.

Its interesting when you put up GW1 to GW2 and compare their microtransactions. GW1 to my recollection had none of this RNG baloney, what you paid for was what you got. I realize my refusal to participate in the Gem Store due to the RNG nature is largely symbolic, I highly doubt my not purchasing with real money a Molten Pick will hurt ANet’s bottom line. But I will say that I think its reprehensible to put in the cash shop items that CANNOT be earned via gameplay, especially things like weapon skins that the enemies you’re mowing down in droves should be dropping left and right.

And before anyone says the gold-to-gem conversion, please. Unless you’re lucky enough to get a precursor drop to sell on the AH, its unlikely any of the majority of the playerbase will ever acquire enough gold to max out bank and bag slots on a single character, much less several in addition to extra character slots. And that IS “buy to win” in a very real sense, it may not be stats but having more storage or alt space makes gameplay more efficient in the long run. Add to that the very real difficulty of farming anything in appreciable amounts also pushes players to spend real money, and its much more a shove than anything else.

Blaine Tog.8304:

You made a lot of points in a quick sequence. Would you rather I simply ignored them?

And again, just because I don’t agree with your proposal doesn’t mean I think the Ele couldn’t use some help. A bit less reliance on our active defenses and more universal access to active defenses would help open up our build options a LOT. That + trait cleanup + tuning would go a lot further than a radical redesign to give us nothing but boring, binary skills with a very low skill ceiling.

I’d rather you actually post something constructive and concrete rather than general stuff that every professions wants/needs. Not sure how relying less on active defense but having more access to such would help.

But you are either oblivious to, or missing on purpose the core problem of the Elementalist. It has double the skills of any other profession, yet those skills are designed the same as any other profession, meaning out-of-the-gate all Ele skills are watered down to at least half effectiveness, sometimes more if a potential combo is designated “OP.”

I mean, why have four attunements, with a plethora of skills, if all of them just boil down to the same usage as any other profession? A Warrior playing dual Axe plays very differently from a Warrior using a Rifle or Longbow, or even dual swords. Longbow Ranger plays very differently from a Sword/Torch Ranger.

An Ele, depending on the weapon, plays the same in every single attunement. Direct damage, a condition or two, some CC, maybe a movement skill on every attunement, on every weapon. You keep saying that my idea would lead to boring skills with low skill ceiling, but that’s entirely untrue. The flavor of “sameness” on Ele skills is quite overpowering, I mean Cone of Cold and Drake’s Breath are just colored differently, both do damage exactly the same while one heals and one inflicts burning. Not exactly a huge amount of skill required to use them, nor to differentiate between them based on F/X. But they do nearly the exact same thing, which defeats the whole purpose of basically having four weapon swaps. Regardless of which weapon an Ele is using, he’s putting all his big skills on cooldown every fight, because of the design limitations, instead of using skills tactically and situationally.

IF ANet took my design philosophy, each attunement would be highly specialized, differentiated, and require more skill to utilize correctly, due to the need to be more tactically aware. That way, no matter which weapon set the Ele picked, it would actually feel to the player as if they had options, rather than “if I get caught while in Staff I die” or “I have to build bunker to be able to survive since none of my attunements focus on defense”, etc., etc.

Blaine Tog.8304:

snip

If you’re going to only quote my stuff out of context and ignore all the explanation further down, then why even respond? You’re obviously not interested in improving the Ele, merely playing Negative Nancy.

Ralathar.7236:

Depends on your team composition.

Which is exactly how you don’t balance a profession. No one at ANet is balancing Thief Stealth around Engineer’s Smoke Bomb, or Warrior’s Adrenaline gain by standing in Fire fields.

Ele Staff for example should not require balance consideration around how many Guardians are using Might Blow at the time.

juno.1840:

One major problem with this approach is it actually discourages attunement switching. Why switch out of Fire in a fight with lots of trash mobs? Why switch out of air in a boss fight?

One of the more enjoyable aspects of ele to me is that I really have 20 weapon skills instead of 5 and it’s super cool to switch attunements every 3 seconds.

Your proposal takes some (not all) of the motivation away from that play style.

No that’s a fair point. My response would be that it entirely depends on what skills ANet would put in Water and Earth. For example, right now what is the most damaging skill you can use against a karka?

Magnetic Aura. A defensive skill, with an offensive twist.

Take your typical D/D build. Switches to Water for heals and maybe a Frozen Burst or Frost Aura, Air or Fire for a somewhat reliable movement skill and damage, Earth for some CC such as a knockdown or Cripple, and some blast finishers.

With my proposed changes, you’d still be doing all of that. Doing damage in Fire and Air, switching to Earth when you need some CC and defense, switching to Water when you miss or are out of dodges, then to another attunement with whichever movement skills you need, etc., etc.

Point is, even if its just lots of trash mobs, the Ele is low health and armor. You WILL need to switch to Earth for defensive measures, or Water for healing. Against a boss, you’ll need to do the same thing, and heck, you’ll switch to Fire or Earth just to lay down some combo fields for your teammates (especially if they add Smoke or Darkness fields to Earth and/or Water). As it is now, you have to quickly rotate through your attunements to maximize damage. With my proposed changes, you’d still quickly roll through attunements but with a specific purpose to each skill, rather than simply spamming 16 skills to aggregate the damage.

Blaine Tog.8304:

That said, you’re oversimplifying Churning Earth by a lot.

Pros:
1) Gives a cripple field.
2) Blast finisher
3) Huge damage (I believe our highest single-hit damage)
4) Applies many Bleed stacks
5) Huge AoE
6) Can Lightning Flash during channel to move AoE

Cons:
1) Long channel time
2) Moderate cooldown
2) AoE emanates from the Ele

It’s the definition of a high-risk, high-reward skill. Skillcap comes in managing the cons in order to maximize the pros, as well as ability to take advantage of the Blast Finisher and make use of Lightning Flash tricks. But there’s still room for self-expression. One Ele might use Lightning Flash at the very last moment while another might intentionally start in the center of a group after he’s pretty sure all interrupts have been used to cause a scramble off a point. Heck, if you’re chasing a group and can get ahead of them, you could even use the Cripple Field to shut down their escape.

And you’re overemphasizing CE by a lot. A cripple field that really has no value if used in conjunction with Lightning Flash. A Blast Finisher that isn’t taking advantage of the fields you put down if you use LF. Huge damage, lol. It makes the screen shake, but damage? No. Bleed stacks? One condition removal, which of course tend to come off cooldown well before CE is ready to go again. Huge AoE, which of course people can just stroll out of due to the 3.25s cast time. Unless you use LF, which again diminishes many of the skills pros in the first place.

Also, now that the Ele has been nerfed so much, about the only profession the Ele can get ahead of to use the Cripple Field as an “escape shut down” is the Necromancer.

Its a high risk, no reward skill, which is the same vein for many of the Ele skills due to having double the skills of other professions with the same homogenity of non-damage variables like conditions and status effects. To keep “balance” requires the watering down of ALL Ele skills and traits, since making them even close to comparable to other classes would make the Ele far too powerful. This is a problem with how skills on the Ele are the same, design-wise, as any other class.

Its akin to designing the Warrior to do less damage than a Ranger unless the Warrior ALWAYS blows every weapon skill CD on both weapon sets as soon as it is up. That’s not tactical or engaging gameplay, that’s simplistic min-maxing on every encounter.

And, moving all damage out of Earth and making them defensive skills doesn’t necessarily mean that CE has to be removed, nor a lack of “self-expression” with the skill. I’d envision CE as a shorter cast PBAoE field, that persists for, say 8 seconds after casting. It would pulse every second or two, applying Weakness, Crippled and maybe a few Bleed stack(s), and Knockdown. And would double as a Smoke Field. So you lose the majority of damage, but gain a powerful field, and very strong offensive CC, which is in line with my view of Earth as “active defense.” It could still be used as a chokepoint holder, a means to help lockdown a boss, could still be used with LF for a variety of options, and also as a defensive measure by combo blasting in the field. The stats on this skill could then be balanced without regard to other damaging skills, and moderate the Ele’s overall defensive abilities.

Like I’ve said, I understand that many don’t like change, but what is going to be the end result a year or two from now of the Ele profession, when its pretty obvious that the ANet devs just don’t know how to handle it? When their stated intent is to nerf bunker and bring other build options up, and their changes nerf bunker very little while wrecking any other build option, its plain that the basic design for the class is either not understood or too difficult to manage within the framework of the other professions. A change like I propose makes balance easier, gives more depth and variety to Ele gameplay, and in the long run probably more fun for everyone. But by all means, argue to the contrary while people are shelving their Eles left and right for other, easier classes.

Leo G.4501:

Which is why I’d think it’s more beneficial and more likely to shift around the traits instead. Consider that the recent Warrior update deleted one trait, combined 2 and added two new traits, altering the traits for Ele seems more logical.

Oh I absolutely agree that traits need to be looked at in depth., and on every profession. Minor traits need to be useful regardless of build, either making them work regardless of attunement, or in the case of my proposed changes, making offensive traits (like Electric Discharge) work in Fire and Air, with defensive traits working in Water and Earth. In fact, making traits work with two attunements would make more sense, because then it roughly equates to other profession’s traits working per weapon set, half the available skills each.

But the problem is, and the whole reason I envisioned such a change in the first place, that any change made to the Ele profession is always going to favor the bunker build types. And the reason is that the Ele has no inherent defense like Death Shroud or Stealth or lots of blocks, so Eles to survive (ESPECIALLY in D/D) are pretty much required to build tanky with lots of boon support including plenty of Vigor and Protection uptime.

If ANet made changes like I posited, than Water and Earth become the Ele’s active defense attunements, giving any build regardless of weapon or trait selection defensive capabilities to match other professions.

Yes, there are some simpler ways to go about it, such as giving the Ele more combo field access, such as Smoke and Dark, and making skills like Ice Spike, Meteor Shower, Shatterstone, Frozen Burst, etc. and any others that explode or cause movement in some way into combo finishers. Having more access to Blindness as an active defense would be a step, and having access to Stealth (i.e. invisibility) seems fitting for a wizard type anyways.

Honestly, I don’t know which way is the best way. To me, giving the Ele specific capabilities and specializing the attunements for certain tasks seems the most fitting, given every other RPG type I’ve ever played. Yes, GW1 had plenty of attack skills in each trait line, but then you had in general seven other bodies to tank for you! And even then, thematically Earth was always used as a tanking/farming build, Water as a snarer in GvG, Air as a blindbot, and Fire was kind of meh, although the E/A Starburster was fun in Alliance Battles. Which is why I think the GW2 Ele needs to have these boiled down to their essence rather than the general homogenity of skills and effects as they are now. Plus, as I mentioned above, by specializing the attunements, traits will follow suit, and more builds will open up because defense and survivability will no longer just be a function of healing damage in Water.

Leo G.4501:

I think the reason your suggestion seems a bit out there is because a lot of traits, playstyles and effects would be orphaned.

What do you do with boons on swap? Spells on swap? There are traits like improved damage to vulnerable foes while attuned to water, good lot that’d do if water has no damaging skills and just a 20% increase to vulnerable foes regardless of attunement seems a bit strong for an Adept trait.

That’s a valid concern, but I disagree on the impact. Boons on swap can be handled like many other traits, internal cooldown. Weapon swap sigils already have a 9s icd, so no issue there. And exactly how many bunker eles do you see taking the improved damage while vulnerable trait? I’ve actually used it, however its not used while casting Cone of Cold or Vapor Blade, its used after inflicting vulnerability, channeling CE or Fire Grab, and switching to Water at the last moment. So even if there were no damaging skills in Water, but ways to inflict vulnerability, then this trait would still be viable, although not as useful as others. The VAST majority of players out there take the same traits over others, because they’re so much stronger and more useful in a larger variety of situations.

I get that some people don’t like change, I know I don’t like it when skills and traits are nerfed into utter uselessness because of the whining of a vocal minority. The traits in general on the Ele are overall pretty useless except in a very few cases. Heck, just look at some of the Ele’s minor traits and tell me when these are useful in a majority of situations:

Flame Barrier
Zephyr’s Speed
Enduring Damage

Or some of the major traits:

One with Fire
One with Air
Soothing Winds
Tempest Defense
Grounded
Stone Splinters
Shard of Ice
Stop Drop and Roll
Soothing Wave
Vigorous Scepter
Windborne Dagger
Arcane Energy

The point is, everyone can sit here and say how difficult it is to make changes (it isn’t) but for a long term solution for a profession like the Ele with a profession mechanic that just screams for specialization ANet will have to take a good long look at the current playstyle and make some decisions. Bottom line is, anything they do to the class in its current state will always make bunkering the go to build. Its a critical problem of class design. By making Water and Earth specialized defensive attunements available on demand, then any build becomes viable because they’re not paper targets when they get focused.

ThiBash.5634:

The suggestion is way too complex to be implemented. Try some simpler fixes.

How is it more complex to make the skills simpler and more specific, access to each attunement at will relegating cooldown balancing solely to skills, and making each attunement provide a specific function that follows a logical theme?

In my mind that’s much simpler and easier than trying to memorize the different attributes of multipurpose skills across 20 skills per weapon.

Instead of just leaving it at “its too hard” why not suggest some simpler fixes?

Blaine Tog.8304:

Still better than having one designated button that everyone has to use.

That’s already how it is, with all professions. Each skill does something specific, take Temporal Curtain for example. The skill itself either gives a boon to an ally or inflicts a condition on a foe, but in either case, it only does one thing to whomever steps across it. The extras all come from other options, such as the sequence skill Into the Void, triggering combos from OTHER skills on it, or using traits to extend its functionality.

And those types of options could be present on the “updated” Ele skills as well.

Every Ele player in the game uses Churning Earth as a big nuke, there’s no alternate way to use this skill. It does act as a blast finisher, but adding a bit of Might from a 30s CD skill is VERY tertiary to its primary function.

And with the skills being as underpowered as they are, every Ele player is forced to use optimal rotations to even approach being competitive. With a change as I posit however, that doesn’t need to change. An Ele could use Eruption as a blast finisher in a Lava Font or Geyser just like now, but the Eruption would not do any damage, just cause bleeding or possibly CC conditions while the Lava Font does the real damage. The kicker to a system like this would be that the Ele could be much more versatile and not have to worry about putting an attunement on cooldown, and make it more in line with other professions who mostly have to worry about skill cooldowns only.

In my opinion, there are many more upsides to having 20 unique skills that do something specific, as opposed to 20 skills that all more or less do the same thing (i.e. some damage, some CC, etc.) Yes, even now certain attunements are more focused one way or another, I’m simply suggesting taking that focus to its logical conclusion to both enhance gameplay in multiple aspects as well as simplify balancing long term for ANet.

Blaine Tog.8304:

How do you propose making this work without forcing the Ele to lock himself out of a given facets of combat for 9-15 seconds? Simply removing Attunement cooldowns seems like it would require watering down all the Ele’s weapon skills rather significantly.

But that’s just it, I don’t think it necessarily would mean that conclusion. As I pointed out in my above post, when you look at other profession’s skills, they have multiple parts to them, such as CC, straight up damage, condition application and so forth.

And for professions that have a weapon swap, but only five skills for a given range (i.e. Hammer being melee, Rifle being ranged) each skill needs to have multiple parts to it.

The Ele on the other hand is locked into a range, with the same skill design as other professions but on 20 skills instead of 5. For balance purposes, this necessarily means each individual skill must be about a quarter of the strength.

If you remove the multi-purpose nature of Ele skills, and instead spread them across attunements, then you have individually more powerful skills, however their effects are highly specific.

Which means you can then remove attunement CDs because each attunement provides a specific function. You wouldn’t go into Air attunement when facing 2 or more foes, likewise going into Fire makes little sense when DPSing a boss. An Ele would switch to Earth to absorb or reflect a big hit, and Water for healing and Chill.

Your assertion about watering down Ele weapon skills only fits IF the same multi-purpose skills exist on each attunement and weapon. By separating out each aspect of a skill and placing it in the appropriate element, then there’s no reason to attunement hop to maximize DPS, because it would no longer be possible. If you wanted to AoE DPS, Fire is the only option, single target, Air is the only option, etc.

In the long run, this type of system would make ANet’s job balancing the skills much easier, as they wouldn’t have to worry so much about the interplay of skills. And it would open up the opportunity for more build options, as balancing the trait system would also be much more specific. For example, you wouldn’t need to worry about the interplay of Piercing Shards, Weak Spot and using Churning Earth because CE (or the skill that replaces it) would no longer deal damage.

Leo G.4501:

I’m not really following this.

It’s basically saying “Give us more damage, more CC, more healing on shorter cooldown…just isolate it to specific attunements.”

If anything, this would make Arcane line more mandatory as you’ll want to be able to swap into these attunement specialties more often. Perhaps you can lay down some more theoreticals on me?

It’s a fun thought exercise but I don’t think it’s likely to come about.

Well, like I said in the OP, something this big would have to be knocked about at ANet before simply laying it on the public. It would be akin to the Mesmer update in GW1.

But so far, from what I’m reading people are concerned about the burst potential, the usual suspects claiming OP, etc. The way I look at it is basically that by scattering unspecialized skills across four attunements, ANet forces an attunement swapping skill spam on cooldown style of gameplay. While I have no problem with this, its a bad situation when the whole class dynamic allows for no other competitive style.

And technically speaking, I’m not asking for more of anything. Take you average Ele “rotation” utilizing skill combos and switching across all four attunements. You’re using double or triple the skills of other classes, to accomplish almost the same effects. You’re locked out of two or even three attunements due to the CD, you’ve done your “burst” and stuff is still coming at you, because despite what all the usual suspects would have you believe, Ele damage is mediocre at best. But the point is that the damage you would normally get from Fire→Earth is put entirely into Fire, while Earth is replaced with defensive skills, to give the Ele something to bring it in line with defenses such as Death Shroud, Stealth and blocks.

What I’m saying is to move all (or the majority of) damage out of Water and Earth into Fire and Air. This will make the offensive power of the Ele easier to balance. CC goes to Water, defense to Earth, with exceptions as noted in my OP. This will make the defense easier to balance as well, because the skills are much more specialized and their effects much more specific. It would mean that sometimes an Ele would not even need to switch to Air for example if not facing a single target (or targets strung out in a line), or if there’s no need to CC an enemy (such as in the case of bosses) then switching to Water or Earth is pointless.

As for Arcana, remove the CD reduction (adding some other benefit in its place) and get rid of attunement swapping CD entirely (or make it like kit swapping). This would enable the Ele to switch attunements as needed, which will be decided not by the need to spam skills like crazy just for low damage, but as the situation demands, making for more tactical gameplay. For example, say the Ele is in Staff Fire nuking a trebuchet, and sees a couple of enemies advancing on his position. He switches to Earth to put up a magnetic aura in case of ranged damage (putting the skill on cooldown), then seeing he’s probably outnumbered switches to Air to escape. He could switch to Earth or Water to CC them then back to Fire to try and kill the incoming enemies, but then some of the survival skills are on CD. If the Ele gets overwhelmed and needs CC, he could switch back to Water but those skills might still be on CD. So this allows ANet to balance individual skills without having to worry about cross-attunement abuse.

My overall aim for this type of change is to make the gameplay of the Ele less spammy, and more like playing a chess match, having to out-think one’s opponent. Obviously ANet would have to balance skill effects and cooldowns but the point is by isolating and specializing the attunements, you make the Ele a more versatile class without making it overpowered. Take the Mesmer’s Phase Retreat for example. Generates a resource (clone), moves the caster, is a combo finisher, and the clone itself causes damage. A fine multipurpose skill. My proposal is that this type of functionality be spread across the four attunements the Ele has, making the player responsible for DPS, healing, CC and defense via active specific skill use from each specialized attunement, and not secondary or tertiary effects on watered down skills spread across the attunements.

Blackhat.4016:

There is one thing you forgot about:

CD.

All elementalist skills have pretty high CDs which means you will switch to another attunement once you used most of the skills in one attunement. The auto attacks are close to useless which means every time you are not switching attunements you are wasting time without really contributing to the fight.

That’s why spamming skills is so effective compared to staying in one attunement.

Besides that they would need to rework the majority of fire/air/earth traits to make them worth spending points on, reduce the base attunement recharge rate to make the Arcana trait line less important, increase the base HP to make non-bunker builds viable and so on.

I like the ideas behind your suggestions but there is so much to do I highly doubt changing some skills will be the solution to all these problems.

No I didn’t forget, it seemed obvious. If you consider that to be effective at damage, an Ele generally in D/D is using Fire and Earth on cooldown. Well if you move all the damage to Fire, with Earth becoming defensive, then obviously the cooldowns would be reduced for both, since neither depends on the other. And with increased damage and reduced cooldowns, there would no longer be a necessity to spam. Yes, your damage would mostly come from Fire and Air, but I think that’s a small price to pay for true versatility.

And some of those other changes may be necessary, but I think with my proposed changes you’d be fine with health totals for example, because now you’d have dedicated CC (Water) and defense (Earth) on hand.

1. Fire becomes the go to AoE damage attunement. As an example: Dagger #1 would be changed to a Fire Nova emanating from the Ele, Dagger #2 would have a larger spread (I.e an actual cone), Dagger #3 is fine, except maybe make the fire trail wider. Dagger #4 is fine as a damaging fire field, and Dagger #5 becomes akin to a Guardian’s Binding Blade, throw out some fiery daggers, causing burning, with a sequence AoE pull that ends with a fire blast. The damage on all these skills would be increased due to the loss of damage from Water and Earth. Burning is located here.

2. Air becomes the high damage single target attunement, with most of the skills being channeled lightning effects allowing movement while casting, and anyone passing through the lightning gets damaged. Blind, Daze and Vulnerability conditions are located here.

3. Water becomes the healing attunement with any area skill inflicting Chill on foes. The Water AA heals the caster, and any friendlies caught in the splash while damaging foes. But the other four skills are all healing/CC focused, with zero damage.

4. Earth becomes the defensive attunement, focusing on offensive debilitating conditions, blocks and reflects. Some damage output could be gained from this attunement, especially a build focused on condition damage, but the primary goal of this attunement in any weapon set is defensive. Most of the skills in here would either tack on conditions like Bleed, Weakness and Cripple, or cause status effects like Knockdown or Launch. And at least a couple Earth skills in each set would be of the “magnetic” type allowing reflects such as Magnetic Aura, or purely last ditch defense like Obsidian Flesh. The Earth AA might be a small damage skill that stacks Weakness and Crippled; in effect an offensive CC. Again, all these changes would affect each weapon set.

5. The #3 skill on each weapon set should possess some sort of movement, ideally with either a Leap Finisher effect or Blast Finisher effect. Skills like Burning Speed and RtL for example would all go on #3. Water could get a “Ice Slide” skill, and similar skills would be altered for Scepter and Staff.

6. The #4 skill on each weapon set should ideally have an aura component appropriate to each attunement. In this way, a Staff or Scepter user would also have reliable access to a shocking aura effect for example. This could be ameliorated or removed entirely if #7 is done, since Eles could then use auras much more reliably and frequently via combo fielding.

7. Access to more combo fields and finishers. Its pretty obvious that a skill like Shatterstone or Ice Spike would be very appropriate as a blast combo finisher, whereas a skill like Unsteady Ground makes perfect sense as a Smoke field, especially if its AoE is made similar to Frozen Ground.

I’m sure there’s many other ways to better improve the Ele, but the short list above is what I came up with in a short period of brainstorming. And before all the haters and trolls cry “OP” at the top of their lungs, the tl;dr version is this:

Make Fire and Air damage, Water healing/Chill, Earth defense/condition spam. Water and Earth would possess little to no damage.

In this way, someone can run a “bunker” build by focusing on Earth and Water for point holding, a DPSer by focusing on Fire and Air, or a hybrid of various sorts by combining attunements. But by giving each attunement a specific function, rather than the hodgepodge of damage, defense and CC across all attunements, you force Ele players to think and play much more tactically, rather than skill spamming as quickly as possible. An Ele will have to think before switching out of Earth attunement for example, and be situationally aware as to whether more enemies are incoming, can he get away with DPSing, etc. With changes like the ones above, it would also be MUCH easier to balance, as each attunement has a specific function, just like the weapons on other professions.

This is an attempt to work out a comprehensive fix to the Elementalist class as a whole.

I’m sure many are aware of both sides of the many issues that plague Eles, and I think I’ve got it nailed down as to what the problem is. Homogenous skills. If you look at the Eles skill selection, each 1-5 regardless of weapon set all do about the same thing. There’s some low impact damage, a smattering of movement effects, an assortment of CC, and all sprinkled over all four attunements.

Why not make the Ele live up to its original idea as a Jack of All Trades? My solution would be to take each weapon, and each attunement and really distill the skills down to necessary effects that fit with a theme.

What I mean by this is to start with the attunements, and figure out what each should do in each weapon set. For example, Fire is supposed to be AoE damage. On D/D that means PBAoE, on Staff long range AoE, S/F mid-range AoE that presents obstacles to enemies. Air would then be all about single target damage, with more cleaving effects in D/D, Water would be the healing and some CC attunement, while Earth would be all about defense, bleeds and cripples.

Now you might say, that’s how it already is. And what I’m saying is, completely (or nearly so) remove the damage from Water and Earth attunements, except perhaps a light damage AA that inflicts a condition. Then add more damage to Fire and Air to compensate, and distinguish between AoE and single target/cleaving on those two.

We’ve seen that the problem with the Ele is the trait system that makes the strongest build (in this case the D/D bunker) always the most resistant to nerfing, while all other builds suffer more. If you buff damage, the D/D gets it, if you nerf survivability, the D/D still possesses the most out of any other viable builds, etc., etc.

So what I am proposing is that the devs make the attunements unique, or more so, to add flavor to the profession. This would also make Eles less reliant on stance dancing for mediocre damage output and instead use attunement switching for specific roles.

How I would personally do it is the following: