Guild Wars 2

Shaogin.2679:

Kyon.9735:

The bias is strong with this one. Go play power builds and see for yourself. “Fix the builds” meaning go all out on anti-condi traits, runes, and sigils and deal next to no damage while most condi builds can be both tanky and actually deal decent~great damage at the same time?

Scrapper is able to deal high damage because of natural might stacking through hammer AA and very great hammer skills which both act defensively and offensively and are already being QQed by other players as well. Defending a broken build by using another broken build as an example is pointless. Just face it, Scrappers are in a “good spot” just because of how good hammer is and not all classes have that same capability. Scrappers actually need buffs on other areas outside of hammer builds (which are probably gonna get nerfed again).

You actually just verified my point. Yes, Scrapper and other power builds are broken, just as there are broken condi builds. Do we nerf direct damage across the board because of broken power builds? No, we nerf the build.

I am merely suggesting that condi builds receive the same treatment. There are a total of 3 professions out of 9 that are effectively using condi builds in the meta. Instead of being biased against condi damage, just balance the condi application and/or sustain of those 3 professions.

P.S. – My favorite builds to play are Power Rifle Engi, Flamethower Condi Engi, and Power Necro. There is no bias here, sorry to burst that bubble. I just get annoyed by the fact that people push out so much false information concerning condi damage and want it nerfed into oblivion instead of taking the logical approach and balancing the builds that are over-performing. It would suck if my Flamethrower Engi became even more useless than it is now just because other condi professions had too much condi application and sustain.

Fact – Condi is balanced around PvE for Fractals and Raids wherein Boss HP and Armor are too high but are incomparable to player characters in PvP. Just look at how they buffed confusion.

It is as you say. Either bring some nerfs on condi or its rate of application for PvP. And yes, scrappers need nerfs on hammer too but they deserve more buffs to other areas. Non-hammer Scrappers are in such a sad state right now with all these CC and projectile hate.

TL;DR – I get that condi builds should be tanky because they are supposed to deal DoT but in reality, their DPS are way too good for their tankiness. Same goes for scrapper hammer.

PS.
Why can’t Anet just separate balancing for condi’s rate of application/dps in PvP? They were able to balance some stuff separately in the past (Ele’s signet of restoration/cleansing wave/healing ripple)

The bias is strong with this one. Go play power builds and see for yourself. “Fix the builds” meaning go all out on anti-condi traits, runes, and sigils and deal next to no damage while most condi builds can be both tanky and actually deal decent~great damage at the same time?

Scrapper is able to deal high damage because of natural might stacking through hammer AA and very great hammer skills which both act defensively and offensively and are already being QQed by other players as well. Defending a broken build by using another broken build as an example is pointless. Just face it, Scrappers are in a “good spot” just because of how good hammer is and not all classes have that same capability. Scrappers actually need buffs on other areas outside of hammer builds (which are probably gonna get nerfed again).

Eval.2371:

Toughness needs to be universal in reduction.

Not gonna happen since conditions were reintroduced to counter high armor builds. However, it turns out that conditions are good against both high and low armor builds.

Would’ve been awesome if conditions actually dealt damage depending on the target’s armor value but I guess that would totally kill the servers due to more computations (WvW issues).

RodOfDeath.5247:

I’m just surprised JQ is still “very high” status. I watched three massive guilds from JQ pour into our bay today against all 25 of us FA guys. How are they not full status?

This population + server merge thing isn’t working out. Beta is gonna last forever lol

I think you should blame your server’s fair weather players. JQ has like one of the worst NA coverage among higher tier servers but somehow they’re able to keep up the PPT during NA. Some level of steamrolling during SEA is kinda expected though because that’s JQ’s prime time.

Shaogin.2679:

Sezz.3029:

condi dmg is passive, and has to go.

You’re thinking of Boons actually. Boons are passive in this game. Condi damage is applied the exact same why Direct damage is applied. The only difference is you take Direct damage all at once, and the Condi damage is dealt over a period of time.

Jourdelune.7456:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

season 3 reapers has been nerfed and is much more balanced now than season 2 reapers.

also, if you focus the reaper in team fights they will go down rather quickly.

OP QQ is not about 1 Reaper. It’s about team that stack 4 condition builds.

In 2014, if you did that your team was doing zero damage.

Shoutbow war (or bunker guard) + DD ele was enough to cleanses 4 condi users in team fights.

We need another META build that can AOE cleanses to “even the fields”. So, if you queue and see you only got a Tempest, switch to that new meta build (hint buff shouts on Guardian to cleanses more and put the traits that give HP in the master slot, not grand master).

Well actually 3 Reapers supported by a Tempest. Reapers are still easy to focus down, unless the Tempest is there to support them. So which profession is the real problem here? Makes no sense to nerf the Reaper that is relying on the Tempest for support.

Well didn’t OP say that Tempests were optional for total steamrolling which means they aren’t really necessary but are more than welcome to have?

I don’t really understand how it would be easy to focus down 2 or more necros with all the cripple, chill, and weakness spam lying around.

#BasedNecro

Hesacon.8735:

Jourdelune.7456:

Hesacon.8735:

Rune of Lyssa turns 5 conditions into boons. They’re basically helping you.

Not everyone run “instant” low cool-down elite skill. 45 sec CD on Lyssa don’t help much.

Maybe it’s just an issue of imagination. People make a build and think it’s fantastic, then get upset because they die. Rather thank try to resolve the weaknesses in their build they blame the system where counters exist.

45 seconds is a long time, but how long do spvp fights last? You can down people in a few seconds with concentrated fire.

If there was a little imagination on how to negate the effects of conditions and conditions stopped being so strong, people would run fewer condition builds.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Build

2 sigils remove conditions. 2 runes remove conditions. 1 rune reduces condition duration. And this is before traits or utilities.

And then again don’t forget that some skills that should apply 2 conditions are able to apply more than 5 conditions through traits and runes/sigils as well on an equal or much lower CD than everything you have listed above. Even if you use that setup you mentioned, you are just prolonging your death because you will eventually be overrun by its CD.

Always look at both sides of the coin.

I see 2 main problems for condi builds:
1. They can be naturally tanky while still having the ability to deal potent DPS compared to power builds.
2. This is a problem for both power and condi builds – Too much AoE

People can argue that power builds should bring cleanses but the rate of condition application tips the balance in favor of those tanky condi builds.

Epic editing paired with epic good ‘ol fights. If Anet can somehow bring the balance back I wish they’re release this kind of videos for advertisement. I mean I totally got chills just from the intro.

We can all just dream on about zerg busting guilds who run boonshare.

Anet removed boonshare on Tempest Warhorn which was one of its selling point. Why don’t they just do the same for boon sharing related skills for mesmers? Only specific boons can be shared.

Or better yet, don’t give resistance boon properties. Give it a fixed duration. I know it can be stripped right now but it’s not as easy at it seems to strip a whole guild when they have like perma 8+ boons them.

IMO condi builds need to add more “offensive” stats so they will need to put less stats on defense. They can be very tanky and also have the ability to condi burst which is not available for most power builds.

Remove expertise and lower overall condition damage. Allow conditions to crit. That way non offensive condi builds can still be tanky but deal less damage and people can still condi burst if they choose do take precision for it.

Can confirm that just healing/sharing boons doesn’t net you as much bags but I still do get the events like dolyak kills etc even by just tagging a little.

Not really sure but most ele skills are multi-hit so you won’t be able to really utilize it. Try using some marauder armors.

I suggest playing WvW if you just want the old D/D nostalgia

So a full zerk Tempest with probably around 12~14k hp and around 1900~ armor should’t be hitting hard on another glass player? Not to mention it takes 3.75s to fully cast it and roots the player while casting… and oh, there’s that large red circle that tells you “something big is gonna hit there” too.

Well, maybe for once you should use your head and stop stacking with your frontline if you have low armor and below 15k HP.

Legendofzelda.1278:

What I think we need is something that involves our utilities like conjures to be made viable without adding anything that uses auras because if you buff stuff with auras of course that us just going to add to the ele bunker but if you buff utilities/traits somehow that is not part of the ele heal build then you might get a different build come out of it.

I would love to play pvp ele but not bunker but I also don’t want ele bunker destroyed lol

Well as long as nothing changes on other trait lines that will give us survivability, all other non-bunker builds that use water/tempest pretty much gets destroyed as well when bunker ele gets nerfed.

Well for me the complexity is playing Ele/Tenpest on non meta builds. I’ve tried (and still trying) to find better builds. They’re obviously not as strong at meta but it’s a lot more fun.

My edit doesn’t seem to get saved so I’m posting a new one.

For example.

What if Eles had a Fire trait that heals them when they apply burn and attack burning foes? What if there was a trait that removed X condi every Y seconds while inside a fire field? Of course, water will need to be nerfed and some traits must be changed into more offensive ones.

There are a lot of different mechanics that can be added for each line for every class. I believe these kind of mechanics will make things more interesting and reduce reliancy on specific lines.

Yes, making these core traits baseline as they are now would make them OP which is why I recommend nerfing them while distributing he sustain and cleanse on every trait line.

They can also put similar traits with different mechanics on every traitline if they won’t nerf them and make them baseline. It will still be up to the player if they would want to take those or be more offensive with their trait choices. Bottomline is that we should be given other options for survivability.

I agree that in a sense, the old trait system (minus the bonus stats) are good because it lets people use whatever they want. I still like Anet’s vision of specialization, they just need to implement it better.

@Sarrs
I don’t really see it as child-proofing but rather opening up more options.

Finally. I hope JQ goes back to T2 then T1… nobody in T3 is having any kind of fun right now because of the difference in sheer numbers and in builds.

love T3 roamers though, they don’t run full cheese unlike roamers in T1 and T2. Just need to get off some salt and stop spamming emotes lol.

Hexinx.1872:

Not sure if you are already on this:

Render Sampling: Native

and turn down Character Model Limit/Quality

They are the only two I can think of that really help reduce lag on your side.

Are you the only one on your server experiencing it?

B-but I didn’t buy a new PC months ago to keep on playing on low settings :’)

On a serious note, I’ve been monitoring my connection for a while now. I have a constant 190~250ms which is still manageable. However as soon as fights break out my GW2 ping spikes between 500 up to 2k which eventually leads to a DC. However, resource monitor tells me that I have constant 200~ ping during that time. I guess I’ll try lowering my graphics again..

Regarding Warrior being OP, I did say that some traits will need to be nerfed to balance it out and my suggestions are mere suggestions. I’m pretty sure you and a lot of others have a better idea than the one I gave

When creating builds, I realized that we think too much about defense in general which is why we are limiting ourselves with our builds. With better baseline defense and core mechanics, we can actually start thinking about offense and as we all know, having bunkers hit bunkers isn’t fun. But what can we do? Without these bunker setups we can be easily killed even by bunkers.

Anet will need to stop the discrepancy between “offensive” and “defensive” trait lines. Eles need to think that Fire is for burn and fire based damage, Air for Lightning and direct damage, and Water is for Chill and Water based damage. This is what we have originally been promised for HoT. “I am a Tempest specializing in Earth and Water” should’ve meant specializing in those element based DPS, not a standard norm for “I am a Tempest who doesn’t die in the first 5 seconds”. This goes for all classes.

I know this will be a long term investment as a lot of changes need to be done and traits to be added but hey, it’s better than thinking that we’ll be using the same traits for the next few years until this game totally dies because of lack of build diversity.

P.S – Sorry for using Tempest as an example a lot. Obviously, I main one so it’s easier to give general examples.

As long as Anet keeps “game changing” traits in “mandatory” trait lines. By this, I mean specific traits are mandatory to be able to survive. I don’t like to use metabattle as a reference but take a peek at it and you’ll see every class for every “meta-viable” build has a mandatory trait line.

Ele – Water
Mesmer – Inspiration
Guardian – Valor
Engineer – Alchemy
Necro – Soul Reaping
Ranger – Nature Magic
Warrior – Defense
Thief – Deadly Arts/Trickery

These Trait lines have become mandatory to at least survive. Eles shouldn’t think that Water is for healing and for cleanse. Same for Defense for Warriors. Anet needs to add more sustain and cleanse traits on other trait lines and fix the core mechanics of these classes. Of course, there will be nerfs to these current meta traits to balance it out.

For something more detailed, I won’t be listing all classes as it has already become a long wall of text but here’s some examples:

• Ele – Lowest base HP and Armor? Oh well let’s give them a lot of healing and access to defensive boons. Well, too bad for you they’re only in Water, Earth, and Arcana. Oh, Tempest doesn’t take advantage of attunement swapping? Well there’s still Earth and Water.

• Warrior – So… your defensive utilities have long CD? Go get Defense for sustain and cleanse for a start so you have something while they’re on cooldown.

• Necro – So you have 2 HP bars. What, that’s not enough? Well, there’s Soul Reaping to boost your core mechanic.

Now imagine if this was the case.

• Ele – Elemental Attunement and Healing Ripple are now core mechanics. Elemental attunement and Healing Ripple will only affect the caster and HR heal is reduced by 50%. Traiting to water will increase Healing Ripple by 50% and now heals allies. Traiting to Arcana will now share Elemental Attunement’s boons. New sustain and cleanse traits with different mechanics are added to offensive Trait lines. Some water traits are changed to more offensive ones.

• Warrior – Adrenal Health and Cleansing Ire are now core mechanics. Nerf Adrenal Health healing by 50%. Cleansing Ire does not increase adrenaline when hit. Traiting Defense will increase Adrenal Health’s healing by 50% and Cleansing Ire increases adrenaline when hit. New sustain, cleanse, and adrenaline related traits with different mechanics are added to offensive Trait lines. Some Defense traits are changed into offensive ones with an active mechanic.

On the other hand, they can just add similar traits on offensive lines with different mechanics. Powercreep should be nerfed though.

There are a lot of other changes they can do besides what I suggested but this will not be enough if they don’t balance other skills and utilities. If these are added to the core mechanics, Elementalists will now look at Fire to increase their burn damage and Air for direct damage. Warriors can now boost the potential of other weapons. With this kind of changes, people will start looking at other traits and will finally create build diversity.

TL;DR – Give offensive traits better sustain and cleanse and/or rework class mechanics. It’s been 3 years and these mandatory trait lines have almost never changed.

@Glenstorm
Sustain – We need self sustain in general, not party sustain so I’d say no to anything that heals more allies.

Bonus stats on attunements – We have those already on different traits and most people will probably not agree for more passive bonuses.

Pyromancer’s Puisance – Looks good as we have many fire fields. Similar to the past suggestion to remove X condis every Y seconds while in a fire field. However, the CDs of our blast finishers makes this worse than the former.

Soothing Mist – No. If anything, it might get nerfed to self only.

Stop Drop and Roll – Without ICD or exclusive effect of dodging while in water this will be OP. I’d rather put chill inducing skills on Piercing Shards.

Healing Ripple – No.

Soothing Power – No more additional sustain on Water traits. I think many of us would like to see offensive traits here so chill uptime would be good. Kinda think 33% is too much.

Rock Solid – No more passive defenses especially damage reduction. We can keep a perma uptime with this with GoEP and Sigil of Earth.

Another nerf suggestion that kills the only viable builds which hurts non-meta builds more without a single attempt for compensation on other areas.

I doubt anyone is having fun here in JQ. Everyone was literally shocked and angered at reset to see that we actually dropped to T3. I can assure you people want to leave this tier as quick as possible because I’ve seen JQ/AR walking yaks up until 4am GMT+8 which never happened before (JQ has like one of the worst EU coverage).

As a roamer, I was excited at first though. T1 and T2 roamers mostly consist of of people running condi cheese builds and I was sick of it. I’m actually enjoying seeing a lot of zerk thieves and mesmers in T3. Sadly, I see less and less roamers as the days go by. People are actually concerned how this pairing will affect the SBI and SoS links as players from your server will probably stop playing until next linking or stop playing at all which is a lose-lose situation for all WvW players.

TL;DR – Nobody is really happy with this linking and you can only blame Anet for their matchup logic. We know it ourselves that we’re simply winning because of coverage and the difference in builds between T1/T2 and T3.

lil devils x.6071:

morrolan.9608:

SkyShroud.2865:

DeWolfe.2174:

SkyShroud.2865:

How about something crazier, lose some of your SEA so you won’t be full?

It’s always something negative with you isn’kitten Break this community, break that World, all you want to do is break everything other than your own. How very non awesome of you friend.

Negative? Nah, I’m being extremely objective. If you lose one map queue of casual SEA, you can fill up your NA with 1 additional map queue. It is completely logical.

So what you expect JQ to force a sea guild to move off it then wait for at least a month and try to recruit more NA? Do you not see how unreasonable that is? We love our sea guilds on JQ.

You can send FOO over to Mag anytime. We love them LONG time. XD

Hell no. We love them harder!

Nice info. As long as Anet keeps it up we’ll only need stats for “how frequent each build has been used” in the future.

Wolfric.9380:

If you wan´t it very simple with only a few changes.

Rework powerful aura to something completely diffrent and offensive like Ice mastery: your water spells apply 1s of chill on critical hits.

Yes this is a serious nerf to aurashare (or some say auraspam ^^). For support you now are left with condi removal on regen or more healing.

Add -20% shout duration to tempestious aria.

—
Beside that a lot of buffs to arcane and fire will help. Also utilities and elite need help .. but ..

Ele weapons are the last thing that currently need help. OK warhorn is still clunky and scepter could get some small changes again but it´s not a primary problem anymore.

I, for one, believe that we need more cleanses on weapons mainly scepter and WH. We already have bad base HP to counter condis and we don’t want to be forced into water anymore for cleanses. I really believe we need core mechanic access to boons (mainly prot and regen) and cleanses (through weapon skills) to reduce reliancy on traits. Think of it as the real compensation to having the lowest base HP and Armor as we learned it the hard way that 20 weapon skills are not enough for non bunker builds.

I’ve been pushing on the idea of non damage modifier offensive traits like chill on water traits too. I’m playing a chill/burn based hybrid DD in WvW with runes of elementalist and sigil of hydromancy. It’s not meta strong level but it’s a lot of fun!

Meanwhile those grieve troll threads are still in the PvP subforum. I hope you’re reading this you incompetent fool. Move this back as it needs feedback from non ele players too.

snaplemouton.1294:

Mr Godlike.6098:

You miss understood me:) I wasn’t talking about giving bigger health pool to DH and thief. I just said that they kill people with similar health pools because they have better sustain by the design and can do their thing with pure dps amulets.

I see, still it’s not a matter of traits and abilities. We have what it take to survive. What we don’t have is a fundamental class mechanic that allow us to survive in PvP.

We’re glass cannon without any ranged capabilities…
Staff is meant for PvE, Scepter is garbage and we have no Power ranged single hander.
When it comes to melee, Dagger is unreliable as F with tiny hit box compared to other melee weapons for other classes that has huge cleave.
All of this is exacerbated by the fact we have cloth and the lowest health pool in the game.
A melee glass cannon that can’t even connect its attacks.

Just my opinion but MH Dagger is really good (except Fire/Water/Earth Auto Attacks) and it’s not even really melee.

Ele has bad sustain outside of bunker healer builds. Healing skills are useless considering the fact that they have the lowest base HP and Armor in the game. They need to dump stats into vit/toughness to at least make the heals useful which results into having lower stats for DPS. This is the only reason why Eles are pidgeonholed into supports aside from the fact that they make great supports.

Here are some possible stand alone buffs meaning not all of them need to be added. Listed buffs barely affect the current meta support Tempest.

Solution A: Rework class mechanics. 4 attunements and 20 weapon skills are not enough to carry bad base stats. Nerf to Aquatic Benevolence is a given.
• Make Elemental Attunement a core mechanic but limited to the Elementalist. Will need to trait to Arcana to be able to share boons with it.
• Make Healing Ripple a core mechanic but nerf the healing by 50% and heals self only. Will need to trait water to bring the healing back to its current level and heal allies.

Reasoning – Eles now have base survivability through boons and small heal without traiting to water. A decent ele will take advantage of attunement swapping again.

Solution B: Add self sustain and self condition removal on Fire/Air/Arcane traits. All buffs are added effects to the current ones.

• Persisting Flames – Remove X condition every Y seconds while inside a fire field.
• Pyromancer’s Puisance – Applying burn and attacking burning foes heals you.
• Tempest Defense – Get 2 seconds of Protection when CC’ed on a 5 second ICD.
• Reworked Elemental Attunement – Elemental Attunement now shares boons to allies. Heal yourself for a small amount when applying boons.
• Tempestuos Aria – Reduce Shout CD by 20%.
• Elemental Bastion – Increase base healing from auras by X. Decrease scaling to balance it out. End result – having the same healing power pre and post balance results to the same overall healing.

Solution C: Add more condition removal on weapon skills and add small buffs.
• Dragon’s Tooth – Increase radius to 240. Increase delay by 0.5s
• Phoenix – Now removes 2 conditions.
• Water Trident – Remove 1 condition.
• Heat Sync – Convert up to 2 conditions into boons.
• Dust Storm – Reduce condition damage by 20% while inside the area of effect.

Solution D : Open up new builds. Eles are supposed to be the Kings of Fire and Ice and control.
• Soft Control Ele – Give non-damage multiplier offensive traits on Water trait line like adding chance to chill your opponents and increase chill duration. Add more chill related effects on water weapon skills.
• Hard Control Ele – Rework Signets/Glyphs so that they apply Hard CC (Freeze/KD/KB) instead.

Solution E: Balance utility Cooldowns.
• Balance Arcane Skills
• Balance Cantrips (who needs 10 stacks of stab on a 75s CD?)

Solution F: Remove some nerfs
• Ride the Lightning – Reduce CD and/or make it work like Ancestral Grace to remove travel-related bugs
• Other skills

Edit – Forgot to give props to FrownyClown for some of these suggestions. He has a lot more good offensive buffs for Fire/Air/Arcana trait lines which I may share later.

SkyShroud.2865:

DeWolfe.2174:

SkyShroud.2865:

JQ had two map of tiny queue during SEA. It was said that JQ only run 30-40 size during their previous link. If that is true, the amount of casuals in JQ is huge and that explain why JQ is full and should continue to be full, along with the dormant populations.

Hello… JQ’s had the best Sea in game since forever! How about complain to the Dev’s to unlink JQ? This way we can replace the NA we lost the week before the last linking. Then return to T1 where we’re supposed to be.

How about something crazier, lose some of your SEA so you won’t be full?

fishball.7204:

JQ always had 1-2 map queue vs BG/TC (in T1) in SEA, they’re not really fairweather. Those FOO, WvW FUG guys always show up regardless of ppt score.

Well, I was told by JQ people themselves that they always get outman during T2 SEA on their previous link. Only on this reset they are queuing hard.

Well I guess people don’t want to fall lower and are doing something about it instead of QQing devs for once. I was surprised to see JQ and a lot of AR people (guild tags I’ve never seen) walk yaks to bay and drive off 20-30 man zergs while staying pinless at 4am in the morning.

People hating on a build that put all of its stats, traits, and utilities into supporting without suggesting any balance compensation on other areas are just plain stupid. Sure, Tempest heals and reflects needs to be toned down but not without proper compensation on other areas.

It’s sad that most people just say nerf this, nerf that. Go play Ele and see how much sustain it has if not fully traited for it. Do we really want to see Eles in the dumps for another whole year like they did pre-celestial amulet?

Yasha.5963:

Kyon.9735:

Yasha.5963:

Silv.9207:

If you think that they’re Unkillable Now you had to look at what they was in the past years with the Celestial Amulet and a tons of different OP builds that was discovered time by time. The last one with the Celestial Tempest: unkillable and with a insane dps in both direct and condition damage.

Now is a shadow of it was.
But still a powerfull shadow

This kittenes me off all the more, why is it that ever since about 6 months after launch eles have had these near immortal builds?

Let’s take a trip to the past.
1. Soldier/Cleric DD Bunker – Early stages of the game, people were bound to find good builds. Unkillable? Yes. It was a full bunker build that could only kill people who were stupid enough to stay. If you take a closer look as well, barely anyone used CCs and condis at that time. All cantrips being stun breaks were OP though.
2. S/x Ele – Became “viable” for a short amount of time but eventually died off because of thieves and shatter mesmers
3. Celestial/Runes of Stength DD – Celestial was not OP. It was the ability to get high dps by stacking might which comes natural for Ele.
4. Celestial Auramancer – Ok, you got this one right. It’s not that unkillable but it deals a hell of a lot of damage for a support.
5. Cleric Auramancer – Same like old DD Cleric/Soldier (Minus the Vit), Great sustain but can’t hurt a fly. Would be in some trouble if got +1’ed by non bunker builds.

The only near immortal build is the classic DD Soldier/Cleric Ele. But the main reason for that is that people barely knew how to play the game.

??? You just wrote that every meta ele build was OP, and then conclude that the initial meta build was the only problematic one.

OP? Since when was S/X considered OP? I just listed why they were considered great, not why they were unkillable. If it’s too hard then let me restate it.

1. Classic DD -Pure bunker, no DPS. Wins outsustain Fights.
2. S/X near immortal? Oh please…
3. Celestial DD – Would people even play this if there was no might stacking meta? Without might stacks this thing is nothing but a weaker bunker compared to turret engis and spirit rangers in the old meta.
4. Celestial Auramancer – Tanky stuff buffed by HoT powercreep so it has dps.
5. Pure healer who still has counters

Summary – Celestial eles were played not because they were immortal but rather because they could fight back (might stacks and powercreep) and do more things other than bunkering cap points. Take that damage away and they’d be hardly played due to lack of stability as a bunker. Only exception is cleric auramancer because they support too hard and I won’t be surprised to see them nerfed.

This is a lot better compared to 2012 2013 zerk meta where you would be kicked from pug dungeons if you were not running warrior/guardian/mesmer with full lvl80 zerk gears. They’ve made a lot of progress already and has also completely destroyed PvP and WvW by balancing on PvE. What else do you really want?

Yasha.5963:

Silv.9207:

If you think that they’re Unkillable Now you had to look at what they was in the past years with the Celestial Amulet and a tons of different OP builds that was discovered time by time. The last one with the Celestial Tempest: unkillable and with a insane dps in both direct and condition damage.

Now is a shadow of it was.
But still a powerfull shadow

This kittenes me off all the more, why is it that ever since about 6 months after launch eles have had these near immortal builds?

Let’s take a trip to the past.
1. Soldier/Cleric DD Bunker – Early stages of the game, people were bound to find good builds. Unkillable? Yes. It was a full bunker build that could only kill people who were stupid enough to stay. If you take a closer look as well, barely anyone used CCs and condis at that time. All cantrips being stun breaks were OP though.
2. S/x Ele – Became “viable” for a short amount of time but eventually died off because of thieves and shatter mesmers
3. Celestial/Runes of Stength DD – Celestial was not OP. It was the ability to get high dps by stacking might which comes natural for Ele.
4. Celestial Auramancer – Ok, you got this one right. It’s not that unkillable but it deals a hell of a lot of damage for a support.
5. Cleric Auramancer – Same like old DD Cleric/Soldier (Minus the Vit), Great sustain but can’t hurt a fly. Would be in some trouble if got +1’ed by non bunker builds.

The only near immortal build is the classic DD Soldier/Cleric Ele. But the main reason for that is that people barely knew how to play the game.

Aside from 0 build diversity for most classes, I think they have drastically reduced the skill cap to cater off new players. However, this in turn has shrugged most vets off.

I’m no pro for Anet to care about me but I know a lot of players who will return to PvP once they have toned down the powercreep, condi spam, and AoE cleave.

EremiteAngel.9765:

honestly I feel power reapers are short changed badly by this change of having to dodge a berserker’s primal burst.

We only got two dodges. and in that window, we have to down the berserker cycling through his immune pains and condi.

Every class aside from DD has two main dodges rofl. And as far as I can see, both Reapers and Berserkers are at the top of the food chain.

I know this will never happen. Nerf the power creep, AoE cleave and condi damage and spam. Then nerf healing and sustain to balance it out.

IMO they should have kept conditions as supporting damage and made pierce defense effects (higher damage to high armor enemies) to counter high armor. That way, running glass would still be viable.

Pre-HoT you still somehow needed to hit your skills if you wanted to kill someone, not it’s just 80% AoE spam.

Stealth is totally out of an Elementalist’s lore and I didn’t even think about it. Elementalist as a whole doesn’t need to be changed but rather dish out stuff that has been exclusive to Water and Earth traits. I believe what we really need is to add more base survivability to compensate for having the lowest base HP and Armor in the game. I added condition removal on some weapon skills instead of stuffing all of them in trait lines. Also added a couple of self heals through boon application and a more offensive one, applying burn and attacking burning enemies.

I purposely chose to somewhat replicate some traits, skills, and effects already available to other classes. Why? Because I’m a dev myself and massive changes will require a lot more time so I chose to improve what we already have and add some that we don’t but already exist in the game.

Baseline is, most these suggestions listed are stand alone enough so they can be added little by little to reduce a sudden surge in difference of playstyle and sudden shift of power.

Thanks for your opinion.

KhainPride.3987:

Cecilia.5179:

Idk man, I saw a warrior the other night running gs and a/sh, and he was unkillable 1v1. My Scrapper couldn’t even scratch him. I ended up needing help from a pug to bring him down, and even that was really close. So much regen.

What server was this warrior from?

Also first of all, berserker is the easiest class to play right now and survive on. Every noob warrior is playing it and get carried by AoE arcing divider granting them 3 stacks of adrenal health with a fast aoe.

Nerf adrenal health to 1 stack per burst during berserker mode.

Secondly, our mobility needs complete overwork. Most classes can go out of combat on will and demand. Make skills like rush and savage leap cast faster and go from point A to B much faster.

Make warriors sprint grant 33% movement speed instead of 25%.

A person with swiftness will travel same or more distance than a warrior with 25% movement speed while using whirlwind and rush to cover ground.

Please tell me you’re kidding with those suggestions on mobility.

@rezzet
I kind of disagree. Buffing Condis for PvE is what started this mayhem.

Anet wanted to make condi viable in PvE but they should have known players don’t have boss-level HP and armor for that crap in PvP/WvW. Condis work great against glass and tanky players alike and their main stats were tanky as well. Anet slowly started buffing the powercreep to slow down this tanky condi meta but it totally destroyed non-tanky builds. Then came the celestial and might meta wherein everybody would deal decent power and condi damage while staying tanky at the same time. Slow and boring pace, they removed celestial and we’re back to squishy bugs against condi. Since most power builds were incompetent against condi, the celestial meta was changed to heavy bunker meta. Only specific counters can kill this bunker X, Anet probably decided to buff power again.

In the end, they buffed power which didn’t actually stop the condi meta, so now they have to raise everyone’s sustain.

TLDR – I see everything as a result of trying to counter condi builds damage and tankiness.

Condi builds too tanky -> buff power -> still dies to condi, buff self sustain -> everyone’s tanky now, buff power and condi more -> damagecreep

I’d totally vote for bringing down everybody to core level if it’s possible.

End Result: Builds that doesn’t dish out damage while staying tanky at the same time got destroyed. Rifle doesn’t have any defensive skills paired with the reflect meta and Scrapper doesn’t really synergize to anything outside of hammer.

There will never be a wall great enough to stop people from bunkering.

Well, this is more like a compilation though. They’re pretty much standalone and can work with or witht the other suggestions besides the nerfs to specific traits related to the new class mechanics. Just CTRL+F something that you think needs changes.

Rebalancing the Elementalist.

Here’s my futile attempt of suggesting balances for Elementalist (PvP/WvW) without buffing meta support builds too much. This focuses on buffing class mechanics, offensive trait lines and reducing reliability on Water and Earth traits. Ideas were not all from me. Most buffs to Fire and Arcane traits were from FrownyClown while a few were modified by me. Others were repeated suggestions here in the forum.

Our main problem – Elementalists have the lowest base HP and Armor in the game. To make up for that, we were given 20 different weapon skills and access to a wide variety of boons and healing. However, these defensive boons and healing have become more and more mandatory to survive but are mostly locked into defensive traits which is why we are forced to go bunker/support in PvP or WvW (outside of zergs).

Solution – Add much needed defensive traits, boons, and effects across weapons and skills. Buff offensive skills and traits that are of no use to the current bunker meta. Balance long CD skills.

Sub-motif – Make Elementalists the kings and queens of Fire and Ice as were supposed to be.

Class Mechanics
Our main class mechanic based on the official GW2 website is having access to 4 different attunements resulting into a lot of weapon skills. As we all know, having 20 weapon skills are not enough.

Elemental Attunement is now a class mechanic. Grant a boon to yourself when swapping attunements. Activate Healing Ripple (base healing lowered to 651) when swapping to water attunement.

Trait Changes

Tempest:
• Tempestuos Aria – ADD EFFECT – Reduce shout cooldown by 20%.
• Elemental Bastion – Increase base healing when applying auras by 200. Decrease healing power scaling to balance it out. End result – having the same healing power pre and post balance results to the same overall healing.

Water:
• Piercing Shards – ADD EFFECT: Critical Hits has a chance to chill an enemy. 5s CD, 30% chance on Critical Hit, 2s Duration.
• Healing Ripple – Remove the Heal. New Effect – Increase healing ripple effect by 50%.

Reasons for Healing Ripple changes – Since healing ripple is now a class mechanic, this removes the “mandatory need” to trait water for sustain. If the current healing ripple heals you now for 1302 without healing power, it will now heal for a base 651 if not traited to Water. Healing Ripple trait from water will increase the base healing back to 1302.

• Aquatic Benevolence – Reduce Outgoing healing to allies to 10%. (Elementalists gained a selfish class mechanic from Elemental Attunement, need to lower support ability).
• Soothing Power – ADD EFFECT – Increase chill duration by 20%. Apply 2s chill when interrupting an enemy. (Need opinions on this)

Earth:
• Rock Solid – Gain 1 stack of stability when attuning in and out of earth.

Fire:
• Burning Precision – Increase burn duration to 3s.
• Sunspot – Increase radius to 240.
• One With Fire – Activating a signet grants you Fire Aura. Blasting Fire fields grant you additional 1 might.
• Persisting Flames – ADD EFFECT – Remove 1 condition from yourself every 2 seconds while inside a fire field.
• Pyromancer’s Puisance – ADD EFFECT – Applying burn and attacking a burning foe heals you for 180 HP.

Air:
• Zephyr’s speed – Increase movement speed by 25% on all attunements.
• Tempest Defense – ADD EFFECT – Gain Protection (2s) When disabled. 5s ICD.
• Lightning Rod – ADD EFFECT – Increase duration of hard disables by 20%.

Arcana:
• Arcane Precision – Skills has a chance to apply a condition on hit. 20% chance, 5s ICD.
• Elemental Enchantment – Now synergizes with attunement recharge after using Overloads.
• Elemental Attunement – Nearby allies gain boons from Elemental Attunement when swapping attunements. Heal yourself when applying boons to yourself and your allies (35 HP)
• Elemental Surge – Change effect: Arcane skills remove 2 boons from enemies hit.
*Arcane Power will remove 1 boon per attack.

Skill Changes

Cantrips:
• Ether Renewal – Lower total cast time to 3s.
• Armor of Earth – Reduce CD to 60s. Reduce Stability stacks to 5. Reduce incoming direct damage by 5% and reduce incoming condition duration by 10% (6s).
• Lightning Flash – Reduce base damage (399 to 299). Reduce CD to 30s.
• Mist Form – Reduce CD to 60s. Apply 2s chill (1s ICD) when attacked while in mist form (Need opinions on this)
• Tornado – Reduce CD to 100s.

Signets: (Needs a lot of opinions)
• Signet of Fire – Passive: Add 2 stacks of torment. Passive: Daze your target for 1s.
• Signet of Water – Passive: Timer now starts after clearing a condition. Active: Freeze your target for 2s. Increase CD to 40s. Increase cast time to 1s.
• Signet of Earth – Active: Launches nearby foes (3 targets, 300 radius). CD increased to 50s. Breaks Stun.
• Signet of Air – Active: Teleport to your foe and stun them for 1s on a successful hit. 900 range, requires target (may not be in range, works like Phase Traversal). Increase CD to 30s. Breaks Stun.
• Signet of Restoration – Active: Create a water field around yourself and gain 3s regeneration. Field duration 2s. Radius 180.

Arcane:
• Arcane Power – Your next 5 attacks are unblockable.
• Arcane Shield – Reduce CD to 45 seconds. Blocks incoming attacks for 2s and can be self detonated. Reduce base damage from 399 to 320.

Weapon Skills

Dagger:
• Lightning Touch – Reduce cast time to 0.5s ADD EFFECT – Daze your target for 1s.
• Ride The Lightning – Reduce CD to 20s. Change to ground targetting. Blind foes upon hit (180 radius). Reduce damage from base 355 to 280. Now works like Ancestral Grace to remove travel-related bugs.
• Cone of Cold – ADD EFFECT – Chill enemies for 2s (can only be applied once).

Scepter:
• Dragon’s Tooth – Increase Radius to 240. Increase delay by 0.5s
• Phoenix – Now removes 1 boon from enemies hit.
• Shatterstone – Add a frost field before explosion (1s chill).
• Water Trident – Removes 1 condition.

Warhorn:
• Heat Sync – ADD EFFECT – Grants Fury (10s). Convert up to 2 conditions into boons from you and your allies.
• Wildfire – Increase animation speed and reduce burn damage. Ground Targetted. Increased pulses from 8 to 9. Remove 1 boon for every 3 pulses. Boon removal starts at 1st pulse. Cast Range – 600.
• Tidal Surge – Remove Delay. Reduce knockback to 180.
• Cyclone – Increase animation speed. Increase pull strength (similar to Temporal Curtain)
• Dust Storm – Ground Targetted. Reduce incoming condition damage by 20% while inside the area of effect. Reduce Bleed Damage. Cast Range – 600.

Summary
• Class Mechanics: Increased overall survivability by making Elemental Attunement and a weaker Healing Ripple a class mechanic.
• Fire Trait line: Increased burning application and added survivability options on GM traits exclusive to fire related skills. Reverted One with Fire and made might stacking better.
• Air Trait line: Increased overall mobility and defense when CCed.
• Earth Trait line: Didn’t really touch it aside from buffing Solid Rock to grant stability when attuning in and out of Earth.
• Water Trait line: Nerfed a couple of minor traits to balance the new class mechanics. Added chill effects.
• Arcane Trait line: Buffed offensive and defensive prowess by giving boon removal, small heal on boon application, and fixed synergy with overloads.
• Tempest Trait line: Increased offensive potential with shout cooldown and increased base survivability by rebalancing Elemental Bastion.
• Cantrips: Reduced cooldowns and added defensive effects.
• Signets: Changed the actives to be more useful and offensive. #BringBackTheControlEle
• Arcane: Reworked less used arcane skills and buffed Arcane Shield.
• Dagger: Improved mobility, added access to daze and more chill.
• Scepter: Added defensive and control effects.
• Warhorn: Buffed weaker skills, reduced clunkiness, and buffed defensive prowess.

Note: I know some of these look overpowered or underwhelming. Not all these needs to be implemented. I just hope Anet would pick up some of these.

Am I going too wild with these suggestions? Discuss!

Eddbopkins.2630:

Alekt.5803:

No earth shield for a PvP condition elementalist? Get out!

this isnt a pvp forum were talking about wvw roaming 1v1s, also i get 7.5 secs of protection from just switching to earth trait with my boon duration when sigil of concentration procs so running earth just for the protection wouldnt be as beneficial as water trait with clearing condis with regen.

and to Kyon.9735 water trait line does not increase vit i dont know where you got that from if im wrong please let me know.

Well.. if you scroll up a little you’ll see tbat I quoted the guy who quoted you. lol.

apharma.3741:

Eddbopkins.2630:

Nearly any class running condi vit toughness is viable…make magic happen and show me power precision ferocity running 11.5k hp…..
On a side note who thought of giving a class 11.5k hp fair in any kind of fight? To make zerker viable in any way they need to raise the base hp of ele to at least 15k to start with.

They could add 400 vit to soothing power and increase its effects by 500% but make soothing mist only apply to you. Add a bit of marauder/knights and you’d have a decent burst build that won’t die in 2s to a thief with good selfish sustain. Still be prone to condition overload but most burst builds are tbh.

No way that’s gonna happen especially as a buff on water trait line.

Wolfric.9380:

auras are not so powerful for themself, but distributing them with multiple effects over the whole group makes them a game winner.

True. Let me change my statement.

Auras as of now are already good when used by bunker/Support builds.

Adding anything “base” for these auras will just make them more powerful for these meta builds while they are practically underwhelming when not traited. Unless something drastically changes, only way I see to “balance” auras between bunkers and DPS Eles are adding effects on offensive traitlines and CD reduction on Tempestous Aura.

The last thing I want to see are buffs on Support Tempest meta builds because people will go on a QQ frenzy which will warrant us a nerf on all builds. From what I see this is how Anet has always done “balancing”, nerf something that affects non-meta builds as well without revamping other traits/skills. Please, no more of that.

I thought of the same at first but realized how good Auras already are without any other bonuses. Now for that shout cd reduction..

Gokil.2543:

Cheers.

Arcane not reducing overloaded attunement cd’s intentional?

ANET… Please fix this T^T

XTR.9604:

Dahir.4158:

Almost makes me want to buy an alt account for NA just to beat this cele ele.

You’re welcome to try.

Well honestly speaking, Cele Ele isn’t that bad in this meta. It’s just your playstyle doesn’t stack might and all cele builds are heavily might dependent for damage. You’ll probably have a very hard time against tanky people (which is the current wvw meta for roamers except for a couple of thieves/DDs) with this build.