Guild Wars 2

Dahir.4158:

Kyon.9735:

Here are my proposed changes for their active skills.

Signet of Air – Teleport to your foe and stun them for 1s if you hit. Range 900, CD 30s. Breaks stun. Requires target (target doesn’t need to be in range)
-More in-battle mobility and control/setup

Signet of Water – Freeze your target for 2s. Range 1200, CD 40s. 2s cast time.

Signet of Fire – Add 2 stacks of torment and daze your target for 2s. Range 1200, Retain current CD. 1s cast time

Signet of Earth – Remove Immobilize and Cripple effect, add 2s knockdown. blockable Range 1200, CD 50s. 2s cast time.
- On the contrary, we can make it unblockable but reduce the range significantly.

Reason for changes – open up possibilites for Control Ele and more setup for DPS Eles. As all ele knows, we need as many defensive utilities and traits. Going for 2 or more of these signets reduces survivability significantly so I think these changes are balanced

#BringBackTheControlEle
#NoMoreBunkering

Edit: changed CDs and added ccast time

I like your ideas. With Signet of Air I would keep it at 1,200 range because 900 sucks (Lightning Flash as an example). Since your suggestion requires a target I would imagine it’d be harder to pull off if you somehow manage to de-target while fighting and in a real need to port away.

For Water, when you say freeze your target, do you mean like the reaper elite that freezes/stuns? If so, I’d like that a lot, but the passive for this particular signet annoys me. I feel that 10 seconds to remove one condition is maybe a bit too long. Why not remove 2 conditions instead? That sounds reasonable.

Nice idea with torment added to Signet of Fire. Condi ele users would love this (I DO), but I think the daze may be a bit too much; wouldn’t mind it though.

Would your Signet of Earth changes work? Sometimes using a signet while immobilized wont work because the target may be behind you or on the side, so would it still work if the skill misses? Like I said before with Fire, the knockdown may seem OP so I wouldn’t even know if they’d implement this change onto the signet. I still like the idea, just seems a bit much.

Signet of Air – I wanted to minimize the range because it has too many effects. Teleport, Break stun, and even a stun on target upon hit. This will synergize perfectly on scepter eles but we need some kind of counterplay. Reduce the range, it only stuns WHEN you hit the enemy (you must be exactly 900 range or below). The teleport works like Rev’s Shiro PT so it can be used as a gap closer.

Signet of Water – Yes, it is basically a single target Reaper Elite. TBH Anet kittened up when they gave that elite to reapers instead of Eles. Eles should be the master of fire and Ice. And as for the passive, I agree that it should only start the timer upon condi removal.

Signet of Earth – Same as Signet of Air, I had to put in some counterplay thus the 2s cast time and “LoS”, so use it wisely. However, it will still be on 1200 range to compensate for the LoS counterplay. And to counterplay the range, it will be blockable. We can make it unblockable by reducing the range significantly.

Signet of Fire – You’re right. Honestly speaking, daze seems out of place on fire signet but I think it would open up options for Lightning Rod builds as a low CD interrupt.

Agreed, ele is really good in PVE. Though I’d play my warrior/rev when I’m lazy and dont want to click too much. As much as I hate to admit it, IMO Ele is perfectly balanced PVE-wise. Now time to go and fix PvP ele, dear Anet.

Kyon.9735:

Dahir.4158:

Nikkinella.8254:

You’re right about it being crappy. I dont think i’ve ever used it at all since this game came out. It’s just plain terrible. Personally, I’d prefer they make it remove a condition only when you have one as a passive, or a -33% condition duration as a passive. Preferably the – condition duration. Or possibly something similar to the scrapper’s trait that reduces condition damage you take by 20%. Or maybe something entirely original that they’ve never done before. “As long as this signet is active you cannot be affected by more than 3 different conditions at once.” And make the active remove 5 condis or give you 10s of resistance.

If we had something like that we wouldnt be forced to take so many traits and utilities just to survive and it would open up more dps oriented builds for roaming in wvw. It sucks being forced to take every condi removal we have available and still being overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of condi spam going on in wvw. Personally im really in favor of making it so that we cant have more than a certain amount of condis affecting us at once. or maybe make it so we cant have more than 5 stacks of any condi on us.

I completely forgot about resistance. I like what you said towards the end, “As long as this signet is active you cannot be affected by more than 3 different conditions at once.” And make the active remove 5 condis or give you 10s of resistance." I would definitely use this signet if it were changed to this.

reikken.4961:

sending conditions is not fitting of the elementalist class in general

a way to make signet of water more useful would be to have it only remove a condition when you actually have a condition. As it is it just triggers every 10 seconds, whether you have one or not, so that when you do have one it’s on cooldown and won’t remove it for another 6 or so seconds, which is obviously useless.

This would probably make more sense as well, but I am really liking the resistance idea Nikkinella posted earlier.

Maybe have it increase healing power or vitality as a passive and as an active it can remove 5 conditions.

The last proposed buffs are downright OP. 10s resistance or limit incoming condis? Nope.

IMO we don’t need defensive actives on signets as they can be used by bunker builds as well. To be exact, defensive buffs must be on offensive traits to avoid overpowering bunker builds.

Here are my proposed changes for their active skills.

Signet of Air – Teleport to your foe and stun them for 1s if you hit. Range 900, CD 30s. Breaks stun. Requires target (target doesn’t need to be in range)
-More in-battle mobility and control/setup

Signet of Water – Freeze your target for 2s. Range 1200, CD 40s. 2s cast time.

Signet of Fire – Add 2 stacks of torment and daze your target for 2s. Range 1200, Retain current CD. 1s cast time

Signet of Earth – Remove Immobilize and Cripple effect, add 2s knockdown. blockable Range 1200, CD 50s. 2s cast time.
- On the contrary, we can make it unblockable but reduce the range significantly.

Reason for changes – open up possibilites for Control Ele and more setup for DPS Eles. As all ele knows, we need as many defensive utilities and traits. Going for 2 or more of these signets reduces survivability significantly so I think these changes are balanced

#BringBackTheControlEle
#NoMoreBunkering
#MakeDPSEleGreatAgain

Edit: changed CDs and added ccast time

Yasha.5963:

Kyon.9735:

Yasha.5963:

Kyon.9735:

Yasha.5963:

Ele is probably the top class atm, doesn’t need any buffs.

Because 1 build is great means that people should ignore other builds? Please..

There is no reason to buff the currently most powerful class, period. Bring the 1 “great” (= OP) build down to the same level as the other builds.

shion.2084:

There are some decent bunker builds for guardians. Fought one last night, he had absolutely no teeth but 2 v 1’d for much longer than a guard should… don’t even think he used offensive traps.

“he had absolutely no teeth”: that is why they are not viable- they are also slow. And this “2vs1 for much longer than he should”- guards always used to be able to do that.

Eles can 3vs1 if good, 2vs1 quite easily and also pump out damage, as well as being extremely mobile. Why use a guard to bunker when ele, and to some extent condi warriors, engis and perhaps necros can do a better job and deal massive damage and/or have better mobility?

In fact you pretty much just described the classic guard that was the main bunker during the first year of GW2, and illustrated what is wrong with this game atm: bunkers that can do too much damage and have too much mobility.

Did it ever come to you that they can actually buff non-meta related traits and weapons and it will not affect the current meta build? Do you see people running Fire/Arcane/Air in the competitive scene? I have no qualms with nerfing Bunker Tempest as long as other builds don’t get affected. The idea is to create build diversity and you won’t get it by only nerfing the current meta build because it does more harm to non-meta builds realistically speaking.

The buffs proposed by the OP will not add build diversity, just make things worse.

I wasn’t referring to his buffs though..

Yasha.5963:

Kyon.9735:

Yasha.5963:

Ele is probably the top class atm, doesn’t need any buffs.

Because 1 build is great means that people should ignore other builds? Please..

There is no reason to buff the currently most powerful class, period. Bring the 1 “great” (= OP) build down to the same level as the other builds.

shion.2084:

There are some decent bunker builds for guardians. Fought one last night, he had absolutely no teeth but 2 v 1’d for much longer than a guard should… don’t even think he used offensive traps.

“he had absolutely no teeth”: that is why they are not viable- they are also slow. And this “2vs1 for much longer than he should”- guards always used to be able to do that.

Eles can 3vs1 if good, 2vs1 quite easily and also pump out damage, as well as being extremely mobile. Why use a guard to bunker when ele, and to some extent condi warriors, engis and perhaps necros can do a better job and deal massive damage and/or have better mobility?

In fact you pretty much just described the classic guard that was the main bunker during the first year of GW2, and illustrated what is wrong with this game atm: bunkers that can do too much damage and have too much mobility.

Did it ever come to you that they can actually buff non-meta related traits and weapons and it will not affect the current meta build? Do you see people running Fire/Arcane/Air in the competitive scene? I have no qualms with nerfing Bunker Tempest as long as other builds don’t get affected. The idea is to create build diversity and you won’t get it by only nerfing the current meta build because it does more harm to non-meta builds realistically speaking.

Yasha.5963:

Ele is probably the top class atm, doesn’t need any buffs.

Because 1 build is great means that people should ignore other builds? Please..

It does need buffs on Fire and Arcane trait lines along with Arcane Skills and WH and Scepter in general. There are actually some decent buff suggestions in the Elementalist forum which doesn’t include buffing Water/Earth or any current meta bunker related traits. Here are some of my personal favorites for trait changes which doesn’t include the meta traits which are earth and water. As for Arcane Shield, I’d love to see it block incoming attacks for 2s on a 50s base CD.

FrownyClown.8402:

That is why I propose to add a boon removal affect to one of the arcane traits. I would give up the condis produced from elemental surge to have arcane skills remove 2 boons from enemies. It makes more sense for a dps build to have that option than have a trait that is used only because of the reduced arcane cooldown.

Secondly, I know its a popular opinion to increase the cd reduction of arcanes to 33%, however it would be the first utilities to have that kind of cd reduction on any class. It just wouldn’t be fair. That is why CD reductions should be done on the utilities and not the trait itself. Have Arcane Shield 60s CD (48s traited).

Increase the radius and damage of Arcane Brilliance to bring it closer to arcane wave. (360 radius and half the damage of arcane wave). Make the heal skill ground targetable 600 range.

As far as the Fire trait line goes, this is what I would change.

Give Burning Precision a 100% chance on critical hits to apply burning.

Increase the damage and radius of sunspot.

Persisting Flames now removes 1 condition every 2 seconds as long as you are standing in a fire field. I feel this would give d/d builds a leg up in bigger fights, since they have a pretty good uptime on Ring of Fire.

TL;DR – Elementalists’ offensive traitlines offer lackluster “defensive tools” compared to other classes’ offensive traitlines. Buff those along with scepter and warhorn and we should see some interesting builds.

As long as Anet doesn’t balance PVE and PVP separately, this is nothing but a dream.

ANET have long seen this coming even before HoT. It’s the reason they nerfed boon share on Tempest Warhorn (Heat Sink) which was its selling point. I’ve always wondered why they never did the same to other boonshare cheese.

Anet, stop feigning ignorance.

DeceiverX.8361:

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

I thought boon related problems only existed in large scale WvW boon stacking which mainly consists of Mesmer and Revs?

I don’t see your point. Ele boons has been toned down already, particularly protection uptime. If you nerf boons, it will hurt Eles more than any other classes as they have other viable builds. You’re pretty much doing the same mistake ANET has been doing for years – Nerf a viable build to make other builds “viable” which has failed over and over again.

Smooth Marc.8743:

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

I believe we need that weakness in Air because Arcane Precision is on Arcane line and to be honest Arcane Precision itself needs a rework. I find it trash because only precision builds can actually make use of it. It procs 33% chance ON crit. They should change it to proc on HIT and lower the proc chance to balance it.

Waisenpai.6028:

No silly D/P is not the threat but S/D and weapon swap DP thief.. The thief (daredevil trait) has daze on demand with main hard sword. The steal is trait as 20 cc with 2 more from utlity and elite. No the thief can cc you every 10 seconds if required. not including the mainhand sword. Playing against bad thieves don’t count…. play against a full time wvw roamer/ESL thieves and we can chat. They have crazy regen and clears on evade.

Not a threat? Yes. He wasn’t able to bring down my HP to below 50% that whole 15 minutes with my 2.5k armor. My point was having an in-demand daze completely destroys overloads thus lowering your actual DPS which is why I failed to kill him multiple times. He was sitting at 40% most of the time and I lack that extra PBAOE skills from overload to actually finish him off. It’s pretty hard to kill a high mobility thief with just Lightning Flash and RoTL to rely on for chasing.

@xtr
Uhh, I don’t see any situation wherein Immobilize on F2 would be a better choice instead of dazes on traps against a classic bruiser/buker water-earth full celestial shout tempest. I actually just dueled a D/P thief for 15 minutes earlier (I was using D/D and a mix of marauder, crusader, and zerk) which ended up as a draw because some random pugs from his server came. A timely daze is enough to completely render overloads useless thus dropping your DPS a lot.

@topic
For roaming, you could play and have any role but not be good or be the best at it. Only exception would be the classic support/shout tempest as I actually find it on par with a healer druid or even better because of boon sharing. I find tempests completely underwhelming in PvP and roaming WvW outside of the D/F weapon set compared to other classes.

Honestly speaking, I like the idea of actually making them weapon sets. IMO FGS is already good enough as it already gives us the mobility we need albeit that it’s not a really good choice for DPS given that it’s Fire Attunement.

Shield and Axe should be reworked since it shouldn’t use up 2 weapon slots. I actually like Earth Shield too but since it’s an offhand, it will need to be reworked. I wouldn’t actually mind having a 2 handed shield (which is more likely impossible anyway) if we could retain the shield skills on earth and get other skills on other attunements.

I’m really afraid that ANET will use these conjures as a basis for our next weapon sets thus not giving us weapon sets similar to our conjures. Sword is ok but I’d probably stop playing my Ele for a while if we get a Torch instead (and it becomes meta somehow).

XTR.9604:

https://www.twitch.tv/asphyxiaxt/v/69568483

Another video of 1v1s against a Guardian that is actually pretty good running my Ele build a few days ago.

I’m no hater but some things I have noticed.

1. Somehow it feels like you just blow your shouts when you feel like it. I mean you just use your Shock and Aftershock even when he just swapped back to GS so you didn’t use it for defensive purposes. You weren’t even dropping any combos for that immob so it wasn’t used offensively either.

2. He has some serious face-tanking problems. Why would he choose to stay inside your overloads and dropped AoE fields for a good 3-5s before leaving? WH actually has great condi damage given that enemies stay in it. He just went out with 500+ burning damage then uses F2 leap to go back inside wild fire? o_O

3. Does he know how to actually fight a tempest? He hit you multiple times with GS#5 while overloading, even on water, but he doesn’t activate it. He never uses Spear of Justice to stop your overloads. Heck, it seems that he doesn’t even use the trait Heavy Light which is an incredibly standard trait to fight against tempests, especially 3 shout tempests.

4. What the heck is his build? He knows he’s fighting a Tempest so Traps with Daze should be standard but he have any, heck he doesn’t have a single offensive trap. He doesn’t have Heavy Light either. With no stability in your build aside from Earth, IMO you would’ve been destroyed if he knew how properly use interrupts.

I really can’t rate your build based on that video because the DH clearly doesn’t know what he was doing. As far as playstyle goes I was hoping to learn some good D/W combos for PvP use but I guess I didn’t see any actual combos. I would love to see how you would fare against aids condi builds though. Something like Dire Perplex Thief/Reaper who knows how to actually play their class.

I believe buff to cantrip CD, especially Armor of Earth, at the very least are long overdue. Support Tempest is meta, not bunker. They will still probably go for 2 shouts 80% of the time even if the cantrips are buffed as long as the buff is not OP.

IMO what we need in Fire, Air, and Arcane lines are something that helps defense as well. Getting more offense won’t really help as Eles’s survivability without gearing up and traiting for it is close to none. What we need are defensive effects combined with offensive traits, like what FrownyClown has suggested. I’m really sold on his idea about Persisting Flames(anti condi) and the changes in Arcane trait(life steal) in general. I mean with just those changes, I can already imagine a lot of different offensive/hybrid builds that will not rely on Earth and Water.

I wish Ele devs were as creative as Scrapper Devs. I’ve been having a blast playing with my Charr Hammer scrapper as I find it really balanced in terms of DPS, utility, and survivability. On the darker side, most scrappers tend to go for 1 build which is the standard Inventions, Alchemy, Scrapper with Hammer, Elixir Gun, and any other utility skill.

@Guizao
Burning rage: attuning to fire grants you might (1 stack, 20s) and makes your attacks unblockable for a short period of time (5s | ICD: 8s).

This is probably the most overpowered suggestion you gave. WvW will be crying and hating staff Eles.

Persisting flames: executing blast finishers on fire fields grant fury. Fire fields last longer. Create a lava font when you go down. Additionally, deal increased damage to foes standing on your fire fields (10% increased)

More damage multiplier might make it overpowered in PvE.

Sus.3610:

Not mine, but a classic I enjoy very much

https://youtu.be/dlfUTwQ5sdg

How the hell did I miss this gem?!

@Supreme
Thank you. Finally we’re in the same page.

We are trying to buff Offensive Traits and self survivability by buffing traits and utilities that have small or no probability of being used by the meta support eles.

In a PvP point of view, Eles are mostly taken for their ability to support their team, not for their ability to stay alive when focused in a 1vX situation. Getting any cantrip aside from Lightning Flash (if they don’t replace it instead) will lose them 1 support shout resulting into less heals and condi cleanse. Sure they can still get Armor of Earth by replacing Lightning Flash but it will still have pros and cons and mobility is a big thing in PvP. They might also have a dilemma choosing between AoE cleanse and reduce Cantrip CD. Same goes for Cleansing Fire wherein there will be more cons than pros in regards to its role as a support.

However, it will be more advantageous for other builds like the bruiser DD/DPS as they need self survivability instead of team support. Also, take into account that the suggestions for Auras will be on the Fire trait line which offers a lot less team support compared to Earth and Water.

As for your suggestions I think it requires a lot more of rework on a dev’s point of view compared to FrownyClown’s ideas which can result into being way too overpowered or underwhelming. How about giving us how your suggestions work together like FrownyClown did so we will have an idea of how they synergize?

FrownyClown.8402:

Kyon.9735:

FrownyClown.8402:

Here are my current qualms with DPS scepter ele.

First off, its lack of sustain. I addressed that in my other post with regards to arcane shield.

Second, its lack of damage. It has very high burst damage, but very low sustain damage (unless you play a cele d/d build). The auto attacks are not that useful versus classes with high sustain and you spend more time kiting dps classes than you do landing auto attacks on them. The fights versus dps classes is fine since you have other options of casting skills behind you. The main issue with dps is how well we do versus bunker builds.

That is why I propose to add a boon removal affect to one of the arcane traits. I would give up the condis produced from elemental surge to have arcane skills remove 2 boons from enemies. It makes more sense for a dps build to have that option than have a trait that is used only because of the reduced arcane cooldown.

Secondly, I know its a popular opinion to increase the cd reduction of arcanes to 33%, however it would be the first utilities to have that kind of cd reduction on any class. It just wouldn’t be fair. That is why CD reductions should be done on the utilities and not the trait itself. Have Arcane Shield 60s CD (48s traited).

Increase the radius and damage of Arcane Brilliance to bring it closer to arcane wave. (360 radius and half the damage of arcane wave). Make the heal skill ground targetable 600 range.

Arcane power needs a rework, since dps builds usually have a good amount of critical chance already. I would have it so it makes your next 5 attacks are considered arcane skills. This would make it so you could remove 10 boons on a target potentially. Increase the cooldown to 50 seconds. It also heals you for 20% of outgoing damage on the target for the next 5 attacks.

As far as the Fire trait line goes, this is what I would change.

Give Burning Precision a 100% chance on critical hits to apply burning.

Increase the damage and radius of sunspot.

One With Fire applies 2 stacks of might for every aura applied.

Persisting Flames now removes 1 condition every 2 seconds as long as you are standing in a fire field. I feel this would give d/d builds a leg up in bigger fights, since they have a pretty good uptime on Ring of Fire.

This is pretty well made that I’d seriously want to play my S/D build again or even try playing D/D Arcane. All traits and utilities synergize well. Having boon removal on arcane skills would be very handy. However, I’m quite reluctant with the change to Arcane Power as it might be too powerful being able to remove 10 boons while being able to life steal for the next 5 attacks even on a 50s CD. I think 10 boons is just too much.

Burning Precision – will completely make Condi Ele viable. I like it even though I hate the condi spam meta. At least will have a viable condi build which won’t require sitting in Fire attunement forever. However, I think burning is one of the strongest conditions out there after confusion and torment (pvp perspective). I think a lot of people will complain.

One with Fire – brings back the might stacking. Might be too powerful if paired with Tempest Trait line and specialization. How about increasing direct damage by 2% when applying an aura (up to 5 stacks, each stack lasts 15s)?

As for utilities…
Cantrips – Cooldowns are too long especially if not traited to Water. Reduce base CD:
• Armor of Earth – Reduce base CD to 50s. Reduce to 5 stacks of stability and reduce “buff” duration to 5s. While active, reduce incoming direct damage by 15% in addition to protection (still weaker than Bulwark Gyro which reduces 50% damage on a 20s CD). CD is too long and only front line WvW eles will need 10 stacks of stab (I even think it’s still too much). Somewhat similar to GW1 Armor of Earth in a sense.

• Cleanse up to 3 conditions and apply 1s of resistance for every condition cleansed (up to 3s). We have the lowest base HP and completely vulnerable to conditions because of this. We all know that we’ll never survive condi spam without speccing our traits, stats, and runes/sigils for to counter it.

Yeah I thought it would be too strong too. Removing just one boon from an arcane skill doesnt seem worth it though. You could probably just get rid of the “next 5 attacks are arcane skills” thought and have it just heal you. Reduce the CD to 40s (32s traited).

Your changes to Armour of Earth are very good and I think healthy for the game. It gives frontline Ele what it needs to be be frontline; reliably stability on a decent cooldown.

The Cleansing Fire change might be too strong. Its strong removing 4 conditions (because of regen) and applying burn. I often used this skill offensively back in the cele ele days.

As for the might on all auras. I think it could be considered too strong. Especially if the changes to Persisting Flames happened as well. Basically you would have people going Fire instead of water, while taking advantage of cleansing flame trait and Persisting Flames for condi removal. However, I think the trade offs are worth it. Bunkers lose the condi cleanse from auras since they dont have cleansing water. You would also have to change the rune to a might duration one to take advantage of the might stacks, losing even more condition removal. Basically I can’t see people using the trait at all in a bunker build and it would be better suited for more bruiser style play.

I think Removing 2 boons would only be OP on Arcane Power. It’s definitely balanced for me as far as Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Shield goes.

The suggested changes to Persisting Flames are really good and I believe it will make Fire Trait Line more than Viable with those changes. I’ll definitely use something like Tempest/Arcane(or water for hp sustain)/Fire.

I can only see getting 2 Might from applying auras as overpowered when paired with Tempest specialization and possibly Fresh Air as well, other than that it’s pretty balanced as non-Tempest builds cannot Aura spam reliably. I can see a possibility of semi-bunkers with Fire/Water/Tempest who would rely on might stacking to get damage as well similar to the old celestial meta. While these changes to One with Fire are perfect for non-aura spamming builds, I assume it would benefit bunker-ish ones more. What do you think of getting a flat damage increase while an aura is active? Probably gain increased 10% damage(I think 20% might be too strong) while an aura is active. It definitely helps the sustain damage of bruiser builds while gives scepter builds more burst when swapping to fire (Empowering Flame + gain Fire Shield from Sunspot).

As for Cleansing Fire, it already cleanses 4 conditions with Soothing Disruption right now but with the amount of condi spam in this meta, I still think it’s not enough so I suggested adding max 3s of Resistance.

I also think Signet of Restoration’s active effect is too weak compared to other classes’ signet heals. I mean take a look at Warrior’s Healing Signet. As passive as my grandmother is, grants Resistance upon activation, and even has lower cool down. I suggested in another thread to buff Signet of Restoratin’s Active effect by creating a 3s water field around you that grants regeneration. I can see this as a more reliable heal for non-tempest builds. Being able to blast it would help non-tempest DPS builds more as you can get a reliable 1.3k heal per blast (without healing power) and its active is still good sustain. I don’t see tempest bunker/support builds taking this because I think Wash Away the Pain is still better overall.

Edit: Well I think my suggestion to One with Fire is more useful to D/X builds more than S/X builds.

FrownyClown.8402:

Here are my current qualms with DPS scepter ele.

First off, its lack of sustain. I addressed that in my other post with regards to arcane shield.

Second, its lack of damage. It has very high burst damage, but very low sustain damage (unless you play a cele d/d build). The auto attacks are not that useful versus classes with high sustain and you spend more time kiting dps classes than you do landing auto attacks on them. The fights versus dps classes is fine since you have other options of casting skills behind you. The main issue with dps is how well we do versus bunker builds.

That is why I propose to add a boon removal affect to one of the arcane traits. I would give up the condis produced from elemental surge to have arcane skills remove 2 boons from enemies. It makes more sense for a dps build to have that option than have a trait that is used only because of the reduced arcane cooldown.

Secondly, I know its a popular opinion to increase the cd reduction of arcanes to 33%, however it would be the first utilities to have that kind of cd reduction on any class. It just wouldn’t be fair. That is why CD reductions should be done on the utilities and not the trait itself. Have Arcane Shield 60s CD (48s traited).

Increase the radius and damage of Arcane Brilliance to bring it closer to arcane wave. (360 radius and half the damage of arcane wave). Make the heal skill ground targetable 600 range.

Arcane power needs a rework, since dps builds usually have a good amount of critical chance already. I would have it so it makes your next 5 attacks are considered arcane skills. This would make it so you could remove 10 boons on a target potentially. Increase the cooldown to 50 seconds. It also heals you for 20% of outgoing damage on the target for the next 5 attacks.

As far as the Fire trait line goes, this is what I would change.

Give Burning Precision a 100% chance on critical hits to apply burning.

Increase the damage and radius of sunspot.

One With Fire applies 2 stacks of might for every aura applied.

Persisting Flames now removes 1 condition every 2 seconds as long as you are standing in a fire field. I feel this would give d/d builds a leg up in bigger fights, since they have a pretty good uptime on Ring of Fire.

This is pretty well made that I’d seriously want to play my S/D build again or even try playing D/D Arcane. All traits and utilities synergize well. Having boon removal on arcane skills would be very handy. However, I’m quite reluctant with the change to Arcane Power as it might be too powerful being able to remove 10 boons while being able to life steal for the next 5 attacks even on a 50s CD. I think 10 boons is just too much.

Burning Precision – will completely make Condi Ele viable. I like it even though I hate the condi spam meta. At least will have a viable condi build which won’t require sitting in Fire attunement forever. However, I think burning is one of the strongest conditions out there after confusion and torment (pvp perspective). I think a lot of people will complain.

One with Fire – brings back the might stacking. Might be too powerful if paired with Tempest Trait line and specialization. How about increasing direct damage by 2% when applying an aura (up to 5 stacks, each stack lasts 15s)?

As for utilities…
Cantrips – Cooldowns are too long especially if not traited to Water. Reduce base CD:
• Armor of Earth – Reduce base CD to 50s. Reduce to 5 stacks of stability and reduce “buff” duration to 5s. While active, reduce incoming direct damage by 10% in addition to protection (still weaker than Bulwark Gyro which reduces 50% damage on a 20s CD). CD is too long and only front line WvW eles will need 10 stacks of stab (I even think it’s still too much). Somewhat similar to GW1 Armor of Earth in a sense.

• Cleansing Fire – Cleanse up to 3 conditions and apply 1s of resistance for every condition cleansed (up to 3s). We have the lowest base HP and completely vulnerable to conditions because of this. This will make Burning Fire trait more useful but still random. At least it won’t go on CD uselessly when 3 random conditions are applied to you. We all know that we’ll never survive condi spam without speccing our traits, stats, and runes/sigils for to counter it.

@FrownyClown
I think these traits should be reworked and I believe you have good ideas for them:

• One with Air – barely used, mostly only by scepter builds in duels against melee classes.
• Tempest Defense – Not really defensive aside from thieves, mesmer and classes who have no/bad access to stability.
• Lightning Rod – I believe the weakness effect should be moved to Tempest Defense while another effect should be added when disabling foes.
• Burning Fire – too passive and random.
• One with Fire – too lackluster. Fire auras aren’t defensive at all without Elemental Shielding. Foes won’t stop hitting you just because they get a puny burn damage and give you might.
• Persisting Flames – I love your idea of removing condis while staying on a fire field.
• Bountiful Power – I don’t see any builds using this as EA and ES are way better in general.

• Arcane Power – who uses this in any game mode, really?
• Arcane Wave – mostly/only used as a blast finisher.

Supreme.3164:

@:Kyon.9735

You don’t get what I mean by “worst sustain”, a more clear explanation has been given by @FrownyClown.8402…and by all means I like to use bolded text where I think it’s necessary.

Back on the worst sustain subject, yes for the love of god, ele got the worst one out of all professions : you have no ways to avoid damage

-You can’t kite for days like mesmer or thief or even revenant…even a GS warrior has more in combat mobility than an ele
-You have no blocks, stealths or short CD teleports

This was ele before Daphoenix “introduced” the glorified super bunker triple cantrip arcana/water build

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ

All your weapon sets offer healing options? AND?
You need min 500+ healing to make them useful at all, this on top of the necessary vitality and the freaking toughness needed to allow you to facetank dmg as you can’t avoid it.

You have the worst sustain because you don’t need to go bunker on other professions to actually play the freaking profession

People can play whiteknights all they want..but I’m simply comparing stats between professions

I agree with you that post-HoT Ele has been hit hard and requires that minimum 500 healing raised up from the standard 200-300. However, we are talking about sustain in general which means the ability to regenerate/heal your lost HP. Even with low healing power, these skills still heal for a decent amount of HP based on our base HP pool. What you are complaining about having no ways to avoid damage is a completely different matter and does not fit “Sustain” at all. I still firmly believe that Ele HP sustain is good (not best) but the problem lies on the ability to avoid and mitigate damage.

With that regards, I completely agree with you regarding the problems of Eles outside sustain which is why I’m discussing it with FrownyClown so if you’re ready to talk in a civilized manner without any ounce of saltiness, hop on.

FrownyClown.8402:

Kyon.9735:

Supreme.3164:

Kyon.9735:

Grimreaper.5370:

If they just gave ele an option for a glass cannon type build that worked with d/d and s/f I think most eles would be happy.

I agree. We need something that will raise the survivability of Glass Eles without making bunker builds overpowered.

Note: I am talking in a PvP/WvW perspective.

Look at other classes, they can play glass builds much easier as they probably have one or more of these:
A. Access to stealth (Thief, Mesmer, Engi)
B. Higher base HP/Armor (all other classes)
C. Mobility and/or Sustain (warrior, ranger, thief, engi)
D. Class Mechanics (Necro Shroud)
E. Access to resistance (warrior, mesmer, rev)

Everyone can argue that Ele has great sustain and boon application but that sustain is useless for glass Eles because they don’t live long enough to actually take advantage of it. Thus, everybody goes bunker build. Honestly, I don’t see any way of balancing our offensive abilities without making our bunker abilities overpowered (just my opinion).

The only way I can see glass eles going back to DPS meta is by giving us an offensive specialization paired with offensive weapon/s and offensive utilities. Tempest is already focused on being support so it would be very logical to have an offensive specialization.

TL;DR – Please give us a GS weilding specialization! (:

EDIT: No, don’t give us a condi build. Just stahp the condi spam for God’s sake!

The first and important thing that I’d like really much to see is for the ele community to stop thinking that ele sustain is the highest

I mean FOR GOD SAKES, we invest every ounce of trait point in the defense department, we even use a full healer amulet and all of this just to be kittening playable, that’s kittening BS

All other profession can get away with investing in power lines and still have enough sustain to play whatever they want .

All of you guys think about it the wrong way : ele got the lowest kittentiest sustain out of all classes, the class is freaking unplayable unless you play some sort of bunker/tank/bruiser …how that exactly translate to the highest sustain in the game?

Wake the hell up all of you!

GW2 Elementalist is possible the kittentiest design that I ever seen in a MMO

4 Years of freaking bunkering and you guys still think that ele has the highest sustain of all classes, are you kidding me?

When Gw2 launched in Aug 2012, the ele was considered by all the worst profession, I can’t find the video right now but..in an interview Chapman found himself unable to answer back to the community at the time, he was all like:" well…well…well.."

Then Daphoenix came around with that d/d arcana bunker and he apparently “saved” the class..by showing how you could troll an entire team of newbs by investing 90% of your points in defense and sit there spamming heal after heal , while trying to outsustain non-bunker specs

The lowest health! The lowest armor! A complete lack of base sustain! A list of rotting utilities left like that since launch! The worst elites in the whole game! The lowest dps ( I don’t give a kitten about pve and killing random AI controlled pokemon)

Thinking that this class will ever see a viable burst/power build…it’s the equivalent of “daydreaming”, it means being completely out of touch with reality…

Rant over…I’m just glad over the years I managed to collect enough resources to start over on another main

You know, if you can read between the lines you’ll realize that somewhere in that long wall of text that I posted, I actually pointed out that Ele sustain is too strong on bunker builds, which obviously means putting all traits and stats into defense, and buffing that sustain in general to help glass eles will only result into making bunker builds more powerful and more “meta” thus not helping the offensive side of the class at all.

And can you please elaborate how and why do you think Eles has the worst sustain in the game? All weapon sets have the ability to heal paired with some traits/combos which is why I was able to play zerk-ish D/D and S/D in the past. Only problem was that I die so fast before I can fully execute that healing combo. I can’t even imagine how a non-bunker mesmer or any build of necro can outsustain a non-bunker ele in terms of HP regen/heals.

So before you go typing things in bold text, hold your horses and FOR GOD’S SAKE read and understand the context.

EDIT: IIRC 200~300 was the “standard” healing power DD Eles needed in the past and that is not literally “putting all stats into defense”. Below are the builds I used for D/D and S/D in T1 duels and solo/2~5 man wvw roaming pre-HoT and I could say Ele sustain is great (not worst, not best) based on these (Not all traits are accurate as some were changed/moved tiers).

D/D: http://tinyurl.com/hh68egl
S/D: http://tinyurl.com/j98429g

The reason why I said that I think there would be no chance of making Ele DPS meta again in PvP/WvW roaming is that for example, buffing Ele’s base HP/armor will just make bunker builds stronger. There is no way for DPS eles to get back into meta without buffing its current core abilities/traits in a way it won’t make bunker builds stronger and that’s why I suggested that it would be possible if we were given a new offensive specialization with new traits and utilities to tinker around with.

First off, I would like to say that this game is not balanced on small man/solo roaming. Thats why you have some of the cheesiest builds in the game that is only viable in small fights, carried by their stats and food.

Buffing the sustain of dps builds is quite easy. Make traits in fire/arcane better.

Add an effect to Persisting Flames. As long as you are in a fire field lose conditions. Does not affect allies.

For arcane improve the traits to better synergize with arcane utilities. Arcane shield in its current form needs to go. I thought about making it pop after 3 seconds regardless of hits, but it would be very strong in wvw large scale if a CD reduction was added to it. Anet could buff it to 6 hits for 5 seconds, however add a second affect when used to pop it whenever you want. It also requires a CD reduction. Improving arcane shield alone would help with the sustain of dps builds, but would not do much for bunker builds.

And as for the worst sustain in the game, its because their is too much damage going around in melee range these days. Other classes have reliable blocks (guardian), high sustain (Warrior), Tons of dodge and mobility (thief). D/D and even Sc/D ele for that matter does not have much to avoid damage (other than 1v1 situations) and only receives the benefits of healing from playing bunker.

I edited my post before reading this and I believe we’re on the same page regarding the issue that the defensive traits in our offensive trait lines are way too underwhelming. I mean by simply playing other classes and looking at the traitlines, it’s not that hard to notice what makes the offensive traits of Elementalists so weak.

In that regards, I noted earlier that I am talking only in a PVP/WvW perspective. Buffing the Elementalist Class in general by giving it more self sustain will only improve the current meta Healer/weak version bunker Eles. That’s why I suggested that we get those in the new specialization (which could take ages). So then, I totally agree with you that our offensive traitlines needs to be buffed for the defensive traits they have.

In that sense, your suggestion for Arcane Shield is similar to what I suggested in another thread except I overlooked the fact that 3 hits would be too small. I totally like your ideas so let’s talking because I think we’re headed to the right direction. Let’s just hope we can deliver this to a sensible ANET staff.

Supreme.3164:

Kyon.9735:

Grimreaper.5370:

If they just gave ele an option for a glass cannon type build that worked with d/d and s/f I think most eles would be happy.

I agree. We need something that will raise the survivability of Glass Eles without making bunker builds overpowered.

Note: I am talking in a PvP/WvW perspective.

Look at other classes, they can play glass builds much easier as they probably have one or more of these:
A. Access to stealth (Thief, Mesmer, Engi)
B. Higher base HP/Armor (all other classes)
C. Mobility and/or Sustain (warrior, ranger, thief, engi)
D. Class Mechanics (Necro Shroud)
E. Access to resistance (warrior, mesmer, rev)

Everyone can argue that Ele has great sustain and boon application but that sustain is useless for glass Eles because they don’t live long enough to actually take advantage of it. Thus, everybody goes bunker build. Honestly, I don’t see any way of balancing our offensive abilities without making our bunker abilities overpowered (just my opinion).

The only way I can see glass eles going back to DPS meta is by giving us an offensive specialization paired with offensive weapon/s and offensive utilities. Tempest is already focused on being support so it would be very logical to have an offensive specialization.

TL;DR – Please give us a GS weilding specialization! (:

EDIT: No, don’t give us a condi build. Just stahp the condi spam for God’s sake!

The first and important thing that I’d like really much to see is for the ele community to stop thinking that ele sustain is the highest

I mean FOR GOD SAKES, we invest every ounce of trait point in the defense department, we even use a full healer amulet and all of this just to be kittening playable, that’s kittening BS

All other profession can get away with investing in power lines and still have enough sustain to play whatever they want .

All of you guys think about it the wrong way : ele got the lowest kittentiest sustain out of all classes, the class is freaking unplayable unless you play some sort of bunker/tank/bruiser …how that exactly translate to the highest sustain in the game?

Wake the hell up all of you!

GW2 Elementalist is possible the kittentiest design that I ever seen in a MMO

4 Years of freaking bunkering and you guys still think that ele has the highest sustain of all classes, are you kidding me?

When Gw2 launched in Aug 2012, the ele was considered by all the worst profession, I can’t find the video right now but..in an interview Chapman found himself unable to answer back to the community at the time, he was all like:" well…well…well.."

Then Daphoenix came around with that d/d arcana bunker and he apparently “saved” the class..by showing how you could troll an entire team of newbs by investing 90% of your points in defense and sit there spamming heal after heal , while trying to outsustain non-bunker specs

The lowest health! The lowest armor! A complete lack of base sustain! A list of rotting utilities left like that since launch! The worst elites in the whole game! The lowest dps ( I don’t give a kitten about pve and killing random AI controlled pokemon)

Thinking that this class will ever see a viable burst/power build…it’s the equivalent of “daydreaming”, it means being completely out of touch with reality…

Rant over…I’m just glad over the years I managed to collect enough resources to start over on another main

You know, if you can read between the lines you’ll realize that somewhere in that long wall of text that I posted, I actually pointed out that Ele sustain is too strong on bunker builds, which obviously means putting all traits and stats into defense, and buffing that sustain in general to help glass eles will only result into making bunker builds more powerful and more “meta” thus not helping the offensive side of the class at all.

And can you please elaborate how and why do you think Eles has the worst sustain in the game? All weapon sets have the ability to heal paired with some traits/combos which is why I was able to play zerk-ish D/D and S/D in the past. The problem now is the super power creep, super Condi Spam, and AoE spam that melts non-bunker Eles as soon as they get hit. I can’t even imagine how a non-bunker mesmer or any build of necro can outsustain a non-bunker ele in terms of HP regen/heals.

So before you go typing things in bold text, hold your horses and FOR GOD’S SAKE read and understand the context.

EDIT: IIRC 200~300 was the “standard” healing power DD Eles needed in the past and that is not literally “putting all stats into defense”. Below are the builds I used for D/D and S/D in T1 duels and solo/2~5 man wvw roaming pre-HoT and I could say Ele sustain is great (not worst, not best) based on these (Not all traits are accurate as some were changed/moved tiers). Don’t forget that there were guard stacks in the past (+250 vit)
D/D: http://tinyurl.com/hh68egl
S/D: http://tinyurl.com/j98429g

The reason why I said that I think there would be no chance of making Ele DPS meta again in PvP/WvW roaming is that for example, buffing Ele’s base HP/armor will just make bunker builds stronger. If you compare the trait lines, Ele’s offensive trait lines have some defense in it but are way underwhelming compared than other classes’ defensive traits in offensive trait lines. Look at Tempest Defense, it can be ignored if you have stability. Only way to make it really “defensive” is by taking Earth trait “Elemental Shielding”. “Burning Fire” in Fire trait line is not very reliable as it pops as soon as you get any 3 condis on you. However, let’s look at other classes’ offensive traits. Warrior’s “Great Fortitude” in Strength give a static 10% bonus HP based on Power. Rangers’ “Enlargement” is also on an offensive traitline. Necro’s “Path of Corruption” and “Parasitic Contagion” are on offensive trait lines as well. Thieves have “Mug” and “Invigoration Precision”. Mesmers have “Desperate Decoy”, “Blinding Dissipation”, and “Evasive Mirror”. Revs have “Replenishing Despair”, “Demonic Defiance”, “Close Quarters”, “Eye for an Eye”, and “Versed in Stone”. So far, Engi and Guardians are the only classes who don’t have defensive traits on offensive trait lines.

There is no way for DPS eles to get back into meta without buffing its current core abilities/traits in a way it won’t make bunker builds stronger unless they completely rework our offensive traits and that’s why I suggested that it would be possible if we were given a new offensive specialization with new traits and utilities to tinker around with.

Grimreaper.5370:

If they just gave ele an option for a glass cannon type build that worked with d/d and s/f I think most eles would be happy.

I agree. We need something that will raise the survivability of Glass Eles without making bunker builds overpowered.

Note: I am talking in a PvP/WvW perspective.

Look at other classes, they can play glass builds much easier as they probably have one or more of these:
A. Access to stealth (Thief, Mesmer, Engi)
B. Higher base HP/Armor (all other classes)
C. Mobility and/or Sustain (warrior, ranger, thief, engi)
D. Class Mechanics (Necro Shroud)
E. Access to resistance (warrior, mesmer, rev)

Everyone can argue that Ele has great sustain and boon application but that sustain is useless for glass Eles because they don’t live long enough to actually take advantage of it. Thus, everybody goes bunker build. Honestly, I don’t see any way of balancing our offensive abilities without making our bunker abilities overpowered (just my opinion).

The only way I can see glass eles going back to DPS meta is by giving us an offensive specialization paired with offensive weapon/s and offensive utilities. Tempest is already focused on being support so it would be very logical to have an offensive specialization.

TL;DR – Please give us a GS weilding specialization! (:

EDIT: No, don’t give us a condi build. Just stahp the condi spam for God’s sake!

Give it up unless as Anet will be only buffing Shatterstone until the day the game totally dies /sarcasm.

Nah. Seriously, I hope this gets fixed along with RtL cooldown. I’m tired of playing a healbot and I’ve been playing offhand dagger for fun again and it seriously needs buffs.

Silhouette.5631:

It’s been awhile since I’ve fought an elementalist, and not just a regenerating scarecrow that poops out lightning storms. I support these changes. thumbs up

I’ll take it as a compliment for Tempests. People avoid poops but Air Overloads from bunker tempests usually aren’t even worth avoiding.

1. Buff and reintroduce the signets.
• Air Signet – No changes to passive. Active: Teleport to your foe and stun them(1s) with a lightning strike (900 range). Breaks stun. Requires target. 30s CD.
• Water Signet – Passive: Increase Boon Duration by 15%. Active: Cure 3 conditions. CD: 30s
• Fire Signet – Passive: No Changes. Active: Add 2 stacks of Torment (10s). CD: 20s.
• Earth Signet – Passive: No Changes. Active: Same. Add poison (10s). CD: 25s
• Signet of Restoration – Passive: No Changes. Active: Create a water field that grants regeneration. Field Duration: 3s.

2. Buff our cantrips. Their CD doesn’t do them justice for their effects.
• Armor of Earth – Reduce CD to 40s. Reduce Stability stacks to 5. Reduce Protection duration to 4s.
• Cleansing Fire- Reduce CD to 35s. Breaks stun.
• Lightning Flash – Reduce CD to 30s. Reduce Damage by 20%.

3. Buff Glyphs
• Glyph of storms – can be cast on yourself and follows the caster – same as overload. When cast on self, reduce Glyph damage by 20% and reduce duration to a fixed 5s.
• Glyph of Elemental Attunement – Increase trigger chance to 33%.

4. Buff Arcane.
Arcane Shield – Reduce CD to 40s. Reduce blast damage by 30%. Can be self detonated
Arcane Power – Reduce CD to 35s. Reduce Duration to 20s.

5. Buff traits.
Fire:
• One with Fire – Grant Fire aura and and 2 stacks of might when activating a signet.
• Blinding Ashes – Change CD to ICD per target. 7s ICD.

Air and Earth: No Changes.

Water:
• Powerful Auras – Increase the potency of Aura effects.
Fire Aura – Increase burning stack to 2.
Frost Aura – Reduce Incoming Damage by 15%.
Earth Aura – Grants Retaliation for the duration of the aura.
Shocking Aura – Apply Weakness(3s) when hit.

Arcane:
• Arcane Precision – Now applies conditions on hit instead of critical hits. Reduce trigger chance to 20%.
• Elemental Surge – Additional Effect: 40% of damage done by arcane skills heal you.

6. Buff weapon skills.
• Ride the Lightning – Reduce CD to 20s. Reduce range to 900.
• Churning Earth – Blocks projectiles while casting.
• Rock Barrier – Blocks the next 3 incoming attacks. Using hurl removes the block effect.
• Heat Sync – Reduce CD to 20s.
• Wildfire – Increase animation speed. Strip boons at a 2 second interval.
• Tidal Surge – Instant.
• Cyclone – Increase speed.
• Lightning Orb – change to stationary orb. Increase range to 600.
• Dust Storm – Applies torment.

Too lazy to think of changes for Tempest right now.

Grimreaper.5370:

FrownyClown.8402:

I strongly believe that the old d/d playstyle could work if we focused on boon duration builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYhcMoxhdOwwB0RMsBY0KIDMCqewG8GMNgAQBE-Tpg+AA4+DQZAA

Pretty much a build like this. the only thing that is missing is an amulet that gives 1050 condition damage 1050 toughness 560 vitality 560 concentration.

Nah man boon duration isn’t the problem, d/d right now is basically forced to face tank and then just soak up damage with heals. d/d worked well with cele amulet because it allowed it to facetank, thats boring, bring d/d back by giving it options to completely mitigate damage and compensate by lowering the healing potential.

On point. This is exactly my problem right now when I try to roam with D/D nowadays. Boon duration isn’t good enough to compensate soaking up with damage (Rune of Durability, Arcane Trait, Boon Duration food, Sigil of Concentration). Only time I can go D/D is when I have a decent team. Pretty sure they need to at buff RoTL so we can properly reposition at the very least.

As the title says, my screen will randomly freeze but music will still play. Only way to get out is to CTRL+ALT+DEL. Been happening to me for a few times now usually when I’m in Lion’s Arch or WvW on both 32-bit and 64-bit client. Been happening a lot recently so I already made sure that all my drivers are updated. Please help.

Specs:
CPU: i7 6700k @ 4.00GHz (not overclocked)
Memory: 16GB RAM
GFX: MSI GTX970

Azure.8670:

Xillllix.3485:

On Launch ele was about huge damage while being squishy but mobile. It was so much fun to play and nobody were complaining about the class being OP, cause thieves could just 1-shot us and it was part of the deal. You could even play zerk d/d ele in the middle of a blob fight back then and zoom across the map with RTL on a low cooldown.

What they’ve done with the class since then is a train wreck. They nerfed ele damage and buffed everyone else to a point where there is no advantage to playing a class with no armor/hp and longer cooldown/cast time.

Tempest was rushed out anyway and just not fun to play. Compared to how the game was before it’s just not fun anymore to play elementalist.

I think they had an amazing team making an amazing game, and then a team of less competent people coming in and ruining it.

At launch ele was the tankiest class with the highest dps. It could 5v1 easily and if you lost to any class besides ele you were awful. YouTube daphoenix and you’ll remember launch ele

Wait, what build are we talking about? The first build that rose to popularity for eles was Daphoenix’s pure Soldier/Cleric build which never dealt the highest DPS per se. Fights were won by out-sustaining enemies who were foolish enough to fight a prolonged battle against a build that was supposed to last. Next to it was the variation of Soldier/Cleric/Knights with berserker trinkets but it still never dealt the highest DPS.

The highest Ele DPS build in terms of PvP (as staff AoE has always been easy to avoid) is the pure glass cannon Scepter Dagger Ele which was only able to survive because of its mobility. In the present though, we don’t have that same mobility and people have learned to play the game to not at least get destroyed by a one trick pony.

But I agree, Ele is so weak in this meta and I don’t think we’ll find any kind of build that will fit in any time soon.

Why take a DPS ele over a thief who has superior DPS and mobility?
Why take a Support/“Bunker” Ele over a druid or a guardian who both have either higher base HP or Armor?

Unlike Druids and Guardians, we need both Vitality and Toughness while having decent Healing Power. All the new “support” Amulets [X + Healing Power + Vitality or Toughness] fit Druids and Guardians way better as they can pick [X + Healing Power + either Vit or Toughness] while there is no amulet that gives [Vit, Healing, and Toughness + X]. Creating a new amulet that gives [Healing Power, Vitality, and Toughness] will just create another bunker meta as other builds with better base stats will benefit more from it.

Anet will need to buff Elementalist traits and utilities to make us not dependent on stats to be able to keep up with others. Removing Celestial Amulet was the first step to actually “balancing” the class which has been dependent to one amulet to be viable for years. All hell will break loose for the Elementalist though if they choose to stay ignorant like they have always been.

With all the builds I tried, I’ve always had a hard time against decent thieves. Even traiting for stone heart doesn’t help that much because as we all know, camping on earth is just prolonging your death while it doesn’t give any decent kind of offense.

I even tried playing WH, both Power and/or Condi, and it’s worse than before as expected. Having to choose between Vit and Toughness to get healing power (plus the removal of Cele) with no weapon skill that cleanses or grants immunity, I’ve become a sitting duck once my stun breaks are on cooldown. It’s just I’m bad or the weapon is really bad.

@blackbeard
I agree, if I’m expecting to fight a corrupt necro I am able to properly rotate my cleanse. However, I get rekt real fast when they arrive mid-fight when my cleanses are on CD. That Signet of Spite 15s CD is the real deal.

On another note, am I the only one who thinks Powerful Auras are a bit lackluster for a GM trait? Our shouts already gives aura to allies near us so taking this trait gives no benefits to shouts. Are sharing on-proc, weapon skill auras, and overload auras enough to justify taking this trait? I only find it useful when I’m playing fresh air overload spam.

Shouldn’t they at least give some bonus effects to it so that we can really call it “Powerful Auras”?
Fire Aura – Increase burn damage
Magnetic Aura – Apply 1 stack of bleeding when attacked
Frost Aura – Reduce incoming damage by 15%
Shocking Aura – Increase stun duration

BlackBeard.2873:

My current build:

Crusaders amulet (+1050 power/toughness, +560 Ferocity/Healing Power) | Rune of the Soldier | Sigil of Leeching and Accuracy | D/F | Arcana/Water/Tempest | Signet of Restoration, Feel the Burn, Flash Freeze, Lightning Flash, FGS
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodncMA9XiVYCeOA8RgFTAjoCEAaAFngCYIwdsmWjrA-TJBBABxXGoq9HA4BAkxJAAA
- Great sustain, great support through healing, cleanses, and boons
- Very good 1v1 capability (esp if you are intelligent with aura cleanses/heals), useful in teamfights if careful to save a gtfo in case focused
- Can be bursted down (both condi or power burst) quickly if careless with CD’s, can also recover from low to full quite quickly
- Maintains reasonable health (~14K) despite no +vit on amulet thanks to soldier runes
- Average DPS, hard to might-stack for greater dps (flamewall very small)
- Weak to stun-spam (only “stunbreaks” are Lightning flash, overloads, and obsidian flesh, although shocking aura helps when caught too)

I just finished 3 games with clerics and I must say 14k HP (also using Trooper Runes) is reasonable at Yolo Queues. Might not be as good in higher tiers where people use VOIP to do sync-spikes. Might try using Crusaders Amulet later.

Eitherway, we have to choose between Vit and Toughness if we want Healing Power. Only thing left is to pick our poison between condi and direct damage.

Tried a couple of Yolo Queues with different builds. As this is Yolo Queue, we can’t expect it to be the same at high level PvP so these are just observations by a casual player playing against other casual players.

Sage Amulet | Balthazar Runes | Sigil of Doom and Geomancy | D/F | Eart/Water/Tempest
- Only good in 1v1s, melts when pressured as expected
- Not enough damaging condis
- Condi burst is good when you land your combo (Signet of Earth, Fire Wall, Burning Speed, Drake’s Breath.
- Lacks in Condi Cleanse

Mender’s Amulet | Trooper Runes | Sigil of Leeching and Purity/Renewal | D/F | Earth/Water/Tempest
- Average/Below Average DPS depending on what you compare it to
- Above Average Healing
- Above Average Condi Cleanse if you take Cleansing Water over Powerful Auras
- Good Team Support
- Still squishy because of low Armor

Marauder’s Amulet | Trooper Runes | Sigil of Leeching and Purity/Renewal | D/F | Air/Earth/Tempest
- High AoE DPS (Fresh Air Overload “spam”)
- Bad Condi Removal
- Below Average Team Support
- Still squishy as crap

Marauder’s Amulet | Rune of Pack | Sigil of Leeching and Purity/Renewal | S/F | Air/Water/Arcana
- High Single Target DPS, bad AoE DPS (well you only have Phoenix to hit reliably)
- Squishy as crap
- No Team Support

Haven’t tried:
• Any staff builds
• Cleric Amulet – I think low Vit will make you useless against condis
• Paladin Amulet

Conclusion:
I’ve had the best results with Marauder’s Amulet and D/F Tempest. Of course, people in higher tiers won’t just stand around and watch you finish your overloads. Since bunker amulets were removed, people have moved to the “Kill before you get killed” strategy. If you have people keep your enemies busy to allow you to spam air overloads you will get the best result. However, the moment you get team-targeted you’ll melt so fast especially if your Obsidian Flesh is not available. All these builds are useless against a good corrupt necro though.

Regardless if you pick amulets with healing power like Mender/Sage, I don’t find it so useful if you get targeted a lot since having a good up-time of protection isn’t enough to cover 2k armor.

Drayos.8759:

don’t understand, what about the skill did they lie about? o.O

It was supposed to be remove 1 condi every 1s, not remove 1 condi when you get hit on a 1s internal cd. It could work, only if the meta wasn’t about constantly spamming condis on every attack. Seems like they’re favoring the “Kill before you get killed” again to raise ESL ratings.

I use Durability with cleansing water when I roam alone using a mix of Marauder and Crusader Armors. If you have gold, you can get another set and use Trooper runes so you can drop Cleansing Water or the whole trait line itself.

posthumecaver.6473:

Kyon.9735:

BlackBeard.2873:

Kyon.9735:

That’s a win-win situation for me as long as Anet steps up.

HAHAHAHA….great joke. You can’t seriously think this will happen.

I have no idea why some people put ANY faith in Anet at all, especially in the face of so much evidence that suggests otherwise….

Faith? I wouldn’t call it faith but rather wishful thinking.

I hope you’d go look at yourself at a mirror and do some reflecting. Weren’t you yourself one of the people who complained about this current bunker meta? Now that they’ve done something about it you’re complaining about it. Are you saying you’d rather be a “balanced” class that could only be viable due to a single amulet than be actually balanced at all?

BlackBeard.2873:

Cele is basically the new Soldier’s (as it was at release). You take cele if you can’t run something squishier, as it has the best balance of sustain/support. When they made an even better sustain/support amulet (minstrels) the game was broken.

Plus, it makes sense to play cele b/c everyone farts out a million random condi procs, which cele makes use of, while still having good sustain. This is a direct result of the power creep that has happened.

Interestingly, if it wasn’t cele, every build was a 4-stat amulet, which are almost exclusively better than 3-stat. You would see much more variety if they had just stuck with 3-stat amulets but split them in 2 (so you aren’t restricted into something so angular).

Not all big changes happen overnight but it should not take them another year either. And why can’t it happen? People has been QQ-ing and there were times that Anet answered it. While it hasn’t been always what we asked them for, there were some times when it happened. Why can’t I hope for the same thing this time?

When the last time Ele hit the rock bottom, we waited one year for ANet to do something for Base Ele, what we got was the Cele Amulet and nothing more.

Now you come here and say, we should have faith to Anet, really? Am I delusional or you are?

To make the thing worst, in the same patch they are removing Cele Amu, they are also nerfing the auras and other stuf in Ele even not considering the devastating effect the removal of Cele will cause to Ele.

So, no my friend, I have no faith toward ANet, I think they messed everything with the chain of events started with the removal of jewels from amulets, then after everything is downward going spiral with ANet.

Someone needs some lessons about reading comprehension. Go read the post again and look for the sentences in bold.

BlackBeard.2873:

Kyon.9735:

That’s a win-win situation for me as long as Anet steps up.

HAHAHAHA….great joke. You can’t seriously think this will happen.

I have no idea why some people put ANY faith in Anet at all, especially in the face of so much evidence that suggests otherwise….

Faith? I wouldn’t call it faith but rather wishful thinking.

I hope you’d go look at yourself at a mirror and do some reflecting. Weren’t you yourself one of the people who complained about this current bunker meta? Now that they’ve done something about it you’re complaining about it. Are you saying you’d rather be a “balanced” class that could only be viable due to a single amulet than be actually balanced at all?

BlackBeard.2873:

Cele is basically the new Soldier’s (as it was at release). You take cele if you can’t run something squishier, as it has the best balance of sustain/support. When they made an even better sustain/support amulet (minstrels) the game was broken.

Plus, it makes sense to play cele b/c everyone farts out a million random condi procs, which cele makes use of, while still having good sustain. This is a direct result of the power creep that has happened.

Interestingly, if it wasn’t cele, every build was a 4-stat amulet, which are almost exclusively better than 3-stat. You would see much more variety if they had just stuck with 3-stat amulets but split them in 2 (so you aren’t restricted into something so angular).

Not all big changes happen overnight but it should not take them another year either. And why can’t it happen? People has been QQ-ing and there were times that Anet answered it. While it hasn’t been always what we asked them for, there were some times when it happened. Why can’t I hope for the same thing this time?

Con: The only thing that kept eles in PvP meta (Celestial Amulet) will be removed. We can’t do anything about it until then.

Pro: Eles (and Anet HOPEFULLY) will finally find ways to figure out how to balance the class without relying on a single amulet which should have been done years ago.

That’s a win-win situation for me as long as Anet steps up.

nextgen.3750:

You’ll leave the game because they kill a way to OP trait? there are way more fun builds than this boring bunker stuff.

Inb4 you go, can i has all you stuff?

Do you know why Ele was viable in PvP at all for the past few years? Because the only thing that kept it alive was Celestial Amulet.

I agree, removing celestial amulet was good step to creating build diversity but it should have been followed by buffs to the base class itself. Elementalists are reliant to Celestial Stats because the class traits, weapon skills, and utilities are underwhelming that it has to rely on a certain amulet to be viable.

I’m not closing the book yet because like I said, this is actually a good first step. I will be hoping that Anet will follow it up with decent buffs so that Elementalists won’t be too reliant on stats like it did before.

TL;DR – Removing Celestial Amulet was a good thing. Now, follow it up with decent buffs to make up for the lost “stats”.

reikken.4961:

How to make Rebound actually useful and noticeable without increasing any numbers:

When it saves you from death, you go invulnerable (and unable to attack) for 1 or 2 seconds before the heal.

If it works the same way as mistform which is another form of invulnerability, wouldn’t condis applied beforehand still tick and eventually just burn the healing you get?

The only way I can see them making this skill useful without completely reworking or increasing any numbers is giving more boon/s preferably a few stacks of Stability which Tempests completely lack (1 stack for a trait, no new utility skills either).

How about making it a stun break and giving it 3 stacks of Stability (AoE as it is a shout of course) and if they’re feeling generous, maybe 2 seconds of Resistance?

I’d still prefer a complete rework though that is more fitting to its name, Rebound. Incoming damage is converted to healing like Infuse Light (Healing skill) and a couple more effects as it is an elite. But that of course, would make a bunker class more bunker which people seem to hate this meta.

Kyon.9735:

Znake.9762:

atheria.2837:

Seera.5916:

pdboddy.4162:

How does one buy this as a gift when one already owns the expansion. I only get the option to upgrade, or to say no thanks continue to the shopping cart. Where I choose the option I want only to be given to the option to upgrade or say no thanks continue to the shopping cart. Where I choose the option I want only to be given…

This tornado’s heading for the trailer park.

Help please?

Buy it off of the website.

If you “buy it on the website” it automatically assigns it to your existing account.

What Seera.5916 means is you can buy it from any of ArenaNet’s retailers online: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers and then just give the code to a friend.

Sorry, I have never bought any Digital copies so I don’t know how it really works and I don’t really wanna waste money by making a mistake.

If for example I buy GW2 from an external website like greenmangaming.com, I will just need to send the code to my friend?

Thanks in advance.

Anyone? Please?

Znake.9762:

atheria.2837:

Seera.5916:

pdboddy.4162:

How does one buy this as a gift when one already owns the expansion. I only get the option to upgrade, or to say no thanks continue to the shopping cart. Where I choose the option I want only to be given to the option to upgrade or say no thanks continue to the shopping cart. Where I choose the option I want only to be given…

This tornado’s heading for the trailer park.

Help please?

Buy it off of the website.

If you “buy it on the website” it automatically assigns it to your existing account.

What Seera.5916 means is you can buy it from any of ArenaNet’s retailers online: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers and then just give the code to a friend.

Sorry, I have never bought any Digital copies so I don’t know how it really works and I don’t really wanna waste money by making a mistake.

If for example I buy GW2 from an external website like greenmangaming.com, I will just need to send the code to my friend?

Thanks in advance.

MyPuppy.8970:

Kyon.9735:

MyPuppy.8970:

Glacial.9516:

Perhaps difficult to program, but what if the cd was reduced to 25ish seconds if no allies are saved from death? Another aura on a utility-level cd would be decent, if still a bit weak.

- “If the effect expires naturally, grant an aura based on your current attunement and reduce cd by 50s.”
This would give it an effective 25s cd in many situations (and it’d -still- be worse than a utility, but more usable and versatile).

I really like that idea. Isn’t 50s a bit too much?

Kyon.9735:

How about making “Rebound” true to its name?

Rebound
• All incoming attacks (self only) for the next 4 seconds are converted to healing for you and your allies. When the effect expires, grant an aura based on attunement and 50% of the damage received is returned to the enemy.
• Prevents Capture-Point Contribution
• 0.25 seconds casting time
• 600 radius
• 75s CD

- Will only prevent damage from incoming attacks. Conditions already applied will still deal damage.
- Allies affected will still take damage, will only receive healing based on the damage taken by the caster, and will gain an aura based on the caster’s attunement.
- Enemies will receive damage based on their own damage applied to the caster.
- Only the caster will be affected by the prevent capture point contribution effect.
- Damage reflect does not work on bosses.

Interesting too, I don’t really like the capture point prevention though. Sounds a little bit op on a bunker build

No, “Prevents capture-point contribution” works the other way around. It will work like Mist Form, Obsidian Flesh, or any other form invulnerability or damage prevention skill.

For example, you own a cap point in PvP and you are fighting 1v1. If you use rebound, the enemy will be able to decap your cap point for the duration of the skill.

Yeah, i understood, that’s why it bugs me. As a point holder/decaper you should be very careful with that kind of skill.

Sorry, I’m confused. Why would it bug you? It’s pretty normal and balanced for an invulnerability skill to prevent cap point contribution

Trivia: Rebound is actually a recycled shout skill from the original Guild Wars… from an April Fool’s Day quest.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/%22I%27ll_Be_Back!%22

I actually kind of find it offensive to Tempests that were given another joke of an elite.

MyPuppy.8970:

Glacial.9516:

Perhaps difficult to program, but what if the cd was reduced to 25ish seconds if no allies are saved from death? Another aura on a utility-level cd would be decent, if still a bit weak.

- “If the effect expires naturally, grant an aura based on your current attunement and reduce cd by 50s.”
This would give it an effective 25s cd in many situations (and it’d -still- be worse than a utility, but more usable and versatile).

I really like that idea. Isn’t 50s a bit too much?

Kyon.9735:

How about making “Rebound” true to its name?

Rebound
• All incoming attacks (self only) for the next 4 seconds are converted to healing for you and your allies. When the effect expires, grant an aura based on attunement and 50% of the damage received is returned to the enemy.
• Prevents Capture-Point Contribution
• 0.25 seconds casting time
• 600 radius
• 75s CD

- Will only prevent damage from incoming attacks. Conditions already applied will still deal damage.
- Allies affected will still take damage, will only receive healing based on the damage taken by the caster, and will gain an aura based on the caster’s attunement.
- Enemies will receive damage based on their own damage applied to the caster.
- Only the caster will be affected by the prevent capture point contribution effect.
- Damage reflect does not work on bosses.

Interesting too, I don’t really like the capture point prevention though. Sounds a little bit op on a bunker build

No, “Prevents capture-point contribution” works the other way around. It will work like Mist Form, Obsidian Flesh, or any other form invulnerability or damage prevention skill.

For example, you own a cap point in PvP and you are fighting 1v1. If you use rebound, the enemy will be able to decap your cap point for the duration of the skill.

How about making “Rebound” true to its name?

Rebound
• All incoming attacks (self only) for the next 4 seconds are converted to healing for you and your allies. When the effect expires, grant an aura based on attunement and 50% of the damage received is returned to the enemy.
• Prevents Capture-Point Contribution
• 0.25 seconds casting time
• 600 radius
• 75s CD

- Will only prevent damage from incoming attacks. Conditions already applied will still deal damage.
- Allies affected will still take damage, will only receive healing based on the damage taken by the caster, and will gain an aura based on the caster’s attunement.
- Enemies will receive damage based on their own damage applied to the caster.
- Only the caster will be affected by the prevent capture point contribution effect.
- Damage reflect does not work on bosses.

Did I get this right? My friend already has the core game and I’m gifting him HoT since it’s been about a year since he last played.

1. Buy game from buy.guildwars2.com.
2. Give him the code.
3. He logs in at https://account.arena.net using his account and select Redeem a Code.
4. Put in the code I gave him.

Would really love an answer asap

Cecilia.5179:

I think a consistent 25s for rtl would be good, because let’s be honest, how often are we actually hitting things other than rabbits with this?

L2P bro. I hit mosquitoes as well /sarcasm

Tomiyou.3790:

most of my allies don’t know how to counter play them so they usually die.

This is the answer as to why you see Tempests as unkillable. This is one of the rare scenarios where the “L2P before you complain” is applicable or in your case, teach them how to play.