Guild Wars 2

Warriors have other forums of heals too. And every single one of them is better than ele heals. Adrenal health > regeneration (because you can have both!), shout heals > ele water heals.

I still don’t understand how the class with the most armor and health can have a passive heal that heals for over 400 every single second, while the class with the least health and armor can at best (fully traited with everything) get 260 health WHEN USING AN ABILITY which of course isn’t every single second.

It’s been a long time since I saw another D/D ele in pvp. Once in a while I see an ele, and he’s either fresh air scepter and simply folds after I dodge his burst, or staff zerker which folds after like 3 autoattacks.

Targeted skills can get bodyblocked, this is expected behaviour.

When will we finally get an update on the upcoming elementalist changes?

ensoriki.5789:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

ensoriki.5789:

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

This has been mentioned before and I don’t disagree that the active is weak.
Signet of Malice active fits it because unlike Healing Signet the passive isn’t entirely passive given the hit requirement. Since their is that requirement whether Thieves like it or not they’ll end up using the active because multiple circumstances will arise where they do not have the leisure to attack to heal themself.

The enemy of a HoT is a burst that doesn’t give them time to heal. The active could play off that and let the Warrior heal back the damage they take in say the next 2 seconds.
Eg.
Active: Base heal 800. This skill does nothing for 2 seconds, after 2 seconds you heal for 110% of the damage you took in those 2 seconds.
Or make a reverse situation of GW1 where using Healing Signet increases your defenses temporarily and heals. Eg. Gain protection or gain 300 toughness for 5s. Something pre-emptively done to dissuade being bursted.

Whatever happened to classes having weaknesses (besides ele)?

Elaborate?

A year ago Johnathan Sharp posted an updated class description guide on this forum. How the developers see the classes and where they want them to be. Warrior was about hitting hard and stuff, and having trouble with condition and having to go to allies to get condition removal or otherwise simply facetank through them with their high HP pool.

Then it all changed when the fire nation the condition meta attacked.

PVP:

- Only S/D and D/D are viable options
- All utilities besides cantrips suck and don’t have any good traits either
- Always need 20 arcane for elemental attunement
- only 10k health with most amulets if not using water
- besides air and arcane (and to a lesser extend water after all the nerfs) all grandmaster traits aren’t worth spending 30 points in their trees for
- no viable untraited active defense from weapon skills, therefore always have to spend utility slots and trait points for defensive purposes → always use water and arcane because they give the best defenses.

ensoriki.5789:

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

This has been mentioned before and I don’t disagree that the active is weak.
Signet of Malice active fits it because unlike Healing Signet the passive isn’t entirely passive given the hit requirement. Since their is that requirement whether Thieves like it or not they’ll end up using the active because multiple circumstances will arise where they do not have the leisure to attack to heal themself.

The enemy of a HoT is a burst that doesn’t give them time to heal. The active could play off that and let the Warrior heal back the damage they take in say the next 2 seconds.
Eg.
Active: Base heal 800. This skill does nothing for 2 seconds, after 2 seconds you heal for 110% of the damage you took in those 2 seconds.
Or make a reverse situation of GW1 where using Healing Signet increases your defenses temporarily and heals. Eg. Gain protection or gain 300 toughness for 5s. Something pre-emptively done to dissuade being bursted.

Whatever happened to classes having weaknesses (besides ele)?

JonPeters.5630:

I was simply stating that the problem is we are not going to address the issues that the passive sustain is creating until we make the active use have a place in combat so even if it is not THE PROBLEM, it is the blocking issue.

Jon

Then why were you so swift almost a year ago in nerfing ele healing signet passive? Eles didn’t get anything to make up for that. And why are you still not undoing those nerfs?

Kamui.3150:

With these additions it’d likely boost the CD of the skill, probably to somewhere in the 30-35 sec range.

It’d have to be more in the range of 60-70 seconds to be anything close to balanced.

Monkeymonger.9235:

I don’t necessarily agree with a guardian as a necessity for solo queue. [I’m talking about clerics 0-0-10-30-30 guard]

The problem is that people view guard as a point bunker. In most matches your team will be content with having a guard going afk on middle, however there are quite a bunch of other specs that are harder to kill, can actually win 1v1’s and have less risk of getting decapped.
Soldier hambows or condi bunker specs (rangers, engis) are examples.

Guardian is an amazing class, but it shines in teams that can rotate him properly to the teamfights. An afk bunker is a waste, whereas might stacks, healing, safe stomps, sanctuary res, condi removal etc. decide fights.

For solo queue i argue that a soldiers meditation guard is a better choice in most scenarios. On the list i would put it below ranger.

I run a 0/5/30/30/5 shout-guardian with greatsword/sword/focus and berzerker amulet for soloqueue and it’s an amazing teamfighter with shouts and aoe condition removal, and also has a lot of dps and 1v1 potential through the weapons. Haven’t found a single spec or class that can turn the tides of fights more than that one.

LightningBlaze.4913:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

LightningBlaze.4913:

It is not the profession that suck at WvW, roaming, it is the player.The Ele within all WvW areas is very powerful and can defeat all other professions even against equally or higher skillful opponents. What you got to keep in mind is that the Ele no longer has the easy good mode like build that even beginners used to perform great. Some players are still stuck on that mentality and thus are unable to keep improving. With every build and weapon set across all the professions there are always some strengths and weaknesses. You have emphasize on your strong areas and improve on your weak aspects. All leads up to the player at the end for WvW roaming.

It’s not the class that makes ele possible in wvw, it’s the gear. The stats, the runes, the procs.

Stats,runes,build overall only helps but doesn’t determine the player. A lot has to do with having average knowledge of your opponent playstyle/build, skill animations and countering them to perform great with the ele. If all the player does is pressing buttons without reading skill animations and knowing when would be best to execute certain combos or skills he will only kill bad players……. against good players he will be at a very high disadvantage.

The thing is, if you put as much knowledge and skill as you put into ele into another class, you’re gonna perform way better simply because the other class has better tools (for example mesmers or thieves).

While I agree that Guardians and Warriors are the top professions for yoloq, thief should be way higher on the list than most players here have it. It has either great burst with d/p, or great teamfighting potential with s/d and of course with shortbow is an amazing roamer that can capture undefended points (or even points with 1 defender) very quickly.

LightningBlaze.4913:

It is not the profession that suck at WvW, roaming, it is the player.The Ele within all WvW areas is very powerful and can defeat all other professions even against equally or higher skillful opponents. What you got to keep in mind is that the Ele no longer has the easy good mode like build that even beginners used to perform great. Some players are still stuck on that mentality and thus are unable to keep improving. With every build and weapon set across all the professions there are always some strengths and weaknesses. You have emphasize on your strong areas and improve on your weak aspects. All leads up to the player at the end for WvW roaming.

It’s not the class that makes ele possible in wvw, it’s the gear. The stats, the runes, the procs.

Stunbreaker on a 20 seconds cooldown, traitable to 16 seconds? Doesn’t take up a utility slot, gives you 4 other skills? Yeah, no.

They should simply merge geomancers freedom with the protection on aura trait, earth V.

piffdaddy.8014:

Please discuss elementalists on this episode of ready up. No beating around the bush this time

Yeah for the love of all that is good talk about the sorry state eles are in and how to plan to get them to a viable state again ASAP.

Rewards are better than at launch. Balance is way worse than at launch.

ITT: People thinking getting carried by OP bufffood and gear means their class is fine.

Mochann.5298:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Mochann.5298:

As for Ele…. There is a skill ceiling, I passed it a month or so back while immersing myself in WvW. But once you get past it, you WILL play well, and often dominate. Those who are whining about the prevalent, “class is fine, you just lack skills” thought on the Ele forums need to wakeup to this reality: there IS a high skill requirement because of the added complexities in Ele play due to the defining class mechanic (attunements) coupled with low health and low armor.

This is what I hate the most. WvW players that don’t even play for long thinking because they can AOE while hiding in a zerg the class is fine. It is anything but fine, it’s the complete opposite.

WvW zerging doesn’t require any skill. At all. Roaming does, because it’s mostly 1v1 and 1v2 but ele completely sucks at roaming since the RTL nerf and is simply a free kill for the other roaming classes.

I won’t say the class is “fine” — I’d love a buff to be honest, though I’d like it to be a damage buff and not a life buff. Let me do more damage! That’s what I live for. I’m really only good at killing and breaking things with my play style.

I will say though, as a staff ele, I rock in all the game formats — open world pve, dungeons, fractals, sPVP, WVW : but I can’t go it alone. I simply cannot go solo or 1v1, except in open world pve.

But team me up with at least one good person to tank for me or front line for me, and I am a walking nuke.

Again, you don’t “rock” at PVP, especially not with a staff ele. You are simply a free kill for any thief, mesmer or warrior. And again, you don’t “rock” at wvw, you’re simply hiding behind your zerg using your AOE. That is neither fun (at least to me) nor does it require any amount of skill. A bot could do that with a few scripts.

“tank for you” “front line for you”… what? There are no tanks in gw2 and peeling is extremely limited and all glasscannons have gap closers galore. Even if you have someone running with you with a staff in pvp, you’re a victim. Plain and simple.

I’ve been playing ele exclusively in pvp for 1 1/2 years like a lot of other pvpers. Do you really think you know more about skillful play than these people? Kitten, please.

You see, the problem with your brain is that you’ve been brainwashed by Anet into the “All classes can do everything there is no trinity” mindset. And as long as you buy into that hogwash (because that’s what it is — utter kitten wash) you will never be happy with this game, because you are thinking you are supposed to be able to do everything on your own.

That’s stupid in an MMORPG, here the mere definition of the game genre is “massively multiplayer” — i.e. players playing with players, not players going 1v1 on everything.

While you are getting crapped on roaming by yourself I am having fun, killing swaths of enemies and rolling with my community.

Fact is, even though Anet is profusely saying “there is no trinity” their flawed game system still allows for roles to be played. I play the role of glass cannon. Others play the role of tank support boon. When we fight together, we are far stronger than when we were alone. Anet is stupid for completely trying to deny the basic point of MMOs and RPGs in general — which is to create a niche role for yourself by specializing. That’s why we have traits to pick from, so we can specialize and do one take better than others.

Since Anet ALSO screwed people who want to be “solo gods” by making high end gear so easily available, you can’t get an appreciable advantage that way either, so no, no man can be an uberman by himself, anyone who thinks they can is deluding themselves. You can beat others in 1v1 consistently, and yes that means you’re a skilled player, but that is not all that this game is about, and your insistence that this is the only measure to use when evaluating the game is silly.

Yet all other classes can solo roam and have the trinity in them. But not ele. Ele is supposed to always be with teammates? That bullkitten. Also you can’t beat others in 1v1 consitently. Not equally skilled thieves, warriors or mesmers. Their class simply counters your class.

sinject.4607:

i agree with this almost entirely. maybe add engie to s tier because as far as im concerned their bunker + condition spam nonsense is ridiculous.

really if anything the current meta is showing that AI and condition builds are both in need of fixing (in that order).

I think the one thing that might put engi into S tier is Automated Response. It’s diamond skin on crack, pretty much always buying them time for cooldowns to come back against condition heavy attackers. Also the fact that a lot of soft CC is conditions so they are immune to a lot of CC too.

Mbelch.9028:

Sure they are. Or maybe that’s just you when you play ele.

Or maybe you shouldn’t judge other players based on yourself.

Any player that is excellent at playing ele will be MUCH better when playing another class to the same extend. That’s a fact that even the devlopers acknowledged.

FYI I’m beast at playing ele.

Eles are deadweight in pvp.

Mochann.5298:

As for Ele…. There is a skill ceiling, I passed it a month or so back while immersing myself in WvW. But once you get past it, you WILL play well, and often dominate. Those who are whining about the prevalent, “class is fine, you just lack skills” thought on the Ele forums need to wakeup to this reality: there IS a high skill requirement because of the added complexities in Ele play due to the defining class mechanic (attunements) coupled with low health and low armor.

This is what I hate the most. WvW players that don’t even play for long thinking because they can AOE while hiding in a zerg the class is fine. It is anything but fine, it’s the complete opposite.

WvW zerging doesn’t require any skill. At all. Roaming does, because it’s mostly 1v1 and 1v2 but ele completely sucks at roaming since the RTL nerf and is simply a free kill for the other roaming classes.

I won’t say the class is “fine” — I’d love a buff to be honest, though I’d like it to be a damage buff and not a life buff. Let me do more damage! That’s what I live for. I’m really only good at killing and breaking things with my play style.

I will say though, as a staff ele, I rock in all the game formats — open world pve, dungeons, fractals, sPVP, WVW : but I can’t go it alone. I simply cannot go solo or 1v1, except in open world pve.

But team me up with at least one good person to tank for me or front line for me, and I am a walking nuke.

Again, you don’t “rock” at PVP, especially not with a staff ele. You are simply a free kill for any thief, mesmer or warrior. And again, you don’t “rock” at wvw, you’re simply hiding behind your zerg using your AOE. That is neither fun (at least to me) nor does it require any amount of skill. A bot could do that with a few scripts.

“tank for you” “front line for you”… what? There are no tanks in gw2 and peeling is extremely limited and all glasscannons have gap closers galore. Even if you have someone running with you with a staff in pvp, you’re a victim. Plain and simple.

I’ve been playing ele exclusively in pvp for 1 1/2 years like a lot of other pvpers. Do you really think you know more about skillful play than these people? Kitten, please.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yesterday when I came across a Bunker + Firesword Ele.

He instant-gibbed my Trebuchet with the Firesword 4 + Teleport combo (litterally killed it in a second) and then caught me out too.

Even in other fights his constant Blinds and stuns were a pita to deal with.

Eles neither have constant stuns nor constant blinds. You’re thinking of warriors and thieves.

Jumper.9482:

Xeph.4513:

Burst Damage, halting strike on Mesmer hasn’t seen a reduction; I find that at the moment it does far too much damage, along with Thief and Ele burst; because lets face it once other classes get nerfed, the former kings will rise to the top again, but if their damage is also brought down inline, I believe that people are going to try and diversify their class compositions.

Jump back to the nerf of Mug (4-5k dmg loss due to executioner). Noone played thief until Larcenous Strike gave thieves a viable build. Caed, for example, played arcane s/f ele (pre-freshair). Not even 25DA does half the amount of burst as ele can do. It can match a mesmer maybe, but with extremely low utility. After that, a buff/rework was made to the Trickery traitline which brought back a very different D/P thief.

tl;dr: D/P Trickery has mediocre burst. With an extremely strong 21s instant boonsteal/interrupt that carries it to top tier just below warriors and necros. If anything, its a one-trick pony completely opposite from scepter ele, with the trick being Steal.

Arcane skills are dumb and boring anyway. They are just instant damage on a short cooldown without any pizzazz. I’d love for them to bake Elemental Surge into the arcane skills, remove all the autocrit stuff, lower their damage, and give eles another arcane grandmaster trait. That would make arcane utilities actual utility (you could burn, chill, blind or immobilize foes with them) instead of 2 more buttons to press for burst.

That’s what I meant, those classes have so many active defenses, mostly built into their weapons, that they can outlast others although they have berserker stats.

Gokil.2543:

Otaur:

A glass elementalist doesn’t trade hits. He either doesn’t get hit at all or dies.

That’s a bit exaggerated but you get the point. You can’t expect to be able to trade with anyone if you have 0 defensive stats.

You can if you’re a warrior, mesmer or thief

If they were instant cast I honestly think they could fit into some builds. Especially earth shield.

Morderger.6298:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmkblR4gjEAkCoMUEyICFPYRRROzA-ToAAyCtIqRVjrGTNyas1M+YWA

this is something I messed around with as D/D. you could change one cantrip to lightning flash to better land earth#5. But cantrips are an eles life line

How do you fare with celestial amulet? 1400 power with only 550 condition damage seems dangerously low to me.

Qaelyn.7612:

Your argument still hinges on the idea that it doesn’t take skill to spot what a caster is doing when he has summons, which isn’t true.

Hindering you from seeing what they are doing is part of the point of having summons. Just like any other mechanism that hinders players.

First of all I do agree that the ability to attack the right target at the right moment is a skill and getting better at it is getting more skillful. But let me clarify my point further:

A lot of the skill at play in competitive games (one might say, esports especially at high level is playing mind games, reading your opponent, doing something he didn’t expect, etc. That’s what gets you an advantage and wins you fights/games, and this becomes more important as classes get more balanced.

So while being able to react to the caster while he has minions is a desirable skill mechanic, this hinges upon the execution of the mechanic ingame.

The problem I have with minionmancers and especially spirit rangers is that they are entirely passive on the pet players side. So in essence the other player doesn’t play against the pet player but against the guildwars 2 game engine in this regard. Which makes this such a frustrating mechanic to me. And which is also why I don’t mind fighting mesmers, as they need to be much more active with their clone generation.

Morderger.6298:

30 in earth is bad. Diamond skin is only good against pure condi builds. Which hardly anyone plays anymore. Probably should go Divinity Runes. You probably wont even notice the +boon duration you have now.
Can try
0-10-10-30-20
0-20-20-10-20
0-0-20-30-20 bunker
0-0-20-20-30 bunker

Amulet and Utility choices for those builds would help. Though I suspect the second answer would be “cantrips, cantrips and more cantrips”.

It’s like Age of Conan all over again. Every patch since launch has made class balance and the meta worse and worse.

Sword #2 is a really short cooldown teleport.

Qaelyn.7612:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

The minions aren’t the problem. Not being able to see what the enemy is casting and not being able to select him swiftly to interrupt him is a problem. Because it removes skill from the game.

You’re claiming that something being difficult means that skill is being removed from the game, when it’s pretty easy to argue the exact opposite: that it provides more of a reward for those who are skillful at dealing with the minions.

That’s not what I claim at all. Arenanet said they don’t want castbars because they want you to watch the action and react accordingly. Then they made the petting zoo. Which actively hinders you from seeing what is going on.

Either the petting zoo needs to be gone or preferably the interface needs a complete overhaul, with enemy nameplates and castbars shown at all the time. That is what promotes skillful play.

Gokil.2543:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Grevender.9235:

honestly speaking, after the last patch the class imho doesn’t need anymore a complete overhaul. While I cannot speak about sPvP, I find very few troubles in WvW.

The last patch changed nothing in pvp. Diamond skin is a waste of a grandmaster trait, and all the other changes were nerfs (moving elemental attunement and cleansing wave up to master). So overall we’re even worse off than we were before the Dec 10 patch.

You simply cannot judge class performance by wvw because the completely overpowered gear there masks all class issues. You can have 1800 toughness 17k health 2k power and still have 20% crit chance and 90% crit damage there. In pvp you’re running around with 1500 toughness, 14k health, 10% crit, 1800 power and 15% crit damage.

Pretty much every other class barring mesmer got hit harder than we did. Don’t overlook that.

I didn’t. Thieves got buffed, Warriors didn’t lose any sustain, Rangers actually got another spirit, Necro stayed about the same but substituted frustrating conditions with frustrating minions, Guardian got a few offensive builds opened up, mesmers got buffed pretty much all around, engi stayed the same besides the vigor change which didn’t hurt their condition spam.

Grevender.9235:

honestly speaking, after the last patch the class imho doesn’t need anymore a complete overhaul. While I cannot speak about sPvP, I find very few troubles in WvW.

The last patch changed nothing in pvp. Diamond skin is a waste of a grandmaster trait, and all the other changes were nerfs (moving elemental attunement and cleansing wave up to master). So overall we’re even worse off than we were before the Dec 10 patch.

You simply cannot judge class performance by wvw because the completely overpowered gear there masks all class issues. You can have 1800 toughness 17k health 2k power and still have 20% crit chance and 90% crit damage there. In pvp you’re running around with 1500 toughness, 14k health, 10% crit, 1800 power and 15% crit damage.

Conquest mode is best mode. It actually enforces teamplay and makes it so a team has to split up instead of zerg on one point for 20 minutes.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

why do pvp players think they should have what pve players have while not wanting to play pve? u want it play pve then.

Because pve players get pvp rewards by playing pve?

Class: Elementalist

Worst Enemy:
1. All other classes

Rezz.8019:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Yeah AOE cap + invulnerable/blocking/dodging counting towards that cap makes meleeing pet classes extremely frustrating. I can be clearly in front of that MM necro and cast my melee aoe at him yet not hit him because his 5 minions soak up the attack although they weren’t even targeted.

If you have him selected you will always hit him with aoe. The selected target always had the priority.

Why should I have to select targets with skillshots?

Mightymealworm.8409:

Melee aoe against pets is not as good as you think. You will still miss targets due to aoe cap, summoner will evade and lock you down so pets will just feed off you because you are knee deep in them. And even when you destroy a pet it often has bad side effects and another one spawns to take its place. And if someone nearby has retaliation, kiss your kitten goodbye.

Yeah AOE cap + invulnerable/blocking/dodging counting towards that cap makes meleeing pet classes extremely frustrating. I can be clearly in front of that MM necro and cast my melee aoe at him yet not hit him because his 5 minions soak up the attack although they weren’t even targeted.

As I said the main complaint about the petting zoo is the screen clutter which is made worse by the extremely rudimentary UI the game has. If it had enemy name plates that showed castbars we probably wouldn’t even have this discussion.

The minions aren’t the problem. Not being able to see what the enemy is casting and not being able to select him swiftly to interrupt him is a problem. Because it removes skill from the game.

While there are some things that would be neat to have (like power/crit/toughness gear) it’s better that runes of perplexity stay where they are. They already make wvw a clusterfrack of conditions, and we already have way too much conditions without them in pvp anyway.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

anyway, blind only affects offensive skills, stand your ground is defensive, not offensive.

You know what offensive skills are also called? Attacks.

attack (plural attacks)
An attempt to cause damage or injury to, or to somehow detract from the worth or credibility of, a person, position, idea, object, or thing, by physical, verbal, emotional, or other assault.
“They claimed the censorship of the article was an attack on free speech.”

Mightymealworm.8409:

Dude, just change the wiki and be done with it.

THIS a hundred times. There is SO MUCH wrong with pvp in this game, and yet Deimos makes it his personal crusade to get a tooltip changed to something that actually makes the tooltip worse.

ensoriki.5789:

AOE balance. We feel that in PvP some AOE builds are too strong for the opportunity cost, and we’ll be bringing those in line in the next few patches.

You talking about this? That’s over a year old.
Don’t think that’s still being considered.

Yeah at around that time they also said that D/D eles need help, and then swiftly nerfed them into oblivion even further.

Yeah there are so fracking many awesome pve skins that aren’t available in pvp. I hope we’ll get those available with the reward and item revamps.

redslion.9675:

When I’m full berserker at half health, no defensive cds, but need to hold the point anyway. And the ele is fresh air and comes with a teammate

Emphasis on the teammate.

In red, and bold, at the top of this forum? How can you miss that?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-to-PvP-Start-here