I agree that they should really explain how they plan to address the issues or even tell if us if they think certain complaints are non-issues. Everyone is in the dark and with so much silence and ambiguity people are wondering if even a-net is aware of and working on certain issues.
I hate the arcane utilities; our class has to be balanced around them so our base dps when not specing for them is always going to be lackluster so long as they exist. They hurt us more than they help in the grand scheme of things to be sure.
Elementalist damage + quick suggestions + Dev feedback request
in Elementalist
Posted by: Prince.3682
I know theres been a number of these threads but hopefully we’ll get some dev feedback eventually. Maybe we are balanced exactly as intended (and perhaps they can say so one way or another) but I still believe we should be able to dish out damage so I’m holding out.
As much as I’d like to say otherwise, I agree that our damage is lacking compared to our inherent survivability. Or perhaps its simply that our burst is so easily avoidable and inefficient. (churning earth is a great example, followed by DT and even burning speed, and even firegrab has such a small range it should have a better damage (wasn’t it higher in beta?))
Hopefully alleviating any L2P comments, I’ve got 1200+ tournaments played so far and a rather high win rate. Apologies if that sounds conceited, it is not my intent, I just hope it lends some small bit of credibility to my claim.
I could be biased of course but you really don’t see cries of OP ele dps on the forums. You even see dps cries on guardian forums of all things.
I really think its an issue currently. I’m sure it must be difficult to balance with the utility we have but something really has to change. More hp would make bunkers even more absurd.
And tweaking damage on abilities would help with risk vs. reward – but it would be bad if it crossed the threshold and people started running 30/30/x/x/x glass that megaburst people like thieves do.
Nerfing instagib specs like bs thief would help a lot as well though. The damage doesn’t even have to be killed but spread it out.
Shortening our CDs a bit would help us but not really fix the issue. we have so many abilities it takes much longer to execute them and people have so much more time to react.
Perhaps making our burst more reliable, make firegrab a leapfinisher like heartseeker (seeing as how they do equal damage anyway) maybe even make it do X% more damage when below X%. But even then the CD on FG is horrendous.
I have a couple other quick suggestions.
Churning earth – add pulsing damage to the charge up. People can still walk and dodge out of it but at least we aren’t then taking a huge drop in dps.
Magnetic Grasp – currently this acts as a self immobilize as well which is bad, make this pull the target to your position.
Ride the lightning – add a 1s daze to the blast effect. RTL is amazing, bugs aside, and this might be a big request but I think it makes sense.
Shatterstone (Scepter Water 2) – add brief chill effect, perhaps a blast finisher as well
Burning Speed – make this lunge -at- the target like a leap attack. This would help d/d a lot. A close range squishy fighter should be fearsome when up close, however this ability punishes the d/d ele being up close to your target, you have to get at range again to use it which is a huge tell to competent players.
The best change you can do for ele is make attunement recharge a flat 9 seconds, or lower, and make arcane tree points grant something different than attunement recharge.
@Devs if any are reading – Can you please give us ele loyalists some feedback on how you feel about state of the elementalist currently? Are things currently in line with your overall vision? Or are there substantial changes to be expected?
Any straightforward information would be extremely appreciated. Even if its to say some of our hopes for ele are unreasonable. Then at least we’d know not to hold out for something that’s not coming.
I dunno, I do land most of mine but there definitely seems something screwy with it. The animation lands right on their face and it doesn’t hit, no evade notice either.
I’ve always found it funny that firegrab does about the same damage as a heartseeker, is not spammable, has a huge cd, and is very easy to miss. Oh and has a prerequisite of burning to do any sort of damage.
Its now equally as annoying as mesmer/thief downed state. Some sort of cosmic justice imo.
But its definitely a very lazy fix. The 2 ability should have been buffed substantially, make it a knock back + root for example (dodgeable), and just left 3 alone.
However its currently fine how it is, for now, until there is some normalizing on other downed states as well.
Stealth really is a tough thing to balance. Its definitely one of those things that should come with a tradeoff.
I’m not sure why people defend on-demand instagib potential. Especially as easy as it is to pull off. People say l2p because thieves will just drop but good thieves (who have l2p) will not get dropped easily. They have a huge advantage when it comes to burst and initiative (picking fights). At the very least steal should have a gcd attached.
lol yeah its pretty lame
If they finally give us what we wanted in the way of paid tournaments (which is indeed a nice improvement) and the pvp community isn’t big enough to support it, then prospects are bleak. Hopefully they’ll pander to us and give more incentive or lower cost to get queues popping quicker.
However, I do like how the system is currently setup and would hate to see it change so I just hope more teams start forming up.
I never noticed that it was fixed. Definitely really buggy. RTL deserves higher priority but I hope this gets fixed before long.
Current backstab builds are too much too quick. Front loaded instant burst that thieves can do is stupid.
Things would certainly be much better if they fixed rendering issues and made it so mug can’t be cast be used with c/d. Make it reset a gcd or something at the very least. Revealed duration being extended would help as well.
I don’t think many that like it at first but after a while it grows on you. I’m used to it now but thief and mesmer abilities are still too annoying, and now even ele is too annoying (coming from an ele lol)
It was a stealth ‘nerf’ if you want to call it that but it wasn’t from this patch. Has been like this a while.
@Soulstorm
That’s the problem; there is a contradiction. Given the chance, they will always speak of what high aspirations they have for PVP and how dedicated they are to it. However, deliverance on tangible results is incongruous with claims.
In other words: So far – a lot of talk, not a lot of walk.
There is a very big issue of financial viability when it comes to PVP and because it is likely true that we simply are not worth it, they simply should not make it seem like they are pushing hard with pvp and then instead we get pumpkin filled mists and a pittance of updates.
What they should have done from the start is given us PVPers more features that we would care to spend gems on. Rented servers, interesting (cosmetic) consumables that can be used in PVP, at least hot join. Template slots could be bought with gems, I’d buy em.
Besides that, I’ve already spent a lot on dyes and bag slots for my chars as I know many in my team have. Its not like we aren’t feeding them money. I honestly want to support them, but I certainly feel like I’m paying someone else’s tab cause I don’t have an time in PVE or even wvw and don’t intend to. I haven’t spent a dime with them since I started losing faith in their intent to deliver on PVP content.
Darn those elementarlists! Just have to spam that number 2 on lit attune and win? brb, rolling ele
Are you one of those leaping death blossom caltrop thieves? If so it’s really funny to hear a complaint about the one thing that effectively hard counters your nonsense. That’s such a troll build anyway.
@Ensifer
If I actually go to a tournament? Don’t assume too much; I would bet a lot that I’ve got more tournaments under my belt than you and I would say the state is not perfect but functional and passable. In fact I would say if you had a few more matches under your belt you’d be as impatient as me.
As you pointed out free tournaments aren’t optimal, although they are available so you can say they are ‘ready™’ since they were released – anet only releases stuff that is ready afterall…. but its clearly not really ‘ready’. But at least they are there and we can make the best of it.
I’m just saying put the features in sooner rather than later and tweak along the way. Paid tournaments and rating can’t come soon enough. Those should have been a part of the ‘ready’ package at launch imo.
(edited by Prince.3682)
Issues crop up in a live environment? I’m sorry but what are you talking about? The feature has never been live. I could understand if the feature went live and people were crashing from queues or whatever but it hasn’t.
I just can’t understand. We’re talking about a really long time here to fix something that is basically a tiny variation of a system working fine. Paid tournaments vs Free tournaments… what is different? Its the same in function except different rewards and can’t solo queue, right? Same type of reward structure, same type of map rotation, no complex rating system to worry about.
Feels like the feature is being held back intentionally at this point or bugs being an excuse for it being delayed for higher priority critical content additions, like adding pumpkins and crap to the mists. Fluff before substance basically.
Its a nice change, I for one am happy with it.
I see now. So anet resources were being consumed by making holiday events. Well that’s alright, now that that is out of the way they can focus on things on substance.
Oh wait, now they have to prep for Thanksgiving events, but then we’ll get core pvp functions in place.
Oh wait, don’t forget xmas. PVP content coming ‘when it’s ready’ sometime in 2013.
Really disheartening.
seeing as how I’m level 2 on all my chars and it will probably always be that way I’d probably like to see my ranked chars displayed on select.
Sorry, you lost me at the start on /bow. Start on sight and then I’ll be game : )
I’ll throw my name into the lot for this as well, I want to be challenged so if you’re good toss me a message to duel. ign – Priince (Elementalist – easy pickin’s, yeah?)
oh my goodness hammer classes are my favorite prey. Their attacks take almost as long as it takes to regen my energy to keep dodging them all day lol. I admit its a little bit lame when its a tiny asura and I can’t read the telegraphs in a team fight. Different race sizes is flawed for balanced pvp imo though.
A lot of us are loving the game but still feel like development/updates in the area of pvp has been going at a snail’s pace. Or a standstill. I’m still having fun – the base system is excellent and really has a lot of potential. But there is only a tiny handful of pvp content and it stagnates.
In the way of updates, fixes, and content additions, I don’t know what is reasonable to expect on a buy to play mmo, I honestly don’t. But I genuinely feel like we are still waiting on features that should have been included for launch. And maybe even features were held back like paid tourneys to buy time and placate the crowds until other content was coming.
I’m just curious as to what resource allocation pvp actually has overall. It seems like it must have been a low priority from the start. Compare content of pve vs spvp – the disparity is significant.
Obviously you’ll never hear a company say “sorry guys, you just aren’t as profitable as the pve’ers so it’ll take a while for us to throw you a pittance every couple months” you’ll hear the PR version: “We are working hard to get you the things you need, we don’t want to promise anything until its absolutely certain we’re doing it. Trust us that this is a big priority for us. We’ll talk about things ‘when its ready’ but only after rigorous testing and localization.”
And by this token even a blog post telling us things we already knew can take two months.
On the topic of transparency… To be frank, the policies arenanet adhere to is generally anti-transparency. To put things another way, transparency would be revealing some of the details of what is in the works and what is planned. At which point there would be accountability. Right now its basically Q:“So what’s in the works?” A:“We have a lot planned but we can’t talk about it it till its nearly done!” Q:“Ok… Thats fine I guess… but about roughly will this be ready?” A:“Its ready when its ready! Coming Soon™” No Promises = No accountability.
My issue with this is that it lets you lead people with a carrot without substance. There might be a lot of great stuff right around the corner, or it might be hype. If we had an ETA we could assess with clarity our goals and intentions for the game. A rough idea of whats coming and rough ETAs would appease many restless pvp enthusiasts.
You can say you don’t want backlash if you change your mind on something but you’re getting more flak than that by not releasing enough. And if there actually are not enough resources available to develop PVP at a pace you are comfortable admitting then I for one would appreciate the honesty if we were told this as well. People are feeling strung along at this point.
Don’t get me wrong, I know its a great thing that devs are actually personally getting involved on the forums but so far its just been a tease. imo either too much is being held back, or not enough development is going on pvp-wise to talk about.
People might say ‘just have faith’ but that’s a cop out. Faith is for zealots. We don’t need faith if we are kept in the loop periodically with legitimate information. We don’t expect meeting minutes or office webcams lol but a game as big as this can surely afford the resources to do a make consistent blog posts. I mean, there are individuals with no affiliation with a-net making daily video blogs and putting a heck of a lot of effort to them with no pay. Can’t we get a weekly update? Just a friendly “Hey guys! here’s what we’re up to this week and we’ve made progress on feature x which we expect to be ready for testing December! But many things are in the works, don’t hold us to it!”
Oh well, I can’t expect one forum post won’t change a company’s mind on anything.
I don’t want to comment before seeing what the Oct 22nd patch reveals but I just feel like its going to take a very long time (more than a few months) before we get anything substantive. Even basic class bug fixes are taking ages. Not obscure ones either, ones reported since beta even. It’s disheartening.
Xriah – you shouldn’t feel like its cheating lol . You must understand that you’re going from a higher damage build to a more sustained build. And that is generally superior to 90% of the fail burst builds running around in pugs – provided you have a little skill to pull it off, which you do.
And besides – You’re giving up 30 points that could be invested in fire/lit for more damage to something that on the surface gives you no damage. However with skill you can make up for it by proc’ing blast finishers in fire and so forth which last longer from boon duration anyhow.
Main issue is risk vs reward is skewed too much in favor of defense at the moment. We don’t have much built in defense like mesmers/thiefs to spec for glass and survive for long.
Most people feel like ele’s small hp pool with low defense would allow for viable and fearsome dps, and it can but only at the cost of being disproportionately easy to kill.
We can pull out some reasonable dps with hybrid builds leaning toward the dps side as long as we outskill the opponents but when you fight others playing their classes at an equally skilled level the disparity begins to reveal itself again.
I could say we shine in AOE dps but engi and necro have that down pretty well also.
Anyway, I for one hope instead of nerfs to arcane tree we get buffs on other traits. I feel like arcane tree should give something else for the stat instead of attunement recharge. Attunement swapping pretty much makes the class and 15s vs 9s recharge is no contest. Should be flat 9 regardless of arcane investment.
Ultimately I would say ele is a solid class, mostly at a reasonable state balance-wise (provided you have invested time to become proficient with it – it does take time) but some trees do need nicer traits, and the bugs that plague our class need to be fixed. Downed state is crap and elites are weak. I would trade elites and downed state with any other class at random.
I’ve played more tourneys than most would believe and I’m still learning ele. Optimal rotations in various situations, etc.
I’ve got some old and new posted on youtube if anyone is interested http://www.youtube.com/user/prriinnce
Yeah best tip for a condition spec ele is log out – roll engi, necro, ranger, mesmer, or thief cause they all do it better.
our elites are pretty bad compared to other classes. I like ele and it can be pretty strong in the right hands but so much of our class just feels watered down.
I’d be interested to duel, I’m betting an arcane build will be better but I’d be interested to see if the opposite is true for others with different playstyles. I use d/d btw and only do sPVP/tPVP.
There was initially info for the upcoming pvp changes with paid tournaments and all that. Then it was removed. Its no longer on the main page anyway. If its somewhere else I don’t know where it is.
Then someone posted on the pvp forums here asking about it. I looked and sure enough, no pvp info. So I followed up the post with a reply, also wondering about it.
Then…. that thread was removed. It was an innocent thread that would not be deleted so where is it?
Is it tinfoil hat time -the pvp updates are delayed and they are doing damage control on forum fallout? Or are they just going to surprise us with lots of goodies? Guess we’ll see in a couple days.
You guys know the dialogue box that pops up insessently when you’re match is ready? And how it keeps annoyingly popping up even if you’re doing a bit of mid round hot join? Just do that and lower it to 3-4 min and things will be so much nicer.
But honestly they should make a new queue system. There is no reason for a free tournament system to queue up 8 groups from the start. At any given point there is a pool of round 2 and round 3 people just waiting for a match to begin. It’s very inefficient. It should pool groups per round and just take from first available each time.
The most damage possible is actually very straight forward, 30 fire 30 air 10 earth with divinity or scholar runes. It does impressive damage. But…. Good luck surviving more than a handful of seconds in any meaningful battle.
Ele doesn’t have built in defense like thieves with stealth and on demand evades, and mesmers with their piles of utilities (stealth, invuln, more invuln, blink, confusion, most on low cd)
I think this is blown way out of proportion.
I’ve played over 1000 tournaments and I have never once thought it was an issue.
Say I play a melee range class and someone gets the notion to swap to a ranged weapon to counter me then whatever. Doesn’t bother me.
Maybe that mesmer tosses out that swiftness buff mid match. A low mobility class getting a little swiftness is an issue?
Maybe my team is running heavy conditions and they swap to condition removal utilities and traits mid match. So what? Good for them. Every trait changed is still something they give up.
One main argument I’m seeing is “I don’t wanna open my bag so make it so others can’t” How is that even an argument?
Are there really players sitting around going, “Darn it! those OP swiftness buffs!” or “I just got countered, the enemy must have just swapped to some cheese because my skilled self would never die otherwise.”
The reality is that if you are winning, why would you need to swap out traits or weapons? You’re already doing what works. If you’re getting smashed, 99.9% of the time people aren’t really going to know why until after the match and they’ve discussed the loss but maybe once in a while maybe someone will decide the other team is too bursty (say a team of thieves or whatever) and they put in a soldier amulet to keep from dying so quickly. Having the ability to adapt on the fly is good.
I think its a much safer bet this feature will save people from gimmick team comps much more than it will create them.
People are acting like there is some game breaking imbalance going on, or rather they are predicting it will ruin sPVP. Thing is though; people have been predicting impending doom on this issue since beta. Yet the game is well underway and again, after more than 1000 matches I have never once has it seemed like a problem.
I posted about this as well. I’d be content for now if they at least made it que the wolf finisher but it goes back to the dolyak finisher. and of course it took them a while to put the wolf finisher in so I only got to use the finisher a few levels.
Just curious. I know there are many bugs and about half our traits and trees being a bit undesirable, but to the people utterly convinced ele is non-viable, and so underpowered, what would it take to convince you otherwise?
yeah the instructions are really annoying after…. I have no idea how many matches, many many hundreds… a bit tedious, no?
Since the wolf banner was delayed a bit as well I figure the tiger banner is just not implemented yet instead of a bug or oversight but can you you change it so it at least shows the next one down – the wolf banner?
Yeah for some reason rtl has been shooting me too in the opposite direction lately. As if it weren’t bad enough before. I play really carefully as an ele and don’t die very often but when I do rtl is often a big part of it.
Please don’t post vids of noob stomps as any indicator of meta or ele effectiveness. It’s really counterproductive for any class.
People have been calling for this fix for months… I don’t think I’ve even heard an acknowledgement of the issue, never mind a ‘hey we’re working on it’ type statement.
Magnetic grasp is buggy as well, not as often as rtl but definitely screwy. ever use it in clock tower?
Even burning speed seems to shoot in odd directions as well. But a lot of people would be happy if they fixed rtl.
So what's the reasoning behind nerfing us even further underwater?
in Elementalist
Posted by: Prince.3682
I couldn’t care less about underwater nonsense but it bothers me that they’re more focused on nerfs, and water ones at that, than fixing long time bugs and general land combat buffs. I think a few tweaks will go a long way.
I’d even be pretty darn pleased if they hurried up with fixing downed state and ride the lightning…
As far as class balance in general, I think ele is in a pretty decent place in many ways but not compared to something like a mesmer that can rock pure glass with so much built in survival.
Anyway, I do very well with my hybrid but pure dps still isn’t viable as an ele in my opinion.
Haven’t run into this but I suspect having a cap based on the player being revived would solve the matter. (can only revive x% faster)
So…. Got a PM saying I was given an infraction for this post:
Agreed, wait time is too much. I’ll add again what I’ve suggested before for free tourneys:
Make a smart queue system where each round is separated into pools, and the teams that finish round 1, 2, or 3 at the times closest to each other will be paired for the next round. Thus eliminating the majority of wait time between matches and this could be streamlined further with a fast-queue system where if the option is selected, it will simply start the match with the first teams fully readied up (the downside is people wouldn’t be able to see who they’re facing before it started)That, coupled with a 2 minute or at the very most 3 min timer I think that would make a lot of people happy.
I’ve done over 500 tournaments now and its just beyond tedious waiting 5 min all the time plus time between matches.
This is an automated message. Your post in “5 minute wait timer at the start of each match needs reducing.” was infracted.
……………..Whut? /headscratch
It’d be nice if they fixed some of these ele bugs already but they’re sure taking their time.
lol yeah, I like lw but it does seem to have some targeting issues. Point blank at times and ‘miss’ ‘miss’ etc
Think about it, heartseeker has the potential to do more damage than our fire grab does plus its got an auto homing beacon built in. Nevermind being spammable.
I’ve noticed strafing screws up fire grab targeting a lot and I for one would like even an ounce of the thief’s ez-mode aspects. Something like this would make it a bit more reliable.
Uhm, I’ll bet that 90% of those rage leavers you’re talking about, they just got a tourny queue pop and left you behind in your less than desirable 8v8 hotjoin.
This happens because of enormous waits between rounds and even waiting for matches to start. We can either jump around the stairs in the mists or do some hotjoin for a couple minutes. Better than nothing though sometimes I just prefer the stairs.
Hot join needs 5v5 option and then the free tournys wouldn’t be the hot-join alternative. Teams wouldn’t have to get bored with pub stomps, and pugs wouldn’t have to get steamrolled so much.
And make a more efficient tourney queue system and shorter wait time and things would be much nicer for everyone.
There are a lot of little things that could be improved for PVP…. wish they’d do it.
Agreed, wait time is too much. I’ll add again what I’ve suggested before for free tourneys:
Make a smart queue system where each round is separated into pools, and the teams that finish round 1, 2, or 3 at the times closest to each other will be paired for the next round. Thus eliminating the majority of wait time between matches and this could be streamlined further with a fast-queue system where if the option is selected, it will simply start the match with the first teams fully readied up (the downside is people wouldn’t be able to see who they’re facing before it started)
That, coupled with a 2 minute or at the very most 3 min timer I think that would make a lot of people happy.
I’ve done over 500 tournaments now and its just beyond tedious waiting 5 min all the time plus time between matches.
I think it’s quite reasonable to hold them to it if they say they’ll have a blog post to update us within a few days. I don’t think that’s too optimistic of a thing to hope for.
I for one would simply like to have something solid so I know I’m not just being baited by on a carrot on a stick. If stuff starts rolling out soon, great. I’m sure all the things we want will be implemented eventually but if it starts rolling into the months range a whole lot of people are just going to bail.
I’m gonna be posting about this soon. I’m working on a blog post right now to outline the features that are coming, the big picture, what we’re working on now, etc.
If you don’t hear from us for a while, it’s not because you’re being neglected or forgotten, it’s actually the opposite – we’re in meetings with our teams to get you guys the stuff you need.
Stay tuned, I’ll post more info as soon as I can.
-Chaplan
Remember when people saw this post and got excited about upcoming changes, or at least the idea of knowing what changes were on the way?
Yeah those were the days… /nostalgia
Honestly, actions speak louder than words. And with the lack thereof; the silence is deafening. It just feels like PVP in general isn’t a priority for them. Content-wise, it represents a tiny fraction of the game and even basic ranking systems and a sensible reward system was omitted.