Guild Wars 2

lunyboy.8672:

Nikkinella.8254:

lunyboy.8672:

The Spiral King.2483:

I’m looking at these changes and all I can think is, “Those poor Eles just got Rangered.” It seems Anet’s idea to make people not use Water and Arcana as much is to nerf them instead of greatly improving the other lines. It’s the same thing that happened with Ranger bows. “Oh, people are using shortbow almost exclusively over longbow? What’s that, make the longbow stronger? No, just nerf shortbow.”

This happens to every profession just about every balance patch, and to be fair, some things are a bit out of scale, and others seem to get lost to the assumption that all professions are balanced before they start moving things around.

Which is just completely false. Full stop.

Correction. This happens to every class EXCEPT warriors. Warriors are using something too much because it’s super powerful and have crappy traits they don’t use, boost crappy traits to same level of OPness as the ones everyone else uses.

Actually, Warriors are getting a bit of a nerf this balance patch, it won’t be enough, of course. But a still a nerf.

Warriors are going to be fundamentally hard to nerf (and still be fun for warrior players).

1) Noone would have fun as a warrior if another class could mow them down in the 2 – 4 seconds it takes for them to close the distance.

2) Warriors have a reasonable expectation to have the advantage when engaged in melee versus a ranged opponent (much the same advantage a staff Elementalist would expect from a range of 1200).

3) It would be no fun if the warrior could not catch the caster (remember how frustrating it is to go against Thieves that just stealth and run away, or Mesmers with their clone army?).

As long as the warriors charge their targets with no fear of appreciable damage (and fairly low travel time), the warriors will have the advantage. And remembering that warriors have to be balanced to survive melee with champion and legendary targets, I think it will be a long time until warriors are balanced with the other classes.

katniss.6735:

Will condition duration, range of application, and speed of application be addressed in this patch, or next one?

From reading the article, they are only affecting trait skills, and I did not see any affecting these aspects.

Taldren.7523:

Can someone name a decent build that really uses anything in fire? Because even with these changes I don’t see one that relies on any point investment for fire.

You can make an entire build around Fresh Air and Electric Disharge in Air for example … but Fire has nothing that I can see on the surface that is worth anything other than the new cleanse. However, that is more of an addon for other builds … not something to make a build around.

I still feel that Flame Barrier is a horrible joke. Lowest health/armor in the game and in the power line we get an ability that only functions when we get hit? A really , really bad joke.

I would argue that the conjurer change has a positive impact on any conjurered weapon build.

I will agree with you on flame barrier though. It would be different if flame barrier punished attackers sufficiently to deter them from wanting to hit us (which takes like 3 to kill us).

Instead it sets them on fire, well guess what, if someone hit me in melee and I am attuned to fire, I have probably already set them on fire. Also keep in mind it is right next to lava tomb which punishes people for wanting to finish us off. Maybe they can combine the two into one also skill that has a 20% chance to create a lava font when we are struck in melee.

Now, I mentioned I had some ideas for balancing out Ele’s to other classes.

First I would like to rehash a couple inherent differences between the classes.

Light Armor – 920 Defense| Medium Armor 1064 Defense| Heavy Armor 1211 Defense.
Health
Warriors/Necros – 9,212 + Vitality| Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer 5,922 + Vitality| Gaurdian, Thief, Elementalist 1,645 + Vitality.

Since all classes get the same base attributes everywhere else, and it is 10 hp per vitality

I give you these numbers because I am about to calculate the effective attribute difference between the classes

A warrior in heavy armor had effectively 291 toughness and 756 vitality over a Elementalist. That is over 1000 point difference.

A Mesmer has 427 points over the Elementalist, a Ranger/Engineer have 571, and the least gap comes from the Thief with only 144 points (but have access to stealth)

Keep in mind that your equipment inscriptions add about 2000 attribute points total.

Now with over 1000 point handicap of the Ele and the warrior or a 400-600 handicap to most other classes you would think that the Ele must pack some amazing skills, doing things no other class can (think Thieves and their stealth, as they are in much the same attribute boat as us).

I purpose a very simple fix, correct the deficit in points.

Light armor classes should get a boost of 291 to their power (as they level), and medium armor classes should get a boost of 144, because power and toughness are direct counters.

As for the vitality gap, I have two ideas:

1) Boost stats of the classes like with the armor deficit.
2) Set every class to the same health as in Guild Wars 1. Create items or traits that trade HP or Vit for more damage or power.

I think a lot of imbalance of the game currently is caused by this stat imbalance. certain skills can make up for it, but that is very had to calculate. And currently there is very little that the Elementalist does significantly better than any other class (unless anyone else would like to point out something valuable that we can do tremendously better than any other class).

I always thought of the Elementalist as a glass cannon, a class that inherently traded durability for DPS, CC, or something special. Thieves have stealth, Mesmers have clones, rangers have pets, Necromancers have minions/death shroud, and Engineers have kits/turrets. I am not as familiar with Guardians, but you can see that Warrior have more durability than any other class.

What I want is for Ele’s to have a niche that they are good at and be just as playable and important in PvE and WvW. In lieu of that I will at least ask that I do not have to play with a 400-1000 point handicap.

For the Fire Trait: Overall – Happy
1) Burning Fire: 40 second cool-down automatic condition removal, in the master tier.

This seems very situational, but keep in mind that Cleansing Fires cool down is 40 seconds, so I think this is balanced (expecially for an adept skill).

2) Conjurer in the adept tier.

Since I prefer Staves and Scepters, I spend a lot of time in the fire attunment. I am very happy that I no longer need to choose between 20% reduction of Fire skills and lightning hammer/ conjured greatsword.

3) Ember’s might changed to 25% longer burning duration.

This I feel is a solid boost for an adept skill, but keep in mind burning only stacks in duration, and I find it easy to keep things on fire (especially since Fire gives condition duration anyway).

4) Burning Rage- 5% -> 10% increase damage to burning targets.

Solid buff of a free skill, expecially since it is so easy to set things on fire and keep them that way as an Ele.

For the Air Trait: Overall – Not Impressed

Soothing winds from 5% -> 7% precision conversion.

base prescision is around 1k, and some builds can get 2k easily. This means that you will get between 70 and 140 healing instead of 50 to 100 healing. so +20 -40. Is anyone going to really take this over the other adepts in the line (Zephyr’s Boon, quick Glyphs or Bolt to the heart). They could go totally nuts and make it 10% the old diamond skin and I would not choose this. This skill needs to be something different all together or it will always be passed over.

Tempest Defense cool down from 60 secs to 25 secs

This is a very big buff to the skill, but we have to keep in mind it is a master skill to be compared to Persistant flames, Pyromancer Puissance, Powerful Aura, and Evasive Arcana. The stun can only stun an attacker once every 2 seconds, and only lasts a few seconds itself, so that means can stun each attacker once. I would not put 30 points in Air to get it, but it is a significant buff, so I guess I should be happy.

For the Earth Trait: Overall – Happy

1) Stone Flesh buff from 1/lvl to 1.5/lvl when attuned to earth/

This is a solid buff to a 5 point free skill. Keep in mind that the base defence for exotic armor is 920 for light and 1064 for medium, a boost of 120 puts us in almost effective medium armor when attuned to earth magic.

2) Strength of Stone from 10% more damage when attuned to earth to 10% of toughness converted to condition damage.

Again a base 80 character has about 100 toughness , and can go to about 2000 easily. This equals an extra 100 to 200 condition damage, which is +5-10 damage per second for bleeding and +25-50 burning damage. Compare that to 52.5 base dps for bleeding (42.5 base with 200 from earth), and 378 (again 328 base and 200 from earth). This is +10-20% for bleeding or 15%-30% for burning increase from the base damage. This is a fair trade for a skill, especially since this is just the old diamond skin available a tier earlier

3) Diamond Skin changed to immunity to conditions when health > 90%

_I know I should like this skill, because one of the first things I plan to shoot straight forwards and get this to see if it is as powerful as it looks on paper. Another part of me does not like this skill though, because this is very powerful in a select situations and will be the be the basis of many classes wanted us to get nerffed. I honestly feel that this skill is more themed with the Gaurdian or Necromancer, but there is really no precedent for a passive immunity to all conditions (even if 10% of our health is so low that this would only save us from the first hit of non-damaging condition skills). It is not that I do not want an OP skill, it is that if we are going to get one, I would rather it be in line with our profession _

For the Water Trait: Overall – Unhappy

_This tree has been discussed in quite a bit of detail in the thread, so I do not think my opinion will add much. I do think the changes were fair except soothing wave (Especially, arcane abatement, as we were the only profession with a master ranked fall skill, not that I ever use it anyway).

If the purpose of nerfing water was to remove the option of getting powerful traits with only 10 points, I would have just moved soothing water to master level, or at least change it to only removing a condition on us. This way it would be on par with Shrouded removal which the Necromancers have. _

For the Arcane Trait: Overall – Happy

This tree has also been discussed fairly thoroughly, and I don’t think I can add much.

My 2 cents will be divided up in 2 sections, one for how well I think they accomplished their goal. The other with what I feel would be some more needed balance.

I saw the goal as two-fold: to reduce the dependence on the arcane trait line, and to remove the imbalance of several water and arcane skills that were available too early.

For the update Overall: – Happy

_
1) Fire magic got a decent boost so they succeeded here.
2) Air magic got very little boost, so I think the patch failed here.
3) Earth magic got a decent boost with diamond skin I think out of place in our line-up, but is more powerful so they succeeded here.
4) Water magic took a noticeable nerf, but I think Soothing wave is too harsh, and out of scope of the original goal.
5) Arcane magic was buffed and nerf, but ultimately I think it did what it was intended. It will open up builds that do not require many/any points in this trait, which I think we all felt obligated to put points in. (also keep in mind low level Ele’s get an immediate boost).

I think looking at the update overall is a success, but I hope they make a few minor corrections. Now if they are looking to expand their scope to balance Ele’s in general I have some Ideas for that too._