Guild Wars 2

Newbie should be ranked at the 5% mark, not 50% mark. If they are exceptionally good, it takes them 10 more matches to get to top 1000. If they are not good, they won’t be abused by the veterans. It’s a fair tradeoff, so why not just do it?

I think this Amulet is fair, and I’d love to see it in the game.
+798 Power
+569 Toughness
+284 Healing
+284 Vitality

Exedore.6320:

Sunshine.5014:

they don’t ask players what the players want; they assume they know what the players want. When they started asking, it was late, and they wasted a year of development.

Except that players usually don’t know what they want either. Players often think they want something, but when it comes along, it turns out they didn’t want it. They just thought they did. Or maybe only a vocal minority wanted it. You can’t just take player feedback at face value; developers have to think on their own too.

You just said it. Since even the players don’t know what they want either, the developers should give them the new version to test! If the majority of the players complain loudly about something, then give out a number tweak patch, and let the players see if that’s really what they want. If they don’t want it, they can complain, and the developers can change the patch back. That leaves a paper trail that later the developers can use to say “here, we did that, and that didn’t work.” or “yah, we did that, and it seems that you guys love it, so we keep it there”

Right now, with the long iteration, the developers can only get the blame.

About the “we must give the players time to adjust to the new meta.” The sad truth is it was a lie. Players are pretty smart. Let’s talk about the recent addition of healing skills. People had predicted rightly that the Mesmer’s signet would get a lot of use, even before the patch was live. They could just look at the number from the leaked notes on Reddit and figured out. If ANet could balance it to the point that it takes the players a long while to figure out what is OP, then ANet could be considered succeeded in balancing the game. Right now, immediately after each patch is a serie of same complains. It doesn’t take people long to see that Warriors are still OP, or Spirit Rangers’ ultimate is still too strong. Saying that “the players need time to adjust” is just an excuse. It is the reason why GW2 PvP is in this sorry state.

I would buy the followings in a heartbeat (been saving gems without anything interesting to buy):

• Announcer sound packs
• Funny emotes
• Item that makes all the enemy displayed as Humans
• Icons next to my name so I can display my pvp achievements to other pve players.

PvP can be profitable. Their product managers just couldn’t figure that out. It is the same mistake they made with the balance: they don’t ask players what the players want; they assume they know what the players want. When they started asking, it was late, and they wasted a year of development.

Since a developer rarely truly understand what the customers want, it’s the faster iteration process that can save them. They will also appear to be more responsive, which is a bonus point.

Yah, I remember when I first get into pvp a year ago, I thought that stacking on point made us capture it faster. After a few games, I then thought my client was bugged, until my friend whispered me and told me that didn’t make it faster.

3 Warriors with revive banner
1 Necro for home point defend
1 Spirit ranger for revive

Basically you keep rezzing your allies until you win. I’m serious.

Most of the time you don’t need the banner or the spirit for that, but in close games, it turns the tide of the battle greatly. It takes a lot of effort/cooldowns to down a warrior, and when they instantly rally up, the other team is in trouble.

Depends on the map, you can change the person who guards home point.

Before the pvp reward patch, you earn on average 150 glory for each pvp match win (and much less if you lose). If you play extremely well, you can get 250 glory.

Your 2 million glory = 8000 matches win. Which is 2000 hours played if you just win all the match you played. 2000 hours for 1500 gold? I say pve players get more rewards than that.

Too much entitlement.

These are points that have been repeated multiple times, but I feel there is a need to repost:

• Guardians have blocks/dodges/heal
• Mesmers have clones/stealth/blink
• Thieves have evades/stealth/teleports
• Rangers have insane regen/dodges
• Engineers have insane regen/dodges
• Necromancers have two lifebars/highest HP
• Warriors have insane regen/highest HP/highest Armor

Ele, being the one with lowest HP/Armor, used to rely on insane healing/a lot of stun breaks as the class mechanics to survive. The serie of nerfs removed all of that, together with its mobility. Ele now is the only class without a defined mechanics to survive, something that you have innately, not trait for it. Ele’s weapons have many good skills to help, but the cast time are just tooo long, it’s not practical to rely on them. The long cooldown just makes everything worse.

Since we all want Ele to get buffs, but not making it faceroll, I suggest:

• Make control becomes Ele’s class mechanics. Rework skills so it has more controls effect; staff Earth 4 was a good start, but the cooldown is way too long for it to be used as survival skill.

By making control becomes a class mechanics, we give Ele a more defined role in pvp, buff its survivability, while still keep Ele as a class that require a lot of skill to play right, not faceroll.

I love this idea. It’s something that make us pvp players proud rather than some “Dungeon Master” title

Luvboard.3567:

Your exaggerating theif if they did 10k dmg perfectly every time then every prof w/o toughness amulet would be killed. Unless they had 20k hp like necros then. 2 thiefs in less then a second would both backstab for 20k. Making thief the best in the game and every1 would run 2. Thats not how it works tho buddy

edit: I guess they have perma stealth and can never be targeted or die. Everyone has to run 5 I guess in your logic, of thief can kill anything in 1 shot or even your “next 3 seconds” as you said.

Yah, they will die, unless they have

• high access to invisibility, clones, and teleport like mesmers
• high access to aegis or invulnerability to block the burst
• a high armor class. I don’t think I ever care about thief burst when I play my ham/bow berserker warrior. Even with Berserker, I have high enough armor and HP pool that I can brush off the thief and remove the pressure. 3 seconds off ~1500 HP recovered.

Also, the people above you argued that the staff ele with berserker amulet the OP talked about would die so easily to the enemy. Your D/D bunker Ele can live longer, although still not as effective as other class. Also, avoid arguing on different skill level. If it must take an extremely good staff ele to be effective, while it takes an average Joe to play effectively another class, then it’s the definition of imbalance.

TLDR: I played top 100 tpvp with an Ele. Ele is decent, not useless. However, if we want to win at all cost, we will not play an Ele. It’s not optimized for any job in this game mode.

I was in between NA rank 50-100 before I grew impatient and queue alone without waiting for my friends to be online (end up losing a bunch). My rank now is about 500 something.

• In mid level team queue, or solo queue, Ele can be great. You can kill a lot of people, back cap, tank, heal. I can even control cannon in Sky hammer. Ele is not useless, at least not that bad.
• However, in high level team queue, Ele is very team dependent. In high level team queues, there are specific roles to be filled, and Ele is not the optimized way to play it. I’m pretty sure my team would have done even better if I had played a different class.

At that level (top 100):

• Bunker: bunkering far/near point is pointless for Ele, since it’s not about who can kill faster, it’s about who can push the other person out of the point and decap it bit by bit. The fight can last minutes. Ele has very few accesses to stability/block, so you will have trouble staying on point to prevent a decap. On top of that d/d bunker ele play style jumps around a lot, and you may accidently go out of the point, giving the opponent one decap tick. However, d/d Ele is not useless as a bunker. With perma Vigor, you can survive pretty well; you just can’t hold point against a high level player who knows how to push/pull/fear. How about bunker mid? Proving mid bunker ele’s ineffectiveness is trivial, and is left as an exercise for the readers xD
• Team fighter: Ele is pretty good in teamfight. The key thing is to not get focused. If an Ele gets focused, their effectiveness drops by 50% since they have to worry about healing, and hardly do any damage during that time. There are only two reliable escape mechanisms: Lightning Flash, and FGS. It’s always on my bar, regardless of builds. Anything else, Mistform, RTL, etc, is just a delay to your imminent death. Does that mean those skills are useless? No. By delaying your death, you can sometimes kill your opponent back. Or you can also hope the opponent makes mistake, and let you run away with a 40/32 seconds cooldown RTL, which doesn’t happen a lot in high level games. Also, the point of the game is not to kill, but to stay on point. Staying on a point for 5 seconds worth more point than killing a person (without points buffs, of course).

Conclusion: Ele is pretty fun to play at mid/low level. It’s still fun to play in high level games; however, your friends may tell you to bring in another class in serious games. The next tournament may see some Ele, but not many.

Instead of increasing Aura duration, let each point into Arcana reduces the animation time of casting spells. Max Arcana will reduce the back swing and forward swing of casting spell (like staff auto attacks) by 30%.

That won’t fix conjured weapons.
Conjured weapons need a redesign from the ground up.

This is to improve the MMR match making.

• If you have 2 top stats (top kill, top captures, top orb carry for example) in a match that your team lose, you don’t lose MMR for that match.
• If you have none top stats in a match, and your score is less than 35 in a match that your team lose, you lose more MMR.

I strongly recommend we implement a slider in the option to let players adjust how fast their MMR range for matchmaking expands. If they want fast matchmaking, they can drag it farther. If they want quality matches, they can restrict it to slower.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Sunshine.5014:

Pyroatheist.9031:

google.3709:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Sunshine.5014:

redslion.9675:

Sunshine.5014:

DanyK.3842:

L2dodge? By the looks of that combat log you weren’t having too much fun that game :P

Of course we lost in a landslide, but I don’t think any of us was unhappy. Btw, how do you dodge a skill that has no visual clue, and when the opponent is hiding?
Big damage + no visual clue = power?

When someone is using killshot, he stands still and points his rifle at you for over one second. Pretty hard to tell, huh?

You talk just like they will stand on a point casting that over 1.5 seconds for you to see.
This build is a sniper build. You hide in a corner shooting it.

So after the first time the warrior does that, you should have the presence of mind to actually look around and find him. He’s a warrior, not a thief. Use your eyes.

excuse me? i’m half thief OKAY??

besides, no matter how much people wanna shame others for getting killshoted, its really hard to predict, specially on team fights

The first time it’s fine. However, after the first time someone on your team reports getting a 20k kill shot rammed up where no kill shots should be rammed, if every one of you isn’t keeping a lookout for that warrior trying to pull a snipe, you deserve to be 1shot.

Just so you know, this elitist attitude doesn’t earn you any respect in the community.

That’s not elitist, that’s common sense and self preservation. If you know a warrior is doing the whole sniping thing, you know that he will die if you sneeze on him, so go hunt him down. It’s just…smart play.

It’s elitism baby, but I don’t think you will accept that. So good luck with your life.

Pyroatheist.9031:

google.3709:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Sunshine.5014:

redslion.9675:

Sunshine.5014:

DanyK.3842:

L2dodge? By the looks of that combat log you weren’t having too much fun that game :P

Of course we lost in a landslide, but I don’t think any of us was unhappy. Btw, how do you dodge a skill that has no visual clue, and when the opponent is hiding?
Big damage + no visual clue = power?

When someone is using killshot, he stands still and points his rifle at you for over one second. Pretty hard to tell, huh?

You talk just like they will stand on a point casting that over 1.5 seconds for you to see.
This build is a sniper build. You hide in a corner shooting it.

So after the first time the warrior does that, you should have the presence of mind to actually look around and find him. He’s a warrior, not a thief. Use your eyes.

excuse me? i’m half thief OKAY??

besides, no matter how much people wanna shame others for getting killshoted, its really hard to predict, specially on team fights

The first time it’s fine. However, after the first time someone on your team reports getting a 20k kill shot rammed up where no kill shots should be rammed, if every one of you isn’t keeping a lookout for that warrior trying to pull a snipe, you deserve to be 1shot.

Just so you know, this elitist attitude doesn’t earn you any respect in the community.

Oblivion.8307:

regarding 20k killshots though, i was pulling 18ks on full glass ele using double banner + signet of might with signet of fury active, you’re going to need like a kitten load of might to pull 20k without the banners and signet. Plus traits were like 30/0/0/10/30.

He has 25 stacks of blood lust on. Without it, it was about 16k. Still higher than my HP pool haha.

redslion.9675:

Sunshine.5014:

DanyK.3842:

L2dodge? By the looks of that combat log you weren’t having too much fun that game :P

Of course we lost in a landslide, but I don’t think any of us was unhappy. Btw, how do you dodge a skill that has no visual clue, and when the opponent is hiding?
Big damage + no visual clue = power?

When someone is using killshot, he stands still and points his rifle at you for over one second. Pretty hard to tell, huh?

You talk just like they will stand on a point casting that over 1.5 seconds for you to see.
This build is a sniper build. You hide in a corner shooting it.

DanyK.3842:

L2dodge? By the looks of that combat log you weren’t having too much fun that game :P

Of course we lost in a landslide, but I don’t think any of us was unhappy. Btw, how do you dodge a skill that has no visual clue, and when the opponent is hiding?
Big damage + no visual clue = power?

Writetyper.1985:

It’s fun, but you can’t hold a point. Like literally an engi or necro has to look at you funny and you’re dead. Not really viable also because there are several methods to counter killshot if you know it’s happening.

And to pull off that kind of damage you have NO condition removal. Zlich. Even taking shake it off is about 1k shaved off that figure.

Only shaved off 1k off that figure, so it’s still 19k :O
Btw, I’m sure trading off 1k and get Berserker Stance is a reasonable trade off, so you can’t say no condition removal.

Also, this is not a build to hold a point, it’s a sniper build. You go to place where your friends are fighting, stay in the corner and killshot. Boom, one down. It’s really fun. I’ve been playing this recently, and it’s even more fun than 3 heartseekers to down an Ele. The enemy walking, not knowing at all, and down instantly.

Again, this is not a build to fight toes to toes, although you can easily switch to Hammer or Greatsword and fight 1vs1. It’s a sniper build, and it’s fun. And no, most of the opponents can’t dodge this, since you don’t see it coming clearly, lol.

In solo queue pvp, and suddenly I’m down. Then I look at the combat log and see this.
This is not a QQ post, I was wearing glass, but that build looks fun. Basically he goes around one shot most of my teammates (who, by the luck of the draw, are mostly thieves and mesmers)

If you know the opponent team has a glass cannon player, bring a rifle warrior, and you will own them so hard with the killshot. With heavy classes like guardians, you can still deal 10k damage, and guardian has low HP too.
:D

Please rate for best PvP Armor!

Evan Lesh.3295:

Both good ideas! I believe we normalized player models in Super Adventure Box if I’m not mistaken, so it’s probably something we can look at applying to PvP. As far as rewards, gold would be amazing. We’re currently on making rewards in PvP amazing (“Incredible!”), and I’m sure everyone will love it They will roll out in steps, though. So when you see one patch, don’t think that it’s the only thing we have planned.

Instead of normalizing the models, please introduce a check box that shows everyone using a generic Human models. This has been done in WvW for the low res option.

And yes, please have silver rewarded for the tournament. It will increase the PvP population and you can finally get the population to a critical mass that allows you to do something more amazing!

I really like this suggestion! +1
It fixes the problem, and it’s fair. You should totally bring this up with the Devs in the other thread.

I just want to say THANK YOU to Anet.
I don’t agree with all the changes, but I appreciate your transparency.

No matter if this patch becomes a huge success or a failure, I won’t regret.
Please keep doing this for next patch, and please don’t be afraid of big changes and quick iterations!

With love,

Guys, what do you think about this proposal? It will increase build diversity a lot by allowing people to have 0 points in Arcana. I think it’s an idea that’s worth considering.

Sunshine.5014:

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Please swap Air II – Zephyr’s Focus and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina instead.

Renewing Stamina depends on Crit, and is out of place in the Arcana line, while Zephyr’s Focus belongs to the Arcana line (although it’s nearly useless since only Meteor Shower counts as a channelling spell). Swap it, put Renewing Stamina in Adept tier for Air, and put Zephyr’s Focus in Master tier for Arcana, and maybe buff it a little bit.

Arcana has too many good traits, swap it to other line like Air will help builds diversity.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Please swap Air II – Zephyr’s Focus and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina instead.

Renewing Stamina depends on Crit, and is out of place in the Arcana line, while Zephyr’s Focus belongs to the Arcana line (although it’s nearly useless since only Meteor Shower counts as a channelling spell). Swap it, put Renewing Stamina in Adept tier for Air, and put Zephyr’s Focus in Master tier for Arcana, and maybe buff it a little bit.

Arcana has too many good traits, swap it to other line like Air will help builds diversity.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Please swap Air II – Zephyr’s Focus and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina instead.

Renewing Stamina depends on Crit, and is out of place in the Arcana line, while Zephyr’s Focus belongs to the Arcana line (although it’s nearly useless since only Meteor Shower counts as a channelling spell). Swap it, put Renewing Stamina in Adept tier for Air, and put Zephyr’s Focus in Master tier for Arcana, and maybe buff it a little bit.

Arcana has too many good traits, swap it to other line like Air will help builds diversity.

Xsorus.2507:

People don’t understand why Bunkers Exist..

Bunker’s Exist because you have specs in this game that can instantly… and i mean that…INSTANTLY kill you.

100 to 0 in 1 second…..

If you’d not one of those classes that can do that, You go Bunker.. its really that simple.

QFT. The old d/d Ele emerged because at that time none of the other Ele spec could handle a few hits without dying. The choice was simple, spec 100% into defense, or die.

As long as there are specs/classes that can instantly kill you, there will still be bunkers.

The current elites are unviable in pvp. If I can just pick a utility slot for it, I’d be more happy. Hell, even a simple signet is also better.

NevirSayDie.6235:

hooma.9642:

NevirSayDie.6235:

…

I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.
…

u should rewatch the update-history. warriors where used after certain key-changes nearly immediatly

Oh I know, but they didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. Sorry for repeating myself.

They were strong for a while. It’s just recently after the last patch that people from other classes (like Ele) couldn’t stand it any more and re-roll a warrior. That’s why it looks like their population spiked.

When a class becomes OP, people don’t switch right away. They complain about it first. After a few months, they will get frustrate, lose faith, and switch, or quit.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Soothing Wave and Lingering are known and documented issues.

Thanks guys

Lingering Elements has been broken since beta, and yet it’s not fixed. I hope they really do fix Ele next patch.

Larynx.2453:

If what you’re saying is that eles need to spend so much effort being defensive that it hurts their offensive capabilities, then sure I can understand that and might agree with it. I think I was just misunderstanding your post when I made mine.

We’re in agreement. Thank you for your constructive post.

You also brought up a good point: are the problems Ele is facing a product of class mechanisms or a number problem?

I think right now it’s definitely numbers problem; however, there are also problems with class mechanisms that make it so hard to balance Ele. It’s too easy to misbalance Ele and make the class OP or severely underpowered. Gives it too much healing capability, and it’s unkillable. Gives it too little healing, and the class die instantly in team fight due to the lowest HP and Armor.

Right now, the biggest problem Ele is facing is the average damage output from other classes are very high. Anyone can deal more than 10k damage within seconds, and that’s devastating for Ele, with the base HP of 10.8k.

I think ANet should increase the base HP of Ele and reduce the animation cast time. That way ANet doesn’t need to give Ele too much healing capability, one of the reasons why the Bunker Ele was OP in the first place.

I totally support this idea.

I also like the idea that only stomp should give rally, and normal dps kill doesn’t give rally.

Larynx.2453:

But nevermind that. The class mechanics of ele have not changed much since they were disgustingly overpowered. Why does all of this apply now, and not then? If the class mechanics are proven to work, why can’t ArenaNet just change the numbers?

I have talked about that in my post. Maybe you missed it? I quoted it again down here.

Sunshine.5014:

The reason why the bunker ele build with Signet of Restoration was so popular is because it optimizes for a low dps_downtime variable, and it offers the Ele more dps time with decent healing. Healing with a bunker D/D just mean swap to water and dodge, and occasionally press Water 5. You have much more time to dps (that’s why together with might stacks, they still have an okay dps).

You wonder what changed? Let me tell you:
- Signet of Restoration nerfed badly, and it only heal for half of the value in pvp now. This change means the bunker ele needs to switch into water much more often to survive. That also means the dps uptime was decreased.
- At that time, only Thief and Mesmer have the bursts that can instantly drop Ele to 20% HP. For other classes, Ele can stay out of Water a long time, and has high dps uptime. However, most of the other classes have been buffed significantly over the period, and they can deal insane damage. Now, basically any class can burst down an Ele if spec’ed into it. This reduces Bunker Ele into the state of having to spend too much time just to survive, and can’t deal damage well anymore.
- Ele can’t clean conditions well anymore. The nerf to Cleansing Fire and Water tree made Ele vulnerable to all the conditions spam from Necro/Engineers/Spirit Rangers. Beside Cleansing Fire no longer have stun break, Mist Form also got nerfed hard.
- Ele was annoying to a lot of people because they could run away from a battle. That is no longer true for most cases, since the nerf to Lightning Flash range and Ride the Lightning cooldown and Ele’s Air Aura (Swiftness duration halved). Lightning Flash also got the stun break removed.

So, in reply to your question: yes, Ele was nerfed hard, while other classes got a lot of buff
That’s the reason why all of this apply now, and not then.

Do you agree with that?

Solo.9027:

@sunshine
The term DPS is always going to be talking about pve because you can’t measure that quantity in pvp, pvp is not a controlled environment because there are too many variables.

Agree.

Let’s not argue over semantics, so I’ll rephrase the claim to:
Ele has less time to deal damage. Together with a low hit rate, that leads to much lower damage output than the theoretic max in pvp. In short, Ele’s real damage output is really bad in pvp except in ideal situations (fighting with noobs who never dodge, stay in dragon tooth the whole time, never stun, never fear…)

That’s why Ele is the bottom tier for tournaments. It’s almost impossible to have the above ideal situation in competitive games.

Do you agree with that claim?

I agree that the superspeed can be awesome, so let’s wait to see it before we say it sucks.

The real question we should ask when we analyze a class in pvp:
How hard it is to land your skill in pvp, and what’s the up time for dps. In pve you usually don’t have to worry if your skills hit; the monsters are not player.

Let’s assume we accept the notion that Ele’s damage is 15-20% higher than the warrior’s during a 10s period (which is very debatable). Now the total damage will be:
Warrior’s damage = 1.0 * normalized_dps * (1 – dps_downtime) * hit_rate
Ele’s damage = 1.2 * normalized_dps * (1 – dps_downtime) * hit_rate

In pve, we can assume that both the players play perfectly, so the hit_rate for both classes is 100%. It’s also widely accepted that the ele with half HP will need to interrupt their skill more often. Which class wins? It depends on your judgement of how much more often the Ele has to interrupt their skill and affects their dps_downtime.

Now in pvp, we can’t assume that the hit_rate is 100% anymore. Warrior has such an easier time to hit with their skills. Ele’s skills have longer cast time and are more predictable given both their known rotations and highly telegraphed visuals. On top of that, the 5 targets limit also reduces the hit_rate for Ele. Consider 2 Ele fighting a spirit ranger and a minion necromancer, the Ele can barely hit the real champion at all, since most of the random hits will hit the minions instead.

On top of that, the dps_downtime for Ele is also much higher. Ele usually needs to switch to water and heal, or casts their heal skill, both of which take out the dps time. The reason why the bunker ele build with Signet of Restoration was so popular is because it optimizes for a low dps_downtime variable, and it offers the Ele more dps time with decent healing. Healing with a bunker D/D just mean swap to water and dodge, and occasionally press Water 5. You have much more time to dps (that’s why together with might stacks, they still have an okay dps).

Nevertheless, Ele (especially the non D/D bunker Ele) also needs to heal more often because of their low HP pool. Ele often needs to heal after they take 8k damage, since that means they only have about 4k HP left. Warrior can keep dps longer. Imagine a warrior fighting an ele, assuming equal skill level, you can tell right away that the Ele will have to heal first, and that is a great opportunity for the warrior to finish off the ele. Warrior also has the passive Healing Signet, which has zero negative effect on dps_downtime.

Even the 20% more damage coefficient can’t help the poor ele, since the Warrior has much more armor, and it reduces the damage they deal to each other to roughly equal.

TL;DR: Conclusion: in pve, Ele is in a decent spot with the presume highest damage if played optimally, or a subpar damage if need to pay more attention to stay survive.
In pvp Ele is in a very kittenty spot since the presume damage coefficient is nullified by the other higher armor class, a kittenty hit_rate, a high dps_downtime, and a lot of wasted time for animation/healing.

I’m surprised that after a page long of posts, no one mentioned the key difference between Warrior’s DPS and Ele’s DPS in pvp:
How hard it is to land your skill in pvp, and what’s the up time for dps. In pve you usually don’t have to worry if your skills hit; the monsters are not player.

Let’s assume we accept the notion that Ele’s damage is 15-20% higher than the warrior’s during a 10s period. Now the total damage will be:
Warrior’s damage = 1.0 * normalized_dps * (1 – dps_downtime) * hit_rate
Ele’s damage = 1.2 * normalized_dps * (1 – dps_downtime) * hit_rate

In pve, we can assume that both the players play perfectly, so the hit_rate for both classes is 100%. It’s also widely accepted that the ele with half HP will need to interrupt their skill more often. Which class wins? It depends on your judgement of how much more often the Ele has to interrupt their skill and affects their dps_downtime.

Now in pvp, we can’t assume that the hit_rate is 100% anymore. Warrior has such an easier time to hit with their skills. Ele’s skills have longer cast time and are more predictable given both their known rotations and highly telegraphed visuals. On top of that, the 5 targets limit also reduces the hit_rate for Ele. Consider 2 Ele fighting a spirit ranger and a minion necromancer, the Ele can barely hit the real champion at all, since most of the random hits will hit the minions instead.

On top of that, the dps_downtime for Ele is also much higher. Ele usually needs to switch to water and heal, or casts their heal skill, both of which take out the dps time. The reason why the bunker ele build with Signet of Restoration was so popular is because it optimizes for a low dps_downtime variable, and it offers the Ele more dps time with decent healing. Healing with a bunker D/D just mean swap to water and dodge, and occasionally press Water 5. You have much more time to dps (that’s why together with might stacks, they still have an okay dps).

Nevertheless, Ele (especially the non D/D bunker Ele) also needs to heal more often because of their low HP pool. Ele often needs to heal after they take 8k damage, since that means they only have about 4k HP left. Warrior can keep dps longer. Imagine a warrior fighting an ele, assuming equal skill level, you can tell right away that the Ele will have to heal first, and that is a great opportunity for the warrior to finish off the ele. Warrior also has the passive Healing Signet, which has zero negative effect on dps_downtime.

Even the 20% more damage coefficient can’t help the poor ele, since the Warrior has much more armor, and it reduces the damage they deal to each other to roughly equal.

TL;DR: Conclusion: in pve, Ele is in a decent spot with the presume highest damage if played optimally, or a subpar damage if need to pay more attention to stay survive.
In pvp Ele is in a very kittenty spot since the presume damage coefficient is nullified by the other higher armor class, a kittenty hit_rate, a high dps_downtime, and a lot of wasted time for animation/healing.

Writetyper.1985:

Ele. I still see loads of mesmers, who are supposedly bad, but eles are a rare beast. Probably because you can get the same results by just autoattacking on a spirit ranger as an extremely well played ele.

This sums up a lot of things. Ele has always been about trying 3x harder to achieve the same (or worse) result. At high level tournament, where the skills are mostly equal, it makes no sense at all to play a handicap class like Ele. It makes no sense to have to try harder while you can just play other easier classes. The risk/reward ratio for Ele is too high, it’s not worth it.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

For me (necro) ele is most untouchable class (if he knows how to play ofc). Even with engineers i don’t have such problem.

Ele have too many different block, knockback, stun, move skills. When he is on low hp – he just move in 2k range in bloody second and i’m unable to chase him.

I’m understand for being good on ele you have to properly use all 4 bars, but still, so OP.

Sigh..
Ele blocks?

Sigh..
Ele’s mobility was nerfed really hard. If you can’t catch an ele, I don’t how you can catch a thief/ranger/warrior/guardian.

The real reason why you click Play Now and it mostly jumps to Sky Hammer: people leave the map. I personally leave the game if it gets to Sky Hammer, and I know a lot of people do so. Which means, when you press Play Now, most of the “not full” games are Sky Hammer, and you get assigned into it. People stay in other maps, so there is less chance you can get into them.

jmatb.6307:

Conjures might have an Engi type feel to the class, like going Fiery Greatsword/Axe with Lightning Flash and Mist Form. The might from cantrips and the axe would be pretty sick, since you have blast finishers from the axe, arcane wave, and your S/D or D/D. Put 15 to 20 stacks of might on someone while attacking and that’s always gonna hurt.

This is facepalm.

It’s people like this that Ele has been nerfed to oblivion. You don’t know what you are talking about. First sentence, you talked about Lightning and Mist Form; then the next sentence say you use Arcane Wave. And you have the extra slot to have other conjure weapons. A character only has 3 utilities slots.

People love to theorycraft about how powerful Ele is. The fact is, many of their ideas are mutual exclusive:

Lets take a look:
- Ele can have massive healing power. OMG 3 heals and get full max HP!
- Ele can have great burst. OMG when he unloads everything my full Death Shroud drops!
- Ele can have great sustain. OMG he can stack might like crazy, easily 25 stacks with Fire Axe and Arcane Wave!
- Ele can have great mobility. OMG he can run away when he has Lightning Flash, Mist Form, FGS and RTL.
- Ele can have great support. OMG he cleans groups conditions like crazy with Staff water field, and aura share too!
- Ele can crowd control. OMG look at the way he drops static and stun the whole crowd in WvW. Then he uses Earthquake, it’s so OP.

The reality is:
- Ele can have massive healing power, but only if he is wearing healing gears, and spec 30 into Water, and then need another 30 points in Arcana to reduce the Water Attunement time for the heal. Mutual exclusive with damage, conjure, no Air cooldown reduction for RTL, no burst.
- Ele can have great burst. but only when spec to Air and Fire. Mutual exclusive with healing, support, crowd control, sustain, conjure.
- Ele can have great sustain, but rarely applicable in PvP. Mutual exclusive with survivability. Try to do the full Fire Axe combo to get mights in PvP. It takes 8 seconds. One stun, and you’re dead. You don’t have time for those gimmicks in tournaments. That’s why it’s great on paper.

Just stop theorycrafting about Ele if you don’t know the class. It hurts.

TL;DR: Yes, Ele is the jack of all trades. He can do EVERYTHING. Yah, but at one time he can only do one thing. Ele needs to sacrifice tons of other things to be good at one task.

It’s all opportunity costs.

Lordryux.9785:

hmm my team actually won xD

Do you know why? Because the other team have 2 eles xD

I’m so glad that I saw many more bunker ele today. It’s the spirit! Lets show people that Ele is not dead; we will survive. Keep trolling people with the bunker build guys, forget the build diversity, that’s what ANet wants us to do.

I mean, your panic doesn’t make ANet stop nerfing ele. So why cares. I mean, if you’re a bunker ele, this doesn’t really effect your at all. If you’re not a bunker ele? Just switch to be a bunker ele. This patch, ANet basically encourages rational ele players to play bunkers.

So, if you’re not a bunker ele, try one now! This patch, it’s not only just slightly better than other spec, it’s the best of the best, far better than the mediocre spec you’re running! Don’t believe me? Read more:

1> The opponent dodged your RtL, and it has 40s cooldown? Don’t worry, just be a bunker and fight them for 40 seconds. My condolences if you’re anything else.
2> The opponent bursts you rapidly. If you’re a bunker ele, you don’t need to care, just continue to fight. Your signet of restoration/regeneration/water regen will still give you around 800 HP/s with Cleric Amulet even with the nerf, not counting other burst heals. My condolences if you’re not a bunker ele, no more healing in mist form for you. Just relax, go get a cup of tea instead of mashing your keyboard trying in vain.
3> The opponent applies some conditions on you. As a bunker ele, nothing really changes for you. I mean, which bunker eles in their right mind use multiple cantrips at the same time right? My condolences for staff ele with water fields. I’m sorry.
….

Disclosure:
I play a 10/20/0/10/30 d/d spec, trying to be as offensive as possible without dying in one or two hits in pvp to all the berserker spec. I refused to play bunkers since to me it’s a trolling build. I have hoped that ANet will nerf bunkers some day. In my build, I relied on healing during mist form to stay alive because I only have 12K HP. I relied on RtL to get away. I relied on Cleansing Fire to clean conditions.

Sadly, this new patch, which “should promotes more build diversity” kills my build completely. Well, I guess I’ll just be positive and play bunker then. So I encourage you guys to switch to bunker and play it with me. The patch barely touches bunker spec, so lets play it!

Peace ~^_^~