Let’s put your points into perspective:
-Ele lose EA at master level, so now the profession lose its place in the meta
My point perspective:
-Ele gains aquatic benevolence
-Ele gains geomancer defense
-Ele gains shorter attunement recharge
-Ele gains 3 GM traits
-Ele can now apply aoe stability, protection( take EA and lose evasive), increase his base team healing by 25%, clear 1 condi from team…all the while being far harder to kill than a shoutbow who is susceptible to burst
-note- Still waiting for powerful aura
…and this is only one of the future builds, remember that:
-burning now stacks in intensity( aura share tanky ember ele – flamewall)
-tempest defense moved to master, attunement CD reduced to 10s base ( lightning rod tanky dps/burst – try current version with d/d and zerker with 30 in earth=1400 toughness, currently not viable because you can’t spec 30 water so…)
- …staff builds ( still in deep theorycraft )
Finally there is..Tempest specialization, the chances that our specialization will be a highly viable burst role….are extremely high as I doubt ele need a support or bunker specialization and we’ve been promised that specializations will allow a profession to play a different role than the norm.
The meta will change inside/out…I don’t think further discussion would be useful at this time
Later I’ll post suggestions for some trait changes and additions, meanwhile I leave my suggestions to make our elite more meaningful in PvP:
Tornado
-Currently the knockback occurs every 3s , reduce the pulse to 2s
-Add a 4th skill on tornado bar : 2s CD – Pull foes
-Add a 5th skill on tornado bar : 4s CD – Reflect projectiles for 2s
Glyph of elementals
-Water elemental = remove the long casting animation, the elemental will be dead before doing anything or you[’ll be dead way before the healing get off
-Earth elemental = increase radius of stomp from 240 to 320
This is a list of posts I strongly believe deserve the dev’s attention, all for a better future of this profession:
Diamond skin Rework
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Rework-to-Diamond-Skin/first#post5015890
Elemental Attunement should not be a GM
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elemental-Attunement-should-NOT-be-a-GM/first
Ether renewal as cantrip
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Theorycraft-Ether-Renewal-as-Cantrip/first#post5014309
Powerful Aura
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Theorycraft-Auramancer-Unbound/first#post5008264
Signets Rework
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Small-Signet-Rework-Idea/first#post5016645
Glyph Rework
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/What-will-fix-glyphs-for-you/first#post5016764
If you play PvP as solo player, you’re doing it wrong. join guild, make team or don’t bother..no kidding
Any cele class, Guardian, Ranger. All are easy. And whatever ANET allows to be braindead and over-powered.
Say they give Skull Crack instant cast back? Everyone will play that. Say ANET gives instant-casting time on Mantra Mesmer and it happens to be broken and easy? Everyone will play that.
Everyone is just going to go to the next easy thing. It’s really just a matter of incentive and meta enforcement by ANET.
So any class that it’s not thief…..xddd, hahaha, dude I’m cracking up in my chair I swear.
just because it’s the only “useful” trait in that slot doesn’t mean that it’s a good trait.
I’ve specifically stated that I don’t think the change to elemental attunemt is balance-wise the best choice or that elemental contingency is better, I just said that elemental attunemt wasn’t very skill-intensive and elemental contingency might be a bit more skill-intensive: I might actually hold on to the switch to fire in certain situations simply because i want the retal – that would’ve never happened with elemental attunemt.
If you take a look at what people run at low/medium levels of pvp..you’d notice that there are no eles in the majority of cases, these days all you see is : engies(omni present with Iwin elite), well spammers necro and med guardian/thief( omni present) and ofc shout warriors…you don’t see eles that often, that should tell you a lot about the level of skill required to play ele respect to the rest…same(or better) result with far less buttons to press
you’re overreacting…. healing power will get nerfed by 10%, so sor will still heal at least around 250/s. if they don’t add 300 healing power to the amulet they will still add more than 100 toughness so that will balance it out aswell.
the problem with sor is more that it sucks for a) short fights, b) slow weapons.
something like withdraw would be appreciated.
glyph of elemental harmony would need a cooldown and casting time reduction. the heal itself sucks so i’d rather have something else; tempest please.
The stats will be completely removed not simply reduced.
I see that you mean celestial amulet..but what will happen to zerker builds or any build that doesn’t use celestial?
With EA moved to GM, the condi clear of ele will take a hit, a reworked diamond skin now would be ideal
I apologize for the boldness of the title, I know that many will say :" what this guy is on about? We have SoR". Yeah I know that already, point is…they’ll remove healing power from water.
What this means is that by default , SoR heals by 202 pts for action, it’s hugely dependent on healing power compared to Healing Signet on warriors; for the moment we don’t know where the stats will come from but with celestial nerfed, it’s safe to assume that the healing potential of eles..will be in a pretty bad shape when the changes roll in.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Restoration
I was thinking that it would be about time for ele to receive a main heal skill that doesn’t require healing power that badly to be
at least be decent.
My proposal is to knock 1/4s from the casting time of glyph of elemental harmony and slightly increase the base healing.
Thoughts?
Eles desperately need an active heal with a max of 1s cast and good working conditions.
I’m praying that ER become a cantrip and for that gain a much lower casting time with a necessary longer CD.
In my opinion one of the reasons why burst ele doesn’t really click in PvP, it’s the lack of an active heal, the passive healing of SoR will be even less now that they will remove healing power from water.
It’s fundamental for eles to obtain a viable active heal, the glyph as it is with its 1-1/2 casting time +casting animation doesn’t cut it at all.
An increased healing ( say 4k to 5k ) + regen and vigor would more than justify an increased in CD and reduced number of conditions cleared, assuming ofc the casting time get reduced
Fire: confusion/burn have no effect
Air: weakness and slow have no effect
2nd Suggestion: Condition duration is reduced by 66% while attuned to earth
3rd Suggestion: Apply 2 and 1/2s of resistance boon when you swap to earth
Honestly, these are some massive overreactions. Procs like this are necessary to actually kill people. Also, most of the classes got buffs, so I don’t think it will be that bad. I’d be far more worried about unkillable builds.
….the thief is the class that has been forcing uber tank builds on professions since launch…that won’t change anytime soon apparently..actually it’ll become worst.
They even gave thief an uber vigor version and resistance boon to deal with condis ….-_-, the dodge spamm has not been removed…just lowered a bit, I’m praying that the dodge spamming will be made less viable…but my hopes are quickly fading
(edited by Supreme.3164)
-snip-
This is not a matter of nerf of buff, I don’t know why you’re so hung up on geomancer defense, yes Everybody understand that the trait is a passive defensive trait.
You keep saying that this trait alone will make eles even more tanky than now with a more passive playstyle, if you take a look at other professions..you’d see that they won’t be that much harder to play either( especially engi and warrior).
Yes you can be a super tank on ele, and arguably this has been made even easier…and so what? There won’t be any more cele super tanky bruiser, you won’t be able to stack might as easily, you won’t have as much healing power to boost SoR.
Yes you can still be tanky…and so what?. They removed healing power…no more 276 SoR, do you understand?.
Yes you can tank dmg, trigger frost aura, elementasl shielding…whatever…then what?
You have no enough freaking healing power to recover, do you understand?
Yes you go now in game and buff yourself to 9000 toughness(random number), you then absorb that 10k hit like nothing…then what? You can’t recover for it, you’ll go down in 4-kittens anyway, so your 9000 toughness serves no purpose, you have nothing to back it up.
Right now a cele bruiser can recover indefinitely while being tanky, do you understand?
They removed stats and moved elemental attunement to GM, so no matter how much dmg you can absorb…you won’t be able to recover from it efficiently unless you equip a specialized amulet like cleric and go bunker role, but you won’t have the dmg of current cele bruiser.
Yes, you use my example of cele d/d vs cele d/d and then state that the upcoming changes will make things even more boring and I explained several times ( including now) that this won’t be the case,yes everybody can see the passive defense aspect, but my point is that a specialized role will be imposed on you so no matter how tanky you hope to be, the infinite war of cele d/d vs cele d/d won’t happen.
The choice between offense or defense will make the game, harder, you won’t be able to have both offense and defense on the same build, not at the level of current cele d/d.
Let’s leave this discussion, I run out of steam, if you understand, good, if not..fair enough
I think ele will become more harder to play because the room for error will decrease in size, I believe that healing/sustain is the biggest contributor to ele sustain, all of which will be greatly reduced once the changes kick in.
I use numbers to formulate opinions, and the numbers are these:
-Current d/d ele: SoR 276 + regen healing at 1500 + 18K Hp ( 300 healing power/vitality + 30% boon duration)
-Future d/d ele: SoR 232 +regen healing at 900 + 15k HP (boon duration for now gone, no more 300 healing/vitality)
There is a drop in passive sustain, now hoping that geomancer defense remains as it is ( it could still be nerfed mind you), then the oveall survivability of the ele will remain mostly the same…..but it won’t increase in terms of passive play ( this also because you can’t hope to use Stone heart passively)
So they decrease sustain via healing — which was semi-passive — and increase sustain via geomancer defense and soothing ice, which is pure passive. I don’t get how you go from there to saying that the overall survivability of ele will stay the same but won’t increase in terms of passive play.
At least you can CC and apply poison to reduce healing. Unless you’re a ranged class, there’s nothing to be done about geo defense or soothing ice. You’re right that the stone heart trait isn’t purely passive, but it definitely isn’t more active than the current ele playstyle.
What do you currently do when you know you’re about to eat a burst that, for whatever reason, you can’t avoid? You pop earth for protection or pop an aura for protection.
What will you do with the new build? You pop earth for stone heart, or pop an aura for protection. The same in terms of active vs. passive. Except now you also just eat the burst at -20% dmg from Geo Defense, and hope that the first crit procs soothing ice + elemental shielding, so you get another ~43% dmg reduction for doing nothing -- the definition of passive.
You’re assuming that geomancer defense will make up for the loss in direct healing, you’re assuming that ele survivability will be easier to achieve….you’re assuming and you have no numbers.
You don’t know by how much the dmg in game overall will increase and neither by how much the loss in vitality and healing will affect the ele, so I don’t see how you state that ele sustain will increase, or rather become worst for the opponent to deal with.
To put this in numbers:
If a 5k dmg source reachs an ele with current dmg reduction of 33%+500 healing, then the total dmg received in the end will, let’s say, 2k with the current level of HP, which is 18k HP, the dmg can be easily overshadowed
After the changes that dmg source will increase ( zerker stats increase, professions able to stack several dmg traits : thieves-mesmer-war) while the ele healing will be reduced by more than half, vitality will decrease by 20% more or less and only dmg reduction will increase by 20%
At this stage it is safe to assume that more than everything the survival will remain more or less the same, because in terms of numbers I don’t see how it’s possible for that 20% alone to make up for loss in healing and vitality against increased dmg, therefore I don’t see how the situation could potentially get worst as you seem to imply
(edited by Supreme.3164)
You forget they’re removing the stats from the trait lines, no more healing power and vitality from going 30 water, no more 30% boon duration from going 30 arcana and celestial is getting nerfed by 10%.
Between the buffs and nerfs, I think the 10% overal nerf will remain, assuming the remaining stats will come from buffed runes then we’re looking at a cele ele with :
-15k Hp
-1.3k toughness
-300+ healing power = SoR healing for 230 Hp for second, respect to 276 like nowRest would depends on rune set that you chose, but as base I don’t see the current cele ele make a return, want a tanky or power cele? Well any of the two won’t have huge sustain with SoR alone so you won’t be face tanking anything in the end.
You can’t facetank anything with toughness/protection alone and that will be the case with the upcoming changes, by the way facetanking for me means to simply eat all dmg you receive without flinching and that something not even current cele ele can really do at 100%
I think you misinterpreted my post, or maybe I wasn’t clear. You suggested earlier that these changes would make ele require more skill to play. I explained why that’s not the case.
For example, you specifically stated that your duels with a D/D ele (presumably a bruiser ele) would last indefinitely even if the other ele ate 5-6 burning speeds (i.e. “facetanking”). You then suggested that this won’t be the case with the HOT changes. I’m explaining to you that even with the HOT changes to ele traits, you’ll still run into the problem you described because of geo defense and soothing ice. The only difference now is the ele bruiser playstyle will become even more passive.
Edit: For your convenience, here’s the post I was referring to:
Look I’m an ele main and I have been fighting my fair share of d/d eles who survive solely because of the trait set up, if you go tank you should be allowed to survive yes….but not survive indefinitely regardless of the number of mistakes you do.
Between 2 eles if one takes 5-6 burning speed in his face, the match should end already, it shouldn’t go one forever because the skill difference has already been established, one waste dodges because he can, the other save his dodges, the latter should be rewarded with victory
Again, the point is that the new traits won’t prevent what you just described from happening. If anything, it’ll make it worse because there’s even less counterplay to a trait that passively reduces damage and a trait that procs frost aura when crit.
In your latest response, you’re saying that eles can’t literally sit still and eat every single attack thrown at them. Of course they can’t. I know you were exaggerating when you said an ele could eat 5-6 burning speeds in a row. My use of the word “facetanking” was also hyperbolic. But its an appropriate way to describe a build that revolves around getting hit to proc auras + protection (either via soothing ice or flame barrier w/ ele shielding) while also relying on geo defense’s passive 20% dmg reduction.
Next, your point about A.net nerfing celestial stats — which we’re already aware of because the devs made a post about it — has nothing to do with whether changes to ele bruiser traits will make ele more or less skill-based. The playstyle will remain the same regardless of the amulet stats. The only difference is how effective the overall build would be. If celestial turns out to be a bad choice stat-wise, maybe bruiser eles will go back to valkyrie or cleric. Either way, the trait changes favor a more passive playstyle.
Also, if you watched the Ready Up, A.net didn’t say they’re removing boon duration and condi duration. They indicated that they haven’t figured out what they plan on doing with those stats yet. So any speculation about how those stats will play out is a bit premature.
I think ele will become more harder to play because the room for error will decrease in size, I believe that healing/sustain is the biggest contributor to ele sustain, all of which will be greatly reduced once the changes kick in.
I use numbers to formulate opinions, and the numbers are these:
-Current d/d ele: SoR 276 + regen healing at 1500 + 18K Hp ( 300 healing power/vitality + 30% boon duration)
-Future d/d ele: SoR 232 +regen healing at 900 + 15k HP (boon duration for now gone, no more 300 healing/vitality)
There is a drop in passive sustain, now hoping that geomancer defense remains as it is ( it could still be nerfed mind you), then the oveall survivability of the ele will remain mostly the same…..but it won’t increase in terms of passive play ( this also because you can’t hope to use Stone heart passively)
If they make it a cantrip why do you expect it to be an instant? Heal as one or healing breeze will be non-instant shouts, just as “Guard Me” is. Or you have a non-instant stance, a meditation or an arcane.
There probably won’t be much of a rebalancing because the only reason they want to categorise skills is to make them affected by traits and runes so they can compete with other skills.
I strongly doubt they would leave Ether renewal as it is, as I could have 6s regen/vigor every 12s with the buffed soothing disruption
I have doubts that Ether Renewal will be untouched. If anything, they’ll probably increase the cooldown time. If you ask me, increased cooldown times should accompany shorter cast times to compensate for the punishing effect of being interrupted. However, with the way balance has been handled, I doubt there will be reduced cast times. Anet doesn’t seem to like to compensate for nerfs and it has shown in past updates.
It will probably just receive an increased CD an nothing else, and put out to pasture as another worthless skill left to die. Anet doesn’t care about fixing core ele problems. They are focused on more exciting things, like engineers!
That would be something we must all strongly complain about, we can’t let them simply increase the CD of ER without reducing casting animation, this is where energies should be used I believe
I don’t think any of the above ideas or responses to Celestial amulet really takes into account the fact with 3 traitlines maxed, Celestial will synergize even more with builds.
How? You lose base stats from everything, really cele users will become the real definition of “jack of all trades and master or none”, you won’t be holding point indefinitely and neither bursting people down with might stacking ( boon duration is gone)….you will fill a role until help come
The idea that bruiser D/D eles will suddenly require skill to play well seems wildly incorrect to me.
Due to the new water/earth traits & synergies, bruiser celestial eles will become way more tanky. On top of that, all of their tankiness will become passive.
Currently, a d/d ele needs to time his earth attune and usage of auras to gain and maintain protection. With the proposed HOT changes, the ele will just facetank damage with a passive 20% damage reduction and passively triggered frost auras (which grant more protection), and elemental contingency passively triggering more buffs.
Also, eles can take written in stone to be able to spam their heal signet every 16s (which works out to more HPS than evasive arcana), without having to burn a dodge (but at least it is interruptible). Or heart of stone to just be immune to crits while in earth.
All this means that “bruiser” D/D ele builds (like the current celestial D/D build) will still be able to recover from a lot of mistakes — just like every other bruiser build. All the proposed HOT do is make the build even easier to play.
Also, separate from the whole “is this a nerf or a buff” discussion — which will change drastically depending on what the ICD for Soothing Ice is set to — the proposed HOT changes are reducing the fun, active traits that ele has, and adding in more passive traits. Timing evasive arcana and elemental attunement, and placing your dodge rolls correctly, in order to best benefit your teammates was fun. Air-dodge-rolling to blind a downed body to give your ally a safestomp was an interesting mechanic. Being able to just passively soak more damage doesn’t seem fun to me. I might as well just play a warrior in that case.
So separate from all the “nerf/buff” discussions, I would love if A.net retooled some of the traits to be more skill-based. Here are some examples:
Make “One With Air” a minor trait and make it trigger only when you successfully dodge an attack while in air (with a 1s duration or so). So when you dodge an attack, you get to briefly reposition yourself.
Make air training give you a stacking dmg boost and CD reduction (for air skills) each time you cause an enemy to miss via blind or dodge.
Give the fire adept minor trait a more active trigger for applying flame aura, such as a chance to trigger when you damage an enemy that is suffering from burning.
You forget they’re removing the stats from the trait lines, no more healing power and vitality from going 30 water, no more 30% boon duration from going 30 arcana and celestial is getting nerfed by 10%.
Between the buffs and nerfs, I think the 10% overal nerf will remain, assuming the remaining stats will come from buffed runes then we’re looking at a cele ele with :
-15k Hp
-1.3k toughness
-300+ healing power = SoR healing for 230 Hp for second, respect to 276 like now
Rest would depends on rune set that you chose, but as base I don’t see the current cele ele make a return, want a tanky or power cele? Well any of the two won’t have huge sustain with SoR alone so you won’t be face tanking anything in the end.
You can’t facetank anything with toughness/protection alone and that will be the case with the upcoming changes, by the way facetanking for me means to simply eat all dmg you receive without flinching and that something not even current cele ele can really do at 100%
It really depends I believe, just an idea but going 6 in arms would allow warriors to use a zerker amulet maybe geomancy instead than intelligence ( given the 50% crit on tun or the 100% crit chance GM) and use 10% dmg increase from minor…just an idea, nothing off the table at this time
My initial thoughts are, for Ele support to be fun ranges really need looked at.
- Aura share is 360.
- Elemental Attunement is 240.Basically being forced to stand on top of an ally to buff them seems kind of unfun, especially since they made EA a GM, would be nice if they could buff up the area.
Preferably; both would be great at 600 radius, still limited to midrange but generally more effective. If they can’t allow that, at the very least EA should be 360 so that players can play with consistent ranges on their buffs.
Yes good point indeed, if they remove the limit I pray they buff the range too, 600 would be more than fine really
With unsuspecting foe as minor and merged merciles hammer now, that may not be the case anymore
They will be tanks yes…but tank with no team support, or not superior self sustain, if elemental attunement would have been left where it is now…then other trait lines would have not received the same level of buffs, ele would have been worst off after the buffing of the other classes.
-no base attunement recharge drop
-no earth defense
-no water line buffs
Now if the team wants support, they will have to pick one or the other, or even better take a shoutbow. A team could take a d/d with elemental attunement and then take a (now buffed) hambow seen as the team support role is taken, or keep the shoutbow and have a EA ele maybe playing as bruiser/skyrmisher..roamer?!
it’s not only staff, there are too many useless weaponskills for ele.
most of the scepter skills suck, churning earth sucks, staff is actually one of the better weapons while focus is the best one imo.all we can do is hope that sword, if that’s our new weapon, will be worthy of a close range damage weapon.
Yeah so let the devs move elemental attunement to GM or whatever, then maybe..just maybe the community will finally realize that people losing to eles are not exactly the PRO players they want people to think and that really they lost to that ele..because they’ve got outplayed and not because the class is OP( well like now is kinda is with one spec)
As soon the OP stigma drop…maybe we get some deserved buff (wishful thinking, looking at the necro state…I’m not that confident really
If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards
Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits
With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth
Do you even know what fresh air means? Do you know that the spec doesn’t use soothing disruption? Do you realize you lose active defense if you don’t go arcana? And dps, too?
Do you realize: current fresh air mostly use cantrip reduction and the trait is being incorporated into soothing disruption?, that now you will max water line and hence take cleansing water most likely? That active defense of frequent dodging can be substituted by revamped earth line?
And do explain how going arcana increase dps of fresh air, now that everything has been removed
Main problem is that I even play 30 fire/air currently so I see things from a different perspective all together, I don’t see at all this loss of sustain on fresh air, if anything the sustain has greatly increased
Lol, I don’t know anyone playing fresh air and using Cantrip Mastery. I suppose some people play it, but they sacrifice dps for reduced cooldown on mistorm (?), which is not really that great. Do you even play ele? Do you know the traits in Arcana? You know you get free fury, weakness, might, protection, regeneration, retal and stuff? Doesn’t seem like it.
No you don’t know everybody and neither the class!, You only know what’s written in big capital letters on website and call it the only thing that work
You should not talk about DPS like you know what metric of measurement means, because current fresh air build listed on meta battle does 1/3 the dmg of a shatter mesmer and 1/2 the dmg of a d/p thief while having less sustain then both and far less sustain then med guardian.
If you’d be really interested in DPS then you’d be able to play a 30 fire/air ele which deal far greater dmg than anything in the current meta, problem is you don’t want to really play a DPS spec…‘cause you don’t even seem to know what DPS means
-edit- Pls do try to maintain consistency in your statement, to say that cantrip mastery over soothing wave reduce dps is complete non-sense, and where this huge dps buff come from in the arcana line when future fresh air will be able to access all attunements faster than current version?
Seeing as you don’t know what Arcana trait line has, you don’t know the class. Maybe you play too much of your pve build that will fail facing anyone who is decent.
You were the one generalizing how every ele plays your build and those who don’t definitely copied it from metabattle. Anyways, no point talking to you.
Yeah I’m a pve player whatever you say or desire, if you think to be that great of a personality that you may want to start acting like one, all you’ve been doing for the last couple of days is whining in every thread with the word ele in the title, whining like a spoiled brat whose favourite toy has just been stolen.
Try to present the devs with constructive criticism instead then force your opinion as the only possible reality because guess what…it’s not
Again ele is supposed to be a jack of all trades class, while you bring dps you bring also support; a fresh air ele can apply regen and heals allies..a mesmer can’t; a fresh air can bring team stability..a thief can’t. Without a clear differentiation between professions you will have a situation where 2 or more spots in a team are covered by the same profession.
This is extremely unhealthy for everybody…including the abused class. Just look at the state of our elites, conjure, glyphs…all in shamble because we were never able to get rid of that OP stigma…so this class never received some deserved buffs on unused staff as the devs wanted to avoid a major uproar on the forums.
So let other professions enjoy their specialized role while we save our identity, meanwhile hoping to receive some necessary buffs on UP staff without causing people’s rage
I really do hope that elemental attunement moved to GM will force hard decisions on players and will make so that an “optimal” build will never be born again (I pray so).
It has become extremely frustrating for me to see shoutcasters not even bothering to go over the build of players using an ele during ESL or similar, all running same trait set up, utilities and runes.
I hope these changes will bring the necessary build diversity to eles, not more a build to rule them all, or you go ele team support or you go ele who benefits the most from dodges.
Mine was an hypothesis really.
In the build above I have assume you have elemental contigency(you gain retaliation being hit while in fire) + elemental attunement + bountiful power + aquamancer , ideally this is the way you want to follow in my opinion to maximise burst without going fire at all
as i said, even that won’t help if you check how mesmers and thieves have been buffed, you need to go into earth to counter them, in fact the counters are very very good.
by going into earth you will reduce every backstab that would hit you for 6k-7k to 5,5k or less without even doing anything. make use of your auras at the right time and you will half it, stay in earth and the thief will maybe not even hit you for 2k.
i won’t say arcana is bad, but not as good as before. now that we’re able to pick 3 lines we will be able to lessen our counters overall while keeping our strengths (or almost all of it).
air:
- superspeed to kite players that want to chase you with swiftness.
- tempest defense, a great counter to overcharged shot and traited steal.
- fresh air, obviousearth:
- elemental shielding, strong with soothing ice, tempest defense and focus 5.
- reduced earth cooldowns and -duration on soft cc, more cleanse and more invul
- stone heart. previously you went into earth to get the protection to counter bursts a bit, now you go into earth and you will counter almost all of the burst.water:
- soothing ice, great synergy with cleansing water and elemental shielding, 3s protection every 10s with regen and a condi cleanse
- cleansing wave, your on demand cleanse without having to dodge.
- cleansing water to get the cleanses you need, very good with scepter 3 on water.you can overcome the weakness to conditions that many berserker builds have
you can mitigate direct damage burst very well
all you lose is a bit of damage and vigour.
Unfortunately I believe that arcana is just as strong as before, the elemental attunement change was necessary; a necessary evil that has brought quite few gifts with it
-very strong earth line
-superspeed
-“buffed” fire line
-“buffed” water line ( hoping they unnerf powerful aura as said on stream)
-reduced base attunement charge to 10s CD
-quite few other things.
Going earth over arcana will be a choice not a necessity, the playstyle change same as the end result : you go earth for more defense or arcan for more dps?
To remember that going 30 arcana now will drop attunument CD to 8s ( how does faster access to healing ripple sound?).
You can’t adapt a single playstyle to different variation of the same build, you really can’t
If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards
Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits
With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth
Do you even know what fresh air means? Do you know that the spec doesn’t use soothing disruption? Do you realize you lose active defense if you don’t go arcana? And dps, too?
Do you realize: current fresh air mostly use cantrip reduction and the trait is being incorporated into soothing disruption?, that now you will max water line and hence take cleansing water most likely? That active defense of frequent dodging can be substituted by revamped earth line?
And do explain how going arcana increase dps of fresh air, now that everything has been removed
Main problem is that I even play 30 fire/air currently so I see things from a different perspective all together, I don’t see at all this loss of sustain on fresh air, if anything the sustain has greatly increased
Lol, I don’t know anyone playing fresh air and using Cantrip Mastery. I suppose some people play it, but they sacrifice dps for reduced cooldown on mistorm (?), which is not really that great. Do you even play ele? Do you know the traits in Arcana? You know you get free fury, weakness, might, protection, regeneration, retal and stuff? Doesn’t seem like it.
No you don’t know everybody and neither the class!, You only know what’s written in big capital letters on website and call it the only thing that work
You should not talk about DPS like you know what metric of measurement means, because current fresh air build listed on meta battle does 1/3 the dmg of a shatter mesmer and 1/2 the dmg of a d/p thief while having less sustain then both and far less sustain then med guardian.
If you’d be really interested in DPS then you’d be able to play a 30 fire/air ele which deal far greater dmg than anything in the current meta, problem is you don’t want to really play a DPS spec…‘cause you don’t even seem to know what DPS means
-edit- Pls do try to maintain consistency in your statement, to say that cantrip mastery over soothing wave reduce dps is complete non-sense, and where this huge dps buff come from in the arcana line when future fresh air will be able to access all attunements faster than current version?
(edited by Supreme.3164)
It’s not a pseudo dmg increase at all:
At current zerker base stats
-air training currently only works while attuned to air
-bolt to the heart trigger when target reaches 33% Hp
In my example you get a flat 14% dmg increase from start + increased stats of zerker amulet, the dmg is more evenly distributed and readily accessible from start and in all attunements, not restricted by heavy conditions ( say above 90% health)
If they do nerf it because it becomes a cantrip, then they might as well lock all PvP builds into water, due to conditions.
If you’re facing heavy condi specs, then you will go water regardless, you can’t expect to survive against heavy condi specs by not going water.
If you want to play fresh air, then a “nerfed” ER that has reduced casting time will instead become mandatory compared to SoR which should be used in spec that have access to better passive/acive cleansing
you take soothing mist in water and cleansing wave, not soothing disruption. you have only one cantrip and even the reduced cd is not worth it if the trait doesn’t increase lf range to 1,2k.
Currently there is no reason whatsoever to take soothing wave on fresh air, because a 465s regen won’t magically increase your survivability if you can’t play zerker in the first place.
what i will do is sacrifice sigil of fire most likely and put in an energy one.
It’s your choice like for everything, you need to look things in perspective: things are changing and cry over spilled milk will help nobody, if anything potential buffs we could still gt are overshadowed by all this pointless crying in my opinion.
The amulet will be buffed so let’s say that zerker amulet will have 100 pts added to each one of the current stats, then:
-go 6 water and take bountiful power ( 2% dmg increase for boon)
-go 6 arcana( if you wan dps so badly) and take elemental contingency and elemental attunement that’s : regen, protection, might, vigor, swiftness, retaliation, fury at 2% dmg for boon that’s 14% more dmg on fresh air + buffed stats on zerker
if people can’t see the dmg increase now…I dunno what else to say only that they “really” don’t play ele , as they only ever been able to follow meta imposed by some ESL player, recognized as a GOD, and never really experimented with the class trying to understand every nook and cranny of the profession
If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards
Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits
With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth
Do you even know what fresh air means? Do you know that the spec doesn’t use soothing disruption? Do you realize you lose active defense if you don’t go arcana? And dps, too?
Do you realize: current fresh air mostly use cantrip reduction and the trait is being incorporated into soothing disruption?, that now you will max water line and hence take cleansing water most likely? That active defense of frequent dodging can be substituted by revamped earth line?
And do explain how going arcana increase dps of fresh air, now that everything has been removed
Main problem is that I even play 30 fire/air currently so I see things from a different perspective all together, I don’t see at all this loss of sustain on fresh air, if anything the sustain has greatly increased
If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards
Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits
With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth
I strongly doubt they would leave Ether renewal as it is, as I could have 6s regen/vigor every 12s with the buffed soothing disruption
Unless they made those boons appear only after a full cast of ER.
That would still be overly strong, because you don’t have to necessarily use ER in front of a crowd, or under heavy pressure, including the casting time, that would still be 6s regen/vigor every 15s.
To lose “perma” is vigor is not a problem at all….because it should have not be allowed in the first place.
Look I’m an ele main and I have been fighting my fair share of d/d eles who survive solely because of the trait set up, if you go tank you should be allowed to survive yes….but not survive indefinitely regardless of the number of mistakes you do.
Between 2 eles if one takes 5-6 burning speed in his face, the match should end already, it shouldn’t go one forever because the skill difference has already been established, one waste dodges because he can, the other save his dodges, the latter should be rewarded with victory
If this would be allowed then the would be no point for any player to try and attempt to improve himself.
I believe this is what Anet think also, reason why feline grace was nerfed, so unskilled thieves can’t survive by simply dodging ghosts
(edited by Supreme.3164)
If they make it a cantrip why do you expect it to be an instant? Heal as one or healing breeze will be non-instant shouts, just as “Guard Me” is. Or you have a non-instant stance, a meditation or an arcane.
There probably won’t be much of a rebalancing because the only reason they want to categorise skills is to make them affected by traits and runes so they can compete with other skills.
I strongly doubt they would leave Ether renewal as it is, as I could have 6s regen/vigor every 12s with the buffed soothing disruption
The cast time on arcane brilliance is like 3/4 of a second, anything below 1s is amazingly great, unless you get a heal like shelter which sits in another category.
To have a 1/2 or 3/4s cast on a “nerfed” ER would be amazing definitely, give me a 1-2 condi clear every 30s ( reduced to 24s ) but with vigor/regen and 3/4s cast…I’m sold
Time for another theorycraft idea, the devs are thinking of removing the current limits imposed on powerful aura (stream time 35:+), if this idea goes through..do you guys see the future?
There are people saying that staff and s/f will die but stuff like this will bring forwards the support potential of the ele tenfold, why I think this?
-Possible build : 0/6/6/6/0 lightning rod/tempest defense staff ele
Multiple source of stun/daze/Knockdown, able to trigger lightning rod several times by sharing tempest defense aura, able to trigger multiple magnetic aura against pew pew teams (lol imagine the chaos when facing multiple rangers pug team with the upcoming change…oh god).
Staff support remains good if not great with aquatic benevolence, there is no way for an engi to substitute a staff ele, to say this is simply heresy.
And so far this is an idea, other combos would be possible with an unnerfed powerful aura, we can only hope
What are your thoughts?
There was talk during stream ( time 34:+ ) that Ether Renewal may become a cantrip , that sounds absolutely great and this is why:
-Cantrips are instants
-New soothing disruption will decrease CD by 20% and apply regen and vigor
-Ether renewal remove several condition but it’s too easy to interrupt
Of course in case ER becomes a cantrip, I can see its CD going up and number of condition removed will be decreased…still assuming the CD will go up to 30s CD, a 20s CD reduction would means a 4-5k healing every 24s that remove x conditions and applies regen+vigor….how awesome does it sound?
Why awesome?
-Celestial will be nerfed by 10% overall
-Base HP of ele is quite low
-Signet of restoration depends heavily on healing power and soon Celestial amulet will be nerfed.
Let’s say that ER will be nerfed in number of condition removed, from 8 to 3 or 2, the added boons will make this a strong alternative to SoR for zerker/soldier or any eles not heavily invested in healing power( those who will equip an amulet with healing power in it – no more healing power from trait line)
What are your thoughts?
So I think that these changes are not going to work out very well for ele. Let’s look at this from a perspective of weapon-sets:
S/X – Scepter builds will still have to take fresh air because they have atrocious sustained damage. So going into air, you lose a lot of damage, gain near permanent uptime on super-speed, and gain either an auto-shocking aura or CD reduction in air. So you have MORE utility, but less damage, which needs to be made up. Fire would normally be the line of choice for more damage, but you don’t actually get any traits in this line that increase your damage appreciably for a burst build. Seeing as scepter is only viable as a burst weapon, and can’t make up that damage, this is a net nerf.
PREDICTION: Scepter builds will die because they just don’t have enough damage to keep up.Dagger/X: Dagger builds have always had to go arcana/water to keep up (with condi clear and damage reduction), and with a nerf to arcana, will probably be forced to go into earth for that amazing -20% melee damage reduction minor. With lower attunement cooldowns, dagger builds should do fine due to high access to boons and cleanses. There is even the possiblity that there could be an offensive aura build pop up that uses tempest defense, lightning rod, earth for prot on aura, and water for cleanses. Fire seems out of place as the lower-tier traits just can’t compare (only the blind-spam is good in higher tiers).
Prediction: Dagger/X builds will be fine, perhaps with a water/earth/arcana d/d build and air/earth/water d/f variant.Staff: This weapon will be irrelevant as engineers are automatically way better (more water fields, fire fields, other fields, and way more blast finishers, on a sturdier body and without general cooldowns). The nerf to elemental attunement hurts staff the most, as it removes access to the cleanse and blast necessary to fight in close-quarters. Perhaps a lightning rod build can do something, but staff just has too much trouble landing damage in small-scale fights. With all the power-creep, it just feels too clunky and slow. I think staff is the biggest loser from these changes, even with a built-in blasting staff.
Prediction: Staff ele won’t be able to keep up.Utilities:
Conjures: these are useless, don’t bother.
Glyphs: Still bad outside of glyph of ele power, don’t go here.
Signets: Perhaps the selfish aura build has a place, but I don’t think it has the power to keep up with the massive power-creed happening.
Cantrips: Welcome home eles. Might as well just leave these on your bar 100% of the time now.I think its clear that Anet has no idea what makes else tick. While some of the trait changes seem to open up some possibilities, they don’t really address the core weaknesses that eles have always had (tank up or go home). If you don’t like tanky d/d I suggest you check out engineer. It seems to be ele 2.0 (more fields, more blasts, no CD’s on swaps).
Far too early to declare what will work, I believe you’re in too negative state of mind to clearly think things through in the correct way
I simply can’t understand this lack of information, it has been asked several times by several players but nothing, total silence, then you come one day saying :“hey guys we’re removing the stats from the trait lines but buffing amulets”…..fair enough..BUT
You " forget" that some professions are sitting at 10K base HP while others are sitting at 18K base HP, so you can’t simply buff the stats on amulet and hope everything will be ok.
You released no info regarding : boon and condition duration, we don’t even know if you will leave runes as they’re now.
There is no way to theorycraft anything in these conditions, this is the reason why some professions communities are in uproar, you need to release an exhaustive set on info regarding stats allocation.
(edited by Supreme.3164)
The amulets will be rebalanced to compensate for the loss of stats originally gained from trait lines.
This is probably as good of a place as any to mention that we’ll also be using this opportunity to rebalance PvP’s celestial amulet to be slightly less effective. We’re probably looking at a 10%~ decrease in overall stats, but this number can change as we draw closer to releasing the core specialization changes.
What happen to boon and condi duration, can we please know?
P.S I am asking this not only for PvP but also PvE where I have invested over 1000 gold in gear and I’m not ready to throw everything down the drain just yet
There won’t be tanky role only, there will be also a DPS role and others.
Still all these roles will not be able to do a better job than specialized profession, that how it is, it will all depends on the team composition, and overall the ele will be able to switch from DPS role to a more supportive role on the fly, it’s logical that it won’t be the best DPS: reason why air ele will have less dmg but more survivability
I don’t see the problem, the ele was always supposed to be jack of all trades and master of none, you can’t expect ele to be superior to a specialized build when ele can fill decently any role at any given time.
With ele you can 1vs1, support and hold point..all with the same build,the shout warrior mostly has no stunbreakers and does not excel in 1vs1 like an ele can.
A fare trade off
I’d still rather have more options. This prevents us from running something glassier if we wanted to. Those of us who would like to spec into the more damaging traitlines would atleast have some small bit of survivability with evasive arcana and elemental attunement. Wont be possible though. everyone is going to be earth, water, arcana. BORING! That was my whole point.
So what about the new fire line and burning that now stacks in intensity + tempest defense moved to master trait ? People miss the whole point, the burst ele will be amazingly strong