Guild Wars 2

oZii.2864:

Stun warrior have been nerfed since sigil of paralyzation has been “fixed” that is why you don’t see alot of warriors with mace/shield + GS at least I haven’t seen many anymore.

Hammer is getting its damage nerfed

Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Mace

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. (same cast time as lightning whip)

Nobody is using mace that I have seen in WvW since it doesn’t give a full 100blades anymore nobody wants to use it (still a great control weapon imo). Hammer damage nerfs are pretty big. People will still use it for the CC but the damage won’t be as scary on somebody wearing almost full Soldiers gear with 20 points in tactics.

Those nerfs aren’t a big deal at all. What needs a nerf is the cooldown on burst skills. Wow, the aoe 2 second stun will deal less damage? Unfortunately, any aoe stun that can be used every 7 to 10 seconds is still op as hell in a team fight. Earthsaker would still be a great skill if it did zero damage. Damage isn’t why you use the skill in the first place and the damage isn’t what is making warriors too good when used by terrible players. A 10 second base cooldown and the ease of building adrenaline means earthshaker and skull crack can be used effectively by spamming them. Updraft, earthquake and gale are on 40+ second cooldowns. Do you think good eles use those on cooldown without thinking? All cc effects should be things you have to use with some intelligence, but this doesn’t apply to warriors.

The skull crack change is nice in principle, but I’ll have to wait and see. 1/4 of a second is impossible to dodge with reaction. Is doubling the time of impossible going to be enough? It’s a step in the right direction, but Anet is being far too timid in their attempts to nerf things that are clearly too strong and making gameplay uninteresting and unskilled.

Well your math is immediately off because you set 916 as base armor. If you set base armor to what it actually is, the % reduction from 1000 points in armor would be much higher than 17%. The additional 776 toughness from my gear gives me close to a 30% damage reduction.

Also, getting 1000 toughness is easier and more realistic to get than 1000 vitality in all formats. There are only 2 gear types, sentinel’s and shaman’s, that give vitality as a primary in pve/wvw. Sentinel’s sucks for adding any damage. Shaman’s isn’t even a good combo. Healing power and toughness just have more synergy than healing power and vitality. If you want an ascended accessory that boosts power damage and defense, you have no real vitality option. There’s the rather trivial vitality from the beserker/valkyrie, and then you have celestial and soldier’s, which still gives toughness. Spvp has 4 amulets that give 560 or more toughness. There are 2 amulets that give more than 560 vitality, and one gives an equal amount of toughness. 2 other amulets give about 260 vitality. Talking about the benefit of 1000 hp vs 1000 toughness in a vacuum doesn’t do much good when you have restrictions to work with.

Really it isn’t even hp vs armor because you need both to be sturdy to any real degree. Low armor just means your large hp pool melts quickly. High armor just means your small hp pool depletes slower except to conditions. It’s really a question of what the ratio should be for whatever build.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

Moving cleansing wave doesn’t affect me now that cantrip mastery is going to be adept, so I don’t really care that cleansing wave will be master. However, I feel like reasoning behind moving it is bad.

It is the only adept aoe cleanse, but it’s balanced by having a small radius and a variable cooldown. 240 is a tiny range; you literally have to chase down a tackle your allies to get in range, which usually means giving up on damaging or harassing the enemy for a moment. This makes it not entirely dependable as an aoe cleanse. There are many times when an ally is just out of range. For the most part, people aren’t stacked up within 240 range, so you’re almost never removing a condition from 5 allies. If you are within 240 range of an ally, you’re both being hit with enemy aoe as well. Risk and reward.

Instant cast heals and cleanses are justified on the profession with low hp and armor. You have the least amount of time to react, so your defense tends to be faster. Plus, on demand isn’t necessarily better than passive; warriors are currently proving as much with their regen and auto-balanced stance.

It can be used every 12 seconds (accounts for global cooldown on all attunements when you swap) assuming you have 30 in arcana and leave water immediately. You’re giving up the attunement you just came from and using more than one skill in water attunement.

You make it sound like you guys consider cleansing wave too strong for adept with no weaknesses, drawbacks or additional requirements whatsoever.

However, there is one good thing that could come from having cleansing wave as master, remove the spvp ICD from cleansing water. The original reason behind that nerf was soothing disruption. Soothing disruption and cleansing wave will compete for the same master slot. Anybody using that trait combo will be out one controllable condition cleansing trait anyway. No ICD would also give soothing wave more synergy with a grandmaster trait, which it will likely need to see serious use.

Op, if you want to make arguments like this, you shouldn’t compare skills and traits. You should compare the inconsistent logic anet uses to justify balancing.

Power Creep
Elementalist: Anet adds new traits with dubious competitive viability & moves the only good adept traits from water and arcana to master tier because they don’t want to power creep
Thief: Sees no power creep issue with giving thieves 33% faster initiative regen, which is slightly more initiative regen than the master trait quick recovery, for free.

Skills will never match up 1 for 1 (though elixir s and mistform probably should), but general balance philosophy shouldn’t change the moment a different profession is being discussed.

Zelyhn.8069:

Also for those who think 40% (for 3 seconds) is a big boost, you should know that most PvE builds run perma 35% boosts (10/20/10/10/0 +20) and LH builds can get 60% (25/0/25/20/0) on vulnerable foes, and yet the class isn’t considered to be top tier because this comes at high costs and requires very specific conditions.

So no, Jon, I do not think this is overpowered.

Stacking too many damage modifiers wouldn’t matter in pve; nobody cares about killing an npc too quickly. It would be too good in a gimmick capacity for pvp. Ele can already use instant cast damage to spike people down. The short duration of your full damage buffs isn’t an issue when you use all your skills in the same second. It’s literally a matter of luck whether your enemy dodges that kind of attack or not. If it wasn’t for those gimmicky burst builds, I wouldn’t agree with Jon at all because most ele skills are very telegraphed. If someone doesn’t dodge a +40% damage churning earth, dragon’s tooth or burning speed, that’s his own fault.

Honestly, lingering elements should just go away; it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Make elemental attunement the 15 point minor. Alternatively, arcane precision can be changed into a trait that has synergy with lingering elements. If an arcana trait is only going to function based off other traits, you should at least not be expected to go into 4 other trait lines and/or pick specific major traits. It wouldn’t even have to be anything all that clever.

Gain increased attributes based on your current attunement.
Fire= power & condition damage
Air= precision & crit damage
Earth= toughness & condition duration
Water= healing power & boon duration

1) Useful in every ele build
2) Makes up for a weakness in going 30 arcana, low traditional stat totals
3) Further encourages intelligent swapping (e.g. making sure to go from air to fire for more damage)
4) Won’t apply conditions that are redundant with conditions that attunement already applies like arcane precision does
5) Neither over nor underpowered on a conceptual level; balancing it would simply be a matter of playing with numbers

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

Diamond Skin
Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

First, thank you for posting.

Actually, I don’t like the idea of increasing ele base hp. I want active defenses, and the ele already has that. The issue is that all the active defense is in water and arcana. The proposed earth trait changes are all passive. Burning Fire is going to be a condition removal you can’t control. Honestly, ele would probably be more balanced if some current traits were just given for free. Ele has the lowest innate defense or fewer defensive weapon skills than other professions except when using a focus, which offers limited damage, control, support and no mobility at all. Attunement swapping is also the only profession mechanic that can’t be used for defense without any trait investment. You either go with defensive traits and cantrips or you have the most limited defense out of any profession. If eles got attunement swap traits for free, it would help build diversity a lot.

Healing Ripple- standard but at 60 or 50% its current strength. The 15 point water trait brings the heal up to what it is now. No change for eles already using the trait, but a bit more defense for squishier eles.

For a few seconds after attuning to earth, you could weaken enemies that hit you. The 15 point trait could turn that into an aura. If making it an aura isn’t enough (as it would only matter when using aura traits), it could also cripple or bleed enemies near the ele when activated.

Electric discharge gets a similar treatment to healing ripple, still the same function with less power. 15 in air makes it apply aoe blind centered around the target. It could also again vulnerability from the 15 trait so people that already spec into air don’t just lose damage for blind.

I don’t expect you to ever implement something like those, but it’s something to consider regarding giving ele more active defense in the future.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

The changes we’ve done to Ele are actually going to drastically increase the amount of build diversity. The arcane recharge change really does add the flow the Elementalist needed when not spending points in Arcane. This will now allow players to stray away from spending points in the Arcane line. Ele’s will now experience faster attunement swapping as well because they will be down to 1.5s globals when they have zero points spent in Arcane and 1.2s globals with 30 points.

This makes:
13 second recharge on 0 points Arcane
12 second recharge with 10 points Arcane
11 second recharge with 20 points Arcane
10 second recharge with 30 points Arcane

Dagger ele’s will now have new specs through Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, and Shared Auras much more appealing, as well as being able to go up the Fire and Earth trees.

Scepter ele’s will be able to play some forms of condition builds, burst builds with more sustain, and even bunker builds.

Staff ele’s will now be able to get blasting staff from tier one and now be capable of going for a trait such as Diamond Skin, or even Fresh air or high up in the Fire line.

You say this will help build diversity, but the trait moves make some often used trait combinations impossible. The other changes MIGHT make certain things see more use. You’re definitely hurting current options because of a maybe.

People didn’t put points into arcana just for faster attunement swapping. Elemental attunement and renewing stamina are important traits. You expect people to use arcana less, but you tell them they need 20 points in it for vigor. Whether this allows people to stray from arcana depends on whether the profession with low hp and armor needs to avoid being hit with endurance, reduce damage with protection, heal with regen and just generally make up for their lack of stats with boons. Diogo brought up this very issue. You quoted it, but didn’t address that issue really.

Cleansing wave needs to stay adept. Ele will have zero adept traits that remove conditions if you move this to master. Honestly, I really shouldn’t have to say more than that. The condition meta is still very strong. You can’t improve build diversity by making it harder to get something so basic that you need to survive. Cleansing wave isn’t even that powerful. 1 condition every 12 seconds (assuming you leave water immediately) isn’t strong enough to be too much power creep. It is aoe, but the radius has always been small.

Eles will never really have condition builds unless they get more conditions. Eles have burning and bleeding, and they aren’t even that great at applying burning. If you want to give eles condi builds, give us traits that allow us to apply new conditions. Bleeds have a chance to apply torment. Burning has a chance to apply poison. When chill you apply ends, foes are confused. There isn’t any respectable condition build used on another profession that only has 2 damage conditions to its name.

Blasting staff- Guardians got their symbol enlarging trait for free. Engineers got their bomb trait for free. How long until eles get the same? Some of the staff skills have truly pitiful radii without the trait.

Also, the changes you’re planning on will shift ele bunker from active to passive defense. You go from defensive boons on attunement swap and vigor for attacking constantly to just being immune to conditions while at full hp, having more armor and another automatic defensive utility trait. Even if the new traits are awesome, encouraging more reliance on completely passive traits and hard counters hurts the game. They’re boring to use and can be frustrating to play against. Plus, the last noteworthy patch tried to give professions more support options, but you’re reversing any good that did for eles by making it harder to take elemental attunement and cleansing wave, aoe traits, because of new traits that only benefit the user.

lordkrall.7241:

Quite sad to see people complaining about this, when clearly something have happened.
Are we really so entitled nowadays so we complain about stuff being canceled due to stuff out of peoples control..?

You really do need to get off your high horse. The complaints are literally just “Bummer,” “Drat,” “Disappointing” and “That’s a shame.” Your response to a hand full of people expressing extremely mild dissatisfaction is to start talking about entitlement. God forbid somebody says they don’t love the current weather around you. “Wow, I can’t believe you’re so sad that you think you’re entitled to a bright sunny day or a cool breeze.”

Kyskythyn.6471:

As far as relation to guardians, ele’s have less healing and area boons, but better combo fields (water, fire, and static).

Why do I always see people say guardians have more healing?
Attuning to water on my ele nets
1,805 + 1,052 (over 10 seconds) + 1,158 (over 6 seconds) = 4015
2 conditions are removed
range is 240
Let’s even say the cooldown is 20 seconds (a longer cooldown than it usually has)

The most similar thing guardians have is virtue of resolve. My guardian, which has more healing power than my ele, gets
2,240 + 1628 (over 7 second) = 3868
3 conditions are removed
range is 1200
46 second cooldown (almost never going to be used that frequently)

That’s only comparing two things, but there is only one healing option guardians have that is obviously superior to eles. Guardians have healing breeze, which beats eles by virtue of eles not having a supportive heal and for actually healing a lot. Ele can heal allies for way more than a guardian can, and they can do it more frequently. The only thing is eles have a harder time positioning themselves to support allies because of shorter ranges. The difference between guardian and ele support is that guardian support is generally weaker, but it is more reliable and easier to use. Also, eles don’t have stand your ground and other forms of aoe stability, which is pretty overpowered.

It can be argued that larger ranges make it more likely to hit multiple targets, and that can allow guardians to net more healing. However, I find that I can pretty much always heal allies for more overall on my ele than guardian. Eles can do a healing rotation in about a second or two and can leave water almost immediately, so it’s less of a commitment than what guardians have to do to heal.

To answer the op, I’ve always seen ele as primarily a support profession. Eles don’t provide many, if any unique, advantages in terms of dealing damage. Ele has some unique advantages for support. I don’t go full bunker, but I don’t see much point in using a glass ele over a glass anything else.

The professions are nowhere near on par with each other for dueling. Warrior can have an absurd amount of completely passive regen for a 1v1 fight. I have an easier time killing bunker guardians, stealth spamming thieves and staff mesmers that do nothing but teleport and stealth just because those things can actually be counter-played in some way. Those professions and builds have to use some active defense to survive, but a warrior just sits on passive regen, high hp and armor while spamming damage and cc. Skull crack is simply overpowered in a 1v1 fight; it’s a hardly telegraphed 3 second stun with a 10 second base cooldown. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Group balance is ok for the most part. Aoe conditions, cc and stability are getting out of hand, but every class can run multiple builds in groups and has a place. Necros, condi engi and stun warriors still feel pretty op though. I swear a lot of group fights feel won the moment the enemy’s condition and/or cc spammers die.

Phi Is Sly.1857:

Aww is someone upset i don’t play ele the way he wants me to, i have no problem making my build work, just cos you jump of the max defence, little offense. don’t mean other builds work in and out of group play

Here you go last 10 mins before i went to sleep. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTw1wjEdRpU&feature=youtu.be I am really CC’d and conditioned to death, oh my.

Good for you; it’s nice that you can make it work to whatever degree satisfies you. However, you’re getting lucky. It is a straight fact that condition builds are pretty widely used. Lots of warriors are using hammer and/or mace right now. It is a fact that your build leaves you nearly or completely defenseless against those things. The vast majority of your “10 minutes” was spent at nearly 100% hp. You were not being attacked by anything (the fact that you’re a tiny asura helps this) let alone any real condi pressure or crowd control. You can’t argue the fact that your build has several instant lose conditions by making videos of ideal conditions, 1v1s against people that barely attack you/keyboard turn and group fights where you are completely ignored. If you showed yourself dealing with any kind of adversity at all, that would be one thing.

I was really just pointing out the obvious about your build and these types of videos that only show wins. Your title and smiley face are all people have to go by. I assumed you were pleased with yourself and thought your video would be impressive or make people “chin up.” I was mostly just attempting to correct your error in judgment. The fact that you got so defensive and your only retort was to invent some stupid motivation for me makes me think I was spot on about the 2 minutes of wins.

You have zero points in water and no condition removal utilities or heal. You have what appears to be 10 points in arcana without the perma vigor trait. You have no stunbreak. You have to blow all your utilities and half of your skills to get your burst off. CC and condition spam will kill you every single time. If your target survives your initial attack, you’ve lost. You’re running this when the meta is currently very cc, condition and bunker heavy. The people running those builds wouldn’t even have to be good because they would hard counter you. I’m betting your video is only 2 minutes long because you could only win 2 minutes worth of fights.

OP, don’t listen to too many of the complaints. Ele isn’t bad for pve. It just isn’t meta, but min-maxing for gw2 pve just feels like a waste of time. If you’re competent, you don’t need to min-max to do things in an easy, timely manner. Any properly built ele from glass to bunker has uses and a place in pve. A bunker ele can pretty much solo anything in pve. Just make sure to have some actual precision and crit damage to make your damage respectable. I bunker ele can still stack might/fury and use a bloodlust sigil to make up for low power. I can actually do some things faster on my bunker ele than other classes with dps builds just because eles have such good aoe. Other classes and builds are better at burning down lone champions though. I use a bunker build for fractals because I don’t like dying instantly, and the aoe defense is appreciated by the party.

Glass eles work better for dungeons. You can stack a lot of might and fury for your team while dealing good damage yourself. I know two people that use zerker eles for dungeons and they do well enough. If multiple dungeon runs are planned, I’ll occasionally switch to zerker gear and damage traits. The only reason I don’t just use my ele for everything in pve is because it feels too busy at times, and I don’t like the idea of switching gear and traits a lot. As a warrior, I just drop banners and spam damage skills on cooldown, and I just sit on healing signet. A zerker ele is still blasting fields, dodging more and switching attunements.

Kodiak.3281:

The one area Elementalists excel is in WvW group fighting. While various other classes can bring our advantages to the table there’s no single class that can bring it all in one tidy package. This, more than anything, is why I keep playing my Elementalist. Elementalists are in many ways the backbone of any group force providing a large number of fields to blow up for AOE boons (Swiftness, Might) and AOE Healing.

Agreed, but I say ele is still good for any wvw play from solo to zergs. If you’re alone, you can build yourself to not have any glaring weaknesses. A lot of builds can be hard countered by something very simple. There isn’t any one thing that is going to kill me without some amount of effort or trouble. My guildmates don’t ask me to roam WvW in small groups to be nice, use me as bait or relegate me to siege. I am legitimately very useful in fights because I literally do everything.

Chaosky.5276:

Tei.1704:

The ele will always be a weak profession for people that don’t use or even know about the advantages it has.

You mean for anyone who doesn’t want to play support.

Ele has , literally, always been a support profession. Why people saw all these strong aoe support traits and thought ele would and should be a damage class is beyond me. The support traits are instant, which means there is no way enemies can stop it, and don’t require you to use any specific utility, an advantage for support few other professions or builds have. The only weakness it has is short range. Ele damage has been easily avoided and extremely telegraphed since beta. Several ele damage skills can be avoided by walking away casually. They have been naturally squishy with no innate defenses since beta. Of course neglecting your defensive traits would result in quick deaths and speccing for defense would feel like a must. Everyone was looking at the same profession, but a lot of people seemed to have reached the wrong conclusion.

If the ele had been wrapped up in a paladin aesthetic, nobody would be whining. Guardians are pretty much always support. Thieves and warriors can’t support well at all. People don’t care because they expect that based on the professions’ archetype. People saw the mage style ele and assumed it would be an awesome damage class. This idea was so strong that people still can’t believe it isn’t true after a year. Will some of you people just switch professions already and stop filling up a forum with your drivel? On the infinitesimal chance a dev reads the forums, they see a bunch of people that willing ignore or don’t care about what the profession has to offer. You could not find a more straight example of a learn to play issue, but people wonder why devs don’t listen to it. There are 6 other professions that do various forms of pure offensive builds well. Ele will be a profession that is always expected to have some support along with guardian.

I’m not saying some or a lot of things with ele don’t need to be looked at. I’m saying some of you people have been ignoring the obvious for far too long.

Bhima.9518:

emikochan.8504:

On demand protection is better than armour.

Not really. You have to swap out of your damage rotation (save for LH) just to get this “on demand” protection you covet. Easier to just have decent hp and decent toughness to begin with.

High armor and hp don’t apply to allies, elemental attunement protection does. An ele interrupting an optimal damage rotation is a small price to pay for a protection duration other professions need to blow a utility for. Protection is one of the rarest and strongest boons, but everybody and their mom is dealing damage. The ele will always be a weak profession for people that don’t use or even know about the advantages it has.

gotem.5284:

I will put it together for you since you clearly can’t.

It’s an easy fight until it becomes 3-5 of us vs 30. I guess by HoD standards 3-5 vs 30 is considered a “difficult” fight that we should win?

Anyways keep up the great work HoD!

So, you can’t troll or read. If your buddy and I were talking about these “easy” fights and your imaginary 5 v 30 isn’t easy, I wasn’t exactly talking about the latter was I? I know 2 whole sentences is a long read, but I’m sure by taking your time and consulting a local scientist you can comprehend them and reply accordingly next time. If you still have trouble understanding, call in more guildies and switch professions until you get it right.

No, nobody expects you to win anything.

Da Sonic.6521:

You can’t even talk, man, you’re from that [GT] guild; I saw at LEAST 6 of you noobs running together in AR borderlands, stupid zergers. 5 man god tier, if you don’t have 3 thieves and 2 guardians, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. All praise the forum warriors.

I ain’t even from GT. I just like to argue, so I can farm forum warrior rank. I’m only a bronze insulter; I got a lot of work ahead of me.

Also, 6 people is a zerg compared to AR.

Aeneasx.1589:

gotem.5284:

Enjoying guilds like [GT] that roam together but refuse to fight unless there HoD zerg can back them up when they start to lose (which is always).

At least it’s an easy fight lol.

So Basic loses easy fights then calls in more guildmates? Difficult fights for you must be an even uglier sight than your personalities and pitiful attempts at trolling.

Attunement cooldowns exist because swapping attunements should be a commitment of some kind. This game has enough forgiving and thoughtless elements to it. There needs to be some kind of counterplay and consequences for making a bad move. Removing attunement cooldowns would be a bigger deal than you realize because chilled would no longer affect it. I have literally died because chilled prevented me from swapping when I needed to. If you leave an attunement at a bad time, you should be penalized for it. Having consequences for your actions just makes for a better more engaging game. Why should a game not punish you for making a mistake?

The “just give swapping traits an ICD” idea would not be the same as it is now. Attunement cooldowns start when you leave the attunement. The cooldown on swapping traits with 30 arcana is 9 second plus how long you stay in that attunement, not just 9 seconds. The traits have variable cooldowns based on how long the player chooses to stay in said attunement; you can’t replicate that with a static number. Do you give the traits the minimum cooldown that they can have now? Are you going to allow people to sit in an attunement and get the swap trait just as frequently as they can now? Do you give them 15 second cooldowns so eles that swap out of an attunement quickly will be hurt? Do you make the traits feel awkward by making them trigger once you leave an attunement? That would make people swap in, out and back into an attunement just so they can access a trait and still use the skills they want. Removing the swap cooldown would bring up too many issues that have no good answer. Not to mention, you’d be taking some control away from the player while making the dumb decision to sit in one attunement more forgiving.

This might sound insulting, but I find this idea amusing. People think ground targeting will let them hit with dragon’s tooth more reliably without cc? Sorry, that would not be true at all. Dragon’s tooth just takes too long to fall and has a relatively tiny radius. You’re not going to overcome those weaknesses by being super skillful and smart with ground placement. People will walk out of the dragon’s tooth without cc.

Ok, you could theoretically anticipate enemy movement and place it where they are going to be, but that’s a pretty ridiculous thing to expect. Do people actually see themselves doing that? Do people hit with eruption and shatterstone consistently without cc? No, they don’t. This isn’t space invaders where the enemies move in the most predictable pattern ever.

If any change happens to dragon’s tooth, it should be similar to shockwave from gw1. It would get multiple, simultaneous aoe hits. If an enemy is in the center of the attack, they get hit 3 times. If they’re in the middle ring, they get hit twice. Enemies furthest from the center get hit once. Adjust damage accordingly. Now, you give the outer-most ring an aoe radius that can’t be avoided by auto-run and boom. The attack is still best for cc aided burst, but it isn’t a waste of time to cast in almost every other situation.

You do realize that stealth hard counters every skill that requires a selected target to hit reliably (that’s most skills btw), right? Stealth also hard counters all the trait points people put into eyesight and “being-able-to-see-attacks-coming-so-you-can-time-a-dodge-on-more-than-guess-manship.” Unlike sick’em and shadow arts, every profession makes use of those traitlines.

I do feel sorry for thieves though. You don’t have the best mobility in the game or tons of evades. You certainly can’t kill people before they kill you. To make things worse your stealth will be on a 30 second cooldown and unavailable the instant you lose revealed. How are you gonna survive being visible momentarily? This one utility on one profession will seriously…kitten….THIEVES….UP (in about a month).

elithrar.7143:

This is one of the most well thought out threads on any class forums. The OP understands that balancing isn’t just “obvious” buffs (which often have not-so-obvious ramifications) such as cool down decreases, but also about providing utility with respect to other weapons. Resolving weaknesses without just making abilities more spammable.

I’m not saying the ideas are bad, but less obvious buffs aren’t any better regarding accounting for ramifications and resolving weaknesses. For example, how would the proposed change to fire shield interact with aura sharing? Do you let eles share so many boons and a pbaoe effect with allies? Low damage and retaliation times 5 can easily become not very low. Plus, an aoe attack would hit 5 enemies, so you could end up with way too much aoe damage in a short amount of time. What scenario do you balance the damage around? Do you somehow leave those effects out of the aura itself, so it leaves fire shield as a subpar aura share skill and leave one of the many weaknesses of the focus unaddressed?

Spamming isn’t exactly bad either. Freezing gust could absolutely stand to be spammable. Focus has only two snares, freezing gust and gale. The focus has two long cooldown single target snares and zero mobility; one of those things needs to change. If a weapon is going to be slow (especially an ele weapon that can’t be swapped mid-fight), it needs good and frequent snaring to make sure any enemy can’t just casually walk away from you. If a weapon has poor snaring, it should have some decent mobility. Honestly, an ele should always have both considering the whole jack-of-all trades but master of nothing idea. Leaving that issue unaddressed would be unacceptable regardless of how creative the buffs are or how much utility they add.

Ele just isn’t all that great for PvE. Bunkering is still just about the strongest thing an ele can do, but that is largely a waste of time in pve. Bunkering revolves around kittening around and winning an attrition battle. Attrition makes no sense in pve when your enemies will make no attempt to avoid your hits and attack in predictable patterns. You can go for more damage, but other professions don’t have to give up as much damage for the sake of good pve utility and support as an ele does.

Also, some of the ele’s advantages over other professions don’t mean much in pve. A bunker ele has better condi removal, boons, mobility and burst healing than a guardian. Unfortunately, none of that is super useful in pve, and guardians have more projectile defense, which is way more useful. A glass ele can blast fire fields for might and fury, but a warrior can just use banners without taking a specific trait or making a conscious effort to combo.

I will almost never use my ele for non-fractal dungeons. It’s just a lot of button pressing for less benefit. I still use an ele for open world stuff because a bunker ele can solo anything within reason, but I wouldn’t recommend an ele for pve unless you just naturally enjoy it. Ele can work just fine for pve, but there isn’t any objective reason to try and make it work if you like other professions better.

SilencingMachine.5049:

Other classes have a similar trait.

Other professions have those traits as major, optional, traits or the line will have other traits that provide endurance management, synergy. The only reason Anet may have thought this trait made sense in earth is because “high armor” and “good defensive traits” from the earth line make dodging less necessary.

Daecollo.9578:

Warrior is only 3% Damage.

I feel like this is a joke, but I’ll respond to it seriously anyway.

3% more damage in the power line of the profession that deals the most power-based damage is worth more than 10% more damage in the toughness line of the elementalist.

Cortalia.5467:

No its pretty much just Ele’s… on the other hand I outlive all my guildmates in WvW when the kitty hits the fan.

That being said.. I can’t 1v1 beat any experienced player except for another ele, the odd ranger and engineer.

When It comes to Thiefs… I play the “see if you can kill me before I make it to the tower” game. I roll with a bunker D/D ele, and its basically a coin flip, either he gets me, or runs away cuz he gets tired of kitten ing on me, or I make it to a safe zone.

That or you have better things to do so you let them stomp you and port back.

If you are a bunker D/D ele, a 1v1 with a thief is a fight you can win. You have an advantage against condi thieves and power thieves are a (for the most part) fair fight. I still run D/D bunker, and I beat the vast majority of thieves I fight. If I lose, it was close. Almost every single time a thief stealths it works in your favor as a bunker. A bunker ele should have way better sustained, and you should have plenty of ways to avoid or mitigate burst damage.

@OP
A straight zerker ele doesn’t stand much chance against a thief. Zerker ele isn’t a self-sufficient build. If you run a build like that, you need to accept that you’ll get hard countered in a 1v1. Thief is literally the best profession in a 1v1 glass vs glass fight. Thieves were designed around the idea that they should be good at dealing high single target damage, eles were not.

DevonCarver.5370:

We are aware of this, but it is a non-trivial fix. We are hoping to make changes to this by the end of the year.

Wait, Anet actually considers this an issue? I hope you’re just telling the OP what he wants to hear. You do realize consumables let people do absurd kitten right? Warriors run around immune to snaring. +40% condition duration food makes the already very strong condi builds even stronger. Applied fortitude gives the same amount of attribute points as any stacking sigil, but is much less accessible. The changes to the borderlands will bring back a mechanic similar to the orbs. Whatever advantage holding the points provides will likely go to the side with the most people on the map, the side that needs it the least. Weapon switching for sigils is by far the most fair and accessible of everything above, but you supposedly have plans to address it by the end of the year.

I’ve accepted that wvw is and will always be unbalanced and unfair as hell. If you, Anet, decide you want less “unfair” advantages in WvW and the game in general, I think that would be great. However, you need to be consistent about. Don’t nerf my ability to have +250 healing power, +5% crit chance & a sigil of hydromancy while warriors can run around completely ignoring snares. If you could forward this sentiment to whoever is handling this, that would be great.

Eles have low hp and armor because they can have among the best healing, condi cleansing and upkeep on defensive boons. Almost every defensive trait used for personal defense can be shared with allies too. A lot of ele defense is also instant, so you can defend yourself while stunned without necessarily using a stun break.

Necros have no vigor, crappy access to boons, pitiful sustained healing, no invulnerability skills, low mobility, poor support options and subpar stunbreaks. Honestly, high hp and death shroud aren’t such huge advantages in the face of those weaknesses; they just keep necro from being a 100% free kill.

I run around wvw alone or with less than 5 guildies most of the time. The same build that was stupid OP months ago still works, and ele has gotten more options. If you’re having trouble, ele just doesn’t click with you. My necro feels weaker than my ele in every field because I play it like crap.

HatSimulator.9362:

We arent WvW’ing today

lol “today”

SandySothe.7950:

ARM.3912:

SandySothe.7950:

I’ll ignore your servers bad trolls if you ignore our servers bad trolls, Styx.

Ohh yeah GT is that guild on HOD that runs from me while im solo. Hows it going GT?

Haven’t seen you around this week to run from, ARM.

First, you said you’d ignore the bad trolls, Sandy. Second, ARM probably doesn’t play ele anymore, so you won’t know him when you see him. He complains quite frequently on the ele sub-forum.

Hey Hatsimulator, were you that sylvari thief I, that charr ele, exchanged a wave with after dodging your venom?

I see some citizens of GoM still refuse to communicate without memes and/or gifs. It’s nice that HoD’s first love hasn’t changed much.

ArkAngel.7940:

You do realize that the inner gate has a slit on top that you can see through. And the arrow cart is very clearly in front of the gate.

Slits don’t render at such low settings.

RyanThomas.4182:

I’m talking about dagger attacks specifically because the other weapons are ranged and should be slightly weaker, so it’s more difficult to compare.

This same logic would apply to ele dagger skills. Every dagger skill for ele has over twice the range of normal melee weapons, and I think that’s a fair trade for damage. I’d say dagger auto-attacks are about right ( though I do wish vapor blade traveled faster) except for impale. Impale deals too little direct damage and is too slow to stack bleeds effectively. Oh yeah, it doesn’t hit multiple foes either. It should really apply multiple stacks of bleeding or fire faster.

BlazeQ.1095:

Currently at work so I wasn’t there but I have a couple of questions. What is a balloon? Why do I need a balloon? Sorry but this post makes me chuckle L2P PVE NSP!!! STOP ROLLING INNOCENT WVW PLAYERS TRYING TO ROAM AND FLIP CAMPS!

<3 NSP, See you guys at reset

Wow……doesn’t even know about the balloon. Open up your achievement panel, look for “balloon tower tourist,” and tell me you don’t want that balloon. There, just taught you how to play.

FYI, I didn’t get rolled because I ran away because I’m a coward.

moutzaheadin.4029:

Regardless of the score , win or lose most of us go there to fight other people. I hate pve , so what else is there. If it means running solo into 3456 I do that. If it means rolling 1 uplevel alt with 5+. Well , ill do that to.

Wvw stlye PvP is the only fun for me in this game. So please fight back , I’m to slow and lazy to chase you.

Have a magical day.

What are you talking about? Of course, you suicide against thousands of players when you’re alone. You’re supposed to kill up-arrows with greater numbers; it’s not ok for them to be in wvw, and they need to be aware of this. However, I wasn’t talking about that stuff. I’m talking about how you shouldn’t be upgrading camps and watching them. Also, balloons.

Honestly, this is more about balloons now. Two NSP are confirmed to not have the balloon, and I suspect you lack one too. Stop clinging to your delusional idea of fun, go get the balloon and start having some real fun.

Some people on Nsp really need to L2P. I logged for some early wvw, and I was immediately greeted by like 5 nsp in the water camp. Didn’t even attack any npcs before I was spotted. I didn’t even have time to get a single kitten stack going. Victory is certain, but some of you are still guarding your fully upgraded camps. Why? Honestly, do you not know there’s PvE to farm? I bet you Wvw try-hards don’t even have your balloon yet.

Focus also needs some more snares because it has zero mobility and weak snaring; that isn’t an ok combo when you can’t switch weapons.

Flamewall —→Bed of Coals
1/4 second cast
15 second cooldown
Damage: comparable to lava font
Duration: 6 seconds
Cripple duration: 2 or 3 seconds (maybe give it a 8 second cripple instead, but it will only apply once per foe.)
Radius: 360
Fire field
900 range

ground target? sure, why not

Dustfinger.9510:

The Norn also aren’t anything close to an “exception”. their entire society is centered around feats.

I’m not saying norn as a whole are exceptions. I’m saying some individual norn and some of things they do are exceptions.

Feats are exceptional by definition. If you google “feat,” most of the definitions you see will mention being exceptional, notable, requiring superior ability or something along those lines. It doesn’t have to be those things 100% of the time, but 9 times out of 10 “feat” is used to describe things the average person (or norn) can’t do. If we’re talking about what would tend to happen on average, feats mean almost nothing. If anything feats merely tell you what you shouldn’t expect the average norn to be capable of.

Citizens of Devona’s Rest, I regret to inform you that you have traitors among you. Look at this kitten. They are just standing there as I give briar “The D.” They even think being a traitor is ok; they don’t even have shame. Literally, telling me to label them as scum on the forums for all to see. To make things worse, they zerg. I was like the only hod on the map, and they attacked me with 2 to 3 times my numbers.

Also, I’m great because I solo towers and maintain decorum (Dat “thank you”) even when talking to traitorous scum.

Golems arranged in the dreaded kitten formation complete with the rarely seen spread shot sperm? Stay classy HoD.

Dustfinger.9510:

I haven’t seen any source at all that makes the individual charr out to be stronger than the individual norn. All sources I have I can provide and they routinely put norn feats of strength as greater than anything any individual charr does.

Fights don’t come down to just who is physically stronger. If we assume both parties have weapons, skill is going to be more important. If we assume barehand, claws and fangs are going to beat fists. If we’re talking about a fight where anything goes, strength means even less because a single bullet wins a fight.

You also have to consider that people are talking about averages. The norn you hear about are going to be exceptions because nobody tells the tale of Joe Everyman. If norn are all about growing their legends, feats they talk about are not going to be things any average norn could likely accomplish. Every charr can at least claim to be a trained soldier.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Either way, from what I’m getting Ele has.

• Condition Cleanses
• AoE Vigor, Protection, Might, Fury (traited)
• Exclusive Combo Fields.
• Some of the best burst heals.

But my question is, though this all could affect allies, how much of the Elementalist’s rotation actually has allies in mind? Whats the range of the AoE effects and how often do you intentionally buff allies as opposed to them just happening to be near you?

Eles have no aoe vigor; that point goes to mesmers. An important advantage you didn’t note is speed. Switching attunements provides an ele’s strongest support effects, and attunement swapping is instant.

Your contrast between ele and mesmer support is more or less true. Most of the ele support traits have pretty small ranges (about or exactly 240), so it can be hit or miss even when you’re intentionally trying to affect allies. Also, the limited range means aoe attacks aimed at you or whoever you’re trying to support will likely hit both of you. I don’t think most non-staff eles will go out of their way to support allies on purpose; it’s just not something I see many eles doing.

However, it isn’t hard to support allies in the heat of a fight, and I do position myself to help teammates when they need it. There have been times when I’ve spent the majority of fights protecting a necro from thieves. How often I do things like that depends entirely on what is going on and the professions my guildies bring. I don’t feel like that sort of thing is needed in most fights, so I don’t support to that extent much. I’m talking about this from a wvw perspective, and I usually get more heat than most of my teammates.

Also, eles have a unique form of support and group utility, fiery greatsword. In WvW, this is the only good way to give allies burst mobility. You can only give it to one ally, but it will make him the fastest thing alive. Portal has to be set beforehand, so it’s less of a “we have to suddenly and unexpectedly run away now” skill.

Razor.6392:

Why not? what does it lack?

The focus lacks properly balanced skills. 3 skills are very strong, but most of the focus skills are pretty much objectively underpowered.

Flamewall is objectively the worst fire skill in the game. A line is harder to combo with than a circle. The cast time and cooldown are longer than lava font and ring of fire. enemies have to stand in the wall for it to deal any damage. Ring of fire is pretty much instant damage and punishes enemies for moving out of it. The only advantage the wall has over ring is range.

Fire shield is the weakest aura. Burning is especially redundant with drake’s breath, the best burning skill in the game. Eles have much better options to stack might. 40 second cooldown means it isn’t even good for activating aura traits. The skill could be good if they just gave it a cooldown of about 15 seconds to make it the best aura for activating traits.

Freezing gust is objectively the weakest chill skill in the game. The 25 second cooldown makes it a low upkeep single target chill with no additional effects besides rather low damage.

Comet is alright. It doesn’t have any huge flaws, but it could maybe use a small buff in terms of aoe radius, cast time or something like that.

Swirling winds can be awesome, but only in certain situations. This gives it more of a neutral standing. Though it loses a few points because the light armor classes have quite a few ranged attacks that aren’t projectiles.

Everybody knows gale’s cooldown is simply way too long for what it does.

Magnetic wave and obsidian flesh are the real reasons to use a focus. If obsidian flesh isn’t OP, it comes very close to it. Magnetic wave just does a lot; it has 5 different effects.

Focus really only shines to me in situations where I know I won’t need much mobility, other players will deal enough damage for me, there will definitely be enemies using projectiles and I’m doing something that is guaranteed to get me focused. Basically, I need to be in a situation where anything other than straight put tanking style defense is inconsequential for what I want to do. I only seriously use focus when I want to finish enemies in the middle of their zergs in wvw.

Hahadori.7548:

I posted my elementalist in the “Screenshot of your Charr Toon” topic but I’ll add her here as well. Meet Kami Thunderblood the cheetah charr.

I actually like how your ele looks. It is unprecedented for me to like how another charr looks. Kudos for achieving this great honor.

What dyes are you using?

The aura that surrounds the player when wielding Kraitkin does not activate consistently when unsheathing the weapon. It appears to be completely random, and I’d say there is a much higher chance of not getting the aura than getting it.

The glow that happens at night only seems to activate once I unequip and re-equip Kraitkin. This has to be done whenever switching maps, not every time I enter the water.

People should make it clear how they play game when complaining about or praising this update. I haven’t played spvp in quite some time, but I can see how this update would be well received by spvp players. I can see how glass staff eles that follow a zerg in wvw would love this update. Anyone using a damage scepter build that relied on air attunement is happy.

I mostly play wvw in solo and small group (usually 5 people at the most) settings, and this update didn’t really do anything for me. I use a typical bunker D/D build. It got some very minor nerfs, but I’m still immortal while dealing decent damage. No real change, and it was arguably a net buff because lightning flash and cleansing fire have reduced cooldowns. It’s nice that when I use a staff to destroy siege or be lazy in pve I’ll feel like I have permanent quickness. Too bad players will still just walk out of the damage skills if I tried to use a staff in actual combat. I’m just underwhelmed and indifferent to this update.

If the spvp crowd is mostly happy now, how about the next update focuses on wvw and pve? Anet, you can start by doing something to make staff and scepter damage more reliable against enemies that don’t have to stand in spvp control points to win.

Aether McLoud.1975:

First Dev post on the ele forum since january. It’s a “Thanks” post for the 1 positive thread amongst the sea of justified criticism posts. Go figure. This shows how much anet simply loves to spit on the ele community.

I feel like the spit part is overly dramatic, but I’m glad somebody said this.

At long last, a quality thread on the forums.

Euryon.9248:

So you’re complaining about a server that is severely outpopulated by both of its opponents this week using whatever resources they do have to defend their own borderlands? I’m the one saying “WoW”

I suppose you think ET should just give up and let SF and HoD fight over the spoils.

ET is outnumbered in general, not in every fight. You’re speaking generally, but I’m talking about a very specific instance. Just the number of people required to activate a breakout was twice the amount of enemies they intended to fight. They weren’t underdogs using a necessary mechanic to win. I’m not complaining either. I just think it’s ridiculous that some people on ET decided having double the enemies’ numbers wasn’t enough. I know it’s not just ET that does it either. People from HoD and every server will do similar things.

Also, no server should feel severely outmanned at this point. This isn’t really a blowout at the moment. None of the servers are going to be significantly more skilled on average than another. If the scores are fairly close, the populations aren’t vastly different. HoD isn’t a bully picking on ET this week.

So ET recently used a breakout to take a paper tower in their own borderlands that was defended by 5 people. I’m going to quote the SOL charr warrior who gets mad when eles get away, but waypoints out when he encounters one without having a numbers advantage. “…..WoW”

I actually consider adding a stunbreak to glyph of elemental power to be a nerf. That’s how dumb this is.

Yuujin.1067:

Wow, you are actually defending this cheesy tactic.

You seem to be missing the point of what the original poster threw out there. Elementalist are the only class that can get up and run through portals while they are in their downed states, after they’ve already had their health bar taken from 100% to 0%. They can then proceed to heal up safely on the other side.

It is cheesy, but out of all the cheesy things in this game this has the simplest counter; just don’t fight so close to enemy structures.

If you are running in a small man group, your team can build a catapult to force enemies further away from their safe zone. If you are zerging a tower, you don’t really deserve any reward for what you’re doing anyway.

Also, eles are the only profession that can go through a portal while downed, but plenty of profession are nearly unkillable near their own structures. Players are supposed to be safer near towers and keeps that they hold. You’re not really going to kill a thief, guardian or mesmer within vapor form distance of a tower either.

Moving stunbreaks away from cantrips is a stupid idea. Every cantrip was a stunbreak because it actually made sense based on their effects. No glyph makes sense as a stunbreak. Glyph of elemental power buffs your attacks for a lengthy period of time, so using it on cooldown or nearly on cooldown is logical. At the very least, you are generally going on the offensive when you use that glyph. Breaking stun is a defensive effect. Breaking stun and making your attacks apply conditions isn’t something you’ll ever want at the same time. Arcane shield would make way more sense as a stunbreak. The base effect of arcane shield even combines offense and defense reasonably well already.

Signet of air would need a buff to its passive. Swiftness is so abundant on eles that any movement signet should take that into account. It could give +7% movement speed when you have swiftness and 25% when you don’t. It could apply swiftness periodically and give boon duration. It could give the 25% speed and precision. Making it a stunbreak isn’t nonsensical, but the skill still needs something.

Also, 5 second cooldown reduction and a damage increase doesn’t even come close to compensating for not being a stunbreak anymore. Lightning flash rarely does damage anyway because it has a tiny radius.

The nerf to bountiful power is officially Anet just hating on water magic. 25 points in a defensive trait line means your damage will be low anyway. A 2%-16% increase to low damage is still low damage. If you’re using enough beserker gear to still have high damage with 25 points in water, you deserve the high damage.

I kind of want to call bullkitten because some of the changes in the leak seem really stupid, but I won’t be surprised if this is legit. No change is nearly as stupid as the rtl or kit refinement change.

Had some good fights with ET in their borderlands this morning. I was the Gt charr ele, and I can’t remember the last time I wakitten with so much immobilize and daze.

However, my favorite part was seeing the s/d charr ele I beat 1v1 show up with d/d and the same elite. It was touching that you would try to be more like your hero, me.