Guild Wars 2

Nikaido.6739:

Ice Ele isn’t reliable… you can’t control when they’re going to use ice field.

No, but you can see it coming with the huge move they’re making. That’s enough time to prepare and fire off a blast finisher.

Ele is weak now, adding more Ice Field to me is “reasonable”. The whole water/ice field/spells on ELE need major improvement seriously.

They may need improvements, but you gotta remember that ice fields are inherently very strong. Most skills that cause chill only cause 2 or 3 seconds of chill to begin with. Each projectile finisher going through an ice field will cause 1 second of chill. A blast finisher will create an AoE armor of frost that will make any ally that gets hit cause 1 second too. And then there’s the chill from the field itself too. So making a skill an ice field has the potential to make a skill cause at least 5 seconds of chill or more. So that’s not something that should be added lightly.

As for the water fields, those are actually ok. They’re not meant as monk-style main heals for the group, but they can be blasted to heal for quite a bit. Water fields are very much used in WvW for exactly that reason.

Water Trident, instead of water field… maybe add back knock back like they promised in GW2 preview movie 2 yrs ago.

It may be a case of 1 skill doing too much, and there’s always the risk that combined with offhand dagger, you get too many easy knockdows on a single set. But it is an interesting idea, and probably easier to balance than adding combo fields to everything.

Ugruk.4069:

You play a light armor character and expect to facetank crap like a guardian… Go play tick-tack-toe, can’t get more simple then that for your abilities.

If you die in PVE YOU SCREWED UP period….

Well, I wouldn’t be that blunt about it. Thing is, he’s got a point. The PvE game is designed around an active playstyle. This isn’t WoW mage standing at a distance doing a rotation. This game requires actively dodging insta-kill skills and trying to move where you won’t get hit but can still attack your target. Or even luring your target into your aoes in case of staff. It’s the main reason why there’s no need for tanks and healers, and also why berserker works so well once you’ve got the hang of it.

CMstorm.8679:

1 more thing i might add is that the trait Blasting Staff does not affect any of these underwater skills

That makes sense, given they’re not staff skills.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

A attunement that is about WATER and yet no water field…
A attunement that is about AIR and yet no Lightening field…

That’s just lore, and gameplay>lore.

Wintel.4873:

Mobility is our survival mechanic?

Not just ours, but in general. You can facetank the flame burst from the boss in CoF1, or you can just move behind him and avoid 95% of the damage. Basic tricks like that make staying alive in PvE (and that’s what the discussion was about) trivial.

I’m kinda shocked that being the main heroes means our characters are forced to commit murder on a beaten and defenseless enemy. I’d have preferred to capture her.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

I think it depends on what percentage of the population of each faction joined her

Supposedly they’re only splinter groups. But if splinter groups can cause this much trouble, I shudder to think what those races could do if all followed Scarlet. Because splinter group implies small percentage, and yet she ever runs out. Not even when you take away the extra copies made for gameplay reasons. Week after week, Scarlet’s armies were back, at full strength.

Just out of curiosity: did you mind that your character is the one that strikes the final blow on Scarlet? Lorewise, my character is somewhat or a pacifist. While she recognizes violence as sometimes neccesary, she fights in self defense, not to seek to end anyone’s life. Yet in this part of the Living Story, your character has to do just that: murder an enemy that’s already beaten and fighting for their lives.

I’m kinda upset that ArenaNet forces our characters to become mindless killers. I know that they’re not exactly innocent, but murdering in cold blood? I’d have preferred a capture. Or to at least have an npc strike the final blow.

What are your thoughts on this?

The legs are part of the Arah dungeon set. Maybe the rest is too?

Clark Skinner.4902:

She’s SOOOO smart, and SOOOO persuasive, and SOOOO dangerous, and and and… here’s a dragon.

This pretty much sums it up for me as well. It just got worse and worse with every patch. I’m so irked by the way the character was written that I can’t even play the game anymore without lashing out at every little thing that annoys me, be it overflow popup or failed dynamic event…everything just bugs me now.

I think the audacity by ArenaNet, claiming it to be a story on the level of Game of Thrones, telling us we’d be eating our words during the final patch, added to that even more. I’m not an idiot, I do not like being talked down to as if I am, and I’ll decide for myself if I think a story is epic or not.

It’s all been said before, and as you can tell, it’s been ignored.

Just like how it’s not fun for people who don’t like a certain back item, to give an achievement for getting said back item the next round of LS.

Zorion.7504:

ThiBash.5634:

So it IS true then…ArenaNet is forcing me to make an item I never wanted to begin with. Combined with the very poorly written story, this game has become a huge letdown. Thanks for the answers guys, this thread can be closed.

No its not true, you are looking for things to whine about, just be a man/woman and stand by your decision to leave without making up reasons for it.
Seriously.

I’m so glad you’re sitting next to me at the table, knowing exactly what I experienced and what my reasons for being disappointed were.

Yeah…and it’s totally not a slap in the face that whatever other ascended item you had, which was just as hard or even harder to make, didn’t get you an achievement.

It seems like a pointless filler to me, or otherwise a very poor way to promote an underwhelmingly ugly item.

Vol.7601:

If OP is going to get angry over that, then I must wonder how he survived in this game that long!

So do I to be honest. It’s a long list of little irritations that started with the ridiculous backstory of Scarlet and ended with me being forced into getting a back item I wouldn’t even use if I got a 1000 gold for wearing it.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Your point being – either run in groups, change weapon or change class

Go back and read his posts again, because that is not what he’s saying.

Wintel.4873:

Ugruk.4069:

If you die in pve it is your own fault sorry stop facetanking, you are not a guardian…

I swear that is word-for-word what I used to hear in WoW forums. I thought this game wasn’t supposed to have a holy trinity, i.e. no tanks?

Eles stay alive by being mobile. That’s what he meant.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

What happened to wanting synergy between attunements? You can’t have that when having such a poor amount of fields to have access to outside of using staff.

Synergy isn’t the same as combos fields.

If the combo finishers did nothing other than being a finisher, then you’re right in saying that they require a team. However, they are skills with the finisher part added as a bonus. This means that you don’t need to finish to get effective use out of your skills.

If you truly want to talk about combos, then we should start with the fact that staff is viable ONLY if you combo, and THEN talk about adding combo fields to a weapon set that is fine without them.

Iris Ng.9845:

cheese.4739:

Guys, Ash just wants D/D to get everything every other Ele weaponset has, rather than to learn its strengths and play by those. Don’t waste your breath explaining why the suggestions are silly and/or OP, because that part of your post will get ignored.

^ +1

^ + 2

The highlight of the story for me is Scarlet, not talking about making a great character but in it’s own way she sparked the interest, for good or bad, of a great deal of the community. That is what makes a GREAT villain, i’m impressed.

Respectfully disagree there. When you talk about a character being so poorly written it destroys the story immersion for you, it doesn’t matter that she affects you in a bad way…because it’s not making you enjoy the game. If the highlight is something that drives players away from the game (which it did for me) then you’ve chosen a very poor highlight.

Randulf.7614:

Yes you are forced to make an item. If it helps, you require very little to forge it (blueprint + 250 shards + 50 iron ingots + 10 radiant dust), but I understand if you feel it doesn’t make it any better

Those are kind words, and they’re appreciated, but to me it was the last straw. I’m literally so angry, so frustrated at what Anet did to ruin my favorite pasttime that I’d really like to throw stuff out of the window.

You’re overreacting. It was predicatable, Scarlet being the epic ‘can do all’ throughout the story, and of course there were mechanics and concepts that shouldn’t have been added in the first place (forced crafting of backpieces).

All in all, this is the letdown I feared it would be, which is a letdown in itself. Anet, and especially it’s writing staff, have gone downhill since GW1.

Oh, that makes it a lot better…epic Scarlet waking up dragons…I’ll stand by my signature.

So it IS true then…ArenaNet is forcing me to make an item I never wanted to begin with. Combined with the very poorly written story, this game has become a huge letdown. Thanks for the answers guys, this thread can be closed.

So Scarlet is a dragon champion after all? She wasn’t awesome enough being supersmart, superstrong and superscary? She was influenced by an evil force?

Apparently I wasn’t allowed to make yet another request for the removal of the overflow message popup, that at times makes your character run off a cliff…or makes you stuck in map view with no way to get out…and is just genereally unneeded and super annoying.

Remove the thing…please!

…that you need exotic spinal blades just to be able to fight Scarlet, or be forced to do a whole lot more?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yeah but they can also use those finishers in more than one way, unlike D/D you have ONE thing you can do and that is Might stacking.

Sure, a ham/bow warrior has more than just a fire field…

You’re purposefully ignoring everything I write, so I’m not gonna bother with you any further. If you insist on ignoring the utility blast finishers can bring to a group, or even the fact that a d/d ele has a leap finisher and can acces ice fields through his elementals, then we’re done. It’s clear to me now why you’re having so much trouble playing an elementalist though.

Kyban.4031:

It’s also easier to blame player skill than accept that the class doesn’t function correctly.

I suppose that can go two ways, depending on your point of view. In my personal opinion, whenever something goes wrong, I can trace it back directly to something I did wrong personally. Other professions do have gear or stats to fall back on, but with eles, if you make a mistake, you’ll notice.

As for the role performance bit, I doubt I’ll ever see eye to eye with most people here. I’m good at making up tactics and tricks on the spot, and thus having a wide array of options appeals to me. However, I realize more and more that it’s not a common playstyle. I can’t play single strategy builds like warriors or thieves well, and I’m afraid that if what the majority would want the ele to be gets implemented, we’ll end up with a simplistic, boring profession that’s just no fun to play.

other classes can switch from melee to ranged but eles are stuck with one option.

As I’ve written many times before, I do not agree with the traditional ranged vs. melee division when it comes to the elementalist. It’s not what defines their weapons in my opinion. At least, the way I play staff, it’s as much a melee weapon as it is a ranged weapon.

Kyban.4031:

Eles also lack the flexibility to change their style in battle

I use glyphs for that. You’d be surprised how changing the combination of GoEP and summoned elementals can change the effect of your skills and thus gameplay.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So, all other classes can play solo as much as they want but ONE class has to play with others to make the most of the class….

That would be true if other professions didn’t also have combo finishers. But they do. All professions have finishers, so all professions are more effective in a group. The D/D ele simply has more and more useful combo finishers than most.

You’re just looking at it the wrong way. D/D ele is good solo, and even better when in groups. Finishers are a bonus, and since they have so many, you’d be silly not to make note of the increased effectiveness D/D eles get in group combat. Unless of course, you want to complain about something without any regard for the factual truth.

My way is GoEP in water, air or earth, an elite Air Elemental and a lesser Water elemental. Start off with some stoning, hit them a few times, and when they think they’re gonna burst you, cast a Meteor Shower at your location. If they’re not gonna stand in it and go down, apply more pressure and add some Ice Spikes and Eruptions to keep them moving. Either they get out, or they ignore it, falsely assuming it’ll not deal much damage. If you can keep them moving, you’ve got the battle won because you can out dps them at range. If they don’t back off, they’ll get major damage.

Do you have any idea how powerful an ice field is for eles? With just 2 traits, you can make every blast finisher give fury, swiftness and protection (not to mention the aura itself). Making them readily available like that would result in some major balance headaches.

Also, you have 2 ice elemental summons that can generate extra ice fields for you.

Sunshine.4680:

Ugruk.4069:

If you die in pve it is your own fault sorry stop facetanking, you are not a guardian…

This would work if every mob didn’t agro you when you tried to DPS.

Shouldn’t matter really. If you dodge and kite well, you can easily take on multiple mobs. As a matter of fact, since pretty much everything you have is AoE, you might ast well take on as many mobs as you can hit. It’ll make things go 5 times faster.

If you don’t want to waste your gold on gear, I recommend starting out with Soldier’s gear (Power/Toughness/Vitality). That’ll give you some room for errors while you learn things like how your weapon skills interact, how to dodge, how certain boss fights work and (last but not least) how to make proper use of combos. Once you get the hang of that, you can replace some of your gear with more damage orientated stuff and deal out some major damage.

Zelyhn.8069:

I must admit I don’t even know what to write about anymore… …Hopefully the next balance patch will give us food for thoughts!

Agreed. I’m kinda done replying to the endless list of complaints and nerfs when it’s clear from first glance those people haven’t even tried to play the elementalist (at best they tried to play a different flavored mesmer or thief and then complain about elementalist not being a mesmer/thief).

Most of all, I’m kinda done being trashtalked everytime I try to show why I do enjoy the elementalist, and how I do play effectively. For the most part, I’m trying to do some damage control to make sure Anet won’t listen to more silly complaints, but fortunately those have seemed to dissappear.

The only real change the ele would need is 2500 more hitpoints, and then everything would be fine.

LordByron.8369:

What harm would it cause to you seing a different number in celestial/wupwup stats?

Since celestial/wupwup is not OP and nobody complained being too strong (on the opposite…) its just an unprofessional behavior that just show how anet dn t care at all of its playerbase….

They have shown they do care because they will rebalance it so it won’t be affected by the ferocity nerf.

Changing EQUIPMENT stat purpose after 1 year is something no professional team would do….

Blizzard has changed stats as well. In fact, they do so virtually ever expansion. Critical damage is flawed because it’s a percentage rather than a stat. Be glad Anet has the guts to admit they made a mistake and change it.

P.S. mine its not an opinion….its clearly stated that ferocity is aimed at berserker pve meta…..

I obviously referred to your second statement.

P.P.S. i would again suggest you to read what you wrote….do some math to calculate what should be ferocity + power stat in celestial to mantain soldier dps….it alone proves you wrong…

Have you calculated the effects of the increased power/precision/condition damage? Have you even read the post that Anet wrote in reply to the celestial issue? I’m guessing no, or you would be aware of how outdated your complains are.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Minor changes that will have pretty much NO effect on combat…

I’m so glad you’ve already tested their actual performance in practice just by looking at a few high level spoilers shared by the devs.

What I’m saying is the devs are aware of things, they have stated they’re looking at specifically the recharge issue you’ve mentioned in the past 40 threads or so, and they may yet surprise you with some good changes. So do us all a favor and not dismiss them out of hand just because you’re cranky.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Right, so D/D ele is ONLY allowed to be effective when its around others?

No, it means it’ll be even more effective when you’re playing in a group. Which is the focal point of this game, no matter how much you prefer playing solo. If you’re really that starved for combo fields though, there’s always the 2 elementals (and a handful of racial skills) that can make up for the loss.

And again, the skills aren’t amazing if you only look at the heals, but they’re quite ok when you add their other effects. Which was my original point.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

ThiBash.5634:

Lawful.5314:

Only problem is that all those stone skins, mist forms, ect have very lonw cooldown for something crucial, and with such low duration.

They’re adressing that in the upcoming balance patch. Just 2 more weeks of waiting.

Won’t be enough, like 15second reduction on a few very average defensive skills (compared to other classes) suddenly won’t make us more viable.

Yet you’re getting at least part of what you’re asking for, so don’t be ungrateful. Also, they have yet to share the final details. We do at least know the recharge will go down.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Except for D/D which has ONE type of field.

And many finishers, thus allowing them to gain a lot of benefits from other people’s fields. The game isn’t just 1v1 you know.

Water in D/D is rather poor you have to build and trait for Healing Power for the healing to be any good…

True, though the condition cleanse is decent at any level. And you can heal/damage with the breath attack. Oh, and there’s of course frost aura. And the auto attack has a logner range which can be useful at times.

Guess it’s only poor if you’re looking at the healing aspect of it.

Ryld.1340:

Also, multiple roles just don’t work for sPvP. You need your own defined role

It doesn’t work for you. Which probably indicates why you’re having issues with the elementalist.

Kyban.4031:

It’s not a problem with player skill when other classes refer to eles as “free points”

It’s always easier to ‘blame the class’ than to actually improve player skill.

Gravox the Terrible.2157:

Stopped playing Ele a couple of months back bacause well, why take a knife to a gunfight.

Remember when actually playing the class was fun? That was awesome.

For me that was yesterday evening.

Lawful.5314:

Only problem is that all those stone skins, mist forms, ect have very lonw cooldown for something crucial, and with such low duration.

They’re adressing that in the upcoming balance patch. Just 2 more weeks of waiting.

LordByron.8369:

There are only 2 facts:
1) ferocity nerf is OFFICIALLY not aimed at celestial but was aimed at zerker
2) there is really no reason to change a set stat rather than making a conversion…..

What you call ‘fact’ is actually opinion, because ArenaNet gave a reason for the stat conversion. You just don’t agree with it.

The reason you’re calling it a nerf is because you’re only looking at the damage. A buff to both offense and defensive means that the total effectiveness of celestial remains the same.

As for the damage nerf, given that celestial will get compensated and zerker will not, the relative damage difference between pure offense and middle ground will become smaller.

So all in all, celestial will become relatively more effective, not less.

Crit damage was used to keep the dps of celestial at roughly the same level as Soldier’s. When the ferocity change comes, the compensation to precision and power will likely result in the same net dps.

Celestial was never intended for spike builds so the upcoming changes will make it more suited for its intended role.

I would prefer they spread the effects of elemental attument to the 5pt traits instead (in addition to what they do now of course).

Seems ok to me. You’ll have to be good at dodging, so when the double sigil change goes live you may wanna get a sigil of energy too. However, wheter it’s truly ok only you can tell, because you have to play with it.

For PvE, an elite earth elemental will fix all your survivability problems.

Apart from that, it’s critical to learn to kite and dodge properly, more than other professions at least. If you’re not casting Meteor Shower, you should be moving (sideways so you can still attack). Place your staff spells where the target will be, not where they were. Use yourself as bait if you need to, lure them into the target area. And finally, make use of combos. If you place an eruption, you can run into the blast area to lure the enemy there, then cast a geyser over it to heal up any damage you may have taken while you stood still there. And if you’re in water anyway, quickly follow up with an ice spike. Those 2 do massive aoe damage.

Just a few things from the top of my mind.

Just for clarity (and get the word out there):

Celestial gear will not be nerfed.

There has been a lengthy discussion about it that resulted in a dev stating they were aware of it and would buff celestial’s other stats to make sure it wouldn’t be affected by the critical nerf.

Ganathar.4956:

I usually compare ele heals and utilities to those of a warrior to get my point across since warrior is my 2nd most played class and I know more about it than the others.

Here is how it is.
In terms of heals a warrior has HS which is superior to every heal an ele can get. Even with the 8% nerf and the revert on the nerf on SoR, SoR still won’t be nearly as good.

Now I know that utilities are not completely balanced between professions because different professions offer different tools and are balanced with ALL of their capabilities in mind. However, one would think that the class with the lowest armor and health would get defensive utilities that are at least equal to those of the class with the highest health and armor.

If you know that, why didn’t you also factor in Soothing Mist, signet traits, regeneration and heals present in just about every weaponset?

Because you can also look at it from the Warrior’s perspective: all they get is a single passive heal that ends if they trigger their panic button, while eles get weapon heals, a 5pt auto regen trait, can get protection while triggering their active which they can trait to not even disable their passive.

As for the main discussion, I think part of the problem is that people are trying to make the ele work by performing a single role. But it may be that you can only be effective if you don’t focus on any role, but adapt to the circumstances.

But I’m sure you’d rather discuss how the ele should be a profession that can only do 1 role at a time, and how single skill x is so much better than single skill y.

Lawful.5314:

As i see, mainly comboes are with staff, with other weapons there are little to no combos.

Each weapon combination has at least a fire field, which you can combine with blast finishers to gain might stacks. Or you can make use of fields created by other players.

Combos are a big part of ele gameplay, and essential for ele staff gameplay. You’d gain a lot from learning how they work.