Guild Wars 2

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Soothing Mist: 80 hp/s= Only in effect when in water.
Regeneration: 130 hp/s = Not even related to skill so this is voided
Signet of Restoration passive: 202 hp/s = On attack not per second
Signet of Restoration active: 131 hp/s = equal to warriors.

Soothing Mist lasts for several seconds after you leave water. With Lingering Elements it’s a permanent buff, but even without it lasts for quite a bit.
As for the passive, I was assuming 1 attack per second on average (as I’ve noted several times). As for the active, yes its equal but it was listed primarily for Written in Stone.

Your a little mistaken on some facts.
Regeneration
Warriors can trait to have perm regeneration
Elementalist regeneration isn’t related to sigil in any way.

Not related, but easily obtained. If you were to make a passive regen bunker build, you’d very likely pick Elemental Attunement (even if just for the protection). If you did, it would give you a good regeneration uptime as well as Lingering Elements for perma Soothing Mist. With that, you only need a small bit of extra regeneration to actually get perma regeneration. You can either get that through a trait or with Healing Rain.

So I’d say it’s relevant, though I didn’t know warriors had acces to perma regen as well. If both sides have the boon then of course it can be removed from the equation.

Passive
Warrior is per second. no matter what. doesn’t effect dps in any way.
Elementalist is per cast so unless we are capable of casting none stop our auto we fall behind if we move out of range, dodge, or use any skill with long cast times.

Eles also have a lot of instant cast skills that give healing too. Funnily, if you have Evasive Arcana, you actually get a healing tick from your dodge roll.

Soothing mist is the only exception to the rule but even then to have the effect we have to go into our weakest dps state to have it.

No, we just have to dip in it for a moment and can then move on because it lasts longer than just being in Water Attunement. Why is everyone so smitten with remaining in water magic permanently?

That depends on what you mean by ‘support’. If you mean healing, then no (but I doubt a full healer ele was ever needed). If you mean offensive support (might, fury, vulnerability) then yes, you’d be quite valuable to the team. However, given that the optimal trait (Persisting Flames) for that is in Fire Magic, you’ll be a damage dealer anyway.

If you’re so calleous about throwing fields on weapons, then you underestimate the usefulness of fields. Most skills will need nerfing if you’re gonna start adding fields to them.

Tsume.3490:

You forgot to mention default lifepool and armor type.

Armor is a relatively minor component, but yes, for a good discussion those factors need to be included as well.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I can see us ending in a WORSE state than we are now

The one thing I’m anxious about is that they’ll exchange the current rapid attunement cycling for something slower, moe akin to weapon swapping ‘because the masses prefer that’.

Seriously, I’d take a 25% damage nerf if they’ll keep Evasive Arcana and attunement field/finisher combos the way they are now on staff.

The lack of dps on auto attacks is compensated largely by the #2 skills being more powerful. Sure, the auto attack is relatively weak. Yet you hardly ever use auto attacks unless everything else is on cooldown.

You get to use a lot more #2 skills than other professions because where they have 1 or 2 every ten seconds, you get 4.

Some professions have auto attack dps with utility on their other skills. Eles have dps and utility on their other skills, and use auto attacks while they’re waiting for them to come of cooldown.

The Durmand Priory already has a public library in Divinity’s Reach.

Thanks for the replies so far guys. I’ll have to take some time to read through all the builds, but it’s helpful nonetheless.

Adamantium.3682:

I’m not sure what “magitech” feel means

In a fantasy setting you generally have 2 technology styles: steampunk(clockwork, blackpowder and steampower a.k.a. Charr) and magitech (semi-magic, usually lightning or energy based a.k.a. Asura). Lookswise, the GW2 engineer is mostly based around the steampunk style. However, some stuff like the Elixir Gun or that Static Discharge build (without the turret) that Yamsandjams mentioned, looks like more magitech, Asura style technology. I’m looking for a themebuild basically, but still one that’s playable.

Kinda like what ‘The Atlas’ on the website has now?

oZii.2864:

I was impressed with the damage i saw from wolfineers celestial grenades bleed ticks for 99 and crits for 1k-1,5k. But celestial will take a crit dmg hit in the ferocity patch.

It’ll get compensated.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not posting this to troll. I’m rather new to engineer and I would like to know wheter it is possible to make a viable (power) build without using either Grenade Kit or Bomb Kit.

Specifically I’m looking for a build for my Asuran engineer that has an magitech feel. Does anyone have any tips for such a build?

LivingLegend.6528:

What about D/D and just curious how do you guys cope with short range to long range and vice verse do you guys just change to staff? Since ele can only equip 1 wpn set

With my staff ele it’s simple. I don’t. For me, range is a secondary attribute of the weapon. I’m just as often, maybe even more often, in melee than I am at range. The thing is, unlike ranger longbow or mesmer greatsword, ele staff doesn’t lose effectiveness. Combine with evasive arcana I can hold my own at any range. I often close in jut so I can make use of the combos I setup for team’s melee fighters.

The same goes for D/D too. Dagger for elementalist isn’t a melee weapon. It has a range greater than melee, and when kiting or avoiding damage, you can make use of that to avoid attacks while still being able to attack. The water auto attack has 600 range. That’s quite a lot for a ‘melee’ weapon. Use what you have.

Maybe skill for skill they are, but in combination…I dunno…I think a proper bunker ele can take a lot.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

That attack she did to knock you back? The was very clearly magic and not a gadget.

That’s an altered version of Magnetic Shield…which is an engineering skilll and thus not magic. Magitech at best, but not magic.

Agreed. It’s annoying when you try to talk to an npc and get attacked constantly.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

You compared SoR with Soothing Mists, Regen and using the heals in Water against Healing Signet and Adrenal Healing. Could we take into account the immunity skills and such that the warrior has?

It’s not just that we can do that, we should do that. And on the ele’s side as well. Consider Mist Form, Endure Pain, Signet of Earth, Shield Stance… whatever skills that may affect the balance position of the signets, and then compare them. Not without traits, skills and stats, because that doesn’t say anything.

blakdoxa.7520:

I think Fresh Air could work well with One with Air and Aeromancer’s Alacrity. In fact I might switch out Bolt to the Heart for AA. But on DD I personally don’t see it making much a difference.

The main thing would be the free extra lightning bolts every 5 seconds instead of 10. Which are 900 range, something D/D might be able to use. It works better on scepter though, because that has low recharge skills to combine it with.

harukazee.2937:

wait actually i am using lv 50 set of armors, however my weapons are up to date so what do you think? is it the problem?

Maybe not the issue, but it doesn’t help.

Another part of it may be that eles more or less require active buffing and actively defending themselves. Because eles have so little health, you’ll need to rely on moving around, dodging and defensive skills (like Mistform) a lot more. On the other hand, if you compensate by taking more defensive gear, you’ll need to buff yourself with might through your combo fields.

So basically, you need to use more skills to accomplish the same. Other professions can do more passively (ranger even has 2 auto attacks ).

Fine, Healing Signet is better. But that doesn’t mean anything, because skills and traits cannot be compared without considering everything else.

I wouldn’t mind discussing the eles flaws and weaknesses if people would also be fair about it. Many of the posts regardling ele balances are exagerated, with the posters demanding extreme and over the top buffs to compensate not just for the balance flaws, but their lack of skill as well.

For example, it’s just funny that many people think a 15 second cooldown reduction on Armor of Earth isn’t gonna do anything. So instead of trying out said changes and see if combined with extra practice, thei can make it work, they instead go yell at ArenaNet being lousy and that no balance will fix this “fail”.

Wintel

Though not as extreme, Ele is in a similar place. Sub-par and unused. The few pro Ele players would perform better if they played any other class.

You’d probably make the effort to come to my house and uninstall the game for me if you ever saw me play my warrior…:)

Maybe they should remove the cooldown on it altogether. In the end, you only get so many dodges anyway.

harukazee.2937:

I keep changing my attunments and literally use all skill every combat(except for earth 5) last time i was running a personal story where risen kraits everywhere it took me like 20 seconds for me to kill a risen krait and whenever a risen abomination(the big krait)hit me I died right away

Do you keep your gear up to date? Because when you’re like, a level 70 wearing level 50 armor, and do a level 35 mission, your gear will get downscaled to level 25 too.

Vash Past.4385:

you will not be able to burn me to death before I spike you out

That right there is where your argument comes apart. Conditions aren’t meant to be bursts: they’re meant for longlasting damage over time. They’re made for atrition builds, to hinder, weaken and pressure the opponent while you outheal them.

The only condition that’s somewhat suitable for bursting is confusion.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

It will NEVER be as strong as Healing Signet, everyone knows it.

Funny how you dismiss several posts of arguments and calculations just by saying that. I think I’m done discussing things with you. In general I mean. It always ends up the same way. No arguments, just repeating that you’re right and that everyone agrees with you.

In general, you can pick a few pieces of defensive gear (soldier’s or celestial) and still have a high damage output. The key is to get enough health that you can survive ordinary attacks and not have them be 1-hit-downs. For me, around 15k hp generally seems enough. 12k for regular dungeons.

Of course, you can be hardcore and go full zerker. But a little hp (wihout going bunker) makes things a lot more forgiving.

Strang.8170:

With staff and ea it´s still just 80% regen about 90% swiftness.

My original premise was near-permanent, but yes you’re right. Permanent boons with just the 1 trait is impossible. I was wrong.

However, it does mean that a ranger using a warhorn/healing spring every minute or so can push it over 100%. There’ll likely be at least someone in your group filling up the small gaps, so if it’s group play you want, 1 trait is theoretically enough.

My point though was simply to show that even a non-support orientated ele can add a lot of benefit to the group. And we do seem to agree there.

You say your ranger is full zerk. Is your ele full zerk as well? Also, do you use all of your attunments? Because in general, you’ll want to use your auto attacks only if you literally have nothing else to do.

When you get at level 80, consider using a Sigil of Battle. It’ll boost your dps considerably (and yes, it works with attunement swapping).

Strang.8170:

Just informing you that real cooldown with “on attunement” type of effects is 11.25s. 10s attunement cooldown when you leave it, but you can´t leave it before the 1.25s cooldown from when you swap into it has gone, so 11.25 in total minimum.

It´s impossible gain absolute maximum healing per second from cleansing wave and water swaps both because swapping to water on cooldown means that there´s extra 3.75s where your cleansing wave is off cd but you´re out of water.

Giving signet proc rate of once a second is rather generous like i earlier pointed.

And finaly, all the above describes ele playing his character perfectly, not getting chilled/interrupted, and stopping to do the healing when it´s off cd despite what situation calls for.
Meanwhile warrior can sit there spamming autotattack and receive almost equal healing.

All of that is true. In the example though, I’ve looked at balanced D/D specs. Not ‘lets get as much healing as possible builds’. If you add Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana to the mix, and buff up your healing power, you can get much, much more healing than the warrior ever will.

The problem with Signet of Restoration is that the rest of the ele’s skills scale so well with healing power. A bunker warrior doesn’t get much extra from healing power. An ele can pretty much double their hp/s. You cannot buff Signet of Restoration without considering those bunkers and all the other heals they get.

There was a reason SoR was nerfed for sPvP. The meta shift allows for it to be unnerfed. But buffing it beyond that can make for indestructible ele bunkers.

So if you wanna buff SoR, go ahead. But don’t look at it in isolation, because that will cause problems.

Do you understand my point?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

what Ele stays in Water for that long?

Long? Just for casting Cone of Cold and (once every 4 swaps) Cleansing Wave? Once the ele starts casting Cone of Cold, they can swap. The total time in water magic for this scenario is 1 or 2 seconds per swap.

Warrior gets just as good healing no matter what weapon they are using and without even having to do anything so you can’t really compare them.

That’s how I compare them. Warrior gets good healing regardless of what they use, but eles can get insane healing if they spec right. That’s why SoR is currently balanced. Because there are specs out there that can totally abuse it with minimal effort. A D/D ele can get more healing than a warrior after spending just 15 trait points. If they go Evasive Arcana/Elemental Attunement or Written in Stone/Signets, they can outperform the warrior by 50% or more.

Warrior will get the exact same healing no matter what he is doing (unless he uses the heal active) An ele has to be in Water, has to attack. All a warrior has to do is equip and hes done.

Exactly. So it’ll never be better than that. The ele on the other hand, can get a lot of extra health from healing power, which buffs both the signet active, passive, weapon and trait heals.

The reason you cannot make Signet of Restoration as powerful as Healing Signet is because of the rest of the skills in the elementalist’s depot of weapons because for some reason, the word for depot of weapons gets censored.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Though you are missing the glaring issue: The fact that the Ele is forced into a specific atatunement and has to cast skills and use skills (CoC and CW) in order to beat a Warrior that is doing NOTHING…

You mean forcing the elementalist to be played like an elementalist? Switching into attunements and using a few skills is part of our normal gameplay.

According to Anet, it was supposed to be added to the game at release. Then it got postponed to a later date. We’re still waiting for that later date.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The thing with traiting for written in stone is that you’re combining very little with very little. Even with Written in Stone, the signet feels weak.

Ok, let’s compare them. At 0 healing power:

Healing Signet

Active: 3,275/20=163.8 hp/s
Active (signet mastery): 3,275/16=204.7 hp/s
Passive: 392 hp/s

Signet of Restoration

Active: 3,275/25=151hp/s
Active (signet mastery): 3,275/20=163.8 hp/s
Passive: 202 hp/c

So even with Written in Stone, Signet of Restoration is weaker right? Well, let’s assume the ele is running a D/D build. This means they also have acces to Cone of Cold and Cleansing Wave. Again, at 0 healing power:

D/D ele

SoR Passive: 202 hp/c
Cone of Cold: 74 hp/s
Cleansing Wave: 32.5 hp/s
Combined @ 1 spell per second: 308.5 hp/s

With no traits and 0 healing power. Still below the warrior’s passive huh? So why is SoR balanced when it clearly requires multiple traits and healing power to surpass Healing Signet?

Well, that’s the thing: it may require traits to surpass Healing Signet, but when you do add them, the ele completely blows the warrior out of the water in terms of passive heals. Note that both now gained 150 healing power.

Warrior with Adrenal Health

HS Passive: 392 hp/s
Adrenal Health: 127.5 hp/s
Combined: 519.5 hp/s

D/D ele with 15 pts in Water Magic

SoR Passive: 217 hp/c
Cone of Cold: 78.8 hp/s
Cleansing Wave: 36.5 hp/s
Soothing Mist: 87.5 hp/s
Healing Ripple: 145.2
Combined, at 1 spell per second: 565 hp/s

This means that the D/D ele outheals the warrior if both invest 15 trait points. While this is a simplification of actual combat, do note that the ele will also benefit more from healing power than the warrior. This means that the 2 skills are actually fairly equal. HS performs better without investment, SoR better with investment.

The problem with balancing these signets is that if you balance Signet of Restoration to match Healing Signet, it’ll become far too powerful when the ele starts gearing and traiting. By contrast, if you make it balanced when the ele is traited, it’ll be lackluster without traits.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Though we were simply comparing Healing Signet to Signet of Restoration, granted you added traits and so did i, even if i spent 15 trait points Vs your 25 trait points.

As you can see in the example above, even at just 15 trait points, the ele outheals the warrior.

The eternal alchemy is more like a life philosophy than an actual thing. It’s a theoretical perfect description of ‘how the world works’, not unlike the ‘Theory of All’ that real world scientists pursue. Hence it’ll always exist and eveything must be a part of it, because that’s its definition…a theory to describe everything.

At least, that’s how I see it.

CrossedHorse.4261:

ThiBash.5634:

Yeah, I’ve been looking for that (and the Ellen Kiel dialogue too). Would you mind sharing the location please?

I haven’t seen the dialogue on the Breachmaker, but the Ellen Kiel dialogue happens during the 15 minute wind-up stage of the Knight’s Assault event at the Red Knight.

Ok, thanks. I’ll go look for it.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Signet of Restoration is just so… plain. It heals slowly and for very little when attacking, and upon activation it heals for very little again.

Yet when traited you can get both active and passive, and due to the weapon healing skills, it’s not the only source of ‘healing while attacking’. Other professions don’t have those. My guess it’s balanced around that concept, because it’d get too powerful otherwise.

It was fixed? Then I give Anet a +1 cookie!

This post was sponsored by +1 cookies. The cookies for those that do good things!

You have some good points Ash. Personally, I’d probably stick with the current builds instead of focusing on a single attunement. There have been multiple requests for being able to make single attunement eles and I figured that this could feel a need. I could see it work for some builds (especially the fire nuker).

However, your point is valid. I think the main issue however is that attunements simply aren’t very viable ‘on their own’. It’s only when you combine them that they become useful.

Thanks for your feedback, I’ll give this some more thought.

Strang.8170:

1 trait, 30 points locked, weapon choice locked, runes locked, food locked.
Without boonduration it´s about 80% uptime on regen/swiftness

If you re-read my post you can see that with just a staff and Elemental Attunement, you get perma swiftness and regeneration. The usefulness of the might stack is debatable and yes, you only have 50% protection uptime with said build.

If you make a full build, adding boon duration and the fire field’s fury, things just get better.

My first advice would be to consider Sigil of Battle for your weapons. Attunement swap counts as a weapon swap too, and you’ll be swapping a lot. This means that you’ll get at least 6 stacks of might from just your sigil, which is a lot of damage.

fire/air+might/fury dual dagger
I would lose the ‘burning on crits’ trait. You’ve got a few good sources of burning already, and if you’re playing in a group, just your fire field will cause perma burning on most mobs. Otherwise it looks solid to me.

air/earth dual dagger
It feels a bit like you’re unsure which skills you want to use. I’d recommend either picking signets or arcane skills, instead of a mix of both. Geomancer’s Freedom feels a bit redundant if you also have Diamond Skin. You could either get Stone Splinters, Rock Solid or Elemental Shield. Also, instead of Soothing Winds, consider Zephyr’s Boon. It would greatly increase your mobility and damage.

wvw/pve staff ele
Signet of Air is unneccesary. You have Windvorne Speed and Glyph of Elemental Harmony to get perma swiftness, and they don’t stack with the signet. Given that it’s a WvW/PvE build, I’m assuming you’re not gonna be on the front lines. This means you can swap Renewing Stamina for Elemental Attunement for even more swiftness, and a protection boon. If cast Meteor Shower, swap to earth during the cast to get fury (from Arcane Fury for extra damage) and protection (useful against retaliation damage you’ll likely get in WvW). The signet reduction trait is also a bit overkill in this build, as is Soothing Winds. Healing power becomes useful when you have multiple heals, but you have neither water magic traits nor Evasive Arcana, so it won’t do as much for you.

These are just a few things to consider. I hope you find them helpful. As for your condition build, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It seems a bit…randomly thrown together. Maybe if you explained it a bit more, I could help you with whatever you’re trying to achieve with it.

Wintel.4873:

ThiBash.5634:

silvermember.8941:

A lot of “pros” are going to tell you that the ele has not problems and they would be lying.

Yet the ele is working for them, so clearly they knowing something you don’t.

“Working for them” in the sense that Ele’s are almost completely absent from most high-level tournament teams.

Skill level has nothing to do with it. Class flaws are class flaws.

Almost completely means there’s some out there. And if they can do it, it means it can be done. And if it can be done, then it’s very much an issue of player skill. Because there’s at least 1 guy that CAN do it.

If a 1000 people pvp as a warrior, and only 10 pvp as an elementalist, how likely is it that there’ll be more warriors at top level PvP? And how likely is it that people will start playing the ele in PvP if they rarely see them and have a rough start? Most will give up before they can truly get good with it.

You can’t all blame it on the profession. Social interaction and perception play a large role too.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Exactly, i tried to make it so that it was just the healing Signet Vs Restoration, but someone had to include traits.

But as you can see, they do make a difference. In your example, you have the elementalist auto-attacking in water only. In a real fight, the ele would also get their weapon’s healing skills, but soothing mist and regeneration probably wouldn’t get full uptime. But at the same time, the ele could get either healing ripple or lingering elements. Then again, the warrior could get regeneration from an ally. So that makes the actual combat fairly complex. And I can see how you want to avoid that.

However, isolating an issue only works if you can logically assume that there are no other factors and in this case, that doesn’t apply.

My main point here is that if you look at the skills in a vaccuum, you don’t get a fair picture. The warrior wins if it’s just the signet. But if you look at the professions as a whole, then eles can have more (semi-)passive healing than the warrior. But even that doesn’t mean the ele will win because there’s also armor, defensive utilities, etc.

oZii.2864:

@Thibash you must add in adrenal health every warrior take it. 15 points in defense/healing power line.

Yeah, sorry about that. Ash did a good job with the calculations though, so I’ll not redo them.

This is something I can support.

A while ago, we had a similar discussion about how the health difference between ele (light armor, 10k hp) and warrior (heavy armor, 20k hp) was so large that it made dungeons hard to balance. If you make a boss do 7.5k damage with an attack, it’ll be a near instant kill for the ele while the warrior doesn’t even lose half their health bar. The result is that for warriors, the boss is too easy and for eles it’s extremely hard.

This post is an extension of that concept. It’s well written and certainly something worth looking at by the devs. They’ll probably know this, and maybe they chose to make the roles extreme on purpose. However, it does make things more complex for the reasons stated in the original post.

@OP: Nice post. For what it’s worth, you have my vote.

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

It’s not the raw numbers, but rather the relative difference between them. Ultimately, which duels are the most fun? Those with evenly matched opponents, or those where 1 player is taken out instantly or 1 player is undefeatable?

Pretty much, though I find it useful in jumping puzzles occasionally.

I’ve updated my post and made some calculations on how much healing we can get as an ele (with almost 0 trait investment) compared to the warrior.

phaeris.7604:

Warrior healing signet heals for more than that and is passive

Thats with 0 points in healing.

How much does it heal exactly per second? Is it the 392 listed on the wiki? Let’s compare it to the ele.

At 0 healing power, the ele gets:
Soothing Mist: 80 hp/s
Regeneration: 130 hp/s
Signet of Restoration passive: 202 hp/s
Signet of Restoration active: 131 hp/s
Total: 543 hp/s (412 without Written in Stone)

So assuming you get all the basics, and excluding any heals from weapons, the ele gets more healing than the warrior gets from their signet (you could lose one of them, but then there’s still the weapon heals so that balances it).

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The fact i take a Racial elite 90% of the time as the others are simply lackluster for my build is kind of disappointing.

You could make great use of elemental summon even in D/D.

knowing that we have VERY little access to Stability.

We have Armor of Earth, a trait for another Armor of Earth, and a trait that gives us stability everytime we swap to earth attunement. That’s hardly ‘very little acces’.

Strang.8170:

ThiBash.5634:

Why? Can guardians provide near permanent uptime of 4 boons through just 1 trait?

Neither can ele.
Just because every build propably should have it, doesn´t mean it´s free.

The trait alone needs 20 points investment, and the uptime from only that is 49.2% for regen, protection and swiftness, 123.1% for might meaning 1.23 stacks of might on average.
Maximum you can get (without the completely unviable stats like givers armor) is 86.7% which requires 30 trait points, all rune slots and food to pull off.
Any additional duration on any of those boons(except might) teamwide requires atleast either weapon choice or another 40 trait points and 2 major traits to be used

The might boon lasts 15 seconds and can be applied every 10 seconds, so that’s 100% uptime.

Now, if you use staff, you get Windborne Speed and Healing Rain to make the regeneration and swiftness last permanently too (even without extra boon duration).

That leaves protection, but in a boon duration build you can get as much as 8 seconds of protection every 10 seconds.

So the bottom line is: eles can provide near permanent uptime of 4 boons through just 1 trait.

silvermember.8941:

A lot of “pros” are going to tell you that the ele has not problems and they would be lying.

Yet the ele is working for them, so clearly they knowing something you don’t.

And since you’re calling other people liars, I presume you don’t mind me saying that you’re at a skill level you could improve by listening to them?

The elementalist’s elite skills are rather good (especially the greatsword), so if it’s just about the racial skill,s the choice wouldn’t matter.

As for the size, I dunno…I don’t think it makes that much difference. Most people have only have their eyes on the zerg as a whole anyway.

More important would be imho to pick something you enjoy looking at because if it’s a succes, you’ll be spending many hours looking at it.

Yeah, I’ve been looking for that (and the Ellen Kiel dialogue too). Would you mind sharing the location please?