Guild Wars 2

Patty.3268:

Sorry to ruin your rant, but Staff Ele is still the king of AoE damage (and has been for a long time). Not too bad for a class that originally is a “jack of all trades, master of none”, I guess.

PVE Yes, but not even close to the same definition in PvP/WvW. It used once to be a threat in WvW with the Tordano/Metero Shower combo, but it was long time ago.

Focus:
- provides instant damage denial skills and cleansing (earth 4 and 5), plus projectile protection (air 4) → required by glassy builds and likely also defensive builds.
- provides ranged CC – > strong for lightning rod builds; strong in small scale support builds to help teammates sticking to targets and interrupt key skills

Dagger OH:
- provides high damage skills
- provides a gap closer
- a large, fast cast, low cd fire field for good might stacking rotation

The dagger OH cleansing is weaker due to the cast time and the fact that it’s a water skill. Focus is more flexible for cleansing condition because you have 2 attunements available: Water (Arcana/Water combo) and Earth (#4 skill). As DD, if you have your water attunement in cooldown you have no access to the cleansing skills of the weapon skills bar, which could be dangerous.

In conclusion, I think dagger OH is very strong thanks to the buffs received over time, but it’s viable only if the ele is tanky enough to survive most bursts and heal up quickly. This requires a “Celestial approach” to the build, mixing offensive and defensive stats making good use of might stacking and boons. So, defensive/support and glassy builds should stick to Focus.

KrHome.1920:

lighter.2708:

any hard counter?

Every build that is capable of bursting between the blocks while sustaining the DHs pressure.

… or simply unblockable bursts.

Constant mediocre damage won’t kill a DH. Its damage/block/heal rotation is too strong.

This makes the class hard to play against for newbies as they lack any sense for counterpressure timing (or even worse, they just stand still in traps).

There is no hard counter for a class that can at the same time:
- do both ranged and melee pressure
- chain cc and pull targets
- close the gap with teleport Ciri-style skills
- ignore the first cc and get stability boon
- block attacks and get aegis procs
- easly out-burst most classes
- access an unblockable ranged cc skill
- delay the fight with elite and its reset
- kite most classes with its mobility
- out sustain most other dps builds
- remove conditions multiple times
- proc both offensive and defensive boons
- something else? Yeah, also group utility.

DH is one of the remains of the HoT elites mess…

bOTEB.1573:

Ele is and was always one of the hardest professions to play in order to bring its full potential. Core ele is one of the strongest to play. In good hands its highly rewarding and sadly in bad hands its just not worth playing. I agree that a lot of ppl can benefit from little buff but if good players see such buff I am afraid it will be too op. I play ele both core and temp and I am doing pretty nice myself vs any class. Even in PVE, after the meteor nerf, after the overload nerf I still find myself in top dps position.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRzYWesu6Fo

I agree with it: core Ele (Both FA and DD) is slowly getting better patch after patch, thanks to tweaks to core skills and nerfs to other classes around.

After years you find that the same playstyle, skill bar and build abandoned after the first expansion is now playable again (in the right hands). This is “good news” or “bad news” depending on the point of view.

The main issue of the Core Ele is, in my opinion, build diversity for PvP/WvW. Being forced in the Water/Arcana combination since release is sad. This could get even worse if the Weaver will also be forced into it; that’s why I hope they fix Unravel Hexes or give a new option to address the conditions cleansing.

Ele is forced into water for condi cleanse because of the Cleansing Water synergies, due to many regeneration procs on traits, utilities (with traits) and weapon skills.

Base ele water-only is not enough, that’s one of the reasons arcana/water is a must for base ele. Tesmpest has potentially more regeneration procs with its traits, and the water overload.

The Weaver traitline, unless they fix Unravel Hexes, has no other source of cleansing and no regeneration procs. That means that a Weaver may require the Arcana/Water combo like base ele, killing diversity and any dream of dps build viable in PvP/WvW.

In conclusion, YES, Ele needs condi cleansing outside of water for PvP/WvW, even more with the new Elite.

cursE.1794:

How do you feel about the disadvantage of locking yourself out of earth #4 and #5 with this squishy build?

Let’s see what phantaram feels but my feeling is that it is not a big issue, because when you attune to earth you already should have something to defend yourself, if you managed your cooldowns right: you can use earth 2 (evade), a dodge, maybe a charge of Twist of Fate; also if you are coming from air and there is projectiles you can cast Swirling Winds. After these 3.4 seconds you have a choice: water or fire. Both options will give you not only Obsidian Flesh but also another evade (water 2 + earth 4 blast for heal) or barrier (fire/earth dual)… And so on.

In the end, I think a skilled player can achieve a better defence out of this mechanic thanks to sword skills and smart use of defensive utilities (Twist of Fate first) and dodges.

Add some condition cleansing to it and you have the dream.

I did some testing in WvW and the feeling is very good, it looks effective as offensive build, and you can even balance it to be less glassy. But the higher condition pressure in WvW is simply unmanageable with it, lacking the condition cleansing.

Phantaram.4816:

Hey everyone how’s it going. I got another video with a weaver build up and this one isn’t as strong as the others but boy is it fun! I cannot wait to play this build again at PoF release because I had an absolute blast.

The builds only condi clear is earth 4 on focus which I’m hoping is solved at PoF release when maybe Unravel Hexes can be our other option for condi clear. I tried water instead of arcane and it just didn’t feel right. I really do feel like the best way to play this build is arcane/air/weaver. Until then we just take all the damage modifiers and basically play it like a suicide build!

If you have any questions let me know in the comments! Enjoy and I hope you look forward to play this build as much as I do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uup_8zWedo4

I followed some of your stream and also tried it in WvW solo. Really fun and high risk-high reward style. Too bad it’s not really viable lacking the condition cleansing. I really hope Anet fixes this issue, because it’s the key to open up more possibilities for damage builds.

Kyon.9735:

The best solution they can do for Sword Weaver is to balance out the risk-reward playstyle of a pure melee spec which has been asked countless times.

They need to do 4 things:

1. Increase Sword DPS by a huge margin.
2. Increase barrier HP and improve decay timers.
3. Improve gap closer skills.
4. Improve condition cleanses on weaver trait line.

I see a lot of people complaining about the Weaver attunement CDs and not being able to use offhand skills on demand. However, that is the general design of a Weaver and should not be touched. The problem is that the current risks are far greater than the rewards.

DPS and Attunement CD: To simply put it, Elementalists have 20 weapon skills which dealt small~medium damage because these skills should be chained together by dancing through attunements. However, with the current Weaver design you are not able to reliably chain weapon skills due to attunement CD and each specific skill is abysmally weak as well. To justify the Attunement CDs and to compensate the loss of reliable skill chaining, skills should deal more damage than they currently do.

Barrier, Gap Closers, and Condition Cleanse: Sword Weaver is a pure melee spec. As it stands, it’s currently impossible to go toe to toe against condi Necros without going to a bunker build. I think I don’t need to explain further why improving these 3 are essential for build diversity.

Another point I’d like to make is that the Barrier design is absolutely terrible for Weaver. The current formula as per wiki is (Coefficient * Healing Power) + Base Value and it is also capped to 50% of the target’s max HP Link. If weaver is the “DPS spec” for Elementalists, it makes no sense that the formula would include Healing Power and be capped at 50% of maximum HP. This kind of mechanic just pushes weaver into another bunker spec which Elementalists already have through Tempest. I think the current formula is only good for Scourge.

My opinion: I love the general idea for the Weaver design but it is clearly lacking to be a real “DPS” spec. I’m very happy that they put several skills with evade frames. I hope they improve the spec by the time of the expansion’s release.

^this

Jski.6180:

Added though:
Stone Resonance should clear one condi ever Pulses. This will fill the lack of any real condi clear on the weave elite spec.

This will be nice to have but will not fill the requirement, not even close. The frequent condition application and the condition bursts in PvP/WvW require fast and frequent removals. A long cd skill with slow cleansing ticks doesn’t fix it.

Wolfric.9380:

Or weaver drops that swap mechanic and swaps normal substituting only #3 skills depending on the swap so as weaver you never have the old #3 skills ….

This is an issue for Dagger and Scepter… Losing access to skills like Burning Speed, Shocking Aura, Water Trident and Phoenix to get the dual counterparts is a major loss.

This should be a minor trait in the Weaver traitline, I guess. Maybe move the Elemental Refreshment to a Major and boost it, so Weaver can diversify into offensive traits or barrier traits.

Lingering elements could increase synergy with other specializations except Arcana, increasing competition with it. Also, Weaver could be able to specialize in Tankiness (barrier traits), DPS (offensive traits) or condition cleansing (Unravel Hexes FIXED), or a mix of all that.

That absolutely makes sense.

Skittledness.5106:

Change the last change from all autos from 3/4 to 2/4
Buff air 2 range from 450 to 600 (can’t make any z axis teles)
Buff fire 2 power impact damage and buff range to 600
Water/earth add projectile finisher
Unravel hexes removes all condis at a 1 sec interval (so your not forced into water/arcane)
Remove root from sword earth #3 (or buff damage)
After fully attuning the attunement cd swap time is halfed(fully attuning punishes way to hard)

I fooled around with the idea of insta double attuning but that breaks the design of weaver and it dumbs down the class.
Bye friends!

^this

Also increase base damage on air auto attack to beat lightning whip dps.

Bleikopf.2491:

It feels really great using it, especially if you combine it with Lightning Flash! it just has this feel to it. The animation team definitely did a good job there!

The balance team, however..

I had the same feeling… I felt super strong using it on enemies being so fool to eat my skill in face to trade damage. However… I found myself losing the trade every time.

That skill could use more damage and more range, cannot even be considered a gap closer due to the slow animation and short range.

maddoctor.2738:

An idea for condi cleanse:
What if Weavers got their version of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Abrasive_Gift ?
There are a lot of ways to get Barrier on Weaver, you can use traits to get Barrier when you dodge and when you use dual skills.
Removing conditions when getting a barrier effect would work well on Weaver. Perhaps too well?

This is a nice concept tbh, maybe remove the might part for balancing. This will also make Stone Resonance relevant, good idea.

I still think that cleansing on superspeed should be the way for 2 reasons:
1) synergy with other traits that we can choose to pick, making the choices matter.
2) less overpowered: cleansing on barrier will have an automatic synergy with passive traits and dual skills, giving too much value as a single pick.

Weaver:
- Unravel Hexes: make this remove all conditions, or we will never have a viable PvP/WvW power sword build.
- Sword gap closers are too short range, make them 600 please.
- Sword damage needs a huge buff on Fire 2 and all Air skills; also, auto attacks are too slow.
- Barrier values need some tweaking: reduce base value and decrease scaling maybe.
- Stone Resonance should be our major defensive stance but its values are way too low; consider increasing the duration or reduce the cooldown.

Coldtart.4785:

The long attune cd combined with no on-demand access to offhand skills without also blowing a utility on unravel makes it seem like this spec is only good for tanky cele d/d style builds that don’t need much on demand defence. At first when I saw weaver I thought of s/f fresh air but after trying it there’s just no way it can match the fast pace the existing s/f build demands.

Sword skills generally seem weak compared to dagger skills and both sword and scepter combo skills seem incredibly weak compared to dagger combo skills.

The attunement long cooldown might work with sword/focus because this combo is packed with nice defensive skills, if you correctly rotate water and earth. One issue is the weak sword damage numbers on most auto attacks, on the fire 2 and all air skills.

The main issue is the lacking of condition removal from Sword skills and Weaver trait line, making the Arcana/Water combo probably mandatory as for core ele.

Scepter is the biggest loser with Weaver, losing fast access to its most threatening skill (Phoenix) and the powerful Water Trident, replaced by weaker dual skills.

Out of all the comments and shoutout for this trait on the feedback and other mixed threads, I think this deserves some visibility. We don’t know if it’s bugged or it worked as intended in the demo, but this single trait is HUGE for any viable real damage build for the Weaver for PvP and WvW.

I’ll start from the basics: core ele has always been Arcana/Water dependant to be viable in PvP/WvW, because this combo provides all the survivability needs for the Ele and everyone knows why. Core ele had a third free line to spec for dps (Air for FA scepter, Fire for DD).

Then Tempest, even if it was not designed for damage, it was designed to atleast not require arcana to survive.

Now the Weaver, being mostly a melee design, like the core Ele has the same survivability needs. Weaver has access to Barrier and some stability, which is cool and well designed (just tweak some values).

But, looking at sword skills, Weaver traits and all the stances, other then the partial Unravel Hexes, there is no single condition removal/resistence around. What happened here? Did the Devs have a big miss or is the existing solution bugged?
Looking at the tooltip it looks crystal clear to me: the removal should be for ANY condition, and the superspeed proc should be on the listed conditions only. It seems to me like if they had that in mind but have been scared by the Weaver high potential on paper to give such powerful stuff.

There is much potential on the Weaver, but missing the self condition defence will kill any build diversity and make the Weaver completely team dependant or just a tankier version of the core Ele, carried by the condition damage of Primordial Stance.

I think that our PvP/WvW Elementalist community deserves a clarification on this by the Devs.

mazut.4296:

Core ele was considered hard to play because its complex. Now weaver follows. But all we need is practice. It will get fluid in 2 months

But still underwhelming, and forced into the same arcana/water combo to survive.

My feedback after testing sword weaver pvp and wvw:

- Sword has low power damage and scaling.
- Sword has way too low mobility, Air 2 450 range is a joke. Make Fire and Air leaps 600 range.

- Weaver traitline doesn’t cover the survivability needs for a melee Ele, so we are forced again in the Arcana/Water combo to survive. Barrier is not enough and it lacks condition cleansing.

- Weaver traitline doesn’t provide “soft” speed buffs without wasting a trait. without swiftness or 25% speed bonus, sword range is a pain to be played. There is a trait but it’s contested with the most powerful traits, so u can’t pick it, and Ele can’t afford wasting runes/utilities for that.

I see much other wasted potential with this new elite:
- without the condition removal, the superspeed build will not exist.
- without a change in the attunement swap mechanic, a scepter build will not exist (no fast offhand skills, no fast phoenix, water trident)
- another thing is that chill has too much value against the Weaver swap mechanic, unbalanced by design.

In conclusion, we seem to have a very tanky melee build with some good sustained hybrid damage (carried by Primordial Stance in this demo weekend), with way much CC skills, but with the same identical issues of the core DD ele forced in the arcana/water combo to survive.

No way Weaver will be the offensive build we hoped for in PvP/WvW:
- not enough mobility to rotate fast (PvP) or engage/disengage fast in WvW and avoid damage
- not enough self-buffing offensive boons
- not enough condi cleansing (unless they buff the superspeed trait)
- no crazy op or cheesy sustain traits/skills that other professions have to survive in marauder gear

People wants to PVP in WvW, as it looks like an Open PVP mode with sieges. Ignoring WvW as a part of the PvP-oriented balance is what is killing WvW…

And now that ANET is trying to balance Raids and SPvP, WvW is left alone with its stupid polls, and is bleeding.

ANET should merge PvP and WvW balance, but also work on stupid op stats combinations and consumables that increase/allows cheesy builds/combinations, like:
1) Condition bunkers
2) Boon stacking perma-everything
3) Power glass cannons doing too much damage

In my opinion, WvW balance should start from this…

Josh XT.6053:

Xunleashed.5271:

Sadly, I think there is no roaming for the elementalist in the current state. I’ll explain why.

We have some good duelist/small scale fights builds; I’m having some success with both S/F fresh air and D/F lightning rod.

The problem is that roaming is not only about good fighting capabilities, it’s also about choosing fights, disengage, run when outnumbered, juke zergs, etc. Elementalist with its competitive sets has less mobility then everything else in the game (unless u waste ur elite with FGS, losing Rebound). Add to this that with the expansion, the overall mobility is increased.

In conclusion, with the current state of the game u can be a decent duelist/fighter but u can’t be a good roamer.

To fix that they should bring offhand dagger back in the meta by de-nerfing RTL and improving defence (water spells maybe).

You must have never fought me then lol. Elementalist is the best roaming class right now in my opinion.

Source: Haven’t lost a 1v1 on my ele yet in WvW.

You didn’t read what you replied to… Dueling is not roaming, and even if we can be good in 1v1, it doesn’t mean we are good roamers.

Having no mobility, no way to disengage or to engage by surprise, bad chasing (every decent build can run away if he wants to)… These things make roaming hard nowaday.

Sadly, I think there is no roaming for the elementalist in the current state. I’ll explain why.

We have some good duelist/small scale fights builds; I’m having some success with both S/F fresh air and D/F lightning rod.

The problem is that roaming is not only about good fighting capabilities, it’s also about choosing fights, disengage, run when outnumbered, juke zergs, etc. Elementalist with its competitive sets has less mobility then everything else in the game (unless u waste ur elite with FGS, losing Rebound). Add to this that with the expansion, the overall mobility is increased.

In conclusion, with the current state of the game u can be a decent duelist/fighter but u can’t be a good roamer.

To fix that they should bring offhand dagger back in the meta by de-nerfing RTL and improving defence (water spells maybe).

flash freeze+soldider runes fixed… Arcana-Tempest still not…

The cooldown reduction from arcana is not working after the overloads if u swap attunement, the cooldown goes up as without arcana reduction.
This bug is still as it was at the expansion release, and is again left unfixed.

Do we have to get hundreds of agreements on the forum to have a major bug fixed or what?

Thank you.

One simple solution for a fast implementation can be the following:

1) increase the base healing for all healing skills
2) reduce scaling with healing power

Balance the numbers around the Cleric stats pvp amulet, making the cleric ele not gaining any increase on his heals.

Result: more viability of dps ele with gained survivability with offensive stats; no change to the support ele which is already strong in his role.

This doesn’t fix the condition problems: arcana, fire, air and tempest on their own have close to no condition cleansing, outside the synergy with water; earth diamind skin is too nerfed to be effective alone.
This is making the ele inconsistent: water should provide team cleanses while self cleanses should be more available to the tempest ele. One tempest GM trait could be cleansing 2 or 3 condis on overload. Alternative maybe something for arcana like condition cleanse on boon gain (with internal cooldown) or cleansing on attune swap.

Here some suggestions to improve Overloads mechanic (pvp/wvw oriented) and Rebound

Overloads cooldown:
- reduce general cooldown from 20 seconds to 18 seconds
- half cooldown when overload is not completed (14 secs)

Fire overload:
- make the caster evade attacks during the channeling OR increase damage and range

Water overload
- make the caster block attacks during channeling OR increase start/channeling healing

Air overload
- ok

Earth overload:
- increase protection OR add resistance ticks

Rebound:
reduce cooldown to 30 seconds OR rework it: give all 4 elemental auras and convert 3 conditions into boons on cast

FIRE:
- faster flamewall and more damage

WATER
- freezing gust hit behind and aoe 3 targets

AIR
- make wirling winds follow you and add a superspeed effect and/or swiftness

EARTH
- no changes

FIRE
- faster auto attack casting time;
- faster dragon tooth; maybe reduce damage and increase cd

WATER
- add vulnerability x3 to auto attack
- shatterstone: add chill or blast or stun
- trident: increase base healing reduce scaling

AIR
- faster auto attack; less ticks more spike damage
- blinding flash: make it little aoe 3 targets

EARTH:
- faster auto attack
- rework dust devil: give damage or cc OR complete new spell with a mobility skill, maybe a backside leap

For those who remember me: hello mates, I’m back.

I’m giving my contribution in the tempest feedback; I will cover also some of the non-elite stuff.

Talking about PvP/WvW (scall scale specialist), first impression is that tempest is not bad. It’s not a super new playstyle but it feels fun to play (and viable).
Tempest is lacking something, like the elementalist itself. It looks like a half complete work.

OVERLOADS
Overloads cooldown on the attunement is simply too much. No matter how powerful they are, they destroy the core elementalist play. Thanks god we have fresh air.
Change it to 15/16 seconds cooldown and not 20.

Overload Fire: range is too low, make it 240.
Overload Water: give a healing burst at beginning, or increase the pulse healing. OR rebalance it to give a water field at the end.
Overload Earth: fine
Overload Air: fine

SPECIALIZATION

Adept:
Gale Song: not enough, merge with Tempestuous Aria
Latent Stamina: useless… No sinergy and we already have enough access to vigor
Unstable Conduit: nice but I think it can be merged with another “aura” trait, like Invigorating Torrents or Element Bastion

Master:
Tempestuous Aria: not enough, add cooldown reduction or merge Gale Song
Invigorating Torrents: very nice to have but too much competition in this tier, merge with Unstable Conduit or Element Bastion
Harmonious Conduit: MUST HAVE FOR ANY FORM OF PVP: long channeling is too easy to counter, we need the stability stack BASELINE. Make this trait add a stack or two to it PLEASE.

GM:
Imbued Melodies: fine
Lucid Singularity: nice but too weak compared to the other traits. Nerf and merge it with something else, or rework.
Element Bastion: increase healing scaling to make healing stat really matter for tempest.

WARHORN

Fire 4: bad designed, good only to double the revenants might (not to self)… Add a fury effect, or a blast, or aura or redesign it.
Fire 5: too slow to appear, make it faster
Air 4: make it faster
Air 5: make it follow moving targets a little, and changing its speed to better hit them. And make it not disappear behind objects…
Water 4: fine
Water 5: make it a little slower maybe
Earth 4: fine
Earth 5: make it faster

SHOUTS
I didn’t test shouts too much, cause I feel that there is no place for shouts in the utility slots unless playing a tanky support build.
Anyway, I think that they need to be ALL INSTANT CASTS to sinergy with channeling skills.

Rebound: this elite skill is a joke, it needs a rework. They have many options, like giving strong buffs for a short time, depending on attunement. Something like:
Air: superspeed and alacrity/quickness (5 secs)
Fire: mightstacks, fury, and retal (25 secs)
Water: converting some conditions into boons (to counterplay our counters)
Earth: resistance and/or stability (5 secs)
Plus the aura at the end of the effect.

SCEPTER

Water 1: add vulnerability
Water 2: add small chill field after explosion + increase cd and dmg OR add chill effect and increase cd

Fire 1: make it AOE or increase damage/attack speed.
Fire 2: make it land faster, trade for some damage if needed

Air1: increase damage or make it faster or add vulnerability.

FOCUS (this weapon needs a mobility defensive skill)

Water 4: change to a mobility defensive skill, like a back dash with a chill effect or frost aura.

Fire 4: make a bigger field please, more burning.
Fire 5: reduce cooldown to 30 secs.

Earth 4: make it a magnetic aura maybe? Easier for the enemies to react and sinergy with traits.

Air 4: make it follow the caster (the dream)
Air 5: add a secondary aoe effect. Like a pull centered on the target or an aoe weakness/vuln.

OTHER STUFF

Arcane shield: strong in 1v1 but useless in zergs. Make it block all attacks for 3 seconds, and to explode at the end.

Arcane Power: make it crit ALL hits for a short duration

Arcane Brilliance: remove the increased healing per target and increase the base healing.

Conjured Weapons: Allow us to swap them like Engi, remove charges for self, also remove stats bonus. Let us drop a weapon with charges for allies as it works now. No conjured weapon is currently too op to work with this mechanic.

Enough for today.

Cya guys, I hope to be making new vids soon.

X

- Location: Italy

- Time and date: last few months in prime time

- Game World: Gandara

- Description: High ping only in GW2, around 300 ms, game unplayable, same for spvp, wvw and pve

It looks useless for WvW outside 1v1, internal cooldown is global, so u blind only 1 target every 5 seconds even if u do an aoe burning. ICD should be “each target”…

same here and half of my guild, thanks for posting

I Am Dansker.7105:

Phi Is Sly.1857:

and for your information this is what happens when ele casts a AOE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB6zdwc7iWY&list=UUM8NqxY8uiOsuc-JFj22SoA&feature=c4-overview

You made my day sir XD

ahahaah this happens to me too, one of the stupid things of this game… If only ANET “designers” play the game….

that’s just stupid, but it’s obvious that they don’t play their own game…
In a game where conditions are harder to remove then stuns, and in a game where the core defensive mechanic is dodge and u can’t dodge when immobilized, immobilize is like a stun and should not stack

Warbanners needs to be reworked or removed for WvW, they make every WvW fight on 15+ scales just a stupid banner spamming… Who has more banners is more likely to win and they make close to impossible to win an outnumbered fight, because if u down 3 or 4 enemies on a 10v15+ or 15v20+ u just see 2 or 3 warbanners pop out and reset the fight atleast 2 times… Making ur outnumbered fight even more unfair.

Downed system is a mess, and Warbanners are one of the stupidest thing around it.

I just had this crazy idea (sry if it has already been discussed) for a new Grandmaster Fire Trait…

Reasons:
- Lack of good fire traits (I know this is not a full offensive trait as we could expect from fire, but looks solid)
- Lack of defense if traited for offensive play
- Lack of sense for fire aura (obtainable with focus / D/X combo / Conjured axe)
- Lack of build diversity and different playstyles/mechanics

Consequences:
- Speccing 30 fire will open a new mechanic that could give sense to fire aura, burning on crit, burning proc runes, Glyph of elemental power and so on, exclusive to the elementalist
- A new defensive tool outside of water and arcana
- Something that is useful in every environment: PvP – PVE – WvW (from duels to zerg)
- Something that is not just a passive buff (like diamond skin) but scales with player skills and requires timing on some spells (like staff fire 3)
- Useful in every weapon set, not buffing a single one

We are elementalists, our fire trait line should give our burning something strong not only for condition ele

Obviously, it needs an internal cooldown like 3 or 5 seconds each target (similar to glyph of elemental power), so spamming scepter fire auto attack will not be op.

Sasajoe.1509:

I don’t know if they (the devs) are blind or plain dumb not seeing/understanding that a game of pve & minor pvp is doomed to a very short life.
Players vs Players – in what ever gaming mode – demands CONSTANT balance which is being avoided deliberately here thus the diagnosis ( the exactly correct term because those devs are some nasty parasites & are poisoning it)

totally agree

They just avoid problems… WvW is brainless laggy zerg farming loot bags most of time. PvP is poor, same game modes as the start, same low itemization, same broken glory system. Balance is too slow and sometimes stupid (like diamond skin trait), the meta is horrible.

And u know what? Moar living story

They cannot ignore this issue, ANSWER TO US ANET AND TELL US WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO CELESTIALS,

An answer from ANET, just to let us know that they didn’t forget celestials, will be appreciated

Celestial gear came out with one important aspect: efficient critical damage on it. I’m not saying that it was right or not, but it came out with this feature.
If they drastically reduce this critical damage, they completely change celestial main stat and every build with celestials. So, we want ATLEAST A REFUND TO OUR ASCENDED CELESTIAL if they do that

If Celestial stats are going to drop 50% of their critical damage, they should give us a free STATS CHANGE on our ASCENDED CELESTIAL gear crafted with blood before this patch.

We need some must-have traits baseline that’s for sure.
It’s doesn’t look hard to achieve, for example they could:

- Elemental attunement baseline SELF ONLY – applies to allies with trait

-Merge elements traits 15 with 5, distribute evasive arcana on trait slot 15 of every element

- Move renewing stamina to a trait 5, like guardian and mesmers have. I don’t understand why it has not be done yet, mesmers have clones on dodge no internal cd and guardians have 1x scaling 240 range heal no internal cd.

And more:
- Redesign useless traits, merge effects, give fire something special

- Redesign utilities, stop nerfing cantrips but make something else viable, giving synergy with new traits. For example, glyphs need complete rewamp; conjured weapons need a lower cd like 30 seconds or be more like eng kits; arcane spells need a look too (arcane power is not arcane power, give it a +% damage boost for X seconds)

- Redesign some weapon skills: Every weapon set needs mobility, staff is ok with burning retreat; RTL IS NOT OK, revert it to 20-25 seconds cd. Focus needs a big redesign and needs a movement skill like other weapons to be effective in pvp/wvw.

And further, increase every single healing spell base value, reduce scaling so we are not forced into healing power but we don’t become immortal with high healing power.

or this weapon should have a teleport-like spell, similar to lighting flash or to mesmer staff

I’ll try to focus on major aspects of Ele issues, I will go deeper next time.
Elementalist problem is the combo of other problems:

1) Survivability
Every class has his surviving mechanic. The stronger the mechanic is, the less heals/base stats/armor that class have. So, coming to ele, we don’t have a special mechanic but we have heals/boon. Unlucky, heals are the most gear/traits based mechanic.
This forces us to get defensive stats to survive, lowering our diversity. Heals are our mechanic and best heals come from traits more then from weapons.
So this mechanic looks strong on paper, that’s why we have worst base stats. Sadly we are forced into defensive traits and are forced into same utilties over and over.

2) poor designed trait lines
We will never get out of arcana, face it pls. We need elemental attunement as base trait. Change it to be passive personal only and team buff with trait. And lower the attunement cd too.
Increase base heals value and reduce scaling.
Remove useless traits / merge them in other trait lines.
3) bad designed weapon skills
Focus any1 ?

U should balance ur game not destroying what works and is commonly used, hoping that ppl get what is not used.
U should boost what is never used, and make baseline what cannot be taken off.

That’s all that comes to my mind atm

oZii.2864:

Cassiel.8762:

Hi guys! Me and 2 other people got facerolled by 2 d/d elementalists yesterday in wvw. From what I could observe they were both 0/10/0/30/30 boon duration eles and they were cycling through attunements such that none of them were in water attunement at the same time. Whenever we would immobilize or interrupt one of them the other would come in with updraft or earthquake or pop into water for aoe condi removal. What are some tips for taking on such a setup?

What are you and the other people playing? It depends on the comp if you can counter or not.

Easy face roll you just would need 1 necro and 1 thief with perplexity problem solved.

I don’t think that without stability from a guardian the necro can stand the cc chain that 2 eles can do, and if the necro can’t remove their boons (10 seconds of stability in armor of earth full boon duration) the perplexity thief can’t do much to save him

It’s not that easy to counter 2 eles with a necro, they can cleanse conditions each other and double their cleanse ability, double their heals and get a bigger protection uptime.
If u don’t have atleast 2 necros u need to be good enough

About equip changes, I wanted some more toughness without losing critical damage.

About ascended armor, in general an ascended armor is not mandatory, but it’s a boost.
It’s not only the +1 or +2 on stats, but it’s a base armor increase and a +30 to a defensive stat from infusions. If u main Ele and u can afford and want to get it to the top, it’s worth.

Hope it helps

I used to solo roam with that build, but as I replied before u, I’m changing my build with ascended armor with some more toughness, it’s balanced all around so it’s good for both solo and teamplay