Guild Wars 2

1. Elementalist
2. Necromancer

He should make a new video.

One is a 10 point trait investment the other is 5. That might not seem like much but lets put it into perspective.

Renewing stamina is a popular trait among eles that dip 10 points into arcana. Though I will say that if you are staff it is no question that you grab blasting over this trait if you only go 10 in arcana which many do now.

Imagine if they moved critical infusion and vigourous precision up to adept to match renewing stamina but didn’t do their proposed nerf and kept it the same.

Mesmer’s for example would be hit the hardest if you moved it up 5 more points. You then are looking at choosing between critical infusion and phantasmal fury, blade training, deceptive evasion, duelist discipline, far-reaching manipulations.

I don’t think there are many mesmer’s that would take it moving up to adept to stay as is over keeping it at 5 points with a nerf.

I’m sure you can think of traits you would then have to decide to take and probably agree it would hurt build diversity if it was moved up to adept major.

The extra 5 points doesn’t seem like justification for the trait not being nerfed on a Elementalist (which it already has been in the past I believe twice). If you look at it from the other point of view if they moved vigorous precision and critical infusion up to adept most players would call that a nerf to build variety and probably say it would be a worse nerf then the one it is receiving.

This mesmer isn’t very good and I wouldn’t take any advice from him at all. He is the definition of rally bait.

Ring or no ring people will still get hit by it because you don’t cast it on people that aren’t afk but people that are already fighting and preoccupied especially if your glassy staff.

I don’t have a problem with it getting rings.

Wouldn’t a 30 Ele viable build be good if the signet makes people go 30 earth i would think that is positive.

They have put icd’s on a Signet before Signet of Vamperisim necromancer signet has a 1 sec ICD.

Our Elite’s aren’t very good FGS is more about mobility and a situational burst with lightning flash. Mostly in PvP it is used for mobility. In PvE it does see uses very often I don’t see this signet over taking FGS in group comp speed runs.

It would probably be the go to Elite but that says more about the elites we already have. As a human Ele I like Reaper of grenth more then the other elites.

Would this be OP I don’t know I have read everything everyone says and to me the concerns is that it would make Elementalist the best stomper in the game (though I still think that belongs to any thief with cloaked in shadow traited) but the Ele has to find a niche.

Remember in sPvP it is 8 professions but only 5 roles the Ele doesn’t have one currently. So would this Signet released with no ICD give Elementalist a Role in sPvP. Would 30 Earth written in stone Elementalist look attractive to take on a team over one of the current favorites that fill roles?

The Developers goal is to get Elementalist a Role in current s/tPvP game modes regardless of what anyone thinks about that mode hate it or love it. Ele is used in PvE and WvW but s/tPvP it has no place. So they have to figure out how to do that. So that should be considered when we call this Signet potentially overpowered.

Would Signet of Arcana cause top teams to take a Elementalist over a thief, warrior, spirit ranger, necromancer, engineer, or a Guardian? Those are currently the classes the Elementalist must compete with in s/tPvP would this one signet make any team slot a Elementalist instead of the above mentioned classes?

As I see it now the other classes have viable PvP elites, Plague Form, Signet of Rage, Warbanner, Baslisk Venom, Entangle or Rampage as One, Renewed Focus or Tomb, MOA, Supply Crate

I am not saying that our elites cant be used in s/tPvP but they aren’t as good as the one’s mentioned above with a maybe exception to tornado with meteor shower on Staff.

Incase these are Fake: I remember a thread with new Elites but can’t find it but I did find these old threads.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Ideas-for-an-Arcana-Signet-Elite

http://www.reddit.com/r/gw2esports/comments/1fab39/daily_discussion_529_viability_of_elites_in/ca8cd8m

The original thread if I remember had elites for all professions signet of arcana was in there but it wasn’t quickness for the passive.

Nice video jebro good for beginner’s that might night have seen it.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Lol I’d accept Jumper’s changes to thief over this guy, and I don’t even like Jumper’s changes.

What’s truly ironic is he thinks his opinion is “law” – nevermind the obvious situation of putting laws of unintended consequences to the wind.

Seriously, these balance ideas you have for all classes are cute, but, as with all balance suggestions given by players, it’s simple theoretical gymnastics. It’s fun playing dev – I get it. However the best we can do as players is give general feedback on what we have experienced. Leave hardcore balancing to the devs and the alpha testers. Anet just needs to make sure their alpha testers have a healthy amount of players who deeply know the mechanics of the game inside and out.

Even then, giving general feedback is a touchy subject because, as an example, 6 pool zerg rush was a thing which drove people up in arms – the problem being that most of those people were just bad at the game though. Where simple scouting would solve the problem of any type of quick push. There was a time in starcraft history where people were actually debating about the efficiency of using hotkeys instead of clicking everything. Feedback is great, but it has its limits.

Startcraft 2 saw this with the 4 gate which was nerfed then changed again basically once the player base learned 2 play. This did however make protoss extremely weak to terran m/m and zerg RR in the early game. A problem that wouldn’t have happened if the 4 gate wasn’t nerfed. Unintended consequence resulting in protoss being weak for a long long time in the early life of startcraft 2. Basically All-ins vs Macro games which is a decided decision and has pro’s and cons like balanced builds vs glass cannons.

I feel like Swaggs balance changes for all classes is geared toward the lowest skill level. I never said I died because that Ele had at least 15 in air. If he missed his All-In he probably is dead that was his choice to go all in knowing the consequences.

Maugetarr.6823:

Swagg.9236:

Maugetarr.6823:

I (and others) have already argued the points earlier and I don’t think we’ll come to an agreement with more debate. The combat system in this game is fun, as is, with instant cast from various classes.

Fun is subjective. Balance is not. Instant-cast offensive abilities are imbalanced within the context of GW2.

I disagree. That’s like saying snipers or noob tubes don’t belong in FPS games.

Don’t forget vehicles or kill streaks.

Swagg.9236:

Maugetarr.6823:

I (and others) have already argued the points earlier and I don’t think we’ll come to an agreement with more debate. The combat system in this game is fun, as is, with instant cast from various classes.

Fun is subjective. Balance is not. Instant-cast offensive abilities are imbalanced within the context of GW2.

Yet you have many threads with a long list of changes to those instant-cast skills and you really truly believe that they didn’t add them on purpose? I am not saying that they are imbalanced because I don’t know but I think they where put in on purpose and whatever parameters that the devs had they fit those balance parameters. So are all instant cast skill imbalanced in the context of Gw2 if so many where intentially placed in the game to begin with?

Swagg.9236:

Maugetarr.6823:

So basically guild wars doesn’t play exactly the way you think it should play. Have you stopped and thought that it is playing and handling those playstyles, but you’re not? That’s why you’re having to make drastic changes on all the classes, even those you consider close to perfect.

There are very clear conditions that have to be met when constructing a PvP environment in an 3rd-person MMO that employs auto-targeted attacks but also forgoes a dedicated healer/damage-mitigation class. This isn’t about what anyone wants; this is about what it takes to make a balanced and engaging MMO combat system without dedicating an entire player class to actively manage the party’s red bars.

In any case, you’re not attempting to argue any of the points that I’ve made.

You think that those are the only rules that govern the way they designed the game. As if you where in the meeting but that can’t possibly be the only rules that govern the game because there are several instant cast attacks in the game or the cast animation is so fast that it is almost impossible to see coming. This maybe have been put in place to give those skills the illusion that they are indeed extremely powerful. To also counter alot of the instant cast defenses available to professions.

At the basic core the design decision could have been lets give some skills instant cast “free” potential damage because there is instant cast "free’ damage mitigation.

I can’t see why you and some other’s think that the balance team let anomalies into the game instead of those presumed anomalies being decided choices. It’s like the statement you see on the forums alot that a Dev doesn’t like a class though they designed it or helped designed it or could have nothing to do with profession creation at all.

From all your threads it looks like you want to slow the combat down and make it predictable where anything instant is bad and therefore must be changed. I personally see those more instant type of spells provide the illusion of reliable attacks that you can count on.

Amins.3710:

Thedenofsin.7340:

I have full confidence that, if the ArenaNet developers read this, they will realize the egregious error they have made and increase thief base health by 30%, and nerf elementalist base health by 20%.

Guardian would have to be lowered too.

Those GC Guardians are just ~way~ to hard to take down w/ their 11k hp & 2400 armor.

No give Guardians Warrior base HP and put on full zealots gear!

Apathetic.2904:

Appreciate other peoples insight, Im hella new, I know practically nothing thats why I’m asking. I’ve seen a few videos, only one person stood out and that was Bitcloud. Most videos I’ve seen, are simply people rushing in aoeing and kiting and waiting for their teammates to do the rest in WvW. Havent seen a true 1vsx roam, I’ll look further later on.

It just takes time that you would be willing to invest. Elementalist is like that class that your always learning a little something. I would think engineer is similar also but I don’t have one of those.

I have 6 of the 8 classes to 80 and Elementalist is my favorite class it was my first class but wasn’t my first 80. That was mesmer after playing all of them I get bored faster because they are easier to play more straight forward. I am not saying I mastered all my classes because I haven’t. You just get to a point where you see that the other don’t feel as deep.

A Elementalist might have to press 8 buttons to put out the damage that a thief can put out in 2 but if simplicity was all I cared about I would main my thief or warrior. Warrior holds my attention second to my Ele because of it’s available weapon choices which are greater then any other class. Thief is fun it’s trolly it serves it’s purpose I get bored with it because I find it easy but I still play it occasionally.

Maybe there is just a fake barrier to elementalist where Anet programmed it be harder warrior for the same result and I like it. The end result is usually to kill the other player how you want to get there depends on you.

Mesmer is probably the class I am best with next to my Elementalist but it’s my 4th favorite of my 6. It’s keep away AI driven unless you play shatter if I where to give you the dumb down version Mesmer plays like:

Summon AI to do your damage
Evade
Stealth
Stealth
blurred frenzy
Summon AI
Evade
stealth
stealth
blurred frenzy.

Unless you play shatter that is pretty much how every mesmer fight looks like if we break it down. You can throw in a random daze mantra if you like but thats about it and of course Greatsword auto attack keep away.

Shadowfall.6543:

/

I have spent quite a bit of time playing the Elementalist (since beta actually). I have recently started playing a warrior, and I am able to do more damage, much more CC, and live longer then my elementalist. I have seen some very good elementalists out there and they are a force to be reckoned with, but that is because GW2 rewards player skill. Their class is not awesome, they are awesome players:

the key to being an elementalist is memorizing the other classes attack animations, intelligently mashing buttons, and a really solid internet connection. (Oh did I mention you Will need to remap your keyboard for that class).

If they played another class with that kind of skill they would probably also be unbeatable (think of what they could do as a Mesmer).

Guild wars 2 guru might state Elementalist have higher theoretical damage, but in competitive play (and even most PvE) an elementalist Cannot run beserkers, while a warrior can.

I was not originally a huge advocate that warriors were OPed, I figured it was the grass was really greener on the other side. I did not come to that conclusion until I started playing the class. So go ahead, I challenge you pick up the Elementalist, play them for a while. Make sure to get to at least lvl 30 – 40 when monsters start hitting back hard or just go into PvP.

However we are drifting far from the original topic that classes should not be balanced around Passives equaling active abilities. That is what the OP is trying to get at, if you want to continue the debate, feel free to start another post and I will debate you to your hearts content.

You are confusing ease of application with more damage. I have a Elementalist at 80 and a Warrior at 80 and 4 other classes at 80. I play them all pretty well and think I understand them pretty well. Warrior isn’t more damage in PvP it’s easy damage. It’s “Hulk Smash” damage. Run around try to kill people with only a greatsword then run around and try to kill people with greatsword + sword/shield.

The OP’s personal preference is equalize HP between all the classes. I disagree that this fixes anything and makes the classes more similar then alike.

Ill look at the OP again but I didn’t see a suggested value for all the classes.

Edit: It looks like the OP is suggesting HP values all rise to warrior levels and armor stays at it’s current levels. Don’t agree I because mesmer and thief would then feel less inclined to grab survivability I run full zerker on my mesmer and thief because I can get away with it.

You bump my thief up to warrior base HP and instead of running the current 10/30/30/0/0 popular backstab build out in WvW I’ll run 30/30/10/0/0 because I can get away with less survivability. I just need the condition clears I have enough hp barrier combined with my active defenses to sustain me between heals of withdraw or hide in shadows. I don’t need faster recharge on my steal or acrobatics because I have more damage so they should be dead faster and since I have more hp I can mix it up with melee a little bit more.

More vitality means you have more room for error that is what it does. A guardian is already difficult to kill with it’s low HP give a guardian Warrior base HP no stat investment and see how hard they really become to kill when they dump as much as they can into healing power.

Shadowfall.6543:

snip

Lets remove my example of Elementalist then. Lets apply this to thief, necromancer, mesmer. Is it that easy to just give everyone higher base vitality and armor? Nothing else needs to be balanced just bump everyone up to the same?

Lets look at the other side of the spectrum and ask would a necromancer, guardian, warrior be able balanced with 10,805 base hp and 1836 base armor with no additional balancing needed? It isn’t as simple and bumping hp and armor up or down.

Also for the elementalist condition removal you must look at it raw no stats, no food, no traits. The elementalist has very very good condition management before you even invest into traits.

I have a necromancer also and I can’t imagine it at 10k hp base stats it would be terrible because it’s survivability is so tied to deathshroud which is a 60% of your HP no Soul reaping investment.

My point was just that there would be alot of balancing that would have to happen if hp and armor values where normalized across the board it would be as simple as sliding the scale. Once the balancing would be all said and done I don’t think you end up with a better game you just end up with classes that play almost identical with a few differences.

Shadowfall.6543:

Andele.1306:

Nutshel.7264:

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Except the fact that eles have 16k burst rotations with 5/8 skills/traits used being auto targeted that can be done in less time than a full triple chop to evisce combo… not that warrior damage and invuls (or cc and regen) doesnt need to be nerfed (it does, or be given to the necro), its just you really got the tools to make up for the effective hp deficit.

I was just testing a concept on warrior, in about than 5 seconds they can burst for over 20k + (this is in PvP too, on a quick build) (Bolo, rush, 100b, switch to rifle and f1).

if the target does not have an ability to remove immobization they eat the entire combo (which can be facerolled as rush has a long range). not to mention this burst is on a 20 second cool down, ele’s burst is on a higher one.

The elementalist DPS is just never going to be leaps and bounds beyond other classes. And consider if those builds went up against each other what would happen, the elementalist would die (most do not have 20k+ HP, this warrior build had almost 20k).

What? That’s spreadsheet PvP. That requires no condition removal and no available block, blind, endurance, invuln, Stun/Daze, weakness, evade. Who doesn’t take condition removal and who doesn’t have any of those things available to them?

Have you seen what a S/D Ele can do in 5 seconds? Sure it’s gimmicky but so is what you described.

Any PvE guru will point out that a Warrior doesn’t out damage a Elementalist in theoretical damage the Warrior is just easier to perform but the Warrior is the pick up and play class of Guild Wars 2. You don’t see Lightning Hammer D/F or S/x Ele’s in PvP and you don’t see GS+Bola+Rifle Warriors either.

I agree with these since it works within the existing framework and doesn’t re-write the game like other suggestions.

What about scepter auto attack? The devs said they are looking at suggestions for Scepter auto.

I don’t know if I agree with this because I don’t feel like it’s that simple. This came up in the Elementalist forums before and I put together a example of what I think it would look like. This just a copy of my post from that discussion.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5n.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.0.0.0.0.0.0|2t.d1d.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.d1d.2t.0.2v.d13|p68.f1.k68.0.a2|6f.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Take this build but give the elementalist Warrior base stats and you end up with the following:

Power 2313 (no might stacks) 2663(easy 10 stacks of might)
35% chance to crit (no fury) 55% crit chance with fury (via zephyr’s boon)
83 critical damage
Warrior modified Armor = 3066 (3186 while attuned to earth)
Warrior modified Health = 19182

I am almost certain that if Ele’s HP was raised the condition management option we have now would be nerfed hard.

The ele can do alot of damage raising the hp would allow ele’s to make more mistakes therefore be more effective because we can afford to face tank damage to apply our own damage we wouldn’t need to be as careful. That is fits warriors theme of heavy armor high vit/necromancer’s attrition style play/guardian is surviving through magic but still front line heavy armor.

HP increase I think would see healing nerfed, condition removal nerfed, vigor nerfed.

I obviously would slot ether renewal, cleansing flame, probably arcane shield, and lightning flash. I still have heal on dagger 2 and 5 for sustain. The values of some heals would have to be brought up to compensate for the higher health pool. Or do you remove Eles sustain on it’s weapons skills and replace it with other skills since it now has higher health and armor? This starts to make the Ele more into a Warrior just a little different.

This would be fun to play like that but I would probably kill just about everything out there when I think of the damage I could do with that and no fear of conditions because I could handle conditions well but do a ton of damage.

TL&DR: I think it is much more complicated given the different ways the classes play now. It isn’t just that simple as making the bases stats the same. End result could be alot of very similar classes once balancing was done.

either the knockdown had him facing away and then he used it or he pressed the face away key and did it only things I can think of.

Looking at it again he got updrafted and was facing away face down. So he probably got up and updrafted away.

Arthas the Great.8765:

Thanks for the replies

Initially, I do have about 50% crit damage with divinity runea and berserker gears, but then I don’t last more than 3 shots against a warrior. Most dd video I watched told me to go power vitality toughness with boon duration, so I have to sarcrifice my precision and crit damage to go to exotic soldier gear and use rune of traveler, monk and water to increase my boons duration

Anyway, I started a warrior now, was thinking of a mesmer, which seems more fun, but I can’t take the chance on another light armor prof again.

You have berserkers gears. 50 crit damage is still low who are you watching on youtube? It doesn’t matter what class you play damage works the same in this game and you have to understand that and how to build it regardless of the class you play.

You will probably like warrior more its straight forward and you can even build it so you don’t have to dodge roll just go S/S LB apothecary and face tank kills.

I am glad that Ele isn’t face roll people that don’t even know how to get over 50 crit damage while slotting berserker gear just don’t understand basic things about the game. I didn’t even know that was possible.

You can’t do blow up damage with certain trait choices no matter the class. Let me explain.

Healways guardian is 0/0/10/30/30 it is a tanky build relies on boon duration. You can’t turn that into a dps spec to rival 0/5/30/30/5 with the same survivability it wont work you would be a one trick pony like a 0/10/0/30/30 Ele in full zerker. Any guardian on the guard forums will tell you that.

Mesmer 10/30/0/30/0 Phantasm spec will out damage 20/20/30 all day long. You can build 20/20/30 PU as zerker but it wont pump damage out that 10/30/0/30/0 will because you get 2 15% damage modifiers there.

Thief 30/30/0/0/10 Instagib signet spec 14k backstabs will always out damage a 10/30/30/0/0 the most common backstab build. why? Damage modifers that are present in the build.

Warrior 0/20/30/0/20 is common build for many weapons you can swap out but a 0/20/20/30/0 shout heals wont out damage the above and if you try to build it to do so then your heals wont be as effective.

0/10/0/30/30 has certain specifics that you can run it but if you are going for damage and know what you are doing there wont be to much difference between the output because of the basic 20 water 30 arcana. That’s 30 trait points allocated to boon duration and class mechanic.

These are just basics of GW2 no matter the class you play. People many times compare classes with out looking at weapons and builds.

Warrior is brought up alot 0/20/20/0/30 another common build in WvW no matter your weapon. Remove the warrior equation and you have +200 precision +30 crit damage. Ele 0/10/0/30/30 D/D = 100 precision 10 crit damage. Basics of the game says +200 precision/30 crit damage > 100 precision/10 crit damage

katniss.6735:

Merlinios.3946:

Is this your build?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEFcY6BKHQlgAgyIlTmM0oDRBLKF2B-jECBYjAEEAJfFRjtqpIasabYqYER1WzC1G0KaSB8wwI-w

Also i agree with valkyrie instead of celestial if the change of crit dmg comes out…

I would use power stones with this. Try it, then click “show action” under tornado. It will boost your crit chance to 66%. This way the build pumps out 4700 attack instead of 4483. The food stays the same, though. Power and Crit damage are the 2 important stats. That’s why I use more cav now instead of celestial because I get more power, toughness that becomes power from the stones, and crit damage.

To me, this looks like an amazing build: valk/cav w/ 25 stacks
Tons of health, above average toughness, and a metric ton of power.

Edit: The cantrips I run are AW or AE, MF, LF.

My testing in spvp: if you’re not the one applying the vulnerability before every tornado/meteor, you’re losing 1000s of damage on each hit. You need someone else to do it for you. I tried using arcane to stack vuln before doing erruption, lava font, meteor + arcane power, tornado with zerker ammy and boon duration (since the spec you have banks on more damage per boon on you), +2 divinity runes, and the meteors were doing 5455 each, which is a lot in spvp.

I then switched to a full bunker spec, which doesn’t utilize vulnerability, or endurance, bolt to the heart, and the meteors were a horrid 3433.

The original spec with the max damage requires you to land ice spike, or hit 1 person with the 2 on ice bow, or that someone else applies the vulnerability for maximum damage. I don’t know how easily this is applied. I know engies can do it with bombs.

Also, serrated stones doesn’t show an increase on timer for the bleed applied with ice bow’s ice storm. I don’t understand the trait. Does it increase your damage by 5% if someone else has a bleed on the target, too? If not, I would take armor of earth at 50% health for defense, plus the vigor you need to support the high damage numbers.

You have to finish in water after meteor before tornado, too. But most people should be doing this for defensive reasons, and supportive team regen. Meteor shower, ice spike, tornado does 4482, but has less uptime on meteors, as the spike is a 1s cast.

Chill, ice spike, lava font, meteor, tornado is a nice combo and was doing 5549 without even finishing in water, which confused me, given that piercing shards was one of the traits being used. I tried it again without piercing shards used, and the damage dropped to 4375. You don’t need the lava font, because you want the meteor hitting with the most uptime of vulnerability as possible with piercing shards.

All of my tests were done vs indestructable dummy with 0 stacks of bloodlust, and 0 might.

Overall this has been a fun test for me. :0)

Isn’t the crit chance a bit low on this?

First I’ll say Yes Please I like this but it wasn’t apparent to me at first what they where going for.

When I first played the map I said omg where are the waypoints it takes to long to get back to the fight. Alot of people have this issue with the map. Then I saw a comment from someone who was in testing and said that waypoints and walking where brought up alot but for some reason they kept them that way. I think I figured out why.

EOTM- Is the WvW map where you truly care about dying and maybe even moreso teaming up for a small group roam. The walk is basically a more hardcore death penalty for dying and not being careful or aware of your surrounding. Even Zerg v Zerg deaths are much more important in the outcome.

I don’t feel EOTM is a casual map at all but definitely a more dangerous one with some AI thrown in and Players but this time it is AI that really is a threat not like MOA’s or Wolves in other borderlands.

EOTM is different but I like that it is different play from the regular borderlands.

Now you have 3 borderlands with similar style play and EOTM with a different style but still enjoyable for me personally.

Black Hat summed it up perfectly.

I would also look at Frost Aura having the ICD on it I am not sure what I would prefer the ICD and -10% damage or No ICD and no -10% damage.

I think I lean more towards no ICD and no -10% damage.

Karl McLain.5604:

For reference, in regard to Cleansing Water, there’s no internal cooldown for either PvE or WvW, as WvW uses the rules for PvE. The trait was previously split for elementalists in PvP as their healing and condition cleansing, coupled with their damage, posed greater potential than most other professions had means to deal with.

As you stated you feel that that change that was applied is outdated currently with the fact that other classes have been brought up. I agree that it is outdated you guys have stated that you plan to also return the healing of SOR to PvE/WvW levels which I also agree with.

We should know where we came from to move forward.

April 26th 2013
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/396007412 @ 34:42

You and Jon go over the changes you made to Elementalist in the old Meta.

If we took the old Elementalist specfically the Cantrip bunker Elementalist and put it in the current meta do you guys feel that it would be to strong?

In the old meta -

• No Dhuumfire pre Necromancer buffs
• Warriors where terrible and didn’t fit in the meta at all no sustain and terrible condition removal
• Boon stripping wasn’t as prevalent
• Thieves didn’t go 30 in trickery pre-slight of hand buff

I personally feel that if we inserted the old Elementalist into the current meta that it would compete with Warrior for that role and still people would take Warrior over the specific cantrip bunker elementalist that was nerfed in the old meta. What it would do I believe is make the drop off from taking a Warrior to Elementalist not as bad if you don’t happen to have a Warrior but still Warrior is optimal in that role.

The closest you can get to the old incarnation of the cantrip bunker ele is in WvW/PvE. Any Ele there will tell you that the buffs to the other classes have either put it on par or surpassed it in effectiveness.

Reverting the cleansing water change coupled with the SOR change will not bring the old Cantrip bunkers back. They will compete with Warriors with Warrior still being the optimal choice.

The reason why is mobility specifically RTL.

Warrior always had the mobility to compete with Ele in the “OLD META” but it didn’t have sustain or the ability to deal with conditions like a Ele. Elementalist were brought down in sustain and condition management along with mobility while Warrior was brought up in all 3 areas. Currently the Warrior can do just that so if the worry is that the old Cantrip Bunker Elementalist will come back it won’t because Warrior is still better in that Role.

I am not targeting Warriors as OP or anything I have a Warrior. I am just looking at sPvP from 8 classes 5 roles. A old cantrip bunker Elemetalist could sub for today’s Warrior but it still wouldn’t be better then today’s Warrior or that role.

RTL should also be changed I personally would like 25 seconds as a common ground anyone traiting for air skills cooldown will get a 20 second RTL. Remove the penalty the bug fix reduced it’s range to 1200 so it is no longer easy to reset combat anymore with it.

Aveneo.2068:

I was speaking in a general sense. Personally I don’t care about sPvP. What I do care about however are all the global nerfs PvE and WvW have suffered because of it.

That is cool that you don’t care about sPvP but the context of the conversation was about specifically Cleansing Water’s internal cooldown in sPvP. You said when you mean “PvP” I hope that also includes “WvW”. There is not icd on cleansing water. I don’t think you knew this otherwise why even say it.

Anyway alot of people don’t know this because they don’t hover over the trait to see there is no 5 with a circle around it. Or look at the wiki for traits.

What global nerfs? The biggest is RTL. SOR was a bug fix and healing reduced in sPvP only. Mist form change wasn’t oh lets just do this to ele they also did in the same patch to Elixir S for Engineers applying the same balance. You can’t use utilities with Elixier S and Mist form.

Was there some other Ele nerfs that really crippled the class in WvW and sPvP together? The sPvP Ele is much weaker then the WvW/PvE Ele.

Einlanzer.1627:

snip

Aveneo.2068:

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

Einlanzer.1627:

This is a very common sentiment; I don’t get what the deal is with their almost myopic focus on PvP either.

Both of you don’t even know what is and isn’t split PvP/WvW/PvE. You want them to considier removing the internal cooldown on cleansing water in PvE/WvW when there isn’t one. That is basically what you are discussing here. Nothing.

THERE IS NO ICD ON CLEANSING WATER IN WVW AND PVE!!! Never has been.
Cleansing water was never nerfed in WvW/PvE -Source is patch notes and testing and wiki

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Water Has a cooldown of 5 seconds in sPvP.

This is probably why they don’t want to split so many things balance wise because people like (see above) don’t know what is and isn’t split. Obviously people don’t go and test things either which they should feel forced to be at least read the patch notes or the wiki perhaps.

The best answer is both which one you value is personal preference. Which one is more important depends on what your goal is.

Toughness vs vitality you can google plenty of topics on the subject.

scerevisiae.1972:

I wouldn’t disagree with that assessment. People weren’t great at fighting D/D’s but more importantly, they didn’t have the condi and boon removal they do now.

Add in the mobility (RTL and flash) and healing (SoR, CW) nerfs and D/D took a massive hit as a WVW roaming class while eg: warrs turned into the speedy gonzales abrams tanks with CC/melee dmg/ranged dmg/condi removal out the kitten like they are now.

My rabid/condi S/Sh+LB is basically an unstoppable killing machine when roaming and IMO is stronger and more mobile than my D/D ever was.

SOR’s only “Nerf” in WvW was the bug fix that came when confusion change happened because it would heal 4 times when you dodged to in earth but you would also get punished by confusion 4 times also. CW was never nerfed in WvW I am not sure why people think this.

Rabid S/S + LB is lame build imo it’s so face roll you don’t need to worry about dodging especially if your running it super lame with shout heals in full apothecary. It still is weak to a P/D perp thief and I wreck S/S LB condi with my phantasm S/S Staff mesmer no PU.

S/S + LB is basically like a PU condi mesmer it’s a dueling build that you can ignore. Noobs get hit by the flurry, stand in the fire from combustive shot. The real threat is Impale and Pindown which is about to get a nerf making it even easier to dodge. As long as you wipe the impale and/or pindown if you get hit by it then it can’t kill anything that doesn’t want to die.

It will wreck about any Ele build in a duel but the ele can also chose to not die and tie. It just takes advantage of sustain and that it can do it’s damage from range with conditions which is just a weakness of S/D and even more a D/D. Same reason a necro is a hard fight for Ele ranged condition pressure.

Not saying I can beat it on my D/D Ele I can’t because it’s a good counter but I can not die also. It is also predictable if combustive shot is laid down then the warrior will want to leap through it for fire aura. Followed by flurry if it is up. Somewhere in there is impale which is sometimes hard to see coming. Try to bait dodges to setup pindown.

This thread would be great debate but people can’t sit back and say whats OP so if there really isn’t much OP in the game is everything balanced? People would argue it isn’t for sure and describe everything that is “broken” but could they provide builds that are balanced for other professions?

ThiBash.5634:

ErazorZ

Im talking about PLAYING a staff elementalist, not WATCH it do damage. (aka attunement dancing etc)

No, you’re talking about setting up the situation just right so your rediculous claims of ‘eles can’t deal dps’ becomes valid.

What you really mean to say is: “To me, eles do not deal enough damage in small fights for me to play them that way.”

I think that is what he means but I don’t see the ele at anymore disadvantage then any other class. Small man fighting “Pug style” you can get away with being zerk on certain classes more often but if you are fighting a small man group they will figure out who is squishy and call target on it immediately. The only squishy that doesn’t get called out is a thief but we wait till they bite on something then blow it up “Hey I got a thief on me” = called target and dead thief easy.

Any organized small mans will pick out squishies and thieves are suppose to go after back line and warriors that are squishy will get rolled by the guardians and tankier warriors while the squishy ele in the back lays aoe. The squishy warrior flexes his superior mobility one of our thief goes and kills it. This is how almost every small man v small man plays out.

Organized roam groups like my guild, RIOT, BLNT, SWAG, RAGE/ILL, vT, AD/BSTY, FEAR, AGG. These are NA roam guilds that some people know are all in voice comms. Example RIOT has a Ele S/D we will pick it out cause we know he does damage on the same token when I am on my Ele I get picked out. Why go after Sanny since he is running a shield and a gs if he over extends we blow him up but he usually doesn’t alot of times he goes in runs out as a distraction. Instead we will go after one of the necros or mesmers. Which are usually very easy targets.

Most guild groups are in comm so nobody is safe tbh unless your in full sentinel/clerics class. I run full clerics armor with soldier/celestal/clerics trinkets occasionally for those thirsty thieves that see ele but I am just a distraction.

scerevisiae.1972:

Viking Jorun.5413:

He’s clearly delusional.

It’s cute some of you guys still think of Ele as an apex predator, but it’s not. I played a roaming D/D exclusively in its glory day but now I have little-no trouble with them on any of my other classes – the rotation is very predictable, the moves are all very telegraphed, and worst of all, they’re slow and very weak vs CC.

So when you use to play it you got by on the fact that people didn’t know the rotation and the telegraphed moves? Is there a such thing as more then 1 apex predator in roaming or is there only a apex depending on the professions involved. Like you know any D/D Ele vs any Guardian build is most definitely in the Ele’s favor therefore Apex?

This is basically what we have been saying all along D/D Ele wasn’t a Apex predator it was just that people didn’t know how to fight it. Victim of the Nerf it now cause it’s easier then learning crowd.

ThiBash.5634:

@ErazorZ: Am I correct in assuming that you’re the type of player that measures WvW effectiveness by how well a profession can duel 1v1? Because I’ve no shortage on damage while fighting in the zerg. In fact, I believe the current ‘to beat’ is 20k per meteor in a Meteor Shower (that can hit 5 players per meteor, thus effectively going over the 5-man cap as well). I’ve yet to see a warrior (or warmachine) that can beat that.

Thibash didn’t you know if your profession+build can’t DOOL it isn’t good.

djooceboxblast.9876:

So Phantaram needs to learn to play now? YESUS! Im not going to try to argue with you! Thieves and warriors are and have been the cancer of gw2 for a long time. It is going to be hard for ANET to balance thieves because the core design of the profession is horrible and does not fit or share the same ideology of the other professions.

Can you explain why thief doesn’t fit the ideology of the other professions? You think Anet said lets make a sort of ninja type character with reliable access to stealth cause it sounds good and not think about how that would effect every other class in the game? Lets just put it in cause we want to. Maybe thief snuck into the final product and was never meant to be in the game at all.

This is a good thread I don’t think there will be a consensus at all lol. Smart thread though

Im guessing replies will be P/P thief not a build just the weapon set
Med Guards
All ranger builds
All ele
That’s all I can think of that people would say is not OP basically the easy to kill builds.

I saw a post of someone saying this doesnt work anymore today. Can anyone confirm?

Elementalist is one of the most popular classes. GW2 isn’t a traditional MMO see Engineer, Stealth, Thief, Dodge button, No Rage Timer, Healing, self heals, self sustain, lack of traditional trinity. There are probably many similarities to traditional thinking of MMO’s but there is also several differences.

Bombsaway.7198:

Typically when you think of a robed caster, you think of:

1. High AE damage (if not the highest in the game) and
2. Horrible ability to survive given such high damage.

Does the ele really fit either billing? (I tried every class on spvp for a couple of laurels each but this one is hard to really get initially).

1) Yes
2) Yes

if you want you can get 1 and 2. For PvP imagine you had 5 people standing around D/D Ele 30/20/10/10/0 full zerk and scholar runes you Burning speed+LF ROF and Fire grabbed or used the S/D combo double arcanes on both you probably will kill those 5 people.

If they breathed on you then you would probably die too. Sounds like it fits that traditional robed caster. So you can gear to fight that role but can you get away with it is another story in PvP anyway.

I have dusted my Mesmer off and started playing it more lately it use to be my main but Ele is my main now.

Looking at this thread and build

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Phantasmic-Interruptions-Phantasm-Lockdown/first#post3537983

I think crippling dissipation is very very strong if not the strongest on death trait. I’m going to try this build later with staff I don’t like GS anymore I use to use it alot but prefer staff with S/S.

I like the idea of this though it makes the condis duration longer but doesn’t have alot of condi damage. Anyone have a video running this?

Yea I wish this information was available. Bountiful theft for theif I am almost 100% certain always takes stability which means you always get a daze from sleight of hand.

Blackwater Maker must Kill!!!

Odinsfury.8360:

This is a very good question. I would like to see a dev response, but I know they are busy responding to posts which praise all of their good works.

They have never responded to a question about RTL. It has been asked probably 100 times on this forum.

Very good video watched the whole thing.

I think the game mode just highlights this. When the new gametypes come I think there will be more roles.

There will always be a best at something you might have a class that can do OK but you want to take the best.

How can you make the roamer role better for other classes? Nerf the class that is the best at it? Then you have to nerf it so that it is = to the other classes that can fill that role. Otherwise people will still take the thief right? So how do you make thief = mesmer, elementalist, warrior. Why would you? What about the other classes then? We should nerf everyone’s mobility to Guardian so that they can all fill the role. We should give guardian bleeds, weakness, poison, cripple, immobilze and fear so that Guardian can play condi pressure. We should nerf engineers mobility so that they = Necromancer. The list goes on and on until it’s boring and every class does everything the same but they look different.

I don’t know why this is a thing because they are playing another class. Good players can play different classes there doesn’t need to be a “Hero” player tied to a class.

I partly agree with Shockwave.

I think it was also l2P and other classes where still weak. They should have just reduced the range and thats it.

I always say to my guildies if Ele had all of its previous nerfs reverted RTL brought in line with 1200 range. Would it be OP in this current meta or still be overshadowed by Warrior for Roaming bunker or Thief for Burst? Those would be the roles that off hand dagger users would compete with D/D Ele with Warrior and S/D Ele’s with Thief.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

killahmayne.9518:

I guess you haven’t seen a good ele 1v1 then. Because they are just as competitive 1v1 as most of these classes.

I have seen plenty of good Eles, they could maybe compete in S/TPvP but in WvW? Not a chance. It would take more than an Evasion on one skill to make a class with the lowest health, lowest armor, longest defensive cool downs and no stealth to be a “king” of 1Vs1. I am talking Mesmer, Condi build, Warrior kind of “Kings” not the kind that manages to kill up levels.

Neither of those “King” classes are unbeatable or counterable in 1v1. A P/D perp thief will wreck both of them at best tie the warrior if he happens to run a condi shout build.

The best 1v1 class/build is a P/D perp thief because it has just about all the strengths that condi classes have combined with all the strengths that thief and stealth have.

selan.8354:

you brought up a couple of good points and i am pretty concerned about those changes myself. in spvp though i think ele might not be overpowered after this, so lets wait and see. they really do need help in spvp and im glad they get buffs there.

my big concern goes for wvw though and again anet did not consider the wvw raids at all. elementalists are already the most powerful and useful light armors in wvw. not only do their aoes melt everything on the walls, even where they should clearly not be hitting, but they also can crit u for over 5k per meteorshower hit( an aoe that has no red aoe area around so u dont even know whats hitting u). then ele has lots of cc’s and the chillspam they can pull off with necros together is just ridiculous in wvw anyways. ever been chilled for 30 seconds? yeah not fun…
anet has to start splitting the balance between wvw and spvp again. warriors are out of control in wvw, eles destroy u with a few aoes, mesmers are veilbots and cant do anything else than that, rangers are unwanted, thieves crit u for 7k and can pperma stealth and on top of that anet buffed immobilie and other cc which turned wvw into a cc spamfest.
ele does not need a buff in wvw at all. their meteorshower need an aoe circle indication and the dmg for this one skill can scale way to high with foodbuffs, ascended, berserker trinkets, ascended weapons, guardleech and bloodlust.
i have 2.8k armor and got hit by 7k meteorshowers that u cant see in a heated battle.

and now the gwen meta will soon become a gwe meta, complete domination war and then ele and then guardians. mes is only there to veil(1- 2 in a 40+ man erg are enough)

balance was much better when wvw and spvp were split. it doesnt work when u balance a gamemode where u have massive battles, stronger weapons and buffs based on a small group 1v1 gamemode where u dont have that aromor, nor buffs, nor food.

remeber spirit ranger dominance in spvp? yeah it was a complete joke in wvw. u fear mesmers and all ther clones in spvp? lolz in wvw. what clones?what phantasms? ai is terribad in wvw aoe and cc rules in wvw.

Do you always say things without reading or having a small amount of knowledge on the subject? You said he brought up some interesting points as if you read what he wrote but none of these changes have anything to do with Staff at all which is the “Raid” weapon.

Evade on Burning speed NOT STAFF
Trident Regen NOT STAFF
Frost burst NOT STAFF
SOR healing was never changed in PvE/WvW and is also NOT STAFF because running SOR on staff is fail.
Armor of earth is all Eles and not exclusive to Staff and that is the only change that you could mildly point to as a buff for Staff ele’s.

You kill me with your mesmer whining all the time but you didn’t even read the OP. If you knew anything about Ele you know the OP is being sarcastic.

Hype.8032:

I gotta say Phantaram, I’m disapointed in your lack of understanding of s/d. S/D is barely keeping its head above water in the current meta. So many builds either beat or hold their own against it.

What you’re really upset about is how bad Elementalists still are. Watching Helseth’s stream and hearing him yell at you asking if you were in downstate before the fight even started says it all dude. Focus your energy on something positive and make suggestions on how to make ele’s viable rather than making another build un-viable. When you’re wrong you’re wrong no matter your status.

Watched Phants stream earlier today heard him say Ele is fine just other classes need to be nerfed. That’s not the route I want to see this game take at all.

Undertow.2389:

There’s no way they’re going to have 45% might duration on one rune set and the same 45% to all boons on another. Much more likely going to be around 30% boon duration total. BUT, you should get a pick of a working 4 and 6 pc bonus now, along with higher stat totals. Perhaps there could even be some choice now in which boon duration set you want too. We won’t know until the patch. Personally I don’t think 60% boon duration vs 75% (including traits) makes that big of a difference, if it’s made up for by those other things on the rune sets.

Yea I agree 60% is fine and was the standard for some time before traveler came out.

Need to see how the critical damage changes work with Divinity runes. If they are hit hard then I’ll probably swap to another rune set probably Boon duration.

Xaylin.1860:

oZii.2864:

Anyway, all signs point to you still being able to get +45% boon duration.

I’m not sure if this will be the case. Right now, you could stack 60% might duration with runes while the new rune set only provides 45%. The new rune set does indeed provide a lot more duration than it currently does. However, the maximum achievable amount will decrease quite significantly. We might be looking at 30% oder 35% boon duration instead of 45%. The maximum for boon duration has to be lower than the maximum for a specific boons.

That is true. I am banking on them saying people want the actual stats to go with it. You might be right though with 35%.

I am new to guardian but not on Warrior but i have other 80’s also. Guardian and Warrior aren’t even close to the same besides heavy armor and can frontline.

IMO they are more different then alike so I can’t really see how to compare them.

The old unkillable d/d ele roamer was PvT armor with 3 monk 3 water and either omnomberry bread (vit/tough) or boon duration food. I think the trinkets where also PvT or Clerics.

You need might stacks to get dps up. It really is the same as it is now just less mobility. The other key was Ether renewal with mist form which would be baby mode for engis. We both got nerfed that same patch where we couldn’t use skills with mist and engi’s can’t baby mode and heal. I don’t know engis well so I call it baby mode.

So basically boon duration, prot uptime, fury uptime and rtl. PvT so you can 1vX.

Unless I am missing something this thread is s/PVP focused. Not sure why people are bringing up WvW like guy talking about giver condi thief and people talking about taking camps