Guild Wars 2

NevirSayDie.6235:

With respect, I’d say that’s not necessarily a fair assessment.

There are X number of people who have queued for at least 20 solo matches in the last 2 months (let’s say 20,000). The chances of winning 15 out of 20 (assuming that your win rate should be 50% with perfect matchmaking) are 2%.

You’re making a fair point, but it is not fair directed at me. I didn’t say “too many people on a given day experience streaks”. I said “people experience too many of these streaks over time”.

Obviously, I think that – if you dug into the statistics – far more than 400 per 20000 players experience streaks on a given day. But I don’t have access to that information. So I stuck with individual terms.

Also, my analysis was too generous to the current system. If you are the sort of player who loses 15 of 20, the odds of you winning 15 of 20 in the near future should be abysmal – far lower than 2%. I’ve actually had that happen to me on consecutive streaks.

Of course, I could be the one guy in a million who has this happen. But the far more likely answer is that matchmaking isn’t random enough. Even from your perspective, it’s the more likely answer. (Your sample space is posters on this forum, not the game’s population as a whole. Your odds might be two or three orders of magnitude better than mine, but they’re still near-zero.)

MightyMicah.7451:

I don’t mean to be rude, but have you ever taken any economics courses? Or perhaps government? The last thing that speculation does is raise prices.

I don’t mean to be rude, but (a) yes I have and (b) you need to take yours again. In some very tightly controlled economic models with very strong assumptions (perfect competition, perfect information, perfect rationality, etc.) speculation can lower prices. It is why governments regulate speculation – to preserve those assumptions in reality.

There is absolutely no argument that speculation can and does raise prices absent these assumptions. It creates bubbles, which are literally instances of overvalued assets. The 2007 financial crisis is such an example.

This thread has already proven why the economy section would have been the wrong choice. It would have just turned into a Keynesian vs. laissez-faire war, which is the last thing I want.

There is no question that flipping has raised prices in GW2 far beyond what one earns naively from dungeons and farming. Perhaps a player who spends some time mastering the economy would find no problem here. My question is how a mandatory economy, which is what speculation has created, improves the game in other aspects. There is certainly a way for naive play to earn all the gold you need, without ever requiring participation in speculation. So why is this latter option never pursued?

Why is rampant speculation allowed in this game? This is something that’s bothered me in every MMO I have played, but it’s most extreme in GW2.

Imagine people bought bread for no other reason than the expectation it will be worth more tomorrow. Buying a loaf of bread would get pretty expensive really quick, would it not? This sort of thing has wrecked real-world economies throughout history. It’s something every modern government works hard to limit and control. But for some reason, MMO’s embrace this behavior without reservation. Why?

To be clear, I’m not talking about profit-seeking. (Farming mats and selling them, for example.) That is a normal, healthy activity which adds real value to a game’s economy. I am talking about flipping items on the TP. It serves no purpose and only raises prices well beyond what a player can hope to farm naturally.

So here is my very simple question: what benefit does speculation offer an MMO? Developers must believe it has some positive aspect, because it is allowed – encouraged, even – in nearly every major MMO ever released.

edit – Why did I post this here and not in the economy section? Because I’m not interested in how speculation affects the game’s economy. I don’t care whether or not it makes the economy healthier.

I’m interested in how it changes the game itself, in general. How it effects players who choose to have a minimal exposure to the economy. If I want ascended gear, how does the materials costing thousands of gold add to the experience? Speculation is directly responsible for this situation, thus I ask what it adds to the game. (If that makes sense.)

If I posted this in the economy section, I would just start a debate over the merits and risks of speculation. That is a worthwhile discussion, but it is not what I’m after. I am curious how a speculation-driven economy improves the game as a whole – from PvP to WvW to PvE.

Zirith.6429:

Malediktus.9250:

Not really, its expected to turn to a 50% win/loss ratio in the long time, so unless your win/loss ratio is far above or far below after 1000 games its not your fault

There are not nearly enough players to make that happen, so it is entirely your fault (in the long run)

It’s pretty obvious matchmaking in solo queue is broken. Players with 40-60% winrates have long stretches of 0-20% or 80-100% winrates. That should not be happening often.

For example, imagine you have a 50% winrate and won or lost 15 of 20. The odds of that happening are 2%. In other words, if you played 100 sets of 20 (that’s 2000 games!) you should only have that sort of streak twice.

It’s a sign that matchmaking is not random enough. It is also very frustrating for players. The long winning streaks set unrealistic expectations for yourself, which only amplifies the long losing streaks.

Not that this is a bad change, but I really hope it’s not the only buff we get. Ele’s are so, so far from being viable it’s going to take a lot more than this to fix us.

Are we even sure this signet will be a better option than what we have now? You have to be casting for it to work, and sometimes you either can’t (CC) or don’t want to (Confusion).

Not to mention, what’s the point of a 400-800 HPS signet when we take four or five times that in DPS? This seems like it might fall into the trap Diamond Skin did: great on paper, but negligible in practice.

edit – If this is one buff alongside others, I do think this is a solid change. I am only skeptical of this change if it’s the only one being made. I like it much more if it is complemented by other major buffs to our survivability.

The problem isn’t so much the application of conditions, it’s the conditions we apply. Burning stacks in duration. Chill, Vulnerability, and Blindness all do no damage. Leaving Bleed as our only strong option.

Chill doing damage would be a huge help, but I don’t think it would be enough. No ability can stack it. Giving it the same problem Burning has, albeit for a different reason.

florence.1674:

Mash Hog.5672:

Lets talk specifically about our Attunement Mechanic and how that hurts us instead of helps us.

I already talked a bit about attunements here.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-ELE-tism-Balancing-The-Elementalist/first#post3477748

But to further add to it, our weapon skills don’t synergize with our attunements either. If you look at other classes, their weapon skills have synergy with their class mechanics. Mesmers get to create clones which aid their F1-4 powers. Necros can gain additional life force. Warriors gain adrenaline faster with some weapon skills. Rangers buff their pets.

Then there’s the whole using F1-4. Other classes, you hit F1-4, you get an additional ability. Without needing to trait for it, mesmers get to blow up clones for added effect, engineers get an additional ability based on the utilities they equip, warriors get an additional powerful attack, rangers get pet abilities, necros get a whole new health bar and additional attacks, thieves get a range of abilities they steal with, guardians get extra buffs.

Our F1-4, no synergy with our weapon skills, and no additional effect other than being a weapon swap.

In theory, attunements provide extra utility. We get 20 abilities instead of 10. In practice, the extra abilities are so weak they provide nothing valuable at all.

We end up having the same utility as any other class, except our damage is spread across a few extra abilities. (Which is actually an indirect nerf to PvP for us. Packing your damage into a couple of abilities is vastly superior to spreading it across four abilities.)

There just is no place for a “good at everything, master of nothing” profession in PvP. World of Warcraft tried it for years with Druids and Shamans, but those classes only found a place in PvP when they were allowed to be the best at something.

Just to further explain these changes, you have to remember how astonishingly fragile Ele’s are. It amplifies nerfs and undercuts buffs. Minor tweaks have crippled the class, while (theoretically) massive improvements have proven useless.

A perfect example is Diamond Skin. On paper, it looked disgusting. Other professions thought it would ruin the meta, with condition-immune Ele’s running rampant. Necromancers thought they were going to get pushed out of sPvP entirely. Then it was released, and proved to be such a negligible buff that most Ele’s don’t even take it.

To buff Elementalists, you have to aim higher than you think you should.

Just to point out the obvious, Guardians are already unkillable bricks in sPvP. It takes no fewer than 2 players to kill a good Guardian bunker. Depending on team composition, it sometimes takes no fewer than 3. This is a huge problem as it is now. If Guardians were given any survivability buff, let alone something as massive as an HP buff, it would break sPvP.

To give Guardians this sort of buff, they would need to eat some heavy nerfs in key sPvP abilities.

Denar.3950:

I am sorry but those suggestions do not seem balanced at all.

Fire – Well, that one sounds alright as a trait and not something innate, but cooldown would need to be like 20 seconds

Air – The importance of evade is the invulnerability frames, not necessarily covering ground quickly. Removing all movement condis is OP. Changing the endurance regen rules is not user-friendly

Water – Seems ok as a trait… bit odd. I see where you’re coming from – “who would stick around in water for 20 seconds to get the full immunity?” But then the whole idea just seems pointless, no one sticks in water for more than 5, let alone 10.

Earth – So presuming you’ve got D or S MH, you can keep up permanent cripple by just auto attacking. Not only that, every 5th bleed is also 2s immobilise? That’s 1.6666 auto attacks with scepter. That is ridic OP.

These are huge, sweeping changes not suitable for PvP. Anet has already addressed that they will be reverting some of the earlier nerfs to Ele that made it less suitable as a roamer.

My response for each of the attunements:

Fire – If it removed all conditions, not just movement impairing, I would agree it’s too good to be innate. I think you’re judging the buff in the context of Ele’s other abilities, outside of Fire. Except those abilities cannot be used, so they aren’t a factor. Fire currently provides nothing in the way of survivability or mobility, once conditions are factored in. Basically, it would give fire one single mobility buff every 10-20 seconds. In team fights, it would barely matter, with all the conditions flying around. And it can’t stack on top of other Ele condition cleanses, because Fire has none. (Burning Retreat and Burning Speed improve mobility, but are countered by Immobilize.)

Air – Endurance regen is already altered by Vigor, Quickness, and a number of traits. It isn’t a concept foreign to the player. As for whether it is OP or not, consider that when an Ele is focused they have no escape outside of the teleport Cantrip. The idea is for Ele’s to have an out if they become the main target. With the 100% regen penalty, no one will be spamming this. And because you can no longer use dodge for the invulnerability, no one is going to camp in Air just for the teleport.

Water – This is meant to interact with the Air attunement, to provide Ele’s the ability to roam freely. You can use Air to get out of fights, then hop into Water to stay out of fights. The longer you retreat, the harder you will be to catch. That said, the buff stacks so slowly it would not have much of a role during fights. It would work well with the Chill abilities already available in Water.

Earth – First of all, I think you are vastly underestimating the omnipresence of Chill/Cripple/Weakness in teamfights. Targets already face these conditions with 100% uptime. All that said, you ignored the cooldown. I think 2 seconds would be enough, but my range was 1-5. If you went with the full 5, then the immobilize would only be available once every 25 seconds. That’s certainly not a very outlandish ability. (Warriors have full-fledged stuns available more often than that.)

The first thing that hits anyone trying an Ele is our attunements. They are fun while leveling, but turn into a waste in PvE and an actual liability in PvP. This should be an exciting, core mechanic. Instead, it’s something you either ignore or hate.

The changes to each attunement would be:

Fire – Whenever a movement impairing condition is applied to you, you instead gain Vigor and apply Burning to nearby enemies. (5-10 second cooldown)

Air – Dodging now teleports you, instead of merely rolling you. Teleport covers twice the distance, removing all movement impairing conditions. (no cooldown, but stamina regenerates 100% slower)

Water – The duration of movement impairing conditions is initially reduced by 25%. This percentage is increased by 25% for every 5 seconds you remain in Water, resetting to 0% from 100%. (no cooldown)

Earth – Apply Cripple whenever you apply Bleed to your target. Every 5th application of Bleed also applies Immobilize for 2 seconds. (1-5 second cooldown)

These changes would reward attunement-swapping. Instead of being simple gates to needed abilities, attunements themselves would provide important and valued benefits.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Class: Elementalist

Worst Enemy:
1. All other classes

The list is incomplete, I think.

Worst Enemy:
1. All other classes
2. And their pets

Why do people think ele’s have a high skill cap? There are already a few posts in this thread suggesting as much. One of the biggest problems with the class is that it has a very low skill cap.

Just think about it for a second. If ele’s had a high skill cap, then you would see them at high levels of play. Instead, high level ele’s are rerolling en masse. It takes double the effort to get the same reward other professions get. I think people are confusing “difficult to play” with “high skill cap”.

Clutter shouldn’t be a factor in PvP. It’s not rewarding for the player creating the clutter, and it’s frustrating for everyone else.

Why not, in PvP only, do the following: (1) give pets 50% more health, (2) debuff pets to take 100% more AoE damage, and (3) make pets untargetable.

The goal would be eliminating clutter completely, while leaving pets killable. If you want to kill a pet, you can still do it using AoE skills. The health buff is to stop pets from becoming collateral damage. All of this would be restricted to PvP, so that it would not change PvE. (Just make it a permanent effect on pets as soon as they enter PvP or WvW.)

tldr version: Have you had a lot of long winning or losing streaks? Like winning or losing 9 of 10? Or 18 of 20?

full version: I took a long break from this game, so I just got into Solo/Team Queue. I’ve already had multiple improbable streaks, both winning and losing.

At one point, I was two games under .500 and lost 15 of 17. Putting me 17 games under .500. Then I immediately won something like 22 of 27 to get back to .500. Those stretches were back to back, so it all occurred at the same MMR.

Statistically, assuming a truly random matchmaking, the probability of these sorts of streaks are extremely low. Of course, matchmaking isn’t truly random. It has to work with the players who happen to queue up at a given moment, it’s doing some work to try and fine your true winrate, etc. But to get the sorts of streaks I’ve seen, the matchmaking has to be far from random.

All that said, this is a huge game and I’m only one player. The odds that a handful of people see stretches like I’ve seen are actually close to 100%. So I could just be that one guy who got the bizarre streaks. So my question is, has anyone else seen these sorts of highly unlikely streaks?

Stormcrow.7513:

zilcho.7624:

I can only imagine how much work went into the graphics, just to make it all run at a decent framerate. There is stuff in this game that just hasn’t been done in MMO’s before.

Decent framerate is subjective. GW2 is fantastic looking but I am still waiting for our big performance update that was promised. It is also too bad that most people cant run the aforementioned reflections since they are such a pig on resources.

I have a pretty decent system and I turn reflections off completely

Well there isn’t a whole lot you can do to optimize effects like reflections. The simplest, traditional method renders the scene once for each reflector. The basic shadow rendering algorithm renders the scene once for each light source. It gets really, really expensive very quickly.

(I’m sure GW2 uses some custom rendering algorithms. All triple-A games do. But the traditional algorithms give you a good baseline.)

You can do some work figuring out which reflectors aren’t visible and which lights aren’t contributing visible shadows. But at the end of the day, if an effect is supposed to be visible you can’t optimize your way out of it.

I don’t think GW2 is just the best looking MMO out there, it is in it’s own league. There isn’t a single MMO I would mention in the same sentence as this game, as far as graphics go.

I’m studying graphics from the perspective of CS (so the technical, not artistic, side). The thing that still gets me is this game’s support of reflections and detailed bump maps. I don’t know of any other MMO that even tries to support reflections on any level. And no other MMO has the sort of detailed textures and bump maps that this game has.

I can only imagine how much work went into the graphics, just to make it all run at a decent framerate. There is stuff in this game that just hasn’t been done in MMO’s before.

The moderation is very concerning. The one infraction I received was blatantly draconian, and I’m sure I am not the only one to receive such an infraction.

Moderation is one thing. Stifling discussion is another. This is just a game, so I don’t want to make too big a deal out of this. But attempts to repress negative opinions historically tend to magnify extremism, not eliminate it. If the goal is to make the forums less toxic, draconian moderation is self-defeating.

This thread is already an example: there are multiple sarcastic posts referencing the moderation. And the reason this is such a problem is that all of those sarcastic posts are entirely fair. The moderation really has gone over the line.

I think this map could work if they toned down the gimmicks. Just get rid of the holes you can fall through, completely. Then halve the cannon’s damage and double the time it takes to cooldown.

I think the jump pads are interesting. Make all the z-axis play the main gimmick. The cannon should be a minor boost, not a gamebreaking necessity.

ArthurDent.9538:

My advice is learn how to use all of the weapon sets. The meta is scepter/focus for pure dps right now, but I have found every weapon combo possible has at least one dungeon situation that I am most comfortable with.

I thought that staff was the meta for pure dps? With S/F being the alternative if your group is missing buffs?

Crujiente.8612:

It used to be a stunbreaker. ANet felt that cantrip builds were overpowered and also wanted to reduce our reliance on cantrips in general, so they spread the stunbreakers around to other utility skills. They also upped the damage Lightning Flash does.

From what I’ve seen, a lot of Elementalists still prefer to use cantrips in general, including Lightning Flash, so I don’t know about that change really affecting much.

The problem with the change is that we’re too squishy to go with anything but cantrips. We can’t afford to swap cantrips for anything else. Give us a higher base HP, and it might be a different story.

If you’re a S/D ele, I don’t think you stand a chance. You desperately need Shocking Aura. It completely changes the nature of the fight.

When I’m going S/D fresh air, I just lose 25% chunks of health while the thief stealths and restealths. I literally never get a chance to respond, because I’ll die before the thief runs out of stealth.

Zanthrax.6538:

I dont see the MMO market as competitive at all….every single other MMO apart from GW2 has crashed significantly in its attempt to draw from WoW and non MMO players. Wildstar is definitely in a solid position but time will tell. From my experience with the game so far I don’t see it succeeding but thats just my opinion

Of course the market is competitive. It takes a massive amount of time and money to create an MMO. As far as software engineering goes, an MMO is arguably the most difficult and expensive project on the planet. If we were talking about a dead genre, it would be just that: dead. You wouldn’t see people developing any more games for the market. A real example of a dead genre would be WW2 shooters.

All these discussions start with comparisons to WoW. But WoW somehow exploded in a way no one will ever repeat. It’s the wrong standard for success, because it was a one-time only thing.

Ulalume.2470:

I believe, that being able to pick out a specific cast animation on an Asura to interrupt it, in the middle of a fight, has nothing to do with skills.
Asura dissapear behind spell effects, minions, turrets and other pieces of fluff…
Things other races simply stand out from.
If you have a build that relies on interrupting the enemies heal etc. you’re gonna have a bad time.

I don’t think anyone actually picks out specific animations with any reliability. It reminds me of high level PvP from WoW. On the forums, no one ever fell for fake casts. But sure enough, play a top 10 player and fake casts would work about 50% of the time.

I do believe skill is enough to let you distinguish between actual ability casts and autoattacks. But anything beyond that I just don’t believe. I think it’s more like “oh hey, my random evade dodged that warr’s stun… err I mean I was totally watching for the stun animation all along”.

It’s just confirmation bias. If you always dodge abilities, which is feasible, a lot of the time you’ll dodge something you really wanted to. Then you convince yourself you did it on purpose, ignoring the dozens of times you dodged something you didn’t care about.

DaliIndica.9041:

I am thinking the PVP player base needs to start rolling PVE chars, just go pure tank and clog up all the dungeon and LFG groups, really push the outer limits of defense whilst contributing absolutely nothing to the group other than being alive. Dont worry, other pvp players will be with you, untill we have groups that can tank any boss but never kill him (will be like guards in beta all over again, YAY).

Actually, this is a great idea. Whenever you get one of these new players in ranked and give them suggestions, they tell you it’s just a game and that you care too much.

Maybe they’ll figure out how annoying unprepared players are if we clog their dungeons with tanks. And when they say we need to learn how to build/gear, we can tell them they care too much.

Then again, are tanks really the most useless thing we can think of? I can imagine a Swiftness spamming ele build. You know, for the utility. If you run faster, you clear the dungeon faster!

Mbelch.9028:

It’s all about skills.. If you have them you’ll do really well, but some builds in TPvP will naturally counter you.

But about those skills, you can have them on any class, and many are easier to learn and do well on.

I love PvP, and played into the top 10 in arenas while I played WoW. I’m not a pro by a long shot, and WoW is a different game than GW2. That said, I do know my way around PvP.

I just got back into GW2 after a very long break, but from what I’ve seen so far ele’s are in an awful spot. Whenever a class is struggling, there are always a handful of players who want to stroke their ego and say “it’s just a lack of skill, the class is fine”. It is an attitude you see in every game in every genre. Someone, through skill and a lot of luck, takes a class to a slightly above average spot and thinks they’ve vindicated the entire class.

Really, you’re just the guy one standard deviation above the class’ horrible mean. It’s nothing more than statistics: the odds of there being a few of you are near 100%. It doesn’t mean ele’s are ok.

Take an ele into competitive pro or near-pro play, succeed, and then tell us ele’s are just fine. We still won’t believe you, but at least your “trust me, I know more than you” attitude will carry more weight.

All I see are ele’s who have played at a near-pro level telling everyone else to just reroll. Top PvP players do tend to be trolls, but when they literally all agree on something they have a tremendous track record.

Ele damage is too easy to avoid, with cooldowns that are too long, topped off with absolutely zero survivability.

But I’m not sure how ele’s could be buffed without making them absolute gods in PvE. It’s like the entire class was designed without one thought given to PvP.

I think the real problem with ele’s in pvp comes down to their two main weaknesses: (a) they are the squishiest class in the game and (b) nearly all of their damage is telegraphed AoE.

Those two weaknesses interact with each other, making life miserable for ele’s. A thief is almost as squishy as an ele. They would be exactly as squishy if you exclude stealth. But a thief doesn’t suffer from weakness (b).

If you want to mitigate a thief’s burst, you have to predict it. Nothing telegraphs it ahead of time. There is no giant circle on the ground, flashing fire and screaming “don’t stand in this”. There are no fiery boulders raining from the sky. Everything an ele does is lit up in neon lights and telegraphed one or two seconds ahead of time.

So what you end up with is a class that can only survive long enough for one round of burst, whose burst is easy to avoid. People dodge the burst, then kill the ele.

I keep seeing people talk about bunkers as though there is something wrong with a player being able to tank 2-3 people for significant amounts of time. I do think that the amount of time bunkers can currently last is excessive, but I don’t think that there is anything wrong with bunkers holding out for some amount.

This game has no real healers. (Healing geared ele’s can come close when they have all their cooldowns up, but once those run out no one is going to mistake them for a healer.)

That means that if everyone was in a dps build, fights would be over in a matter of seconds. There would be a huge random element to keeping points. Did you dodge their Thief’s backstab? Did you have your stun break up when that Guardian stunned you? Did their Mesmer have his Moa or Quickness up? Etc.

What bunkers do is give teams a safety valve. They let teams keep a point reliably against small and moderate sized groups. There is still a lot of random chaos involved in downing dps players, but at least keeping points is organized.

If this game doesn’t have bunkers, there is no way for a team to really have a consistent strategy. Dps vs. dps fights are too chaotic and unpredictable. The only way to play would be with a reactionary strategy. Bunkers give teams a way to play an interesting, organized meta game.

Maybe bunkers need to be toned down just a bit, but removing them would be a huge mistake.

2.1k power, and hitting 1.5k burning speeds normally is fine? I hit that much on my auto att with axe warrior with same power.

The huge difference is that we have four attunements we can switch between. Meaning we (theoretically) have twice as many damaging abilities. That assumption really is true for D/D builds, it’s sort of true for S/x builds, and it’s absolutely false for staff builds.

If you play D/D, where that assumption does hold, we do great damage. You just have to be using all of your damage abilities on cooldown. If you play staff, just hope Anet realizes that Air, Water, and Earth combine for just three damaging non-auto attack abilities. Which is way too few considering we can’t weapon swap. Not to mention that, even including fire, staff has only two direct damage non-auto attack abilities. Which is comically short of what we should have. We can’t switch weapons for direct damage, after all.

I think a distinction needs to be made between being underpowered no matter the build and being underpowered in all but one build. An ele using a water build focused on support is a valuable part of any viable tPvP team. So ele’s are not shut out of tPvP provided they use that specific build.

Our problem is that the water build is our only viable build. A bunch of threads are devolving into “ele’s are broken” versus “no they’re not, plenty of ele’s succeed in tPvP”. Neither side is wrong. We are broken and we are succeeding in tPvP. An ele versus any other class, 1v1, should lose. For anything besides support, an ele is the last class a team would want. The reason we have a spot in tPvP is that for support, we are arguably the best class in the game.

They need to at least fix us in 1v1, because every class needs to have a chance of winning those fights. It is a real balance problem that we are as pitiful as we are 1v1. And if they want to give us more than a single role to choose from, they need to give us much stronger offensive abilities. (That doesn’t equate to more direct damage, though. It probably means changing some cooldowns and reducing some cast times. The actual damage each given spell does is fine.)

A tip that hasn’t been mentioned yet: rebind the attunement keys.

You need to be able to switch quickly, which isn’t possible using the default binds. They need to be bound someplace you can easily reach. (Mine are shift+1 through shift+4, for example.)

Staff:

Use magnetic aura and start moving towards the ranger. Once you can, immobilize them with our 5 ability. Stack bleeds and then switch to water attunement. Immediately drop a snare on the ranger so they can’t run away. Drop heals on yourself and switch to air attunement. Use the knockdown and blind. If you can get the ranger to run through the air AoE stun, do it. Finally, switch to fire. Stay in fire as long as you can without taking too much damage.

By the time you’ve done all this, earth attunement should be back up and you can start things all over again. The important thing to remember is the order of attunements: earth -> water -> air -> fire.

Dagger/Dagger:

Get in air and use our 4 ability to get in melee range. Use our 5 ability to knock the ranger down. Hit 3 to put up your lightning shield and switch to earth. Immobilize the ranger and drop Churning Earth. If the ranger is good, they’ll evade out of it. Don’t panic if that happens, it’s just a huge bonus if you can get Churning Earth to land. Get in melee range of the ranger again and knock them down. Hit 2 to put up the last of your bleeds and switch to water. Immediately snare the ranger. Then use our 5 heal first and our 2 heal second, hitting the ranger while you heal yourself. Then switch to fire to try finishing the ranger off.

Again, the important thing to remember is the order of attunements: air -> earth -> water -> fire.

x/Focus:

We have so many anti-projectile abilities that Crossfire really isn’t an issue.

edit – Don’t get upset if you don’t have cooldowns up. Without them, you’re going to die to the ranger and it’s not your fault. Crossfire does hit us really hard.

Can anyone clarify for me, now that enough time has passed for more people to have experience with the class, what is the actual state of the elementalist in PvP and endgame? Lately I’ve been seeing some positive commentary amidst the complaints, are things genuinely looking up now that people have a better understanding of the class? Or is this more a case of making the best of a bad situation? Objectively, how are things going?

I can’t comment on PvE, but in PvP it’s mostly a case of players finding the one niche we are good at: conditional removal. So ele’s can get in to tPvP using a water build. We’re just confined to a single role.

I also think that people have adjusted to our flaws in sPvP. We’re still subpar, but people gave up any hope of being glass cannons and started including more defense in their builds. (An ele should still lose every 1v1 against a competent player, but we stopped losing 1v1’s to bad players once people switched to more defensive strategies.)

I don’t think anyone is arguing that ele’s shouldn’t get a finisher-interrupt. It’s pretty much assumed that whenever they patch in balance changes, one of them will give us an interrupt.

Anet thought that a root was good enough to count as an interrupt, and the game didn’t work out that way. I’m sure they’ll fix it.

Outside of D/D air, which needs a huge buff, I think our damage is fine. The real problem comes down to two issues: (a) our damage is AoE-based and (b) our damage often includes very long casts and/or delays.

When I play someone who is not very good and who doesn’t move, I can down them as fast as any other class. But when I play someone who knows not to stand in the red circles, my damage drops by about 75%.

The two perfect examples are Eruption on the staff and Churning Earth on the dagger. Both of these are amazing abilities if they land. They both never land, though.

Eruption has a cast and a delay, giving your target about three seconds to get away. Even if your target has absolutely awful reaction time, the only way they could possibly fail at getting out of the way is if they made a conscious decision to eat the AoE.

Churning Earth doesn’t have a delay, but it does have a three second cast. So, again, the only way anyone gets hit by it is if they make a conscious decision to get hit. The other issue is that you have to stand still and cast for three seconds, during which we are incredibly vulnerable. Currently, the only way you can cast Churning Earth without losing half your health is if you put up Arcane Shield first. Which isn’t desirable because cantrips are preferable to arcane skills for many (most) ele builds.

I do agree that ele’s have a place in tPvP as a support class. But we have no place at all as anything outside of a niche water build focused completely on condition removal. This isn’t desirable because it’s hard to balance. If anyone becomes as good at condition removal as we are, then we’ll lose our place in tPvP. Why bring an ele who can only remove conditions when you can have another profession that does that and more? It also has a huge impact on condition-centered builds. I’m sure that water ele’s are having a significant negative impact on necro’s.

If you buff our defense and make our AoE’s more robust (ie. easier to land), then you can take away some of our condition-removal. You also make the class a much more enjoyable class to play for the vast majority of people who want to be more than a condition-removing robot.

I run with 0 toughness and rarely die. Here’s a screenshot of the last hotjoin match I played. Not a single death in that match or the one before it.
I have no comment on tournament play but it seems the consensus is that the downstate is the only major issue.

Running with 0 toughness isn’t a viable strategy. Also, being first in pick up games doesn’t mean anything. I’m usually first in my games, but I don’t do as well as I can on any other class. On my thief, I can just run around killing whatever I find. On my ele, I have to be very careful what fights I get into.

I’m not sure where people get the idea that ele’s have great support. We have lackluster support in everything but water attunement. And the only reason staff seems good is that people don’t target players at range yet. Once they learn how to counter kiting, they will.

I think the overwhelming consensus is that ele’s are in need of some kind of buff. So what buffs do you think would fix them?

My opinion:

- Swap our second downed skill with our third, lets us have it instantly available. This one is obvious. We’re the only profession in the game that has no finisher interrupt available upon going down.

- Reduce the cooldown on Arcane Shield to 30 seconds. This would be an incredible buff to our survivability and would make casting much, much easier.

- Decrease or remove the cast time on most of our abilities. Our damage is currently as predictable as the sunrise. It’s already hard enough doing AoE based damage without a cast. You have to place it in the right spot so that it doesn’t miss and has the trailing edge behind your target. Adding a 1-3 second cast to the AoE just makes it useless. You can’t extrapolate someone’s position 3 seconds into the future. Let alone know where the optimal place to put the AoE will be.

First of all, ele’s are (by far) the worst 1v1 class in the game. So whatever gear/build you use, don’t expect anything beyond being mediocre at 1v1.

That out of the way, our problem with 1v1 is that the damage we are capable of doing does not mitigate the extra damage we take compared to other classes. (To begin with, I’m skeptical that we actually do more damage than most classes. But for now we’ll assume we’re glass cannons instead of just glass.)

So if you want to 1v1 at all, you have to put significant points into earth or water. There’s just no way around it. If you spend all your time in fire and air, you are going to take way too much damage to have a chance 1v1.

The builds I’ve had success with are fire/earth builds. I open in earth and stack bleeds. Usually, by the time I have bleeds up I’ll be down to half health. So I use mist form and heal, which has the added bonus of getting free damage from the bleeds while I’m invulnerable. Then I switch to fire and unload all the burst damage I have. That’s not a script, there is a lot that changes depending on what the other person does. But it’s the basic idea that I build off of.

If you try a build like that, you’ll want all the +condition damage you can find. The idea is that your conditions do damage while you focus on staying alive. The only time you’re actively doing damage is when you’re in fire, which you’re just hopping in and out of for burst. The rest of the time you’re focused on healing, evading/kiting, and bleeds.