Guild Wars 2

they deleted my post. I believe that the OP is joking with this post and hope it isnt meant to be taken seriously.

I also believe that while ele’s are ok..the nerfs they recieved far outweigh the benefits. One weapon has been crippled to the brink of uselessness and serveral other builds/playstyles have been eliminated in this patch.

Also the bug ‘fixes’ didnt actually fix anything. Over half of the skills supposedly fixed are still broken. Also..these fixes brought even more bugs

I find this hilarious.

tyu.9470:

have not seen a single person asking for full exotics yet myself. Worst thing is porbalby asking difficulty x which is not bad at all.

I have only been in lions arch for around 1 hour since lost shores release. I saw 3 groups asking for 80 exotic only, and one guy who complained about it got told that anyone not exotic was a waste as they couldn’t achieve full effectiveness.

Desolation server. Yes its the player bases fault. If anyone in a PUG i’ve made complains about lower gear I warn and then kick em for being kittens.

I have to say I feel as though many devs simply do not care about the playerbase at all.

Extreme changes to balancing are made at the drop of a hat with no consideration on how it will effect future gameplay. No polls or questionnaires to and real statistical data about what the community want and no feedback on excellent suggestions.

Elementalist forums is still waiting for a response from someone on the huge nerfs it received with no prior warning. Still no response from devs on separating PUGs from Premades in sPVP and little consideration for its playerbase when implementing game changing gear mechanics.

The more I play the less I feel valued. I dont want to quit the game. I still enjoy it, but the more dubious decisions I see being made with no communication at all, my motivation drops a little more and more.

Please work on improving communication with player base. If not…well the game wont die, but it will fall into the gaping void and blend with the other thousands average MMO’s.

I am really confused about the event schedule. I missed the first event but there still seems to be loads of smaller stuff in caledon forest ect. Will this be around after the event along with the scavenger hunt?

I would suggest running the one time event for the first time at noon PST as usual.

Then for the next 24-48 hours running in within an instance once every 3 hours.

I was one of the many who wasn’t able to attend. Yes this is my own fault but it seems to be a very narrow timeslot and is a shame for those who dont have unlimited free time to adapt around the game schedule.

Merging several different threads creates confusion, makes the merged thread difficult to read/understand and end up with discontinuity.

This is because many different ideas and opinions are all being herded into one topic.

I would like to suggest a tab feature in merged threads where each OP is layered at the top of the screen, similar to the page number tabs so that all feedback is grouped in one area, but separate issues are clear and easy to read.

Moderators have informed us that part of their role is to relay class issues to the development team in case they are overlooked.

I would like to request that a moderator informs a dev that immediate feedback and reconsideration is needed on the elementalist forums with regards to the changes to the evasive arcana trait.

I do not believe this infringes CoC as im not actually calling out devs, just requesting that info is passed along. If it does infringe I will delete the thread.

Thanks for your help

I already use arcane wave. The point is that it takes up a utility slot and has a rather long cooldown. The sheer number of fields staff has makes it necessary to have another blast finisher in order to make use of them.

Honestly…the blast finisher wasn’t OP. It was the chaining of blasts that made the skill unbalanced. Small steps in nerfing are needed not huge ones that dismiss entire builds.

The nerf did not hit D/D that badly. My personal build revolved alot around might stacking to gain damage so I feel quite affected. For other D/D elementalists no it would not be a huge.

However most D/D elementalists also carry a staff for dungeon support, WVW or other situations where team play is important. Not saying D/D isnt effective as support but staff feels more so. Every single one of these D/D staff carrying eles has also been hit by the nerf so are also annoyed.

Combine the staff builds and the staff carrying D/Ders and you have about half the community raging.

I think the biggiest problem is the lack of buffs. might is required in a way to achieve the same damage output as other classes. With this gone one of the only hopes of achieving high damage was also destroyed.

The principle that they nerfed us but gave us nothing in return is hitting people quite hard.

Suggestions
- Reintroduce the blast finisher on evasive arcana once every 10 seconds.
- Remove the current spell effects
- Introduce the dodge spell finishers as minor traits, replacing less effective traits.

For example change the stop drop and roll trait in water so it produces the effect cleansing wave.

When merging topics…introduce a tab system where each individual merged thread is layered at the top of the screen, above the page number links, to prevent discontinuity within threads.

ThiBash.5634:

Just so you know, I’ve made a post about the changes on the Warrior forums. I figured that way, It’s sure to be read by the people who balance this game.

Posts will all be locked and deleted. I have tried. We are not allowed to call out to devs for responses.

@ phandaria a moderator merged several threads together which cased the icon. There has been no official response on this thread.

Gotta disagree with you on the rangers. They are less than useless in tPVP compared to other burst and bunker classes.

I definitly think Anet overreached on the nerfs with the elementalist. One of our weapon sets is crippled to the brink of not viable and our might stacking, which many eles rely on for damage has been destroyed :P

Jon already visited ranger forum, basically ‘sorry we did nothing ..better luck next time round’ :P

30 Point Arcana trait evasive arcana no longer produces a blast finisher at the end of a dodge roll. This means that the might stacks available from it, which were the only really viable way of upping damage as a bunker, are now gone making it difficult to kill anyone.

Staff is the weapon that has been nerfed the most however. There is no way (other than arcane wave) to produce a blast finisher in water fields severely crippling the healing that bunker staff relies on.

Jon kinda needs to head over to ele forums too…people are NOT happy there. Me included lol.

aydenunited.5729:

Shukran.4851:

what is the opinion of some guardian-engi players about the patch note?

Those are my two mains, and I don’t feel like either were affected in any strong way. Grenade Engineers might want to consider some of the other high-damage builds out there, though, in response.

I think other professions were brought down enough to even it out overall, and turret bunker engineers actually got a good buff overall.

Do you think rangers were evened out overall? And do you think the elementalist nerfs were viable?

@Arc Understand you post. I play a D/D ele and use might stacking to boost damage alongside a 10/0/0/30/30 build which I was advised to do in these forums.

Now that 2 of my might stacking abilities have been nerfed can you explain how I can achieve the same damage in PVE and sPVP using D/D without these stacks of might.

Can you also advise a strategy on how staff can be useful in dungeon without the ability to inform teammates quickly where i am laying down fields. The inability to blash roll in these means I can only apply 1 boon to teammates without their help, which is extremely crippling to the build.

If so I would be very grateful and would stop moaning.
(I am serious here. Need to redo my entire build )

@ Arc its not even the fact skills got nerfed. Everyone agrees that EA was overpowered its that we got nothing in return. No buffs at all (except to useless conjures)

This is a BIG problem and shows Anet has no idea about ele mechanics or just doesn’t care.

I play D/D and I use evasive arcane all the time to stack might. Since we lack truly viable damage builds this was one of the only ways to boost damage significantly. That is now gone…..Please tell me how i can achieve the same effectiveness without those might stacks and I will stop moaning.

I appreciate your worries about thief but I still think ele got hit harder. Our already mediocre elite is not utterly worthless and our only decent grandmaster trait is also worthless. This means bunker builds will be 50% less effective and have 2 less heals. It also means our damage is reduced as we cannot proc the 8 might stacks we could before.

In return..we got 2 bug fixes.

Could not be more disappointed with the patch.
Evasive arcana nerf was an extremely poor choice. If they really wanted to nerf it, changing the dodge spell to a blast finisher and limiting to to once every 10 seconds would have been perfect. With this change one of our few viable options for boosting damage, and healing in dungeons has gone.

Where are our buffs
- Traits redesigned so they aren’t totally useless
- Buffs to underwater combat so we can actually kill things, not just CC for 5mins on 1 mob
- Minor buffs to damage and better bursts so a power build becomes viable.

All I see is buffs to conjures..which very few people use anyway..and tooltip fixes.

Well I guess the trade off was all worth it for 2 decent bug fixes right? right?….

Kneemin.4235:

Nautika.5376:

To me the risk vs reward is nice, but the time vs reward sucks. My Warrior can kill 6+ mobs in a fraction of the time my Ele can and not even break a sweat. It is really kind of sad…

You’re obviously doing it wrong. I can drop way more mobs than any of my other toons on my elementalist.

PvE-wise, I’d say they are definitely worth it. There is a steep learning curve, but once you master it, as said above, you can easily become a very versatile machine.

Would you be able to explain how you manage to drop mobs faster than a warrior in Orr? I play D/D and find I am killing very slowly. Im a new level 80 and advice would be great.

Thanks for your replies. I will work on farming gold and karma lol.
Im not opposed to changing my build, but I really don’t want to change weapon.
Will try and stat more water for the 10% boost too.

Grateful for everyone taking time to help me

Ive been running a power might stacking D/D build in PVE so far and enjoying it with 30 fire, 15 water and 20 arcane. Everything was going fine until I reached Orr.

I now die several times an hour. My character just feels so squishy compared to its performance in other maps. The main issue im having is whenever I activate a mobility skill like RTL (which is a big part of my playstyle) I aggro about 3 other mobs and it becomes an endless cycle of trying desperately to survive.

Is my only option to go bunker staff to prevent my deaths? I would really prefer to not sacrifice my damage so badly. My ele already kills things slowly as it is. :P

Note: I have just reached 80 so my gear is pretty bad.

Any advice is really appreciated, specifically on where I can get easily accessible gear that doesn’t require hours of dungeon farming.

Thanks to anyone who can help

Hi, I currently have a level 80 ele but am finding it kills far too slow in Orr to be of much use.

Wondering if some level 80’s could give me an opinions on which class is best for Orr and as an alternative, which is best for dungeon farming.

Thanks to anyone who replies

I agree with all suggestions the OP gave. This is desperately needed.

I dont think it should become a core PVP aspect. Anet has stated they want the game to be an e-sport and are focusing on conquest, but adding these type of modes as a fun less serious alternative would be perfect.

A simple ladder system, that progresses on number of kills, either team based or solo would be enough. No need for tournaments ect. It could also be a great opportunity to gain an insight into class balance from a different perspective.

As long as its left as a fun casual PVP environment and skills arent balanced solely around it it would work fine.

Also a possible location is the arena build into the char city. Its not really used for much at all atm and would be great as a PVP instance. There are also areas above for spectators.

I agree that ele bunker builds need to be nerfed. I also think all other profession bunkers need a nerf. This MUST be slight, not destroying the build altogether.

I also think to compensate ele’s should get a 10-20% damage buff or vast improvements to earth air and fire trait lines.

Finally that thief and Mesmer get further Nerf to their bursts and perhaps overall damage. Yes they have been slightly nerfed already but its not even close to enough.

Maybe my initial post isnt clear. I do NOT want elementalist to become a 1/2 attunement class nor do I want it to be easier to play.

I actually love the mechanics of attunement swapping and having so many skills at my disposal.

I just believe that originally the class was designed differently to the current outcome of the elementalist profession. I also thought that the great difference in concept design and outcome may explain why we have useless traits and skills.

I am quite happy with most features of my ele, I have my own issues about balance when they are directly compared to other classes but overall I find them a fun and interesting class and I hope they stay that way.

I believe the glory system needs to be reworked. Casual bunker build players are disadvantaged, while high dps/burst builds can gain glory so much faster. This is a big issue for classes like elementalist, where glass cannon builds are not currently appropriate for casual players. In SPVP at least, points should be awarded for standing on and defending a held point.

Edit: I would also like an arena type mode to be added for those that just want to kill other players without involving strategy.

Creslin. To me PVE is a big part of how fast an enemy can be dropped, particularly as I play solo. The fact that it takes me 2x as long to kill an enemy as another class and I have to utilize twice as many skills indicates there is a problem. If we are statting full glass, then we should be dropping mobs faster than balanced builds of other classes. The fact that this does not happen means, at least to me, that we are relatively ineffective in PVE.

Hoenstly, Id prefer if other classes were nerfed to our level. Where they also had to use BOTH weapon sets to actually manage to kill something effectively. This will never happen but I can dream

Please dont tell me you think ele in water is balanced. If you do I wont know what to say lol…

Anyway…this thread wasnt about how good ele is now, more about whether the design of the class changed during development/beta. Derailed my own thread :P

Eles have been balanced slihtly around PVP so they are viable and pretty effective for that. especially staff in WVW. In PVE though….well they suck. You can play an ele solo fine, its fun and can take on any challenge. But switch to ANY other class and you find it can kill faster, easier and with so much less effort. Warriors and guardians can take 5-6 mobs without losin any HP and kill them in 5 seconds. Ele is liekley to drop to 20% HP and takes twice as long. Its just wrong.

My level 10 ranger can kill veterans twice as fast as my level 65 ele in the same area.

Firstly I would like to suggest that town clothes are wearable within combat as well as in towns. The clothes should act as a skin, and layer over the armour so that the player retains his stats and is able to look awesome while fighting too.

This would encourage people to buy more town clothes from the shop. Currently, its pretty pointless as they can only be worn about 10% of the time, when players are standing around in Lions Arch ect. Having town clothes available in PVE combat would make them much more appealing to me at least.

Secondly I would like to add my voice to the suggestions that critical bugs be addressed before balancing and minor bug issues like clipping are considered. Specifically I am referring to ‘The hatchery’ story quest and profession bus such as elementalists windbourne dagger and one with air being totally useless at the moment.

Finally I would like to suggest that the company hire one extra person who’ job is to reply to forum threads. Even if this person is not 100% aware of what exactly the different divisions in the company are working on, taking time to reply to threads with a ‘its being looked at’ is very important and would improve customer relations so much. The company does a great job so far, but I feel they could go even further with this.

Thanks

Sometimes, especially in PVE I get the feeling elementalist was originally designed to be similar to the other 7 classes. Like the devs planned for most elementalists to choose two attunements and stick in those two, but have much greater benefit for doing so.

Mainly because of some specific traits such as ‘one with air and one with fire’ requiring an ele to stay in certain attunements for 30+ seconds to gain the benefit, and even to some extent pyromancers puissance which requires ele to stay in fire for a lengthy time to gain max benefit.

If I imagine this ele, I also see arcana as the ‘middle ground’ where ele’s who wished to cycle through all 4 would stat, as it is mainly the only trait which provides bonuses for all attunements. This would explain why its the most popular and most useful trait line today where stance dancing is required.

It may also account for the unusually high CC we are given, each attunement picked would need its own.

I am actually glad that the ele has changed if this WAS the original concept but it may explain why I sometimes feel this class is so broken, especially in PVE.

Maybe I’m just imaging things

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a class if you’re pretty much forced into a defensive set up in order to enjoy playing it

This. I wouldn’t say forced, you can go power and make the class playable. However power builds are SO restrictive it removes all the fun.
You MUST have certain traits and utility skills to make the builds work. If you prefer a different trait or the utilities dont fit your playstyle then you are out of luck. It takes away all the fun and uniqueness of the class.

At least with defensive builds I can play the way I wish and still be a decent member of a team, even If I do so little damage it takes me about 1 minute to kill a single other decent player. :S

@Diva: You are joking, right?
Otherwise: Erhh … no idea how you come up with that number. It is not really a constructive approach. And 30-40% is just not viable … but if that is what you want, then sure?
I do find thieves to be a challenging aspect as well as a PITA … and that is how it should be isn’t it?

As far as im aware. Ele used to be able to spike close to this level of damage. We took a 50% nerf to damage, and as a result, are unable to spec reliably into full power builds.

So its a real possibility that this may happen.

Honestly, although Im happy for the people that get the achievement not sure Its the greatest of decisions.

Will this be done for every event if one country in the world has a power outage caused by bad weather. Not playing down sandy it was awful but it sets a pretty big precedent.

What if half the UK is out from snowstorms. It happens quite alot over here. Will Anet cater for us too? If not that’s biased. If so, we can probably expect every event to give out free achievements :P Just considering the other side.

Id say one with air is opposite to what ele is meant to do.
The only time it would be useful is for map exploration. During any pvp or pve fights if you are in one trait for 30secs+ you are not playing effectively.

Kuthos.9623:

I feel the opposite. I -like- using all my attunements and buttons to win. I dont like hitting 3 buttons (warrior / thief). That gets boring fast.

I love the fact that elementalist is high skill cap. But I think a lot of people were expecting the same elementalist as guild wars 1. That’s not really what happened.

I dont think anyone has a problem with attunement swapping, and its only a minority that want ele to be a stand and spam fireball mage.

The main issue at the moment is that even with attunement cycling, landing bursts and laying on conditions the damage is simply weak compared to other classes.

For instance, a thief can take about 2/3 of my HP if they are good in around 5 seconds.
After laying on vulnerability and burning my fire grab still only removes about 1/3 to half their HP, considering the time it takes to stack vunerabilities and burn the foe before gettin into the correct position to land grab its just silly how little damage we actually do.

Granted I am a bunker but there really isnt a reliable way to trait power ele without dying about 15 times per match in sPVP lol.

Is windborne dagger broken too? I tested it in a sPVP match and ran the exact same speed as my unbuffed teammates.

What is really frustrating is that in a lot of cases they nerfed a skill by increasing the cooldown, then later nerfed the damage making the increased cooldown unreasonable. Eles have a LOT of skills on 30-40s cooldowns that don’t do enough damage to warrant it.

fire grab, earthquake, water 4 for D/D are all pretty bad. Even updraft’s CD is long compared to other classes knockbacks.

Im all for nerfing in stages but they have to work with each other…ele seriously needs a damage boost. Takes me about 1min to kill anyone in sPVP. Even though im a casual player, its still forever compared to thiefs 3 second instakill.

Signet of water used to be a condition every 3 sec, nerfed to 10. Dragons tooth, meteor shower, phoenix, lava font and fire grab were all obliterated, but were latter rebuffed slightly. They are currently at 54% of their original raw damage, except for meteor shower at 47%.

If they are currently at 54% I would recommend buffing some up to 60-70% of original damage. Especially skills like fire grab and dragons tooth these are our only ‘spike damage’ skills but they don’t spike at all.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Looks like it was too OP before. With our CC AND instakill we would have been stupidly strong XD

Am very disappointed though that they nerfed us SO bad. If what you guys say is true we went from being the best classes to one of the worst.

75% dmg reduction seems so harsh. Give us some back! haha

I didn’t have the opportunity to play beta so im quite curious about how ele played before the ‘big nerf’.

Was it stupidly OP against other classes? Did it have spike damage and higher base damage overall? What about in PvE or PvP? Were the cooldowns for skills different?

Just wondering about our ‘grandparent’ eles. Thanks you anyone who replies :P

Clocktower: Make other players transparent. It solves the issue of not being able to see and keeps the social aspect. Complaining with other frustrated players for 3 hours was actually alot of fun, and made me enjoy the challenge more. In my opinion it would have been boring without the people that failed alongside me.

Act 4: Include fireworks, a large food fight permanent buffet, cake/ candy buff treats. And mini events such as timed pumpkin carving with the winner getting one random item from cash shop. I did love the mad king says however.

Length: Possibly make each act 2 days at least in the future so more people can be included. I do not agree with extending events but programming them originally to be a little longer would make many people happier.

Other acts: honestly thought these were fantastic. Better than anything Ive experienced in an MMO before. Only suggestions would be to make similar PVP games permanent but use player skills instead of objects on the floor.

Overall a fantastic event and one that has made me love gw even more

Im sure it wasn’t. Maybe its just the time I play at lol

I really hope they make at least 1 UK server. Seems so weird they didnt.

We play PVE and sPVP (casual) will try Gunnars hold later. Thanks for replies.
Not to be rude but i do think its VERY inconsiderate that people speak French, German and Spanish on blank European serves when they have about 7 each dedicated to them.

No problem with native languages in guilds but when in map chat I kinda expect people to speak English on these unspecified servers.

We are on gandara but see more people speaking french than english. Maybe they are just more vocal in map but its pretty annoying :P

Me and my friend have been server hopping looking for a UK based server, or even one that speaks mostly English. Everywhere we go there’s only people speaking foreign languages in map which is frustrating.

So which servers are the unofficial English speaking servers? Desolation seems perma full lol. Thanks for any help.

You say that but i can say something else, what matters is not what the class currently is but what the official advertised description of the class is, it is clearly an elementalist, it is clearly close to your average mage with more versatility, the current state of this class is just bad, i cant say mediocre because that would mean it could cope vs other classes which it cant.

All in all, the topic is simple, stop telling people that complain about how elementalist is overnerfed that they dont know how to play it cause its a versatile class, hard to learn, nothing like a mage and this or that.
Its pretty boring and far from the truth, class description is pretty easy to understand.

I can 1v1 most classes on my D/D bunker ele now. It took me time to learn and I had to visit forums for advice on strategies to use, but I can, and im far from a pro player. I wouldn’t say ele is terrible, but it is in dire need of buffing damage or defense wise.

Arguing that an ele is not a typical mage will get you nowhere. This class is not, and will never be a typical ‘stand on the spot and throw fireballs’ mage. It does not matter what the description says, this is the way the elemetalist mechanics are. Changing the entire class is impossible.

It is rude of people to say ‘you are playing it wrong’ when many have valid arguments. And it is true that eles, for the majority of players are weaker as a class, but they are not unplayable.

I would advise you look into help on forums on how to play the class and post a topic askin for advice. Try it out, find the real weaknesses within gameplay and form a proper argument with realistic suggestions on how to improve the class.

Sorry but…having the same profession name and skill description does not mean the classes are the same. Unless the skills actually have the same effects as their GW1 counterparts (I wouldn’t know didn’t play GW1) then it really makes no different what they are called.

Perhaps A-Net originally intended for the classes to be the same, but during development changed them into the GW2 elementalist.

A traditional (average) mages have very low hp, but make up for it with huge dps, usually in the form of spike damage.
Elementalist in GW2 have pretty much NO spike damage, excluding churning earth and dragons tooth, which..lets face it.. Do no more damage than a warrior or thief.

If you try and play the class like this then you are effectively kittening yourself by ignoring all the other skills an elementalist has at their disposal. This is clearly not how this particular version of the elementalist is meant to be played.

I do agree that the ele needs increased damage in order to balance it with thief ect but turning the ele into a spike damage fire/air mage to me does not seem the answer.

I agree, but the problem is that Anet is balancing around top players in tPvP. If they boost the damage then high-level players may make the elementalists look overpowered because of the flexibility and high damage at the same time. I think that is the reason why Anet is pretty carefull with the damage changes even if for us it seems quite obvious that we could use some extra pew-pew

Good point and one I didn’t consider. Only argument is that one of guild wars key selling points is its ability to PVP right from the beginning. Obviously some basic knowledge is necessary but its what drew me and my friends to the game originally, the ability to PVP without having to master a class through hours and hours of practice and leveling.

It just seems contrary to the games design to have a class that is weak for an average gamer, and overpowered for an elitist. Maybe I should have chosen an easier class but everything else feels like..cheating lol