Air Scepter burst ele/weaver: too much damage in a too short amount of time

I find this build unfair to play against. It's capable of doing over 17 k damage to a medium armored profession in less than a second, enough to down most players with no automatic invulnerabilities. I tried it out and I found that I was able to do the same to the heavy armored target golem in the Heart of the mists, which, by the way, has 22,084 health and 2,597 armor. This is just barely short of a typical warrior build, the profession with the most base health and armor in the game.And, once again, it was done in a second.It's not even that the elementalist has to give up all survivability and be a glass cannon to do this, defensive utilities and a focus can be used in the build to the same effect.I strongly believe this should be toned down, as it is the build offers little to no counterplay, it just defeats players in a second.

Counterplay:
dodge - since ele has no stealth mechanicblock/invuln - only unblockable thing in that build is 1 CC skillstealth - self explanatory

Burst has 15-20 seconds cooldown at least and consists of using at least 3 skills. Core ele requires using of offensive flash which makes it dead if it fails to 1-shot. Sustain in this build is close to 0, core ele uses water spec so it's more forgiving. The only defensive utility is arcane shield/twist of fate or maybe mist form which I dont find very helpful since it's transform. The only condi cleanse tools (besides regen with water spec) are heal (which makes your sustain even worse) and focus 4 in earth (which has big cooldown).

Compare this to thief/mesmer or even engi who can 1-shot you from stealth, especially thief who uses only backstab. Damage might be slightly lower than weaver, but it's barely counterable and all 3 can easily disengage with their stealth and/or mobility skills.

Compare this to warrior who has bigger damage output (sustained damage, with access to strong nukes), a lot bigger sustain without sacrificing gear at all.

Besides maybe mesmer, other 3 have very low cooldown on their nukes, and almost all of them hit hard. Ele has to merge several skills with relatively big cooldowns in order to make a strong burst.

I don't think it needs to be toned down. It's squishy and it's a caster, it's supposed to do high damage.

fyi other professions can also get hit by a lot of skills that do 10k+ from tankier and more survivable professions. Break Enchantments, Backstab, etc.

I think thf and mez do it far better and from stealth. You are playing the same game as the rest of us?

core hammer guard, vault thief, mantra mes, killshot war, and deadeye thief can all 1 shot, the only reason you're seeing this build played/so frequently is because the only viable ele build is this cheese one :)

@NaXorb.9732 said:It's not even that the elementalist has to give up all survivability and be a glass cannon to do this

yes it is. burst ele is the glassiest thing in the game by far. the burstiest mesmer build has more survival

You just can't say it's not a glass canon.

FA s/f weaver have :

1. No Furtivity (hello mesmer one shot and daedeye one shot and soulbeast one shot)
2. No chain evade (hello mesmer, hello thief)
3. Only 1 stun break (Hello Mirage)
4. Not a single block
5. Only one blink, and the worst of the game (hello thief, hello mesmer)
6. NOT A SINGLE CONDI CLEANSE (Hello scourge, hello Mirage, hello EVERY CONDI BUILD)
7. The access to the defensive skill from focus are limited, you need to wait 3.5s to swich attenuements
8. So no panic button, you need to time/think about it before
9. Hard access to magnetic wave and invul, cuz that 3.5s cd.
10. Long cooldown between the burst
11. Weakest HP possible (11 645 in PvP)
12. Weakest armor possible (well light armor and full damage for damage)
13. The burst is a combinasion of 4-5-6 skills pressed quickly
14. The burst is blockable, dodgeable and invu-nable

Mesmer can one shot you and u will never see him at all. Thief can do it too both are 100% BETTER than weaver.

There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

the difference being, a Glass Ele. If they dont kill their target. They are themselves dead. No defense, VERY limited mobility normally used to try and get their burst off. That fails and they are at a huge disadvantage until it comes back. They are also hugely weak to condi builds due to limited or even somes times no condi removal at all. You avoid or limit the burst damage and then thats it.

Yes it does big damage. As it should considering all the blocks, invuls, teleports, stealth and everything else that can be used to counter that burst in the game. It should be good damage because if they dont kill the target in that burst they are likely going to die. Its a kill or be killed kind of build. Some is dying. If they avoid that damage. The ele dies.

@"BigEvs.6971" said:There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

pop some defense, pressurize the scepter ele and he is dead, simple as. the build is gimicky and weak.

Weaver FA is considerably more bursty than core, however, compared to other burst builds, it still isn't that great considering all it can bring to the table.

Do you see people asking to nerf assassin's signet staff thief? In spvp, steal + vault combo can do 4k + 24k damage to a heavy class.

I'll gladly trade some damage for condi cleanse in the weaver trait line (outside woven stride, a trait that ties you to water again ).

L2P issue.

The burst has increase indeed from core to weaver ... but the "only"' sustain we got in water attunement is lost cause too long to cast out (4 sec after attuning the first time to water)Hopefully we can still easily get earth (since scepter earth 3 was kinda not that usefull) so obsidian armor is still fine . AND ... I agree the stunbreak stance is welcome.

I disagree and agree with OP at the same time. Weaver definitely has too much burst, but that's really the only thing it has. If they every wanted to nerf it's damage and give it other stuff (to keep it playable at all), they would need to give FA weaver big buffs to sustain/utility.On the other hand, core FA ele does NOT have too much burst too quickly. Even if you land every single ability correctly (looking at you Phoenix) and everything crit, you can barely oneshot the medium golem and that's using 3/4 of your most important CDs. Mesmer and meditation guard can do such things too quite easily, less CDs and the difference in time took is usually pretty much negligible.

If they ever decide to nerf the burst core FA ele has, pretty sure every player enjoying this spec would quit playing it. Removing burst from core FA has or even just increasing the time during which it is applied MAKES FRESH AIR ELE NOT FRESH AIR ANYMORE (and not fun either).

@Tomiyou.3790 said:I disagree and agree with OP at the same time. Weaver definitely has too much burst, but that's really the only thing it has.

As you pointed out. All it has is the burst. No sustain. No survivability. No escape. No plan B.I am fine with its damage because, while it does great damage. You avoid that and they are dead. They are hugely weak to conditions, weak to burst themselves. Have pretty much no mobility. No escape plan. Its a kill or be killed build. Unlike say Thief whose builds can have insane burst, survivability, stealth, mobility and MUCH shorter cool downs between that burst.

There are other classes that can do burst as well, if not better but not have to worry about dying when looked at.

@NaXorb.9732 said:I find this build unfair to play against. It's capable of doing over 17 k damage to a medium armored profession in less than a second, enough to down most players with no automatic invulnerabilities. I tried it out and I found that I was able to do the same to the heavy armored target golem in the Heart of the mists, which, by the way, has 22,084 health and 2,597 armor. This is just barely short of a typical warrior build, the profession with the most base health and armor in the game.And, once again, it was done in a second.It's not even that the elementalist has to give up all survivability and be a glass cannon to do this, defensive utilities and a focus can be used in the build to the same effect.I strongly believe this should be toned down, as it is the build offers little to no counterplay, it just defeats players in a second.

I challenge you to play this build while I play my medium profession, ranger...no druid or healbot bunker...come and show me how strong is ele

• I won't lie and say the dmg is not there but...it's a one trick pony build with few defensive skills on rather long CD and enough for just an initial burst from the shadows
• No sustain dmg after the initial burst
• All you have is super-speed kiting that works barely and only if you have somebody covering your kitten
• Easily zoned out of the game with basic dodging/ LoS/stealth
• Predictable burst as you won't die from their air spike but rather the fire/air dual attack+2x arcane blast ( a burst available every 20s wow....so spammable)

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"BigEvs.6971" said:There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

That was not the point of my post, at all lol. If you read the post you'd see that I think scepter FA (particularly the weaver variant) needs changes because it's a bad design. Nearly everyone agrees it's a 1trick build that would need changes in both directions (nerfs and buffs).

Yes. I get it. It's "gimicky and weak" and it needs buffs, but we can't have our cake and eat it too with buffs only. That's how we just get more powercreep.

But thanks for all the "L2P" posts guys, I'm sure they were intended to be enlightening and constructive

@BigEvs.6971 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

Nerf all other 1 shot "bad design" builds first, especially those that do it from stealth, then your post will have a little credibility.

Until then, goodbye!

@Razor.6392 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

I'm sorry, I'm not a dev?I DO think they should receive nerfs too, I just think Ele (and again, mostly Weaver) oneshot builds should be on the chopping block too. It doesn't even have to be straight nerfs!

But you're so entrenched in your "woe is me I'm FA ele!" mentality that you're failing to be objective. Worse, you're belligerent and aggressive about it in most of your posts, including this one where you just ignore most of my point to be a gatekeeper because I'm not part of the "Buff Scepter Ele" echo chamber. It's very transparent.

@BigEvs.6971 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

"Tradeoffs" is the word you should look up in the dictionary.

Balance often comes in a way where, if a build is REALLY good at something, it becomes balanced by having it lack other things.

Then you have stuff like warrior, that does shittons of damage while being tanky as hell, that's not balanced, in comparison.

You never came to this thread asking for buffs in compensation of the nerfs you would put in place, you straight say it's bad and should get removed lol.

People above gave good mechanical reasons why build is underwhelming...it like tempest reverse - only damage, only single target basically.

In way build was made it should compete for +1 spec spot ( end fights quickly, then rotate). But:-too glassy for 1v1-slow at rotating-bad disengage-Mesmer/thief +1 you - the endWhen you are in snowball situation (almost full enemy team wipe) it feels really strong in this meta. It melts even spellbrakers. When situation is bad...you start to feel that thief/mirage would do better your job to carry weak team.

Besides...if it was broken why it's not used in AT's?

I don´t play it but i can´t see it anyhow being unbalaced. I have just a bit over 13k HP low armor and no passives to carry me and i don´t feel a FA weaver is a threat ... Doge and protection seems enough. Preassure them and know when to doge, then they are weaker then a thief shooting in your back. I die to them like to thiefs, if they get me in a bad moment or i am not alert enough ... It´s a much easier kill then a thief that will run away ... Mybe it´s because i know ele so well. But this indicates it´s a L2P thing ... I did see FA eles werek entire teams of bronzes or average players so ....

comparing it to most other classes with the ability to deal much dmg i see weaver in a high risk/medium award -- state but the ones compared to medium risk / high reward bcs of lots of possibilities to avoid incoming dmg so .. either it should recieve some decent buffs or other classes should get nerfed to put them on an equal level somehow ^^

@Razor.6392 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@BigEvs.6971 said:There's a lot of ele bias here. Tbh there shouldn't be a build that's completely lacking in most synergy besides winding up oneshot combos. The victim complex of ele (especially scepter fresh air ele) is getting out of control. Much of the pressure from scepter fresh air ele is instant and untelegraphed, while coming at a steady and even rate - this is not fun to play against, just as mantra power mes is not. Traits like equilibrium were removed on this criteria. Not because it was OP, but because it (as well as scepter ele) was just bad design that stuck around for way too long. This is also why we see instant damage sigils have been removed.

You posters telling them to dodge lol. It's not hard at all to wait out a dodge or even force CDs by pressing 2 in air.

Everyone wants the powercreep removed from this game except for their own profession's powercreep I guess. We need to stop with the "BUT WHAT ABOUT (other profession)" mentality.

You really can't resist being condescending lol.

You completely ignore how much of a one trick pony FA Weaver's become as a result of this adherence to tradeoffs. That's what happens when you pour more buffs into the build's few strengths and exacerbate its weaknesses: you get the 1 trick pony build we have today. The sad thing about FA Weaver is that it was clearly never meant to be anything but a gimmick.

Once again, where have I ever stated spellbreaker shouldn't continue to be looked at?? Yes FA is overall worse than Spellbreaker even despite having some advantages vs it directly (as it always has vs. Power War). Here's what's up though, many other builds in this game will say "Join the club!" Invoking one of the more stubbornly strong specs in the game post-PoF over and over is meaningless by now because it's an outlier.

You do realize that a combination of buffs and nerfs can still result in the eradication of the gimmick nature of the build, right? It's really weird that you're trying to tell me what I think on this subject. I've always just wanted the gimmicks gone. It (as in the 1shot stupidity that FA Weaver, Mantra mes, Signet Backstab thief, etc etc) IS bad design and should be removed, either reworked (not a package of straight buffs or nerfs) into something a little different or cut as losses after nerfs. I'm sorry I have to spell that out to you. You're being narrow-minded on purpose here. Just because I say this about ele doesn't mean I'm blind to the rest of the issues in this game, holy cow lol.

How to burst with scepter weaver in reality? I'm a bit new to the game and I can't imagine Dragon Tooth can be paired with something else to hit the moving target at the same time. Is it a some kind of plasma beam + scepter 2 + arcane wave with alot of crit chance and crit damage?

dragon tooth isn't part of the burst ... unless the enemy is already down or ppl rezzing

It's almost only "swap air" twice + 1-2-3 in air (plus several skills as opener depending on the attunement you're in first)