Why is that , that devs are so baised towards Elementalists?

Maybe its because they have some kind of a balance rotation where they decide to make one class really Tier S while keeping most of them tier A as well as making 1 or two tier B? abecause balance is supposed to be a scenario where all classes are evenly strong and its skill which is supposedly supposed to make the difference?

One thing i know is for sure, balancing Ele would take merely 10 minutes as its plainly adjusting by increasing and decreasing value lines untill weaver is a vailable 1v1 class, plainly decreasing massive healing power for more damage would be sufficient. it seems that evs dont /want/ to balance Ele other than trying to avoid making a balance mistake

I feel like you should have posted this in the ele forum because thats where its going to end up, despite the amount of people that agree with you.

Also it should have been "Biased against Elementalists"

If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

@steki.1478 said:If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

Some balancing are mainly about remaking skills with tricky aoe or feature. Some require a whole rework with a core broken ability.Ele is only numbers

Theoretically speaking though. It is much easier to balance than most game Devs make it look like

@Silence.3702 said:

@steki.1478 said:If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

It is not.

There are 3 game modes and tons of different interactions.The fact that ele always have the 4 attunements available make it complicated. Adding dmg to skills to give it viable dps for raids that are rewarding for the risk and complexity of the class might make the balanced version of the build too hard hitting on while being too forgiving. Making the heals/mobility/defense worse to balance the dmg might completely remove the option to be a healer/support/roamer...

There are lots of considerations to be taken, traits and gear sets interactions, runes, sigils, synergy with other classes...

If it was so simple you could do in 10min the game would be crap.

@lLobo.7960 said:

@Silence.3702 said:

@steki.1478 said:If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

I don't agree with you not even slightly nor do i see how increasing the AA dmg of weaver by 20 percent as well as giving it better dmg on skills like charge while reducing its water 2 skill chain heal by 30 percent wouldYTHING other than making weaver a better suited for 1V1 and more viable overall.

It is, THAT easy

@Silence.3702 said:

@lLobo.7960 said:

@Silence.3702 said:

@"steki.1478" said:If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Eles actually do good damage currently, but only IF that enemy is basically a golem that stands still and don't fight back. It's the mechanics of how ele works as a whole that's making it weak. The 2 main ones are:

1. Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)
2. Too many useless skills & traits. Utilities taken in spvp are basically always Cantrips & 1 or 2 better skills from the specialization with the occasional arcane shield/blast. A whole lot of weapon skills, especially water & earth ones, are useless and this doesn't help when you're attunement locked, especially as weaver. Except the Arcane trait line, all other good traits are the specific few ones scattered across different lines that force you to take the whole line just for them. If you look at the trait lines of other meta classes like mesmer/engi/necros for example, they more closely resemble Ele's Arcane where most, if not all, the traits are good and it's more about choosing which one is better for your build within each column. Whereas ele's fire/water/earth/air it's basically "whatever, these traits are all shit so I just have to pick the least shit one to actually get to the good ones (eg. Cleansing Water, Smothering Auras, Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Stone Heart, Diamond Skin)".

The mechanic changes of making skills much easier to land (reducing cast time/giving more ways to stick onto targets if they're using melee weapons), access to more useful boons (eg. fury instead of might), or making all the useless skills such as Unravel & Conjures mechanically better should be the way to buff eles, not number changes. If you want to go about making number changes, there should be no nerfs to any of its current defense (sustain) else you'll just end up with no change, or more likely a net nerf like what the current balance team is doing.

what is this nonsense. ele has been one of the strongest classes for the longest time, its only not so great in pvp right now.

@"Stand The Wall.6987" said:what is this nonsense. ele has been one of the strongest classes for the longest time, its only not so great in pvp right now.

It hasn't been so great in PvP for about a year, not just "right now".

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@Silence.3702 said:

@lLobo.7960 said:

@Silence.3702 said:

@"steki.1478" said:If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

1. Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)
2. Too many useless skills & traits. Utilities taken in spvp are basically always Cantrips & 1 or 2 better skills from the specialization with the occasional arcane shield/blast. A whole lot of weapon skills, especially water & earth ones, are useless and this doesn't help when you're attunement locked, especially as weaver. Except the Arcane trait line, all other good traits are the specific few ones scattered across different lines that force you to take the whole line just for them. If you look at the trait lines of other meta classes like mesmer/engi/necros for example, they more closely resemble Ele's Arcane where most, if not all, the traits are good and it's more about choosing which one is better for your build within each column. Whereas ele's fire/water/earth/air it's basically "whatever, these traits are all kitten so I just have to pick the least kitten one to actually get to the good ones (eg. Cleansing Water, Smothering Auras, Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Stone Heart, Diamond Skin)".

This is a pretty good description of the problems, with a few nice proposed solutions. I'd add that reducing the potential healing of ele can actually be okay, but only if Anet replace the lost sustain with other defensive mechanics that do not lock the ele into healing power. Adding damage to skills is going to be useless as long as you are forced to bunker up.

So much wrong. Balancing is extremely complex. You change something, something else will be affected. Ever heard of causality?

Also, devs biased towards ele? WTF? This class was OP for like 5 years. It is still extremely strong with a shitton of utility thanks to 20 skills per weapon-set. And now for the first time it is in a position where they aren't used to be. Like almost every class has been and people whine. So ridiculous.

@steki.1478 said:If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

It may very well take 10 minutes per class. Though let's not forget that the people who are in charge of balancing the game have an insuperable ignorance and lack of judgment when inspecting the intricacies of a class, and their place in the health of the game as well as their ability to be fun and interesting. The Elementalist doesn't have any access to quickness? Let's give Reaper and Holosmith permanent quickness! The Warrior is finally balanced? Let's nerf it again! Let's make it so it loses more matchups than it wins by a factor of two. Ele still isn' doing damage after 3 years of not doing damage? Well, let's give fire measly condition clear and nerf The Elementalist's only viable build some more! There is no logic when it comes to this balancing effort. The game is worse this patch than it was the last one and it'll never get better.

I mean, they have a thread where they'd just have to copy+paste... a lot of the suggestions are not over the top at all. Maybe 10 minutes is overexaggerated, but the last... what? Four patches lackes any meaningful change to ele at all, talking from a PVP perspective. It actually feels like they didn't even invest 10 minutes, every other class got more attention.

I agree about the bias. Yes, the time needed would be more anyways, balancing is not that easy.

I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Eles actually do good damage currently, but only IF that enemy is basically a golem that stands still and don't fight back. It's the mechanics of how ele works as a whole that's making it weak. The 2 main ones are:

1. Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)
2. Too many useless skills & traits. Utilities taken in spvp are basically always Cantrips & 1 or 2 better skills from the specialization with the occasional arcane shield/blast. A whole lot of weapon skills, especially water & earth ones, are useless and this doesn't help when you're attunement locked, especially as weaver. Except the Arcane trait line, all other good traits are the specific few ones scattered across different lines that force you to take the whole line just for them. If you look at the trait lines of other meta classes like mesmer/engi/necros for example, they more closely resemble Ele's Arcane where most, if not all, the traits are good and it's more about choosing which one is better for your build within each column. Whereas ele's fire/water/earth/air it's basically "whatever, these traits are all kitten so I just have to pick the least kitten one to actually get to the good ones (eg. Cleansing Water, Smothering Auras, Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Stone Heart, Diamond Skin)".

The mechanic changes of making skills much easier to land (reducing cast time/giving more ways to stick onto targets if they're using melee weapons), access to more useful boons (eg. fury instead of might), or making all the useless skills such as Unravel & Conjures mechanically better should be the way to buff eles, not number changes. If you want to go about making number changes, there should be no nerfs to any of its current defense (sustain) else you'll just end up with no change, or more likely a net nerf like what the current balance team is doing.

I would rather take these mechanic changes than a damage buff. As an Ele, I can play smart and throw out good damage. But in sPvP, there is greater importance to sustain than just damage. Increasing their damage will make them more glassy than they already are and that'll worsen the problem. Give Ele's, especially weavers better mechanics!

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:Also, devs biased towards ele? kitten? This class was OP for like 5 years. It is still extremely strong with a shitton of utility thanks to 20 skills per weapon-set. And now for the first time it is in a position where they aren't used to be. Like almost every class has been and people whine. So ridiculous.

I'm positive the thread is about Ele in PVP so it's been a very long time since Ele has been OP (or even above average)

Best way to see the real views on ele is looking at the build web pages and how often they have been updated about ele. You have builds on places like meta battles that are 3 years out dated showing as one of the best for the class in wvw. This is not just from the devs this is from the player base as well and the community leaders.

Just out dated into nothing ness.

I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

They very much are by adding in so much ele hate to the game. Less to do with the updates to ele more to do what they added to other classes. Staff ele must run 15k to 14k hp pool in wvw the super glass to be viable. But what happening is that there soo much projcial hate and blocks in the game most of your high risk build dmg is being stoped. MS is not being used because its the end all be all dmg skill but because its not a projcial skill and deals with short blocks.

When you look at other classes who got unblockable to deal with this projcial hate and block spam added to the game its denial to say that ele did not get such things because anet "loves" the ele class.

Lets not get into support builds of tempest and how much is lacks viable boon support and real self stab support making it a very sub part support class.

Anet hates ele or at least dose not think about the ele class when they update this game. I am not sure what is worst being hated or being ignored it all comes out to the same end though.

They dont hate eles. They think ele mains are better players so they deserve a handicap.

@Jski.6180 said:

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Jski.6180 said:

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

lol what are you going to do with scepter autos in wvw, especially fire? ping someone from miles away so they know exactly where you are? your argument might make a little bit of sense if eles can swap weapons but they cant, and staff definitely isn't any more well equip to bypass projectile blocks than other classes that also have ground targeted skills, can just flat out bypass them with unblockable traits/skills, or just switch to a melee set.

@LazySummer.2568 said:I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Except that's not exactly what they've been doing, with regards to your opening sentence. They've been consistently nerfing the healing on Riptide but also on Elements of Rage, various traits in Air, Plasma Beam, Meteor Shower etc. While the initial burst is higher, I think I prefer old meteors for their more consistent damage. Perhaps they've realised they were far too heavy-handed and misguided from March to July and have attempted to reintroduce the damage by putting beefy conditional ferocity buffs in Air but for some builds, the buffs aren't tangible (e.g. Fresh Air scepter). The sword buffs are nice, I suppose.

@LazySummer.2568 said:

1. Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)

I concur. The most prominent examples of this are weaver dual skills across almost all weapons. Staff is the big offender which is why I was so peeved about the nerfs to Meteor Shower. In fairness, they did buff Eruption but there're still many skills that do abysmal damage given the wind-up time (e.g. Pyroclastic Blast, Glacial Drift, Monsoon, Pressure Blast) or provide virtually no utility/incentive for attuning into X/Y (Lahar and Stone Tide). It's piddly damage.

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with

swirling winds

.

You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with

swirling winds

.

Isn't the current meta wvw zerg build for ele staff DPS Weaver running basically all dps traits and stats? What do you think the point of being dps weaver means if it's not to kill? and suggesting LH as a melee weapon swap is like suggesting other classes should have one of their utility slots taken just to swap between melee and ranged weapons.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Jski.6180 said:

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

All weaver skills are projectiles ontop of having big tells and being very slow. All skills that are dmged aimed are blockable as well. Ele was the worst kit to deal with proje hate because of the lack of unblockables, quickness to speed up attks and the simple slowness of the attks. Scpter is nearly a melee wepon in its game play if you realy do sit back and try to use your ranged attks on scepter your likely to not get any real dmg out and still be with in the kill ranged of most players.

Even support ele pays a price for projctile hate as one of its strong healing effects is from its water 1 staff spam that is eatten up by projcti hate. Something that ALL of the other support classes do not have to deal with.

@Dadnir.5038 said:You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).Given that staff eles are not built to be on the front-line, lightning hammer is a little impractical. And staff is by its very nature the best weapon for killing in zergs.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Jski.6180 said:You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with

swirling winds

.It doesn't just affect staff autoattack. On staff weaver, you have four hard-hitting skills that can all be reflected or blocked (

Plasma Blast

,

Pressure Blast

,

Pile Driver

and

Pyroclastic Blast

) which scuppers DPS potential considerably. As Tempest fulfills the support role, I don't see any viable support weaver builds with staff so naturally, I'd like it if they removed the healing component from

Pressure Blast

and just increased the damage. Scepter is also 900 range, being mostly single-target, and so not really workable for large-scale fights; it used to be the case that you could play a skirmisher/ganker who focused targets but since they nerfed the damage, it's a lot of risk for a paltry reward.