End of the year patch predictions

Share your insights! Will your hopes come true (i doubt it)? 1g for each correct guess!

Only about ele! Let's stay focused.

Shatterstone Buff

Aura share to 10 players. I will take my 1 gold piece in unmarked single copper pieces. Don't want to be done for RMT now do I. ;p

it will be a hyped paper buff that will result in a serious real world nerf. Like always.

or there will be a slight buff, but it will not matter because everybody else gets a much bigger buff.

As long as it's something that improves gameplay (faster skill casts, cooldowns, aura changes etc.) rather than just changes to damage/support output (+5% shatterstone, 10 man aura/mist), I'll be happy.

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:Shatterstone Buff

That is such an easy gold :)

I think there will be some improvements, nothing game changing, and a few shaves here and there.I'd be happy just with faster autos, or larger hitboxes. But i doubt it will happen.I'm expecting some change to conjures and a conjurer trait rework, so that will change nothing for me.I think there will also be some tempest change.

What really killed this class for me was how easy it is to interrupt. Every skill, it feels, has a long wind-up and cast time, even as a D/D ele player. This allowed thieves with a pistol to just interrupt every single thing, leading me to quit it around the same time damage on interrupt became big.

Want to make Ele better in an easy way that doesn't involve modifying every skill (which is what needs to happen)? They should remove the cooldowns on attunement changes, but keep bonuses from the attunement changes under an ICD. This allows for a bunch of new play, but might not fix everything.

@Mbelch.9028 said:What really killed this class for me was how easy it is to interrupt. Every skill, it feels, has a long wind-up and cast time, even as a D/D ele player. This allowed thieves with a pistol to just interrupt every single thing, leading me to quit it around the same time damage on interrupt became big.

Want to make Ele better in an easy way that doesn't involve modifying every skill (which is what needs to happen)? They should remove the cooldowns on attunement changes, but keep bonuses from the attunement changes under an ICD. This allows for a bunch of new play, but might not fix everything.

An easy way to make ele better without fixing the cast times and aftercasts would be to give access to a lot of quickness, but that is just a band-aid. Unfortunately, quickness would do nothing to help with the massive dealys that some skills like dragon tooth and ice spike have. In the end they need to look at every single ele skill and ask themselves if their huge wind-ups are justified anymore in the current game. It's simply unavoidable at this point, because no amount of damage buffs will make ele good in the places where it's lacking. You can make shatterstone do 150k damage and it will still be useless against anyone who is even half-competent.

When does this patch comes? End of Nov? Or in the middle of it and a next small one when the Season starts?My problem with ele, both in PvE and PvP is that you cant really desing a build that gives you less damage but a lot of sustain while still capable of doing damage. With this i mean that the two "meta" non-support classes (boonbeast, and the weird boon holo) has access to both damage modify traits and offensive ones in the same traitline. Even if weaver or even core ele would get quickness into its traits(i can only imagine it in air, or maybe arcane) that woudnt fix the problem since its just one boon. For example if core ele gets a good quickness trait into its air traitline and a tempest uses it you get good protection uptime combined with good damage + the auras, but the thing with that is you dont really have a choice to do this in the middle, so if you go offensive you are locked there for X seconds because of the attune, if you go into defensive your damage will be very limited because you are locked again.I dont know how to solve the PvP side of the weakness of ele. But in PvE ele just needs more traits that gives defensive and offensive benefits too, this is only my opinion about it

@"Nepster.4275" said:When does this patch comes? End of Nov? Or in the middle of it and a next small one when the Season starts?My problem with ele, both in PvE and PvP is that you cant really desing a build that gives you less damage but a lot of sustain while still capable of doing damage. With this i mean that the two "meta" non-support classes (boonbeast, and the weird boon holo) has access to both damage modify traits and offensive ones in the same traitline. Even if weaver or even core ele would get quickness into its traits(i can only imagine it in air, or maybe arcane) that woudnt fix the problem since its just one boon. For example if core ele gets a good quickness trait into its air traitline and a tempest uses it you get good protection uptime combined with good damage + the auras, but the thing with that is you dont really have a choice to do this in the middle, so if you go offensive you are locked there for X seconds because of the attune, if you go into defensive your damage will be very limited because you are locked again.I dont know how to solve the PvP side of the weakness of ele. But in PvE ele just needs more traits that gives defensive and offensive benefits too, this is only my opinion about it

The balance pass has not been announced yet, but it is assumed to come on November the 13th with the new PvP additions. I imagine that we will hear more about the patch in an announcement to come in less than a day. Then we should know if the balancing is truly coming next week.

Elementalist is possibly lacking in a lot of ways currently, but the developers just can't try to fix every single aspect of it at once or it may suddenly become OP. I believe that the best course of action would be to look at every single weapon skill and adjust their cast times/aftercasts/delays in one patch dedicated to only that. Then they can let the meta settle for a bit and do further adjustments to their defensive aspects if necessary.

I hope they'll up the stances :Aqua stance... of all healing skills; this one is the worst, you need to stay melee, there is a 1sec CD on strikes ... and why it should affect allies ? Is weaver was designed to be dedicated healer ???? WTF .Guard : no icd, no short range, works strong with many traits. Necro : no short range, better initial heal. Like "You need heal ? Keep pressure at melee and don't miss the tick, and you'll get 4k healing _Sure dude, keep believing" Completly ***Stone resonance : once again you need healing power + vitality ... count recharge 50sec ...Unravel : better than before, but only gives one (short) boon ... in the primary attunement ... still clumsy.Primordial stance : Vulnerability could be 4sec, or more but less charges. Chill1.5sec. Otherwise, it's good.The trait : 70 sec icd for the passive Stone stance. That applies at same threshold than all "passive panic" traits, it's useless to take more than one. Just replace the stone resonance with Grinding Stones for exemple; give 4sec stab and 1 or 2sec of quickness. Give weaver quickness and I promise I will even play the aqua stance and unravel.

My prediction: The patch will be a total letdown for actually fixing major problems with ele skills and traits. Instead, you'll see a bunch of lazy changes, like:

• Stone shards damaged increased 12%
• Dust devil damage increased 28%.
• Etc.

@BlackBeard.2873 said:My prediction: The patch will be a total letdown for actually fixing major problems with ele skills and traits. Instead, you'll see a bunch of lazy changes, like:

• Stone shards damaged increased 12%
• Dust devil damage increased 28%.
• Etc.

I expect something like this too.

Instead of buffing the hit reliability by increasing ranges, they'll add damage to some PVE skills.

At the same time, because they think evade spam on any other class than mesmer is OP, they'll nerf riptide to 15s CD.

I would love 2 points:

• 10 man buffs for tempest support
• replacing toughness buffs on earth related stuff to -x% damage received so condi weaver gets playable in raids. It's stupid that this mechanic alone cancels out a whole spec...

I like a tempest rework its been do one for 3 years after it was rushed out. But i do not see it happening.

Riptide can't be increased to 15s cd since Aqua siphon is already 15s. Unless they also increase Aqua siphon, in which case they'd better change its functionality. (Who uses it anyway ?) Unblockable self centered aoe lifedrain (0.5s cast time, up to 5 targets, 3s duration, 3 pulses, 240 radius, 18s or 20s CD)

positive outlook - boost ele health by 5k (pvp only?) to empower ele to actually be competitive with its build selection.

Negative, they make a bunch of small useless bewildering changes again that demonstrates they are still decoupled from the community and continue to base their metrics on dmg meter results/npc meat farms.

At some point either by design or luck they are bound to make an improvement, maybe the 21st patch this year will be the one..

My only wish for xmas.

More nerfs most likely, and continued banishment to this echo chamber if we try to bring it up anywhere else.

Riptide nerf, it still gives ele some sustain, which doesn't belong to anet vision : ele must be very squishy no matter what because this profession is solely dedicated to hardcore players ?

anyone else typing a lot of sarcastic stuff in txt box here but cant be bothered to actually post it?

@shinta.8906 said:anyone else typing a lot of sarcastic stuff in txt box here but cant be bothered to actually post it?

Yes, you got me. The last post that I was working on involved fixing this comment as a joke.

@"Aigleborgne.2981" said:Riptide nerf, it still gives ele some sustain, which doesn't belong to anet vision : ele must be very squishy no matter what because this profession is solely dedicated to hardcore masochistic players ?

Riptide nerf is a pretty safe bet though. If there was an ele balance patch bingo, "riptide nerf" would be the free space. I also won't be surprised if it turns out that ele will benefit the least from the upcoming rune and sigil changes.

The new rune of dwayna sounds sweet though... It's a shame we have a minor trait that can't benefit to us.

Till mesmer devs team starts making ele related patches :

1. Rework of something benchmark golem related that will nerf us in pvp/wvw.
2. Riptide combo nerf cause why not? Nobody use this s*** in pve. We run for years mender for no reason in pvp.
3. 10000% damage buff to pvp spoon skill's ...I mean that sword thing...still will be impossible to kill good naked SB running berserker in less than hour...
4. Oh yea and shatterstone buff...
5. Dagger weaver buffs that nobody asked for or really cares (but who knows maybe they over buff it to oblivion this way)
6. Tempest will stay as meme in pvp.

Of course it's all my cheerful speculation...

@"Mr Godlike.6098" said:

5. Dagger weaver buffs that nobody asked for or really cares (but who knows maybe they over buff it to oblivion this way)

half incorrect on this one. they'll make sure to preemptive nerf their buffs to keep it trash