Addressing The Elephant in the Room

First off, I want to apologize for posting so many discussions recently in the profession forums. I have been playing this game off and on since the game's release and I have a lot of passion for the Elementalist as a whole and I will always be an advocate for giving them the necessary changes to become viable. I also want to say that this perspective is primarily a PVP one. I will be giving a brief history lesson on the Elementalist as a whole and how powercreep and specializations ruined its trade-off of being the light armor class with the lowest hp in the game.

As you may know, this game has 3 light, medium, and heavy armored units with different base hp values. Now I am not advocating that we all get the same hp values. I am simply saying that each profession at its core had a unique mechanic to address this trade-off. For example, necro has the highest base hp in the game and shroud to compensate for their lack of mobility and stability. Warrior had the highest base hp and the ability to just ignore cc/conditions through stab/resistance uptime as well as having decent ways to avoid damage through blocks and utilities. Elementalist had the lowest hp but had more access to protection and heals than any other class to make up for their lack of vitality. This was great and allowed for elementalist to enjoy d/d for a long time in pvp.

Then heart of thorns came along and gave rise to heal sharing. Heals and bunker became the meta most of heart of thorns lifetime. The ability to heal allies on top of having toughness created a problem that ultimately resulted in the removal of these types of amulets. The removal of amulets is fine. The problem i have is the Elementalist core mechanic of healing or having lots of access to protection has been given to every class in some form or another. Another problem I have is now that every profession can do reasonably well what only an ele could do before, we are left with having the lowest hp and no mechanic to compensate. That coupled with specific stat spreads from amulets has left ele with the ability to only be viable if they have an amulet that uses vitality. Not once in the life-time of gw2 has an Elementalist build been successful with less than 15k hp(to my knowledge). I would love to use other amulets and have 11k health, but the sustain just isnt there. Part of the problem is every single heal the Elementalist provides also heals allies. That means if a heal is nerfed because it heals teams too well the core mechanic of elementalist suffers as a whole.

The nerfs to some of Elementalist healings and protection uptime that will come with this next balance patch is only going to hurt the class. Its like telling a necro they are losing 33% of their shroud. I have a couple of proposed solutions to this. First off, not every ability an elementalist has needs to heal allies. Cleansing wave, water trident, aqua siphon and healing ripple. None of them need to heal allies. They are there to add to the sustain to an ele and healing allies is mostly just extra. My advice is to remove their ability to heal allies and raise their base healing.

A potential problem with this is that it will raise the value of the water trait line too much. My solution to that is adding a barrier to some earth weapons and earth traits. Focus earth 4 could give a barrier. Dagger 2 could provide a barrier. Scepter earth 2 could provide barrier (lol). Overload earth could pulse barrier instead of protection. Earthen Blast trait could provide a barrier. Stone heart could provide a barrier on a critical hit instead of its current effect (small like 200 base barrier).

Another potential solution is raising the base values of some of our heal skills. Take ether renewal for example. Its a 3s cast that heals for a total of 4-6.5k depending on healing power. It cures 8 conditions assuming you don't get cc'd (which you will). Bear stance is literally ether renewal with a base heal and superior condition cleanse. It has the potential to heal almost 13k with 1k healing power. Signet of restoration passive heal should not be reduced. Arcane brilliance should have a higher base heal and it increases by 10% for each enemy hit. The glyph is fine, but should honestly provide 6 stacks of might and 5s of protection. I get that most of our heals have less cooldown than other classes, but that's the point. Heals and protection are the only thing an ele has to defend against damage (exclude perma dodge weaver).

This post is a longshot in general, I just want anet to understand my point of view and consider them in future balance patches. Elementalists have inherently fewer stats than others with nothing to compensate for it. This limits access to amulets and optimal stat spread for some builds. Even in WvW this limits their damage output as they have to build more into defensive stats than other professions.

I think part of the reason eles are being hit in the next update is because at the moment, bunker weavers are a pretty strong build however low their base defensive stats are, and with damage being reduced across the board, they'd probably become basically impossible to kill if their sustain wasn't pared back in kind.

I think that's something that needs to be kept in mind with the upcoming changes: pretty much everyone's being hit. Power skills are being reduced by an average of about a third, and condition skills are also being nerfed, albeit in a less direct fashion. This necessitates a reduction in sustain to go with it - builds that are already relatively weak when it comes to sustain are getting away without too much being filed back, but builds which have strong sustain in the current meta need to be pared back so we don't fall into bunker wars in the new one.

There are acknowledgements that moving into a new paradigm means that there'll be winners and losers, and they'll need to keep a close eye on balance going into the new meta in case some of it is going too far. I suspect this is a large part of the reason why they haven't gone ahead and dropped the patch in the middle of a season, which has become an unfortunate habit of theirs since PoF dropped. Ultimately, though, compared to the old meta, the new meta is going to be like everyone has permanent protection with the possibility of getting super-protection on top.

I agree about healing. If reducing heals to only self healing is necessary for better overall sustain, then so be it. Tempest's traits and specialization as the support spec will only increase in value

For example, Steam Surge got nerfed in heals but it was already an insufficient heal in my opinion. Barrier is another defense that could easily be implemented, especially since it uses healing power just like self heals. Scepter is stuck with outdated skills like Earth 3 blind. When instead, there could be small amounts of barrier added to it to keep it viable.

It's great that Anet is reducing power creep. But I understand the lack of identity concern. There's so many things other classes can do, and it makes Ele's similar skills seem inadequate.

I don't know how it will impact all classes. In my opinion heavy classes, reaper, Soulbeast would still be okai but hard to predict.But I agree with the thread.My issue with elem (weaver); healing and healing power are a main component of the sustain in all build, even fresh air, since years. The life yoyo is in DNA of all elems. Elem will suffer more than others from the healing nerfs; Base healing reduced + coef reduced + healing power amulets nerfed ... it's a triple penalty while others only got one in their current builds.We add the stab, the CD of BS etc. :#

I identify as an Elephant.Truth is, no one can even spot the Elephant with such a big change.I think that, we just all hope that the result of these changes is going to be to simply lower all classes equally, without creating any new unbalances.Lowering the baseline performance.And hopefully every class will stay similar as before when compared to each other. Simply creating a new baseline performance.And with that, they can hand-pick what should be raised with this new baseline. Or even create new things?

But as always, we never know what they think, anything we try to decipher, is always lost in translation... and on next patches they prove us wrong.

I totally agree that Elementalist has never been so weak in the history of this game and on top of the weakness chart is Tempest, its currently a non-pvp class at this point.

When I was a teen and playing gw I used to dream that the dummy island was constantly being used by bots from anet to auto-test skills and balancing.So that when they tweeked a skill that created too much damage or too low something, those bots would automatically trigger an alert.But hey... on gw2 that island is so messed up, cant imagine automatic tests there, and ele class has always been unbalanced. So my dreams got crushed in 2012 xD

Any way, back on topic, I just really hope and pray they notice how weak some classes are now after this update.

Ele needs a vitality boost at least. Build diversity suffers greatly.

@Malcastus.6240 said:Ele needs a vitality boost at least. Build diversity suffers greatly.

too bad. only weavers get nice things

@FrownyClown.8402 said:

@Malcastus.6240 said:Ele needs a vitality boost at least. Build diversity suffers greatly.

I laughed the first time I saw the two traits of weaver about vitality. Like they knew this issue with elem, but they only tried to balance Weaver to stay discreet.

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

@FrownyClown.8402 said:

@Malcastus.6240 said:Ele needs a vitality boost at least. Build diversity suffers greatly.

Or maybe because sword weaver need it more than others?

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

@FrownyClown.8402 said:

@Malcastus.6240 said:Ele needs a vitality boost at least. Build diversity suffers greatly.

With the evades and stuff it has, Weaver arguably needs vitality less than other iterations of Ele, which are stuck to melee.