Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Concerns about Elementalist


System

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 986
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

As a new player playing elementalist, I feel very very squish. Yes i know Ele does like big dmg but if you get hit once by a monster 1/3 of your health is gone. imagine if you have like 3 on you. You are dead. I find the healing abilities with the water attunement very underwhelming. It gives very low health. I find the lack of versatility of different weapons while leveling bad. Im basically stuck with dagger dagger as leveling because thats the only option im able to use for decent survivability and dmg. This is a light armor class while mesmer and necro can output alot of dmg and take zero dmg. Mesmer has all the clones and stuff and necro is even tankier than a f'ing guardian. I very much enjoy the complex gameplay of elementalist because I never get bored of it. I played ranger and man does it bore me to death. Please. Alot of new players just don't wanna play ele or try it out even tho its super fun. I have fallen to the same catogery to in the beginning. I saw this class, was thinking it was like a cool ass mage played it died by the hands of every monster. Then I quit elementalist. Now after a long time of not looking at ele I started to try it again and push through the lack of survivability. I mean it doesn't even do that much dmg to compensate it. I see myself going into water attunement when im low to heal and after I use all my spells I didn't even heal for 25% of my health?? Its a fun class and I am gonna keep playing it but improving the abilities overall and especially for leveling will be huge!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Combo fields-blasts should be reworked as they are nearly useless now in this PoF meta. Ele skills, especially conjures also should be reworked. FGS is still 180 seconds. Overloads need more stability, there can be a trait for that but 2 seconds of 1 stack stab is worthless.

Ele was the mage before PoF meta, now scourge can do everything better with more hp and boon conversion. Staff should be addressed too. So many things to say, so few to hope about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@atih.8109 said:As a new player playing elementalist, I feel very very squish. Yes i know Ele does like big dmg but if you get hit once by a monster 1/3 of your health is gone. imagine if you have like 3 on you. You are dead. I find the healing abilities with the water attunement very underwhelming. It gives very low health. I find the lack of versatility of different weapons while leveling bad. Im basically stuck with dagger dagger as leveling because thats the only option im able to use for decent survivability and dmg. This is a light armor class while mesmer and necro can output alot of dmg and take zero dmg. Mesmer has all the clones and stuff and necro is even tankier than a kitten guardian. I very much enjoy the complex gameplay of elementalist because I never get bored of it. I played ranger and man does it bore me to death. Please. Alot of new players just don't wanna play ele or try it out even tho its super fun. I have fallen to the same catogery to in the beginning. I saw this class, was thinking it was like a cool kitten mage played it died by the hands of every monster. Then I quit elementalist. Now after a long time of not looking at ele I started to try it again and push through the lack of survivability. I mean it doesn't even do that much dmg to compensate it. I see myself going into water attunement when im low to heal and after I use all my spells I didn't even heal for 25% of my health?? Its a fun class and I am gonna keep playing it but improving the abilities overall and especially for leveling will be huge!

Yeah, we are very squishy, but it's part of the fun and it gives intense satisfaction compared to most brainless professions.Dagger / dagger is more fun but not better than staff. I can control crowd better with staff with air 3 5 water 4 and earth 4 5. Proper chaining these skills along with damaging skills allow you to kill many foes without getting hit while putting high aoe damage. Issues come with ranged foes where you only have earth 3, in this situation earth shield can help a lot.As for heal, it's weak without healing power beside glyph. The later is very good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I got myself a nearly full set of marauder gear and went into WvW. I've only been there a few hours, but I have noticed a couple of issues that sort of irk me.

(1): As I mentioned long ago, I hate how the defensive abilities of the ele are tied to heals. The extra healing from Marshal's blows the extra 5k health from marauder out of the water. Aside from particular sets, this means that the ele is ultimately divided against itself. It needs to sacrifice raw stats for defenses, which is the worst kind of tradeoff because it costs money. What I would like to see is the base healing increased while the scale healing is decreased. That way, peak performance doesn't change, but water attunement isn't so useless for non marshal/celestial builds.

(2): This one is a bit of a round trip. See, though I am fairly new to weaver in WvW, I've played many hours on pre-nerf herald. Because I'm only so rich, I used a hybrid of my PVE gear with marauder trinkets, and just used my traits and utilities to build myself defensively. The results were great. I figured that, for ele, I would just do the same thing of having offensive gear + defensive traits. The results have been... less than stellar. Granted, I'm not the best player. I can't see what is happening most of the time, so I just chain DPS and invulnerability skills alternating to try and burst enemies down. However, something I noticed is that I hit like a wet noodle.

I guess it was never really talked about, but it is a bit weird. Elementalists have low power modifiers for a lot of their skills. 2,382 power, 219% crit damage, and I'm whacking people for 1k on crits. Where elementalists get all of their damage from trait boosts, for which there are many. Superior Elements, Swift Revenge, Elements of Rage, Ferocious Winds, Raging Storm, Aeromancer's Training, Pyromancer's Training, Power Overwhelming, all of these are used together on the meta PVE build to get 35k DPS. But, for a WvW build, taking Cellodrag's setup leaves you with almost none of these, and the damage drops dramatically.

On the one hand, from a PVE buildcraft perspective it feels good to be able to take a whole bunch of offensive traits. On the other hand, I can't help but think that the class is just unbalanced if you have to do this. It would be better to have higher base damages on all of the weapon skills, and less stat boosts speckled throughout the trait lines. This would let Ele's become more well balanced overall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:So I got myself a nearly full set of marauder gear and went into WvW. I've only been there a few hours, but I have noticed a couple of issues that sort of irk me.

(1): As I mentioned long ago, I hate how the defensive abilities of the ele are tied to heals. The extra healing from Marshal's blows the extra 5k health from marauder out of the water. Aside from particular sets, this means that the ele is ultimately divided against itself. It needs to sacrifice raw stats for defenses, which is the worst kind of tradeoff because it costs money. What I would like to see is the base healing increased while the scale healing is decreased. That way, peak performance doesn't change, but water attunement isn't so useless for non marshal/celestial builds.

(2): This one is a bit of a round trip. See, though I am fairly new to weaver in WvW, I've played many hours on pre-nerf herald. Because I'm only so rich, I used a hybrid of my PVE gear with marauder trinkets, and just used my traits and utilities to build myself defensively. The results were great. I figured that, for ele, I would just do the same thing of having offensive gear + defensive traits. The results have been... less than stellar. Granted, I'm not the best player. I can't see what is happening most of the time, so I just chain DPS and invulnerability skills alternating to try and burst enemies down. However, something I noticed is that I hit like a wet noodle.

I guess it was never really talked about, but it is a bit weird. Elementalists have low power modifiers for a lot of their skills. 2,382 power, 219% crit damage, and I'm whacking people for 1k on crits. Where elementalists get all of their damage from trait boosts, for which there are many. Superior Elements, Swift Revenge, Elements of Rage, Ferocious Winds, Raging Storm, Aeromancer's Training, Pyromancer's Training, Power Overwhelming, all of these are used together on the meta PVE build to get 35k DPS. But, for a WvW build, taking Cellodrag's setup leaves you with almost none of these, and the damage drops dramatically.

On the one hand, from a PVE buildcraft perspective it feels good to be able to take a whole bunch of offensive traits. On the other hand, I can't help but think that the class is just unbalanced if you have to do this. It would be better to have higher base damages on all of the weapon skills, and less stat boosts speckled throughout the trait lines. This would let Ele's become more well balanced overall.

Yep, all of these have been discussed in this, as well as other threads.

You say that ele has low power modifiers on their skills (I guess you meant coefficients), but they actually have pretty good ones. The problem is achieving that power because, as you mentioned, ele can only buff itself through damage modifiers, while the stat gains contradict with each other (or straight up don't exist). The only reason why ele has been top tier dps in pve is because it's getting those extra power and precision from allies and because it has quite a lot of damage modifiers, but without extra power, those modifiers have much lower value.

Fire gives you a lot of power under some circumstances that cant be achieved easily without changing your gear (aka in order to get a lot of might, you lose the runes/sigils/skills or even traits otherwise used in meta builds) making the dps gain not even that relevant because you lose dps and fluidity to gain dps. A lot of other classes get might with a single button press and some even by just being in combat and doing normal stuff.

Then you have air which has potential to give quite a lot of ferocity, but half of that is temporary and makes you lose almost all power gained from fire spec. Not to mention that you can't even grant yourself a decent fury uptime without losing ferocity.

Air and fire seem a bit counter-productive since they are trying to achieve the same thing, but you can never get both benefits even if you have both specs. I know that they addressed some part of it in the last patch, which made ele more fluid, but those conditions need to be removed completely, especially on minor traits because those should be relevant all the time, not work 50% of the time at best.

Other classes don't have these issues because they don't have as many damage modifiers so they can buff themself easier, with both offensive boons and some defense (at the same time) while having quite higher base damage values on skills making them less reliant on allies and defensive stats. Oh right, and their traits work all the time (exceptions are maybe revealed thief and necro in shroud, but even those aren't close to 1/4 attunement dependency).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:(1): As I mentioned long ago, I hate how the defensive abilities of the ele are tied to heals. The extra healing from Marshal's blows the extra 5k health from marauder out of the water. Aside from particular sets, this means that the ele is ultimately divided against itself. It needs to sacrifice raw stats for defenses, which is the worst kind of tradeoff because it costs money. What I would like to see is the base healing increased while the scale healing is decreased. That way, peak performance doesn't change, but water attunement isn't so useless for non marshal/celestial builds.

I'm confused on this because it sounds like balance having to trade healing vs. damage. I would think all professions should have this trade. Otherwise everyone just runs around in zerker with no risk.

Healing will always out-last health, especially in WvW where you can get one-hit for 5k health easily. Damage mitigation is another form of healing and will also out-last pure health increases. This is why some professions seem really tanky without a ton of healing -- they have frequent blocks, evades, blinds, and boons.

So taking Marauder stats isn't going to do much at all in WvW for "staying alive". Especially if you have no other mitigation.

Also I'd hate to see scaled healing decreased because it diminishes the value of having the Healing Power stat. Choices need consequences, and reducing the effectiveness of a stat is eliminating a choice and associated consequence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@juno.1840 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:(1): As I mentioned long ago, I hate how the defensive abilities of the ele are tied to heals. The extra healing from Marshal's blows the extra 5k health from marauder out of the water. Aside from particular sets, this means that the ele is ultimately divided against itself. It needs to sacrifice raw stats for defenses, which is the worst kind of tradeoff because it costs money. What I would like to see is the base healing increased while the scale healing is decreased. That way, peak performance doesn't change, but water attunement isn't so useless for non marshal/celestial builds.

I'm confused on this because it sounds like balance having to trade healing vs. damage. I would think all professions should have this trade. Otherwise everyone just runs around in zerker with no risk.

Healing will always out-last health, especially in WvW where you can get one-hit for 5k health easily. Damage mitigation is another form of healing and will also out-last pure health increases. This is why some professions seem really tanky without a ton of healing -- they have frequent blocks, evades, blinds, and boons.

So taking Marauder stats isn't going to do much at all in WvW for "staying alive". Especially if you have no other mitigation.

Also I'd hate to see scaled healing decreased because it diminishes the value of having the Healing Power stat. Choices need consequences, and reducing the effectiveness of a stat is eliminating a choice and associated consequence.

The fact ele has to make sacrifices in its stats is indeed good design, and how every single profession should function. I recall bringing that up a while ago and people weren't all that happy with me. It's just a bit funny seeing how this has remained the case with ele, yet I can say that just about every other class has traits or some nonsense skills which allow them to excel in multiple areas without crippling themselves.

Boy, I sure hope ANet puts out a huge balance update which nerfs the other classes so that they have to make significant sacrifices, like ele, instead of one day getting frustrated and putting out a much smaller update which makes ele into another monster class that does everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@juno.1840 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:(1): As I mentioned long ago, I hate how the defensive abilities of the ele are tied to heals. The extra healing from Marshal's blows the extra 5k health from marauder out of the water. Aside from particular sets, this means that the ele is ultimately divided against itself. It needs to sacrifice raw stats for defenses, which is the worst kind of tradeoff because it costs money. What I would like to see is the base healing increased while the scale healing is decreased. That way, peak performance doesn't change, but water attunement isn't so useless for non marshal/celestial builds.

I'm confused on this because it sounds like balance having to trade healing vs. damage. I would think all professions should have this trade. Otherwise everyone just runs around in zerker with no risk.

Healing will always out-last health, especially in WvW where you can get one-hit for 5k health easily. Damage mitigation is another form of healing and will also out-last pure health increases. This is why some professions seem really tanky without a ton of healing -- they have frequent blocks, evades, blinds, and boons.

So taking Marauder stats isn't going to do much at all in WvW for "staying alive". Especially if you have no other mitigation.

Also I'd hate to see scaled healing decreased because it diminishes the value of having the Healing Power stat. Choices need consequences, and reducing the effectiveness of a stat is eliminating a choice and associated consequence.

Its a problem because it means that ele is incompetent by design. No other profession has defenses that don't work unless you spec into them, and the solution to this isn't to bring down every other profession in the game.

There's only two options to fix this. You can raise the damage in water attunement, which wouldn't fix the lack of defenses issue but would make water attunement less useless. Or, you can change the base and scaling so you heal somewhat effectively with zero investment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:Its a problem because it means that ele is incompetent by design. No other profession has defenses that don't work unless you spec into them, and the solution to this isn't to bring down every other profession in the game.

There's only two options to fix this. You can raise the damage in water attunement, which wouldn't fix the lack of defenses issue but would make water attunement less useless. Or, you can change the base and scaling so you heal somewhat effectively with zero investment.

And this is exactly what I was getting at with ANet potentially getting frustrated one day and just making ele into a monster class that does everything. As unrealistic as it is, ANet has to put out a huge balance pass which forces all the other classes to make stat, trait, weapon, and utility sacrifices just as ele does because that is good design and, if done right, would encourage people to toy around with builds depending on what is more effective for the given scenario instead of flocking to the same one or two cookie cutter builds each class has at the moment. And no, I do not count "hey, I switched out one utility or trait" as an entirely different build.

Let's look at option one, simply raising the damage of water attunement. ANet has already done this, ineffectually, by changing some traits around. Moreover, as long as cast and aftercast times exist, damage buffs to water skills mean nothing unless the damage of water attunement begins to rival that of fire or air and at that point it just becomes fire/air + healing with a little less condi damage (who builds for that as an ele anyway?) and less access to cc, respectively. It could work, but it takes away some of the water line's identity by homogenizing it with other attunements. Earth attunement says hello, btw.

Then there's option two, raising base healing and scaling. This is likely the better option, but only if it's done right. If the base values are too high, eles no longer have any reason to use the healing stat because it would be a waste if their base healing is already enough. If this is the end goal of the general game design, why even have healing power as a stat? Increasing scaling too much means any ele who builds for healing essentially makes itself and any allies it's supporting borderline immortal outside of the enemy executing organized bursts against individual targets at key moments. That is why the healing from water attunement keeps getting nerfed: some very vocal people find its mediocre healing output to be too much and cry and scream in pixels until something is done about it.

Ultimately, the thing I'd like people to take away from my stupid, drunken rambling at midnight is that the issues we're dealing with here are not just related to ele. The issues are tied to poor and sometimes knee-jerk balancing that has gone on for years, to power creep that has been unevenly distributed among the different class' capabilities, and the balance team's incapability in effectively addressing those long standing issues introduced by power creep. There is no easy, long-term fix to any of this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dagger off hands ride the lightning should be returned to its 20 second cooldown and distance travelled. That one change would help immensely with build variety, we'd also see a return of elementalist roaming builds in WvW. I'd be careful with its damage as it's already able to attack while defending.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Change the "Meteor Shower" into "Meteor Descent"

Description : No more random fire projectiles that rains on a specific area but One and only big meteor that covers the entire area in one big hit (same has dragon tooth we could say) and that leaves a fire combo field after it. Lowers the damage and apply a Knockdown (to fit the RP behind it)The end of the cast right when the meteor hits the ground for more stylish plays.

The CD of 60 sec seems fine to me. and then I'm happy for staff ... for a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Nath Forge Tempete.1645" said:Change the "Meteor Shower" into "Meteor Descent"

Description : No more random fire projectiles that rains on a specific area but One and only big meteor that covers the entire area in one big hit (same has dragon tooth we could say) and that leaves a fire combo field after it. Lowers the damage and apply a Knockdown (to fit the RP behind it)The end of the cast right when the meteor hits the ground for more stylish plays.

The CD of 60 sec seems fine to me. and then I'm happy for staff ... for a while.

Actually in GW1 there was an Ele skill called 'Meteor' with the function: One hit, high damage and knockdown, as it was used by the hydras in GW1 and this made it into GW2 too.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Meteor

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:

@"Nath Forge Tempete.1645" said:Change the "Meteor Shower" into "Meteor Descent"

Description : No more random fire projectiles that rains on a specific area but One and only big meteor that covers the entire area in one big hit (same has dragon tooth we could say) and that leaves a fire combo field after it. Lowers the damage and apply a Knockdown (to fit the RP behind it)The end of the cast right when the meteor hits the ground for more stylish plays.

The CD of 60 sec seems fine to me. and then I'm happy for staff ... for a while.

Actually in GW1 there was an Ele skill called 'Meteor' with the function: One hit, high damage and knockdown, as it was used by the hydras in GW1 and this made it into GW2 too.

yep I remember ! cause exhaust but has a tiny Area of effect (compared to the GW2 one)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Nath Forge Tempete.1645" said:Change the "Meteor Shower" into "Meteor Descent"

Description : No more random fire projectiles that rains on a specific area but One and only big meteor that covers the entire area in one big hit (same has dragon tooth we could say) and that leaves a fire combo field after it. Lowers the damage and apply a Knockdown (to fit the RP behind it)The end of the cast right when the meteor hits the ground for more stylish plays.

The CD of 60 sec seems fine to me. and then I'm happy for staff ... for a while.

60 seconds lol stop dreaming thanks

For that amount of time, I expect the skill to have a 500% damage increase

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think 60s is justified for one big meteor with less damage and knockdown. The thing is; in WvW the amount Stability spam, stun breaks and AoE stun break is insane that one hard CC is nothing, it can be multipe big meteors, this way the damage is no more as random and the CC of 4-5 pulses would be great. Still 60s is a lot as a FB F1 third skill has a 6ish seconds cd with lovely CC, so I expect the same cooldown as of now's MS with the same or slightly less damage depending on how it will be implemented.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Strider.7849 said:Dagger off hands ride the lightning should be returned to its 20 second cooldown and distance travelled. That one change would help immensely with build variety, we'd also see a return of elementalist roaming builds in WvW. I'd be careful with its damage as it's already able to attack while defending.

I see Sw/D weavers roaming all the time in WvW.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is probably the biggest "Jebaited" in the history. Literally over a year and not even a response. That's lovely!

Ayy!! and guess what? The class is not as fun anymore the more I play.

WvW barely struggles to get a blob now, everyone is hiding or running away, even commanders rq which is lovely for a staff weaver to play in a 10v10 scale... a joke!! Let's just slam doors 24/7, even PvE OW would put a better challenge than zerg-festing a lord 5am in the morning then sleep during prime.

Tempest?!! Oh that's at the bottom of what a commander needs, it's a Weaver's best friend at that bottom... wait a sec, they both have the same roots OMEGALUL

Sword Weaver; the same gameplay for 2 years, not even a single change. Even theory-crafting is nothing but more damage or more sustain. Not like a new playstyle, not at all, not... one... bit.

Class? SquishyProblems? EverywhereThread? Joke... you know the forth.

What's the point of profession sub-forums? Like I no longer want any implementation of suggested ideas nor a discussion, I only want an answer to if they actually turn to these threads that were made as an initiative to a better gameplay and better patches.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Auburner.6945" said:This thread is probably the biggest "Jebaited" in the history. Literally over a year and not even a response. That's lovely!

Ayy!! and guess what? The class is not as fun anymore the more I play.

WvW barely struggles to get a blob now, everyone is hiding or running away, even commanders rq which is lovely for a staff weaver to play in a 10v10 scale... a joke!! Let's just slam doors 24/7, even PvE OW would put a better challenge than zerg-festing a lord 5am in the morning then sleep during prime.

Tempest?!! Oh that's at the bottom of what a commander needs, it's a Weaver's best friend at that bottom... wait a sec, they both have the same roots OMEGALUL

Sword Weaver; the same gameplay for 2 years, not even a single change. Even theory-crafting is nothing but more damage or more sustain. Not like a new playstyle, not at all, not... one... bit.

Class? SquishyProblems? EverywhereThread? Joke... you know the forth.

What's the point of profession sub-forums? Like I no longer want any implementation of suggested ideas nor a discussion, I only want an answer to if they actually turn to these threads that were made as an initiative to a better gameplay and better patches.

To be honest they did address a lot of ele's issues in the latest balance patch. It remains to be a very balanced class and they are still adding tradeoffs to elite specs that dont have any.

Sure it could use some more tuning and buffing underpowered stuff like earth spec and daggers, but every class has useless weapons, traits and skills.

Considering that there arent many people that are good on ele says that it's l2p issues, not a class issue. It's good to have something more skill based rather than a brainless OP class.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@CombatEvolve.9238 said:

@SLOTH.5231 said:Two years later still posting and no changes ?

There were changes, and Ele is fine if you understand how to play and spec.

PVP perspective here:

The only significant change was the cleansing in fire. Which is good, but Tempest is still much worse than firebrand. Core builds are still nowhere close to being viable. FA ele is still a one-trick pony. Sword weavers can still only work sides.

Don't get me wrong, I still like ele. It is just, it is still worse than many other classes. There are better team fighters, there are better +1s, there are also better side noders (depending a little on the composition). There are better hybrids too. Ele is still more or less viable, but the meta builds - basically the same since PoF dropped - are still dominant.

And they hardly worked on the issues that were presented here. Or even started an actual discussion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...