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Concerns about Elementalist


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Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That will push us to the same cycle of over buff/overnerf again.

What we need is:

  • Instead of raw damage buff, we need more ways to deal damage reliability (as in, skills don't have to rely on dumb opponents)
  • Instead of raw healing buff, we need more active defense (teleport, counter, superspeed, blind, weakness, block)
  • Instead of more boons, we need to nerf Ele boons access, and spread the Condi cleanse from Water to all the lines.

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

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@Sunshine.5014 said:Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That will push us to the same cycle of over buff/overnerf again.

What we need is:

  • Instead of raw damage buff, we need more ways to deal damage reliability (as in, skills don't have to rely on dumb opponents)
  • Instead of raw healing buff, we need more active defense (teleport, counter, superspeed, blind, weakness, block)
  • Instead of more boons, we need to nerf Ele boons access, and spread the Condi cleanse from Water to all the lines.

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

Couldn't agree more with these suggestions!

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@Mithos.9023 said:My perspective of elemetalist comes from pve and wvw, as I don’t have any pvp experience.This is even more of a problem when you look for example at the water attunement:

With having a lot of damage skills mixed into water, it is not even a full healing/support aspect. The skills do terrible damage anyway so why not remove them and give it more healing options? Or specify the water attunement more for each weapon, for example have only healing/support or damage spell, not both mixed together. Even the traitline is a mix of damage oriented and support oriented traits leaving us here with an unbelievable mess. Other classes like revenent and druid are straighter forward when it comes to their healing specs. But I have to admit I don’t know what the best course of action would be, as switching to water/earth even air is a problem in high end pve. You lose too much damage most of the time for too little utility, which would warrant more damage in those attunements.Another idea I discussed here recently was to introduce a trait that would turn healing form water attunement into damage, opening the option to use it as support, or traited as damage option. With more weapon skills related to healing this could change the focus of water quite substantial dependent on what is needed.

The trait seems a little confused and maybe redundant; surely, the solution would be to add or buff existing utility on those skills, rather than over-complicating the class by adding a new trait? I don't see the devs allocating resources to vastly redesigning ele, which is why I proposed they just revert overzealous nerfs on damaging skills/traits like Lava Font and Electric Discharge because, as it stands, there is no reward or payoff for investing into zerk or DPS roles.@Mithos.9023 said:

  • Tempest and Auras:

As many have pointed out Tempest problem lies within the auras. It can do good healing but the initial mechanic, auras are problematic as they are simply worthless. Wile earth and air aura are fine to some extent I found frost aura and especially fire aura extremely underwhelming. No underwhelming is not strong enough to express how much I don’t like them. Fire aura as the focus skill is in my opinion the worst skill this game has to offer.I would change fire aura in the way that it no longer grants might on getting hit, but instead constantly pulses might to yourself and on top of it as fire is the offensive one give it low radius, low damage 5 target aoe, pulsing every second. This would give tempest offensive support as you could increase group dps through sharing fire aura. Next is frost aura which is not in a good state as well. The damage mitigation is just too small, 10% won’t save you when you are under focus. And while chill is an important condition its effect is still not enough to make this aura a useful effect.I see two ways here, either increase the dmg reducing effect for example by increasing the mitigation (maybe double it?) against foes that are chilled to give it some kind of synergy with the chill application. My other idea is to give it a dmg effect like my proposed fire aura but with a lower target cap and double the damage against chilled foes. Just some ideas but auras are in a need of a change they simply are not powerful and important enough as a supportive buff.Let me throw an idea in for a trait change in here. For Pyromancer's Puissance, add an effect to it, that procs a small aoe around you (low damage) throwing sparks whenever you gain might, with a one second icd. Might be an interesting combination with the fire aura change.

I agree with you about Fire Shield and think, at the very least, the fire focus skills should be redesigned or replaced with something better. Obviously, it's quite different in a PvE setting, but in PvP/WvW, the damage reduction/chill from Frost Aura is quite strong. I'm really quite wary of ANet getting off track and adding far too many bells and whistles.

I don't think, before the March balance patch, that there was such an identity crisis with ele as there seems to be now, and I think it's because they went overboard with the nerfs but did not compensate with any appreciable buffs. Why didn't they split the diminishing returns change to Meteor Shower in PvP? I don't think staff is even widely used in PvP, and the change was obviously aimed at shaving down damage in raids. Because the game isn't designed with set roles in mind, my impression is that they have to artificially force roles so that all professions see equal play in raids so, as much as I'd like to see an end to the obsession with golem benchmarks, I don't think it will go away.

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@steki.1478 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:just give ele 5000 more base hp, remove stealth from the game entirely and give ele the same barrier as necro (either more barrier for ele or a lot less for necro, either works). The rest would sort itself out.

That's a bit extreme just saying

why? necros have more hp AND barrier and less restrictions, so giving the same hp and barrier would actually fair.

And as long as a thief or mesmer can jump you out of stealth and just burst you down with no defense at all, why are we even talking about balancing?

Necros dont have any mobility, active defenses, useful stun breaks and the list goes on. 90% of their defense comes from health, which is in some situations useless. The last thing we need is another unkillable build that damages everything it sees, like warrior currently.

necros have no mobility? So you are telling me that all the necros running away from me, with perma swiftness up+lightning flash+twist of fate are cheaters?

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btw, for balancing: let the balancing team play wvw for whole week as staff weaver. Then they will know, how broken warrior, mirage, deadeye and necro really are and that ele is in such a bad spot, that there is no time to waste for an emergency buff all around.

How about doubling the damage on meteor shower again? Just for a start?

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:btw, for balancing: let the balancing team play wvw for whole week as staff weaver. Then they will know, how broken warrior, mirage, deadeye and necro really are and that ele is in such a bad spot, that there is no time to waste for an emergency buff all around.

How about doubling the damage on meteor shower again? Just for a start?

You are clearly biased towards Elementalists, most ele mains dont want to be as broken as mesmer believe it or not, but what you are saying will make Ele OP af

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@Sunshine.5014 said:Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That will push us to the same cycle of over buff/overnerf again.

What we need is:

  • Instead of raw damage buff, we need more ways to deal damage reliability (as in, skills don't have to rely on dumb opponents)
  • Instead of raw healing buff, we need more active defense (teleport, counter, superspeed, blind, weakness, block)
  • Instead of more boons, we need to nerf Ele boons access, and spread the Condi cleanse from Water to all the lines.

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That sounds a lot like homogenization to me. Pass. I prefer the straight dps buff. I like how fragile the gameplay is and I don't care it doesn't translate well in PvP. It should be possible in PvE, and it should be rewarded accordingly.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:Talking about PVE now:What would everyone say if they removed Conjures from the game, or at the very least they rework them to fit a very specific playstyle.I think the best Conjure at the moment is the Lightning Hammer. It's the only conjure with a set style and the only Conjure with useful auto attacks, it's the only Conjure that you cast it and use it's full potential instead of cast it to get access to one or two skills then discard it. It buffs critical chance and critical damage, all the skills are about dealing high power damage, a leap and some crowd control.

Earth Shield is another well designed Conjure weapon with abilities that fit with each other. The main issue with it is that it's not very useful in PVE, it's a defensive/tanking weapon.

Conjure Flame Axe is a mostly useless weapon because most of its abilities are surpassed by the Elite Conjure Fiery Greatsword, making this skill an excellent candidate for a rework or even removal. It's supposed to be a hybrid power/condition weapon but the elite is better at both so the Axe lacks a unique purpose and identity, which is why it's not used anywhere.

Conjure Fiery Greatsword is a terrible skill for an Elite slot. It's only used for the later skills while the auto attacks are worthless. It's one of those "I pop this, press 4/5 then discard it" kind of weapon which is sad, given the enormous cooldown. Compare https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firestorm with... https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firestorm_(Glyph_of_Storms_skill) they are both called Firestorm and look redundant, one of these could go, and most likely the Greatsword skill.

Conjure Frost Bow is the worst of the conjures. It only has 1 useful overall skill (4) and a situational (due to the long cast) CC skill (5). It buffs healing power although the healing output it provides is abysmal. It buffs Condition duration, yet it has a great Power damage skill. This conjure is all over the place and needs kind of a rework. Also, https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frost_Storm and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ice_Storm_(Glyph_of_Storms_skill) are similar, the first applies bleeding, the second chill. Honestly these two skills should be swapped or something.

I know making these kinds of changes to Firestorm and Frost Storm would nerf Elementalist DPS further. But, both of those skills make the rotation more complex, require the clunky usage of conjures and provide a good amount of damage. Damage that appears on benchmarks and if it's removed somehow, perhaps the rest of the Elementalist can get a boost instead.

I would love conjures to be removed - a skill that when used reduces your available skills from 20 to 5, and requires you to pick it up again to continue to have only 5 skills fro an extended period of time. Truly awful.

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@Sunshine.5014 said:

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That will push us to the same cycle of over buff/overnerf again.

What we need is:

  • Instead of raw damage buff, we need more ways to deal damage reliability (as in, skills don't have to rely on dumb opponents)
  • Instead of raw healing buff, we need more active defense (teleport, counter, superspeed, blind, weakness, block)
  • Instead of more boons, we need to nerf Ele boons access, and spread the Condi cleanse from Water to all the lines.

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

It's really simple, and people don't need to be scratching their heads so hard to reinvent the class. No buffs, just revert some of the heavy-handed nerfs. We have very good access to superspeed. We have blinds. We have good weakness application if you have enough crit chance. We have blocks. I agree with Feanor. Maybe I'm missing the big picture, but if classes do largely the same amount of damage and bring the same thing to the table, what's the difference besides flavour text and graphics? Colour me cynical.

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Last time I presented some smaller tweaks, mostly on skills (can be found on page 2). Now I'll be a bit more detailed about main class problems as well as suggest some long term changes on traits and general theme of each attunement.
Game mode : general unless stated otherwise
Post length: very long

Main problems would be:
1) boon generation and boon uptime
2) lack of trait identity: traits force camping attunements for most benefit while weapon skills are designed to constantly swap between attunements
3) auras are scattered all over ele's kits, but they are extremely weak skills
4) lots of useless traits and good ones being grouped in the same column

1) 90% of boon uptimes are concentrated around arcane spec and traited tempest auras. Both of those can only upkeep swiftness, regen and vigor for a long time, with protection lagging behind a bit. Might and fury mostly come from blasting fields or from camping attunement (problem 2). Stability is mostly part of elite specs since core ele gets it mostly from armor of earth which comes with huge cooldown (tornado and earth trait are quite weak to be worth using anywhere). Other boons arent even present on ele (and most of them dont even fit thematically).
Solution idea: adding more boon traits through elemental specializations and even on some skills, without requiring traits (burning speed/meteor shower grants might per target hit, water trident grants regen on hit, lightning surge gives fury if it crits, earthquake grant protection per target and so on).

2) Each specialization gets a minor trait that gives bonus stats and some major traits that give some effect while staying in that element. Weapon skills per attunement dont fit all roles to justify camping that attunement. In any solo scenario I do damage until I get low on hp, I swap to water/earth for some defense, I go to fire/air to do more damage or use CC from water/air/earth and so on. I cant camp fire attunement because I'll eventually need heals/blocks/cc which cant be found on fire skills. I cant camp earth because it doesnt have many damaging tools...
Basically what I'm trying to say is that specializing into certain element, mastering it, shouldn't mean that we get more benefits from its skills (it might not make much sense, but we don't use all weapon skills at once so it's good for balance). It should instead share its main focus with other attunements. To explain better: specializing into fire would improve damage and burning overall. Similar can be said for other elements. Benefits that weapon skills would get should be on minor traits only.Solution idea: making all those "get X while you stay in Y attunement" bonuses permanent. Ele already has lowest amount of base stats among all classes, so having additional stats permanently from traits sounds balanced. If ele is designed to be a hybrid class, it can even share those stats with allies (preferably on major trait) or pulse aoe effect like soothing mist.Soothing mist change: instead of pulsing constantly while staying in water, it should grant 8-10 second effect that triggers only on attuning to water. Multiple instances of mist will refresh duration to maximum; the active mist will be the one with highest healing output.

3) Aura reworkI came up with one aura model that fixes both boon problem and introduces more attunement swapping. Considering that some other classes have access to auras on top of better boon generation, they would probably need to have those skills rebalanced or aura sources limited to minimum (or even completely removed). Alternatively, all aura changes could only benefit elementalists, but that means that tempest wont be able to share any of those benefits with allies.
New aura mechanic: rather than completely relying on being hit to get something from aura, auras would additionally grant boons when you hit enemy while having aura and do a small "explosion" in melee range (triggers only once on same aura - on 4 or 6 seconds that is; triggers in small aoe radius on hit/being hit at close range). Explosion will remove aura and prevent it from reapplying for a few seconds. Enemy suffers from only one "on being hit" effect (I believe that current implementation works like this).

Fire aura (shield): gain might when hitting enemy, burn/damage enemy when you get hit (same effect as retal, but stacks with retal), 3-5 stacks of burning in melee range (explosion part).
Frost aura: small heal on hit, chill on being hit, freeze (icebow 5 effect with shorter duration; cooldown per target) in melee.
Shocking aura: fury on hit, vulnerability on being hit, long daze/short stun(5+ sec cooldown per target in pvp modes) in melee.Magnetic aura: protection on hit, cripple on being hit, short immobilize+bleed in melee range. All skills with current magnetic aura effect would reflect by default.

Another idea: aura explosions can only happen after X amount of boon and Y amount of condition was applied. Explosion effects can also scale with those two amounts. Since auras are big part of boon uptime now, it'd be unproductive if auras popped instantly without giving any boons.

How do we get auras?

  • Each elemental specialization will have minor trait that grants aura on attunement swap (these traits trigger on finishing specific overload on tempest).
  • Weapon skills. Each weapon skill that grants aura will now provide some effect based on weapon range (frost aura on dagger can freeze nearby foes, fire aura on focus would damage target at 900 range for example) and have aura as secondary part.
  • Shouts on tempest.

Each elemental spec will have major trait that grants effect (might, regen, fury, protection from each attunement respectively) on every aura application and improve its aura's duration (from 4 to 6 seconds). Arcane spec could have traits that give certain benefits depending on present auras, improve boon generation from auras etc. Tempest would make aura share baseline and add boons that ele cant get otherwise (retaliation - removed from arcane, alacrity, quickness, aegis per element respectively). Weaver can replace every instance of these 4 auras with 1 (lets call it "elemental aura"). No matter which of these auras you receive (from any source), it will be turned into elemental aura and have slightly lowered effects of auras from 2 attunements you currently have : 75% of each if dual, 150% if fully attuned; weaver auras can have static effect - the one you get on receiving aura (they might need specific names like plasma, steam...), or they can change their effect on each attunement swap (sounds like it would be hard to implement).

Additional (and optional) way of getting self buffs, more trait benefits and even elite spec development: a new resource, lets call it attuned core. You get these cores from swapping attunements and receiving auras (with a maximum stack of 4 for example). Traits like minor adepts from elemental specializations could grant stats per core. Those specializations could have traits that benefit from these (burning enemies cleanse 1 condition per core, chill does pulsing damage per core, disables transfer boon and condition per core, incoming critical strikes cleanse/grant barrier per core for example). Arcane could further increase core's supply and add some benefits - number of conditions per critical strike/arcane skill scales with cores, damage output scales with cores instead of boons, might/fury on attunement swap scales with cores etc. Tempest can raise number of maximum stats and make overloads grant additional cores, increase duration on aura boons based on number of cores, add barrier/heal per core on each aura application, have rebound's health scale with cores... Weaver can also have improved barrier based on cores, additional damage on swiftness (swift revenge trait) and so on. New elite specs can use cores as charging resource (like astral force): mechanic available only at X amount of cores (if it's one skill, like specific arcane attunement) or have separate cores that dont deplete (you get fire core on attuning to fire/receiving fire aura; they stack up to 5 times and get removed when you use F1 mechanic).

4) Ideas I had included attunement cooldown refresh (like fresh air), condition/effect "immunity" (incoming stuns are shorter when specialized into air for example) and skill cooldown reduction as minor traits (only the cdr trait, first two should be major) on each elemental specialization. The reason for last suggestion is that we always have access to all attunements, so we should always benefit from cooldown reduction if we spec into certain element. As an example, if warriors want to use axes they will benefit from axe trait, but that trait is pointless without axes equipped so trait is better as a major rather than minor. That trait never gets wasted on ele, but it takes unnecessary spot as major trait.
Another point is to make traits in each column have different roles : both diamond skin and stone heart provide defense, but there's no defensive trait in master column in earth. All 3 grandmaster traits in air are focused on damage, all 3 in water on support.Example for fire spec: top trait provides direct damage, middle trait improves burning application/duration/damage, bottom trait gives some minor utility/defense or offensive group support. I'll label these as attributes.

Minor traits on 4 elemental specializations:

  • permanent stat boost (power, healing power, precision, vitality - to avoid toughness issues in pve, respectively)
  • effect on attuning - melee aoe burn, soothing mist, superspeed, aoe cripple+bleed. Aura proc.
  • 20-30% weapon skill cooldown reduction. [Alternative: make all weapon skills cooldowns lower by additional (to previous thread suggestions, mine can be found on page 2) 10% or so, by default - no traits required. Add some effects on element specific skills (might on burning skills, burning on non-burning fire skills, swiftness on wind skills, fury on lightning skills, regen on water skills, brief daze on ice skills, protection on stone skills, bleeding on dust skills)].

The goal is to have all 'attributes' present in each trait column (utility/support will be different attribute on each element).

Fire - strong for pve and staff, useless everywhere else. Attributes : damage output, conditions (burning), offensive support.
Adept:

  • Conjurer could double stats from conjured weapons and/or have those stats for several seconds after dropping. If ammo charges become a thing on conjureds this could be useful in pvp modes. Alternative: it can grant ~10-20% damage while wielding. Always present: Cooldown reduction on utility conjureds (not on their weapon skills).
  • Stat conversion : condi damage->condi duration.
  • Auras grant might on application, improved duration of fire aura.

Master:

  • Extra damage per stack of might (0,5-1% per stack, 12,5-25% total - it's the only % damage modifier in this fire spec without conjurer alternative).
  • Chance to burn on critical strike/improved damage from burning (10%). Improved duration on burning (20%).
  • Power bonus from minor trait is shared with allies (preferably effect that doesnt stack with empower allies).

Grandmaster:

  • Persisting flames (unchanged)
  • Pyromancer's puissance: change to gain might (5-8 stacks, 10-15 sec duration) and recharge fire attunement on kill.
  • Burning ashes reworked into active cleanse on burning enemy/attacking a burned enemy (or halved cooldown from current trait).

Water - not much focus on offensive part of water-ice, traits are either too competitive or there's only one good option per column. Attributes: aoe healing, condi cleanse/self sustain, conditions (vulnerability, chill).
Adept:

  • Auras grant regeneration on application, improved duration on frost aura.
  • Cantrip trait unchanged (cdr, regen+vigor on cast).
  • Chilling enemies applies vulnerability (whether on application, per second of chill or both). Improved chill duration.

Master:

  • Stat conversion: healing power -> outgoing healing (100->1% for example).
  • Outgoing regen will cleanse conditions.
  • Chance to freeze foe on chill (2-3 sec duration, 33-50% chance, 10+ cooldown per target in pvp modes)

Grandmaster:

  • Water fields slowly revive allies per pulse. Reviving allies recharges water attunement.
  • Chilling a foe applies frostbite debuff (4 second dration, refreshes on application, like superspeed). Take less damage from foes with frostbite (10-20%).
  • 5-10% more damage vs vulnerable foes. Vulnerability lasts longer.

Air - too much focus on damage, competitive traits have same focus. Attributes: critical strikes, mobility/evades, disables.
Adept:

  • Auras grant fury on application. Improved duration on shocking aura .
  • Casting glyphs grants aoe superspeed to allies (3 seconds). Elementals spawn with 5 second superspeed. Cooldown on glyphs reduced, including elemental passive and active skills.
  • Increased duration of outgoing disables.

Master:

  • Critical strikes do 15% more damage + stat conversion: precision->ferocity.
  • Evading attacks grants swiftness. Endurance regeneration is faster: 33% with swiftness, 66% with superspeed.
  • Incoming disables transfer 2 conditions to foe (20 cooldown). Outgoing disables transfer 2 boons per enemy (5-15 cooldown; static field might need special interaction with this trait).

Grandmaster:

  • Critical hits strike foes with lightning discharge (single target damage+vulnerability; 8 second cooldown) and recharge air attunement. Cooldown on lightning discharge is refreshed on swapping to air attunement.
  • Lightning fields last longer and pulse superspeed (one second each second). Blasting lightning fields grants superspeed (3 sec duration, 5-10 cooldown). Core ele would need more sources of lightning field, otherwise this trait serves no purpose outside of staff. Ideas: swirling winds create lightning field. Ride the lightning creates small lightning field at start; upon reaching max range/target, elementalist can recast this skill to swap positions with created field.
    -Lightning rod: disabling enemy strikes it with lightning and applies weakness. Due to removal of discharged lightning from minor, this trait would need increased damage (alternative: add vulnerability and blind).

Earth - generally just weak traits or traits that grant good bonuses with very unreliable uptimes. Attributes: self defense, defensive support, conditions (bleed, cripple, immobilize, blind).
Adept:

  • Stat conversion: vitality->toughness.
  • Auras grant protection on application. Increased duration on magnetic aura.
  • Signets keep passive effect on activation. Cooldowns reduced.

Master:

  • Gain barrier on incoming critical hits and condition applications (small barrier on minimal cooldown).
  • Grant stability when you grant protection (~10 sec cooldown).
  • Bleeding does more damage (10%) and lasts longer (20%).

Grandmaster:

  • Breaking out of stun recharges earth attunement and grants medium barrier.
  • Blast finishers grant stability (2 stacks, 3 sec duration, 15 sec cooldown for example).
  • Increased duration on cripple and immobilization. Conditions on crippled or immobile enemy last longer.

All attunement recharge traits should work differently with elite specs. They could reduce attunement cooldown by 8 on tempest, with around 3 second cooldown.

Arcane - generally a good specialization. I'll add some tweaks to make it have better synergy/concept with other specs.
Attributes: attunements, critical strikes, boons.

  • Minors: permanent concentration, boon on attuning based on attunement, fury on attunement swap.
  • Arcane resurrection removed (implemented in water spec).
  • Arcane precision: removed global cooldown; added cooldown per attunement (5 for example)
  • Elemental contingency: gain boon on critical hit based on attunement (retal swapped with might, rest unchanged; all durations improved slightly). Renewing stamina removed due to vigor application on water crit.
  • Evasive arcana: improved radius on fire, water and air effects; earth radius slightly reduced to match other 3. Added short weakness on air effect.
  • Bountiful power renamed to bountiful elements and added more effects based on current attunement (3% condi damage in fire, 3% outgoing healing in water, 3% critical strike damage in air, 3% damage reduction in earth per boon). Alternative: gain boon duration based on active boons.

I dont have any ideas currently for 2 removed traits, but I'll edit if I come up with something.
Arcane shield can be reworked to be a 2 second block. Reactivating shield will trigger aura explosion effect in melee range and spawn aura, based on attunement. Trait can be changed to do the same thing, with stun break instead of blocking part; triggers on being disabled.

Tempest

  • Shocking aura added to eye of the storm.
  • Rebound briefly slows nearby enemies and cleanses/converts several conditions on successful "revive" in addition to previous effects.
  • Lightning orb changed to create patches of lightning fields (like wildfire) which pulse small damage and vulnerability.
  • Water globe: water field attached to player.
  • Optional visual flavor on fire and air overloads for more destructive look: make them appear like actual storm, a transformation like tornado skill. Water: add icy particles to swirling water; make water bubble freeze over time and finish in crushing ice explosion. Earth: add more sand/dust below and around rocks.

Copied from my previous post for easier understanding. Some ideas were scratched because they were a bit too much.

I'd like to see damaging skills from tempest reworked into offensive support skills. All overloads should have improved radius to 360 and affect 10 allies and at least 5 enemies for every pulse and every impact. If they are remaining as 6 second "wait" time and 4 second channel then they need to have additional effect at the end of the channel (not just irrelevant aoe field that everyone can walk out of). Finishing overload grants effect that triggers on attunement swap from traits (each elemental spec has a trait that procs on attunement swap, arcane excluded) - number of procs on finished overload: 1 or 2 (assuming player has those specializations active). Addition: each overload will trigger aura (from attuning - adept minor trait) if that specialization is equipped.

Fire overload : pulses minor damage, burning, might, aoe buff that gives burning on hit each second (same effect like ashes of just on FB or sun spirit; stacks up to 5 times - could be reduced in pvp modes; damage scales with allies' stats, not the caster's). Finishing overload grants aoe 5 might, 5-10 seconds of fury and 5 more stacks of this buff. Tornado after overloading and whirl finisher would be removed.Water overload : pulses small heal, short regen, vigor and 1 cleanse per second. Cleanses 2 conditions Applies short, aoe freeze (icebow 5 effect), large heal and 5 seconds of vigor and regen on finished overload.Air overload : pulses minor damage, swiftness, vulnerability and static charge each second (stacks up to 5 times - could be reduced in pvp modes; damage scales with allies' stats, not the caster's; 1 second internal cooldown per enemy hit might be needed in pvp modes to avoid gimmick 1-shots). Finishing overload grants 3 more charges, applies 5/10 vulnerability brief superspeed and blinds.Earth overload : pulses cripple, bleed, minor damage, protection and stability (on all allies as well) per second. Finishing overload grants immobilize, 5 stacks of bleed, 3 stacks of stability (aoe), 5 seconds of protection. Dust cyclone and blast finisher after overloading removed.

By minor damage I mean something that doesn't crit for over 1k in offensive gear.

Minors: auras you grant to yourself are shared with allies (water supports with heals and cleanses, tempest is one that supports with auras), gain one stack of stability when charging overload (mirage loses dodge roll but gains superspeed as compensation; tempest is vulnerable while overloading so it should at least have stability as compensation; storms are destructive and impossible to stop after all).
Attributes: offensive support/debuffs, defensive support/self sustain, utility support.

Adept:

  • Shouts apply retaliation/alacrity/quickness/aegis based on attunement they are used in. Apply weakness on affected foes.
  • Auras you grant heal/apply barrier on everyone affected.
  • Apply quickness when you apply superspeed. Optional: superspeed you recieve stacks up to 6 seconds.

Master:

  • Cast heat sync when you reach 20 stacks of might; 20-25 cooldown. Gain boon duration with warhorn.
  • Auras convert conditions into boons (very short icd, if any)
  • Applying aura grants a stack that reduces incoming damage by 3%. Duration 8 seconds, stacks up to 4 times. Self only.

Grandmaster:

  • Overloading grants aoe effects based on attunement (1 second duration on each pulse): 10% condi damage, 10-20% incoming heal, 15% crit chance, 10-20% damage reduction. Finishing overload grants same bonus for a few seconds.
  • Overloads slow (fire and water) or weaken (air and earth) enemies in them. Finishing overload will apply brief CC (pull, freeze, daze, knockback) based on attunement. Both parts are unblockable. First part can only be negated with invulnerabilities (dodging inside overload will still affect foes, as well as using skills like defy pain).
  • Gain complete immunity to specific effects while overloading and 4 seconds after it (fire-burning and torment, water-chill and vulnerability, air - stun/daze and weakness, earth - bleed, cripple and immobilize).

Weaver is much more defined than tempest and works fine gameplay wise, it just needs some higher numbers in right spots.

As a lot of people already mentioned it needs:

  • stronger barrier from traits;
  • its own condi cleanse. Example: rework woven stride to cleanse condition on swiftness (with short cooldown) and superspeed (no cooldown) application;
  • more damage output on swift revenge while under effect of superspeed.

Community wishlist from demo weekends:

  • Add interaction between dual attunements and glyphs, arcane traits, minor traits from elemental specializations, cooldown reduction on dual skills.
  • Let main hand dagger get vitality bonus from master's fortitude.
  • Get increased bonus from elemental polyphony while fully attuned.

Edit: formatting, typos and clarity

  • Added suggestion to make aura explosions trigger after certain amount of boons and conditions was applied, as well as potentional scaling of explosion effect with those two amounts.
  • More clarity. More ice effects on water overload. Weakness on tempest shout trait. No more sand squall passive trait. Added unblockable on destructive overload trait. Made fire overload's finish effect stronger due to no "explosive impact" like on other overloads. Changed vulnerability to superspeed on finishing air overload; added swiftness per pulse.
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Ever since I started GW2 (a bit less than 5 years ago), I've been an elementalist main, mainly (but not only) PvE.

On a class that's so versatile, I find that one of the worst drawbacks is actually to require more than one gear set. I think that stats changing is too expensive and complicated, but that's a more general problem, I just find it more present on a class like the elementalist.

  • Now to the ele, let's start with the core specs:I find the core ele to be a good design overall. One of the main issues I have is with the utility skills... I find very few of them are useful in any way. Conjured weapons in particular, feel very clunky to use, enough for me not to use them at all, not even the elite greatsword. The ground-target component which allows allies to (sometimes by mistake) pick it up when you wanted to save it for later, as well as the time limit (both for the weapon in your hand and that on the ground) make me feel particularly limitted in my actions.Since I find the ability to give a weapon to an ally to be barely useful, I'd like them mutch better if they had an ammunition/charge system like stances (but please don't make them like engineer kits, the elem gameplay is complicated enough already xD).

  • On the Tempest, I find the specialisation to be waaay to slow in general. First you wait for the Overload to be ready, then you wait for the Overload to end its cast, then you wait 20 seconds for the attunement to be ready again... Perhaps Overloads should be ready mutch sooner, the huge cooldown being enough of a drawback? I particularly hate the interraction between Fresh Air and Air Overload - the former shouldn't reduce the later's cooldown at all, it should only reload the attunement. Because of this, I feel like spamming Air Overload is the only way to play a decent Tempest DPS build, and I find it so uninteresting... I also think offensive Overloads (Air and Fire) should be reworked, perhaps into something with a shorter cast, and then the AOE would folow you around but you would still be able to use others things?

  • The weaver is a very interesting design and I love it. That said, I feel like both the elite stance and the healing stance should have instant initial casts, because both of them require additional actions after they're cast to be fully effective. Unravel doesn't feel good to use as a 5-seconds boon, because sometimes when it is active and you want to dual attune, then you need to wait for the effect to wear off before swapping attunement. In the opposite situation, it can also make you feel like you need to swap attunement early in order to fully attune before the effect disappears. It should perhaps be reworked to either make you fully attune to your current attunement, or make your next attunement swap fully attune instead of only attuning your main hand (with the ability to "uncast" it if we pressed it by mistake or changed our mind).

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@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Sunshine.5014" said:Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That will push us to the same cycle of over buff/overnerf again.

What we need is:
  • Instead of raw damage buff, we need more ways to deal damage
    reliability
    (as in, skills don't have to rely on dumb opponents)
  • Instead of raw healing buff, we need more
    active defense
    (teleport, counter, superspeed, blind, weakness, block)
  • Instead of more boons, we need to nerf Ele boons access, and spread the Condi cleanse from Water to all the lines.

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That sounds a lot like homogenization to me. Pass. I prefer the straight dps buff. I like how fragile the gameplay is and I don't care it doesn't translate well in PvP. It should be possible in PvE, and it should be rewarded accordingly.

Homogenization? yeah sure, we can get more dps buff and trait with damage modifier that gives absolutely nothing to the class, oh wait, that's what we already have! Let's get locked into water line in every build with every elite specialization because every other trait line is forcing you to pick water. Ele right now has "fragile" gameplay, and it has always been, but it's not rewarding, that's the whole point.

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Conjures :

  • Someone has proposed this before, but making conjure weapons into secondary weapons when they are summoned vs the whole pick up would be nice. Once you conjure a weapon, you "equip" it. You can switch back and forth you're normal weapon set as long as the duration of the conjured weapon is still up.

Glyph of Storms :

  • Increase the casting range to 1200.
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Just a random question, but is there a reason why pretty much all Water Skills have to be so severely lacking in damage? I know you swap to the attunement for healing, but it seems like those skills suffer the worst by far. Even more than Earth, which tend to have mitigation factors added in, and with such a low health pool, the ability to not be one-shot feels more valuable than a few ticks of Soothing Mist.

The way it appears to me, and correct me if I'm wrong:

Fire = 2nd Best Power Damage + Best Condition DamageAir = Best Power Damage + Various Utilities (Weakness, CCs, Projectile Hate, Speed Boosts, etc)Water = Healing + ChillEarth = 3rd Best Power Damage though some skills comparable to fire + 2nd Best Condition Damage + Various Utilities (Typically mitigation, CCs)

Maybe hitting things with big chunks of jagged ice could be given the Reaper treatment. Low DPS, sure, but very high "Damage Per Instance" akin to something like Gravedigger. A reward for actually being able to land half of the stuff.

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@KidRoleplay.3615 said:The way it appears to me, and correct me if I'm wrong:

Fire = 2nd Best Power Damage + Best Condition DamageAir = Best Power Damage + Various Utilities (Weakness, CCs, Projectile Hate, Speed Boosts, etc)Water = Healing + ChillEarth = 3rd Best Power Damage though some skills comparable to fire + 2nd Best Condition Damage + Various Utilities (Typically mitigation, CCs)

  • Fire: Sustained dmg through power dmg and burns. Steady might generation (with skills or auras), some condition removal (cleansing fire), minor sustain with blinds (blinding ashes)
  • Air: Burst power dmg, mobility and control. Swiftness, superspeed and fury generation (with attunement or auras) and bonuses to precision and ferocity. Higher focus on bursts of power dmg with multiple quick critical hits, vulnerability application, and against disabled (tempest defense) or low hp (bolt to the heart) opponents. Sustain with CC, mobility and weakness.
  • Water: Healing and cleansing. Very low dmg, focus on control (with chill) and sustain (healing and condi cleanse). Regen and vigor boom generation, healing power and outgoing healing bonuses. Focus on steady healing in water attunement (with soothing mist and improved water skills), support (sharing auras and their effects) or cleansing (with cleanses on regen boons, water attunement, etc).
  • Earth: Defense and control. Protection and stability boon generation, lower condi duration and damage defensive bonuses. Focus on defense by reducing incoming dmg and condition duration on you and controlling opponents. Applies cripple, immobilize and bleeding conditions and focuses on hard cc and control.
  • Arcane: Focus on attunement swaping and effects. Reduces attunement CD and improves boom duration. Provides boons and conditions based on attunement to attunement swaps and critical hits, mostly short duration versions of the main attunment traitlines to incentivize quick and constant attunement swap.
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@Arados.4890 said:

@"Sunshine.5014" said:Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That will push us to the same cycle of over buff/overnerf again.

What we need is:
  • Instead of raw damage buff, we need more ways to deal damage
    reliability
    (as in, skills don't have to rely on dumb opponents)
  • Instead of raw healing buff, we need more
    active defense
    (teleport, counter, superspeed, blind, weakness, block)
  • Instead of more boons, we need to nerf Ele boons access, and spread the Condi cleanse from Water to all the lines.

Please do not propose straight DPS buff, nor propose more healing on the Water traits/skills.

That sounds a lot like homogenization to me. Pass. I prefer the straight dps buff. I like how fragile the gameplay is and I don't care it doesn't translate well in PvP. It should be possible in PvE, and it should be rewarded accordingly.

Homogenization? yeah sure, we can get more dps buff and trait with damage modifier that gives absolutely nothing to the class, oh wait, that's what we already have! Let's get locked into water line in every build with every elite specialization because every other trait line is forcing you to pick water. Ele right now has "fragile" gameplay, and it has always been, but it's not rewarding, that's the whole point.

I never pick water. Not in PvE, not in WvW. I go full glass. And I want to keep doing so. The only problem is, the damage output is no longer enough to justify all the drawbacks. However, I don't want to get rid of the drawbacks - that would be homogenization, as that's what the other dps builds do - I want to get my damage back. And keep ele's identity as a high-skill glass cannon. You want something for PvP? Sure. So long as your "something" doesn't contradict what I want. You want reliable damage? Sure. As long as we get the option to have the same less reliable, but higher output damage builds. You want active defences? Sure. As long as they are not available on a full damage spec, since that would lower its damage potential for balance reasons. Same for condi cleanse. And please, straight dps buff for the full damage spec, kthxbye.

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I find that ALL base classes are sub-par from expansion enabled classes. The elementalist probably the worst of all. Especially staff elementalist.As a WvW player ONLY your expansions offer absolutely nothing of value.In fact with each expansion I get robbed of value because I become a second and then third class citizen.The expanded classes should be available to WvW people otherwise your game is simply a pay to win model.

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@steki.1478 said:Fire - strong for pve and staff, useless everywhere else.

This isn't true anymore because Fire is great for Sword Weaver too, both condition and power build.

Grandmaster:

  • Persisting flames (unchanged)
  • Pyromancer's puissance: change to gain might (5-8 stacks, 10-15 sec duration) and recharge fire attunement on kill.
  • Burning ashes reworked into active cleanse on burning enemy/attacking a burned enemy (or halved cooldown from current trait).

Pyromancer's Puissance is a trait that works very well as it is now on Sword, due to fire skills on sword being better than Air skills, you camp sword and get 21-22 stacks of might on yourself without boon duration gear. The reason this trait is weak is because only Sword and Staff have good Fire auto attacks, for Dagger and Scepter it's better to swap as quickly as possible to another attunement (in PVE Air - or Earth for condition builds), Allowing you to get back to Fire when you kill something won't fix the Fire skills on those weapons being lackluster, staff users will still use Persisting Flames anyway. And the most important problem in PVE is that someone else (a Druid) will give you your 25 stacks of Might, making might generation useless. Now if Pyromancer's Puissance could be reliably combined with Heat Sync for 25-stack might uptime then we'd get a good Might generation Alternative.

As for PVP, I think the nature of Elementalist (low health/armor) means relying on defensive trait lines, meaning Fire will always be a secondary option unfortunately

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"steki.1478" said:
Fire
- strong for pve and staff, useless everywhere else.

This isn't true anymore because Fire is great for Sword Weaver too, both condition and power build.

Grandmaster:
  • Persisting flames (unchanged)
  • Pyromancer's puissance: change to gain might (5-8 stacks, 10-15 sec duration) and recharge fire attunement on kill.
  • Burning ashes reworked into active cleanse on burning enemy/attacking a burned enemy (or halved cooldown from current trait).

Pyromancer's Puissance is a trait that works very well as it is now on Sword, due to fire skills on sword being better than Air skills, you camp sword and get 21-22 stacks of might on yourself without boon duration gear. The reason this trait is weak is because only Sword and Staff have good Fire auto attacks, for Dagger and Scepter it's better to swap as quickly as possible to another attunement (in PVE Air - or Earth for condition builds), Allowing you to get back to Fire when you kill something won't fix the Fire skills on those weapons being lackluster, staff users will still use Persisting Flames anyway. And the most important problem in PVE is that someone else (a Druid) will give you your 25 stacks of Might, making might generation useless. Now if Pyromancer's Puissance could be reliably combined with Heat Sync for 25-stack might uptime then we'd get a good Might generation Alternative.

As for PVP, I think the nature of Elementalist (low health/armor) means relying on defensive trait lines, meaning Fire will always be a secondary option unfortunately

I said pve, which includes all builds. If you meant sword in pvp/wvw, I'm pretty sure those builds would rather use bottom trait for higher defense, if they'd use fire at all.

With this "rework", a good amount of might would be supplied from hitting enemies with fire aura, which is a faster and weaker version of curent PP trait. I put might on kill so that more offensive (aka ranged) builds in wvw, as well as any open world build, can get a steady flow of might without camping fire.

None of the traits suggested are supposed to fix lackluster skills (I linked my previous post about skill improvements). They are supposed to enforce attunement swapping rather than camping and add more diversity so not all traits in same column have the same goal, but on a slightly different way (FA and rod are unfortunately not following this rule, but luckily the builds that use one trait would rarely benefit from the other one).

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@"steki.1478" said:I said pve, which includes all builds. If you meant sword in pvp/wvw, I'm pretty sure those builds would rather use bottom trait for higher defense, if they'd use fire at all.

With this "rework", a good amount of might would be supplied from hitting enemies with fire aura, which is a faster and weaker version of curent PP trait. I put might on kill so that more offensive (aka ranged) builds in wvw, as well as any open world build, can get a steady flow of might without camping fire.

None of the traits suggested are supposed to fix lackluster skills (I linked my previous post about skill improvements). They are supposed to enforce attunement swapping rather than camping and add more diversity so not all traits in same column have the same goal, but on a slightly different way (FA and rod are unfortunately not following this rule, but luckily the builds that use one trait would rarely benefit from the other one).

For your Pyromancer's Puissance change, did you mean to type 'chance to grant might'? I understood the reasoning behind doing away with the cooldown traits but your suggestions did away with what are currently very good traits, such as One With Air.

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@"steki.1478" said:I said pve, which includes all builds. If you meant sword in pvp/wvw, I'm pretty sure those builds would rather use bottom trait for higher defense, if they'd use fire at all.

I'm talking about PVE too:https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/elementalist/weaver/sword/https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/elementalist/weaver/condition/Power AND Condition Sword builds both use Fire traits and both deal more damage than Staff (not on huge targets)Sword combined with Fire traits is rather good right now.

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@"Usagi.4835" said:

For your Pyromancer's Puissance change, did you mean to type 'chance to grant might'? I understood the reasoning behind doing away with the cooldown traits but your suggestions did away with what are currently very good traits, such as One With Air.

1 kill = X might + recharge. You get quick flow of short might from aura (with any skill, not just fire one), but "slow" and long supply from kills with this PP.

One with air was moved to minor and replaced current 25% speed while staying in air.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"steki.1478" said:I said pve, which includes all builds. If you meant sword in pvp/wvw, I'm pretty sure those builds would rather use bottom trait for higher defense, if they'd use fire at all.

I'm talking about PVE too:
Power AND Condition Sword builds both use Fire traits and both deal more damage than Staff (not on huge targets)Sword combined with Fire traits is rather good right now.

I think you misunderstood me. I meant to say that fire spec is currently only useful on pve builds (any dmg oriented pve build) and staff builds in general (like wvw).

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Basically small changes like buffs won't fix the ele problem.A complete rework of the current core+tempest+weaver is needed and overall a better 3rd elite spec.Fixing small problems with skills 1 by 1 won't fix the overall problem.As I said - a complete rework is needed. The concept is great but it is poorly executed.

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