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Concerns about Elementalist


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@"Manakel Angel.1047" said:About the major traits of these specializations, I'll just say some don't seems at their place.For exemple, the Conjurer trait in Fire trait line. It says "Gain a fire aura when an ally picks up a conjures weapon. Conjure weapons abilities have reduced recharge".What do conjure weapons have to do with fire ? There are 5 conjure weapons, only two use fire. I understand it is normal to have a trait about conjure weapons (or glyphs, etc) but why in fire (or air, etc) ? If you replace conjure weapons with "conjure flame axe" and "conjure fiery greatsword" then it is right where it should be, but you need to add the same kind of trait in the water line for the "conjure frost bow" skill (or the air hammer and earth shield).

This is something i think should be changed : the way element specialization works and not affect just the element you are in, or change the element specializations for glyph magic, conjure magic, etc because this is what you will actuallyput in your skill bar. The second is probably much more difficult for the dev to do.

I think that some of your suggestions could be described as needlessly over-complicating the class, such as meteors having rocks in them. I also don't see the point in splitting skill types into further subgroups by adding a separate trait just for Conjure Frost Bow into the Water line. That's a completely redundant trait that would take up one of three slots in any of the tiers. In some cases, I think number tweaks can go some way in alleviating existing issues with certain ele weapons and specs e.g. reverting the nerf to Electric Discharge, Lava Font and splitting the damage reduction per hit changes between game modes. I'd love for Arcane Blast charges to go back up to 3, as that affected base ele too, but it's not a huge deal.

Dual skills definitely need looking at, particularly Water/Air and Water/Earth, across multiple weapons. For scepter, the fire and earth autoattacks also require work; on focus, Flamewall and Fire Shield really need to be updated. But again, I'd advise caution in lobbying ANet to rework ele from the ground up; they have a pretty shaky record with even routine balance patches and it's unusual for them to renege on previous changes that are no longer relevant/appropriate for the current meta.

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@"bOTEB.1573" said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:Now, with that said, I don't know how Anet may fix it because ele is super complex but the most reasonable solution for me is a complete rework + building the next elite spec while keeping in mind all these things.

Is this the point of this thread? To find solution to the Elementalist problems?

We are giving suggestions based on our concerns (which I think is the point of this thread). How and if Anet will make any changes is a completely different story.

What players will do: Give well thought out suggestions that come from hours of experience and thought about ways to improve an ailing class, with the hope that devs will listen and implement some desired changes.

What Devs will do: "lol, shatterstone does +15% damage....ele is now fixed!"

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@BlackBeard.2873 said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:Now, with that said, I don't know how Anet may fix it because ele is super complex but the most reasonable solution for me is a complete rework + building the next elite spec while keeping in mind all these things.

Is this the point of this thread? To find solution to the Elementalist problems?

We are giving suggestions based on our concerns (which I think is the point of this thread). How and if Anet will make any changes is a completely different story.

What players will do:
Give well thought out suggestions that come from hours of experience and thought about ways to improve an ailing class, with the hope that devs will listen and implement some desired changes.

What Devs will do:
"lol, shatterstone does +15% damage....ele is now fixed!"

I really hope they don't go this way. Even if that may be their first time doing it, a major rework of a few mechanics is, I think, what the ele needs.

  • Several people have asked for Conjured Weapons to use a charges system, sometimes even suggesting removing the time limit before the weapon automatically drops to avoid being cut off in our combos. It's not a good idea to stick to a weapon for too long anyway. This may work, with the last charge only starting to reload after you dropped the weapon in order to balance things out. Sharing the weapon is an outdated system that brings nothing to the table, simply because the ele knows better than you how to use the weapon, so it's always better to keep it for them. It's as if the engineer could give their kits to someone else instead of using it themselves...
  • I find weapons like the scepter and the focus could use a full rework. This is personnal, but air #2 feels stressful to use because you can't pre-cast it (pressing the button before the cooldown is ready so the skill is used as soon as it becomes avalaible). So you have to watch the cooldown closely and spam it if you want to optimize the rotation. Why not give it a second charge (while removing a little bit of damage if necessary for balance purpose)? That would allow to "load" your burst when you're not in Air attunement, without rewarding staying in Air attunement for a long time.
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imo all they have to do is give eles more base hp. This gives us the freedom to use either more aggressive gear/skills/runes, or indeed go the other way and be more tanky. Giving more HP will also be very unlikely to overtune us (gear difference is not that massive as we already stack fairly high in condy/power). I bet the class would be 1 hundred more times more enjoyable for seasoned players and new players alike. Finally, by tweaking only 1 stat it would be remarkably easy for the balance team to tweak in hot patches to fine tune as we go with little risk. Safes route: next balance patch give 1-2k hp, then increment by 500 as needed over the next few months until the meta settle down,

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@"ROMANG.1903" said:

  • I find weapons like the scepter and the focus could use a full rework. This is personnal, but air #2 feels stressful to use because you can't pre-cast it (pressing the button before the cooldown is ready so the skill is used as soon as it becomes avalaible). So you have to watch the cooldown closely and spam it if you want to optimize the rotation. Why not give it a second charge (while removing a little bit of damage if necessary for balance purpose)? That would allow to "load" your burst when you're not in Air attunement, without rewarding staying in Air attunement for a long time.That seems like a really minor quibble to me and I think they should leave it as is, given the cooldown is so short anyway... If it's not broken, why fix it?
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@"ROMANG.1903" said:I really hope they don't go this way. Even if that may be their first time doing it, a major rework of a few mechanics is, I think, what the ele needs.

  • Several people have asked for Conjured Weapons to use a charges system, sometimes even suggesting removing the time limit before the weapon automatically drops to avoid being cut off in our combos. It's not a good idea to stick to a weapon for too long anyway. This may work, with the last charge only starting to reload after you dropped the weapon in order to balance things out. Sharing the weapon is an outdated system that brings nothing to the table, simply because the ele knows better than you how to use the weapon, so it's always better to keep it for them. It's as if the engineer could give their kits to someone else instead of using it themselves...
  • I find weapons like the scepter and the focus could use a full rework. This is personnal, but air #2 feels stressful to use because you can't pre-cast it (pressing the button before the cooldown is ready so the skill is used as soon as it becomes avalaible). So you have to watch the cooldown closely and spam it if you want to optimize the rotation. Why not give it a second charge (while removing a little bit of damage if necessary for balance purpose)? That would allow to "load" your burst when you're not in Air attunement, without rewarding staying in Air attunement for a long time.

I think both of these suggestions are terrible and misguided in the pursuit of strengthening elementalist. One of the most shocking things you said was, "Sharing the weapon is an outdated system that brings nothing to the table, simply because the ele knows better than you how to use the weapon, so it's always better to keep it for them." This is utterly unimaginative.First of all, if all conjures were changed to be fundamentally useful like earth shield and fiery greatsword, then the team support potential is limitless and the possible applications are without bounds. Think of it: Your necro is under a lot of pressure? Drop down an earth shield so he can invuln, projectile block, AoE pull into his shades, AoE pull into his shroud, block, etc. Is your team far away and you're with your firebrand and you think it's best for your firebrand to support your allies? Drop a fiery greatsword so his mobility is doubled, if not tripled. Want massive AoE cleave in a team fight? Drop a lightning hammer so you and your ally can use the 4 skill and cleave down your enemies. This is NOT an outdated system, it's simply unused due to conjures being clunky and having bad design. Secondly, the idea that the ele always knows the conjure better than a non-ele and always will is... naive. If a conjure weapon exists in the meta, people will quickly learn its skills.Also, my main gripe with your first suggestion is that you think that simply adding a charge will fix the clunkiness of Conjures. Conjures need to act as temporary kits on the elementalist and act as they do normally on allies that pick them up. This way, you can cycle through your cooldowns effortlessly and smoothly instead of having to recast your conjure.With your second suggestion, I feel as if you simply do not know how powerful scepter/focus actually has been in the past. It was a top tier elementalist dueling build, and for a while in HoT it was the best core class duelist in the game. It does NOT need a full rework. The cooldowns for air skills needs to be reduced and the damage needs to be increased because after the nerf to all cooldown reduction traits from 33% to 20%, fresh air was about 40% weaker than it was before. What you said about lightning strike gave me whiplash because it shocked me that an instant cast skill with no animation could be seen as a weakness. Have you played the core game? Core guard can only beat core warrior when they use their instant cast/no animation skills perfectly, like their F1 virtue. This is a STRENGTH of scepter, not a weakness. And lastly, giving it a damage nerf with a charge is... unwise. Why would you willingly increase its cooldown and lower its damage for the sake of a charge? It'd be fine with a 1-1.5 second cooldown reduction.(I used a lot of PvP examples here only because Scepter/Focus is, on paper, optimal for PvP play ONLY, which is a good thing.)

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@Manakel Angel.1047 said:Well, all arguments have to be put in context. I can hardly talk about the elementalist without talking about what it does.You say my suggestion is uninspired and mundane. If I put too much information, you don't put enough. Why ? Arguments ? Other suggestions ?I see none of that

I disagree because the context is clear, and has been clear for 200+ replies. We all are VERY aware of what elementalist does. Here is an example of me proposing an argument for elementalist without talking about what it does: Elementalist's damage is too low for its also very low health pool. See how I didn't have to explain everything about elementalist to make this point? If you're looking for other suggestions/arguments there are 6 other pages full of them.

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@Feanor.2358 said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one. But again, I'm not trying to actively shoehorn the class into a pve role. I'm only disagreeing with other people trying to shoehorn it into only a pvp one. See the difference?

I disagree strongly with this sentiment. In a community of people, EACH perspective is equally important. If you lose players because they're ignored, it hurts the business no matter what perspective they hold. It is the job of Arenanet's balancing team to acquiesce the requests of as many players as possible, not to ignore an entire subset of players because they're a minority. Losing money is losing money, so each group of people, PvP or PvE must be listened to. Also, it's not like PvPers ask for nerfs to staff, and it's not like PvErs asked for nerfs to support Tempest.

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For PvP:Earth is unusable and writhe with useless traits. Here are some trait changes I've thought of to increase the synergy Earth has with itself and other specializations.

Stone Flesh: Toughness increased by 150. You gain an additional 210 toughness when attuned to Earth.Earth's Embrace: UnchangedSerrated Stones: Bleeding you inflict has increased duration and damage. You inflict increased damage on bleeding foes. You have a chance to inflict Slow on bleeding foes. Bleeding damage increased by 20%, duration increased by 20%, Damage to bleeding foes increased to 15%. Slow duration: 1 second. Chance on hit: 33%. ICD: 3 seconds.Elemental Shielding: Unchanged.Earthern Blast: Damage and debilitate nearby foes when attuning to Earth. Damage: 653. Cripple 3 seconds, Slow 1 second, Immobilization .5 seconds. Targets: 3. Radius: 240.Strength of Stone: Unchanged.Rock Solid: Grant Stability to nearby allies when gaining protection. Granting stability now breaks stuns. ICD: 5 seconds. Radius: 360. Stability: 1 stack, 5 seconds duration.Geomancer's Training: Unchanged.Geomancer's Defense: Unchanged.Diamond Skin: Grant resistance for 2 seconds when casting a signet. Signets maintain passive effects while recharging. Signets have a reduced recharge.Written in Stone: Gain charges when Critically Struck. Each charge grants Toughness and Vitality. At five charges, you explode your charges into shards of stone, inflicting nearby foes with bleeding. Toughness and Vitality per charge: 50. Chance to Critically hit: 100%. Bleeding per enemy struck: 5 stacks for 10 seconds.Stone Heart: You cannot be critically hit while attuned to Earth. You proc Stone Heart for 3 seconds after breaking stun.

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@BlackBeard.2873 said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:Now, with that said, I don't know how Anet may fix it because ele is super complex but the most reasonable solution for me is a complete rework + building the next elite spec while keeping in mind all these things.

Is this the point of this thread? To find solution to the Elementalist problems?

We are giving suggestions based on our concerns (which I think is the point of this thread). How and if Anet will make any changes is a completely different story.

What players will do:
Give well thought out suggestions that come from hours of experience and thought about ways to improve an ailing class, with the hope that devs will listen and implement some desired changes.

What Devs will do:
"lol, shatterstone does +15% damage....ele is now fixed!"

Right.Players with thousands of hours of experience: Here's multiple things you can do to give ele great builds that rival the meta.Anet: Oh did you mean buff a earth/earth sword direct damage by 6%? Okay!

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Last balance patches just made sword better in all game modes

Pvp/ WvWEle really needs more base toughness and health in order to be played more glassier thus increasing build diversity.

No other classes suffer like ele in this regard :

Guardian - I dont play it but you know guardiansNecro - High HP and BarriersWarrior - High HPpassive invul and regenThief -Perma stealth and lots of mobilityRanger - invul and stealthEngineer - same as aboveMesmer - Same as above + lots of mobility

Only exception would be Revenant, even though the viable buids are glass cannon can stay alive a lot longer when comparing a Weaver with the same stats.

Staff Weaver worthless in Zergs in WvWNow i can do more damge with a tank/condi Sword/Dagger/focus build taking less risk than with a Staff full Zerk gear.

In PvP it's only useful as a Bunker.

While buffs on sword are nice, Anet stealth nerfed Elemental Attunement a Arcane trait that gives a boon depending on the attunement no longer gives the boon when double attuning, nerfing Weaver's ability to be a bunker

There's a lot of work to be done with Ele in general but the more urgent are :

  • Revert the last changes to traits and skills, maybe except to Lava Font
  • Turn down Meteor shower Damage or just increase it's cooldown
  • Increase some dual skills speed, some are too slow for what they do
  • Increase Sword range
  • Increase base Toughness and HP
  • Some core weapons skills have too high cooldowns
  • ALL NERFS SHOULD BE FOCUSED ON WEAVER

Any changes done to utility/weapon skills would hurt Tempest and Core Ele which already are in a pretty bad place due to Staff nerfs

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@Poelala.2830 said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:

@"bOTEB.1573" said:Now, with that said, I don't know how Anet may fix it because ele is super complex but the most reasonable solution for me is a complete rework + building the next elite spec while keeping in mind all these things.

Is this the point of this thread? To find solution to the Elementalist problems?

We are giving suggestions based on our concerns (which I think is the point of this thread). How and if Anet will make any changes is a completely different story.

What players will do:
Give well thought out suggestions that come from hours of experience and thought about ways to improve an ailing class, with the hope that devs will listen and implement some desired changes.

What Devs will do:
"lol, shatterstone does +15% damage....ele is now fixed!"

Right.Players with thousands of hours of experience: Here's multiple things you can do to give ele great builds that rival the meta.Anet: Oh did you mean buff a earth/earth sword direct damage by 6%? Okay!

Lets hope not :)Also, you forget that Anet will look at all our suggestions like subjective and Anet is/will be very careful with how and what they will change.This is why our suggestions must be very constructive, well written and to cover some very important points like "how should" and "why should".Even if Anet knows that something is wrong with the ele and they are planning a change, we have to convince them how big this change should be (if they are planning a smaller one as you have given some examples).

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@Feanor.2358 said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one.

And here is the thing, how many of the Elementalist changes, especially the more recent ones, were aimed at general pve? None. All they did is nerf the damage of Elementalist so they aren't on top of the Raid benchmarks anymore, meanwhile Elementalist (including Tempest and Weaver) is inferior in general pve, story instances, open world and anything else compared to almost any other specialization. Try playing the latest story on Weaver and anything else and you'll see a gigantic difference. Try fighting some random veteran djinn around Elona with Weaver and any other build and you will also see a great difference.

I'm not against focusing more on the pve side and not the pvp side, as of course there are more pve players than pvp players, but this entire focus on balancing for Raids is getting really old. It's like all the developers care about is how all builds perform on the snowcrows benchmarks (with the exception of Necromancer) and I don't like this at all.

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@Poelala.2830 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one. But again, I'm not trying to actively shoehorn the class into a pve role. I'm only disagreeing with other people trying to shoehorn it into only a pvp one. See the difference?

I disagree strongly with this sentiment. In a community of people, EACH perspective is equally important. If you lose players because they're ignored, it hurts the business no matter what perspective they hold. It is the job of Arenanet's balancing team to acquiesce the requests of as many players as possible, not to ignore an entire subset of players because they're a minority. Losing money is losing money, so each group of people, PvP or PvE must be listened to. Also, it's not like PvPers ask for nerfs to staff, and it's not like PvErs asked for nerfs to support Tempest.

In theory. In practice you often have to prioritize because of limited development capacity. Obviously, the priority goes where it would affect most. Because in the end, it's better to lose hundreds than lose thousands. Obviously it's best to not lose anyone, but that isn't always possible.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one.

And here is the thing, how many of the Elementalist changes, especially the more recent ones, were aimed at general pve? None. All they did is nerf the damage of Elementalist so they aren't on top of the Raid benchmarks anymore, meanwhile Elementalist (including Tempest and Weaver) is inferior in general pve, story instances, open world and anything else compared to almost any other specialization. Try playing the latest story on Weaver and anything else and you'll see a gigantic difference. Try fighting some random veteran djinn around Elona with Weaver and any other build and you will also see a great difference.

I'm not against focusing more on the pve side and not the pvp side, as of course there are more pve players than pvp players, but this entire focus on balancing for Raids is getting really old. It's like all the developers care about is how all builds perform on the snowcrows benchmarks (with the exception of Necromancer) and I don't like this at all.

I disagree strongly with the "raid - other pve" division. The normalization of the damage potential is bad everywhere. The same issues were always present - ele is very fragile and takes much more skill and effort to beat the same encounters than other classes. It's just that you used to be able to get rewarded for that skill and effort by outperforming said other classes. Now you can't, hence it's not really worth playing ele. Not in open world, not in story instances, not in raids, not anywhere.

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@Feanor.2358 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one.

And here is the thing, how many of the Elementalist changes, especially the more recent ones, were aimed at general pve? None. All they did is nerf the damage of Elementalist so they aren't on top of the Raid benchmarks anymore, meanwhile Elementalist (including Tempest and Weaver) is inferior in general pve, story instances, open world and anything else compared to almost any other specialization. Try playing the latest story on Weaver and anything else and you'll see a gigantic difference. Try fighting some random veteran djinn around Elona with Weaver and any other build and you will also see a great difference.

I'm not against focusing more on the pve side and not the pvp side, as of course there are more pve players than pvp players, but this entire focus on balancing for Raids is getting really old. It's like all the developers care about is how all builds perform on the snowcrows benchmarks (with the exception of Necromancer) and I don't like this at all.

I disagree strongly with the "raid - other pve" division. The normalization of the damage potential is bad everywhere. The same issues were always present - ele is very fragile and takes much more skill and effort to beat the same encounters than other classes. It's just that you used to be able to get rewarded for that skill and effort by outperforming said other classes. Now you can't, hence it's not really worth playing ele. Not in open world, not in story instances, not in raids, not anywhere.

The only part of the game were Elementalist was doing more damage than others was in Raids and when you had some babysitters to keep you alive. In story instances for example, you can't possibly follow your dps rotation in order to provide that kind of dps, meanwhile most other specializations can follow their dps rotations just fine when solo and maintain the same amount of dps they do in Raids. The damage difference in actual story content between Elementalist and others is insane, I'd even go as far to say that Elementalsit is close to the bottom of the list, even below Necromancer. The same is true in any other situation where the Elementalist has to... survive, for example it's the same problem in PVP. And instead of making that part of Elementalist better, by increasing the dps Elementalsits deal to match the other specializations, they instead decreased their dps because they were over-performing in Raids. With such complex rotations that are impossible to pull off when you also need to survive!

To make this even worse, they didn't nerf the skills used by the complex rotations either but instead the easier to use skills.Let's see a Staff Weaver rotation: https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/elementalist/weaver/staff/Conjure Fiery Greatsword and Conjure Lightning Hammer are never used outside the Raid rotation, because they are clunky and slow (and boring). They could've nerfed those skills hard to reduce the dps Weavers do. They could remove those Conjures from the game for all I care. But what did they do? They nerfed Meteor Shower and Lava Font instead. There were ways to reduce the dps of Weavers without gutting their important skills, but they chose the easy way out which not only nerfs Weaver dps in Raids, but also everywhere else in the game.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one.

And here is the thing, how many of the Elementalist changes, especially the more recent ones, were aimed at general pve? None. All they did is nerf the damage of Elementalist so they aren't on top of the Raid benchmarks anymore, meanwhile Elementalist (including Tempest and Weaver) is inferior in general pve, story instances, open world and anything else compared to almost any other specialization. Try playing the latest story on Weaver and anything else and you'll see a gigantic difference. Try fighting some random veteran djinn around Elona with Weaver and any other build and you will also see a great difference.

I'm not against focusing more on the pve side and not the pvp side, as of course there are more pve players than pvp players, but this entire focus on balancing for Raids is getting really old. It's like all the developers care about is how all builds perform on the snowcrows benchmarks (with the exception of Necromancer) and I don't like this at all.

I disagree strongly with the "raid - other pve" division. The normalization of the damage potential is bad everywhere. The same issues were always present - ele is very fragile and takes much more skill and effort to beat the same encounters than other classes. It's just that you used to be able to get rewarded for that skill and effort by outperforming said other classes. Now you can't, hence it's not really worth playing ele. Not in open world, not in story instances, not in raids, not anywhere.

The only part of the game were Elementalist was doing more damage than others was in Raids and when you had some babysitters to keep you alive. In story instances for example, you can't possibly follow your dps rotation in order to provide that kind of dps, meanwhile most other specializations can follow their dps rotations just fine when solo and maintain the same amount of dps they do in Raids. The damage difference in actual story content between Elementalist and others is insane, I'd even go as far to say that Elementalsit is close to the bottom of the list, even below Necromancer. The same is true in any other situation where the Elementalist has to... survive, for example it's the same problem in PVP. And instead of making that part of Elementalist better, by
increasing
the dps Elementalsits deal to match the other specializations, they instead
decreased
their dps because they were over-performing in Raids. With such complex rotations that are impossible to pull off when you also need to survive!

To make this even worse, they didn't nerf the skills used by the complex rotations either but instead the easier to use skills.Let's see a Staff Weaver rotation:
Conjure Fiery Greatsword and Conjure Lightning Hammer are never used outside the Raid rotation, because they are clunky and slow (and boring). They could've nerfed those skills hard to reduce the dps Weavers do. They could remove those Conjures from the game for all I care. But what did they do? They nerfed Meteor Shower and Lava Font instead. There were ways to reduce the dps of Weavers without gutting their important skills, but they chose the easy way out which not only nerfs Weaver dps in Raids, but also everywhere else in the game.

Well, no. In fractals Weaver was also the uncontested damage king. In general, in any instanced content where you could go with a standard raid subsquad ele would reward your skill with higher damage output. Worse solo performance was the extra price you had to pay for this. Which was fine. The problem is, all the drawbacks remain, all the price is there, but you get nothing in return. Damage, burst, cleave, range, it is all available in other builds that perform way better solo, are way easier to play and way more reliable. Solo performance is even more trash, but now group performance is also trash.

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@Feanor.2358 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Precisely: there are many more pve players than pvp ones. That's why the pve perspective is actually the more important one.

And here is the thing, how many of the Elementalist changes, especially the more recent ones, were aimed at general pve? None. All they did is nerf the damage of Elementalist so they aren't on top of the Raid benchmarks anymore, meanwhile Elementalist (including Tempest and Weaver) is inferior in general pve, story instances, open world and anything else compared to almost any other specialization. Try playing the latest story on Weaver and anything else and you'll see a gigantic difference. Try fighting some random veteran djinn around Elona with Weaver and any other build and you will also see a great difference.

I'm not against focusing more on the pve side and not the pvp side, as of course there are more pve players than pvp players, but this entire focus on balancing for Raids is getting really old. It's like all the developers care about is how all builds perform on the snowcrows benchmarks (with the exception of Necromancer) and I don't like this at all.

I disagree strongly with the "raid - other pve" division. The normalization of the damage potential is bad everywhere. The same issues were always present - ele is very fragile and takes much more skill and effort to beat the same encounters than other classes. It's just that you used to be able to get rewarded for that skill and effort by outperforming said other classes. Now you can't, hence it's not really worth playing ele. Not in open world, not in story instances, not in raids, not anywhere.

The only part of the game were Elementalist was doing more damage than others was in Raids and when you had some babysitters to keep you alive. In story instances for example, you can't possibly follow your dps rotation in order to provide that kind of dps, meanwhile most other specializations can follow their dps rotations just fine when solo and maintain the same amount of dps they do in Raids. The damage difference in actual story content between Elementalist and others is insane, I'd even go as far to say that Elementalsit is close to the bottom of the list, even below Necromancer. The same is true in any other situation where the Elementalist has to... survive, for example it's the same problem in PVP. And instead of making that part of Elementalist better, by
increasing
the dps Elementalsits deal to match the other specializations, they instead
decreased
their dps because they were over-performing in Raids. With such complex rotations that are impossible to pull off when you also need to survive!

To make this even worse, they didn't nerf the skills used by the complex rotations either but instead the easier to use skills.Let's see a Staff Weaver rotation:
Conjure Fiery Greatsword and Conjure Lightning Hammer are never used outside the Raid rotation, because they are clunky and slow (and boring). They could've nerfed those skills hard to reduce the dps Weavers do. They could remove those Conjures from the game for all I care. But what did they do? They nerfed Meteor Shower and Lava Font instead. There were ways to reduce the dps of Weavers without gutting their important skills, but they chose the easy way out which not only nerfs Weaver dps in Raids, but also everywhere else in the game.

Well, no. In fractals Weaver was also the uncontested damage king. In general, in any instanced content where you could go with a standard raid subsquad ele would reward your skill with higher damage output. Worse solo performance was the extra price you had to pay for this. Which was fine. The problem is, all the drawbacks remain, all the price is there, but you get nothing in return. Damage, burst, cleave, range, it is all available in other builds that perform way better solo, are way easier to play and way more reliable. Solo performance is even more trash, but now group performance is also trash.

Yes, I said " when you had some babysitters to keep you alive". It's not like core Ele with Staff was over-performing, or that Tempest with Staff was over-performing. It was specifically Weaver with a Staff that was the "problem" (in quotes of course), in that case, you either nerf Weaver itself, or you nerf the skills in the rotation that give a damage boost, but aren't used by other builds, so as not to upset the rest of the game.

Would removing conjures from the game (or nerfing their skills) reduce Weaver dps so it's no longer the undisputed king of damage? Since they are completely worthless in any other part of the game, the "damage" to any other playstyle would be essentially zero. This would result in both reducing the damage of Weavers in content with babysitters AND keep the rest of the game as is. Wouldn't that be preferred compared to nerfing the skills that are used everywhere and in every Staff Elementalist build (even non-Weavers) out there?

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I cant believe what Im reading in this post regarding PvP/WvW. Ppl please see this video (published the past week so skills are up-to-date) and reconsider asking for pvp buffs in heal, more health and defenses:

Ele is super op on the right hands. Notice he doesnt even need to use the normal healing skill and he can easily deal 1v2 with one of the class you are mention as op here, ranger sb.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:Yes, I said " when you had some babysitters to keep you alive". It's not like core Ele with Staff was over-performing, or that Tempest with Staff was over-performing. It was specifically Weaver with a Staff that was the "problem" (in quotes of course), in that case, you either nerf Weaver itself, or you nerf the skills in the rotation that give a damage boost, but aren't used by other builds, so as not to upset the rest of the game.

Would removing conjures from the game (or nerfing their skills) reduce Weaver dps so it's no longer the undisputed king of damage? Since they are completely worthless in any other part of the game, the "damage" to any other playstyle would be essentially zero. This would result in both reducing the damage of Weavers in content with babysitters AND keep the rest of the game as is. Wouldn't that be preferred compared to nerfing the skills that are used everywhere and in every Staff Elementalist build (even non-Weavers) out there?

Conjures are an essential part of any pve ele dps build. Both core and tempest build will utilize them, so the effect would be the same in the end. Actually a lot of the harm done was because of the introduced damage falloff on icebow and lh 4. Of course Lava font nerf didn't help, as Staff is the damage weapon of choice for all of them either. But the nerfed conjures hurt the already bad sc/wh tempest for instance.

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@Feanor.2358 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Yes, I said " when you had some babysitters to keep you alive". It's not like core Ele with Staff was over-performing, or that Tempest with Staff was over-performing. It was specifically Weaver with a Staff that was the "problem" (in quotes of course), in that case, you either nerf Weaver itself, or you nerf the skills in the rotation that give a damage boost, but aren't used by other builds, so as not to upset the rest of the game.

Would removing conjures from the game (or nerfing their skills) reduce Weaver dps so it's no longer the undisputed king of damage? Since they are completely worthless in any other part of the game, the "damage" to any other playstyle would be essentially zero. This would result in both reducing the damage of Weavers in content with babysitters AND keep the rest of the game as is. Wouldn't that be preferred compared to nerfing the skills that are used everywhere and in every Staff Elementalist build (even non-Weavers) out there?

Conjures are an essential part of any pve ele dps build. Both core and tempest build will utilize them, so the effect would be the same in the end. Actually a lot of the harm done was because of the introduced damage falloff on icebow and lh 4. Of course Lava font nerf didn't help, as Staff is the damage weapon of choice for all of them either. But the nerfed conjures hurt the already bad sc/wh tempest for instance.

And those being essential in pve ele dps builds is part of the problem, because they aren't essential (not even useful) in any other ele build (yes they do exist). It's what is holding back the Elementalist, sc/wh needs buffs of its own, Scepter has been on bad tier for years. I'm not sure any build being "saved" by conjures is a good idea.

No the effect wouldn't be the same because conjures add bloat and complexity to the rotations. Even if the result in dps numbers was the same if they nerfed conjures instead of Lava Font/ Meteor Shower, the end result would've been a much more fluid spec to play, with less complex rotations, while at the same time, the builds that do not utilize conjures wouldn't be affected. Now, they nerfed the dps, require the SAME complex rotation AND nerfed every build that uses Staff.

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@"alez.2137" said:I cant believe what Im reading in this post regarding PvP/WvW. Ppl please see this video (published the past week so skills are up-to-date) and reconsider asking for pvp buffs in heal, more health and defenses:

Ele is super op on the right hands. Notice he doesnt even need to use the normal healing skill and he can easily deal 1v2 with one of the class you are mention as op here, ranger sb.

Everyone that got killed was bronze and below. Obviously noobs.Ele is strong VS the right enemy, which has a difficult time pressing more than 1 key.A fact in the video - thank you for posting it.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:Yes, I said " when you had some babysitters to keep you alive". It's not like core Ele with Staff was over-performing, or that Tempest with Staff was over-performing. It was specifically Weaver with a Staff that was the "problem" (in quotes of course), in that case, you either nerf Weaver itself, or you nerf the skills in the rotation that give a damage boost, but aren't used by other builds, so as not to upset the rest of the game.

Would removing conjures from the game (or nerfing their skills) reduce Weaver dps so it's no longer the undisputed king of damage? Since they are completely worthless in any other part of the game, the "damage" to any other playstyle would be essentially zero. This would result in both reducing the damage of Weavers in content with babysitters AND keep the rest of the game as is. Wouldn't that be preferred compared to nerfing the skills that are used everywhere and in every Staff Elementalist build (even non-Weavers) out there?

Conjures are an essential part of any pve ele dps build. Both core and tempest build will utilize them, so the effect would be the same in the end. Actually a lot of the harm done was because of the introduced damage falloff on icebow and lh 4. Of course Lava font nerf didn't help, as Staff is the damage weapon of choice for all of them either. But the nerfed conjures hurt the already bad sc/wh tempest for instance.

And those being essential in pve ele dps builds is part of the problem, because they aren't essential (not even useful) in any other ele build (yes they do exist). It's what is holding back the Elementalist, sc/wh needs buffs of its own, Scepter has been on bad tier for years. I'm not sure any build being "saved" by conjures is a good idea.

No the effect wouldn't be the same because conjures add bloat and complexity to the rotations. Even if the result in dps numbers was the same if they nerfed conjures instead of Lava Font/ Meteor Shower, the end result would've been a much more fluid spec to play, with less complex rotations, while at the same time, the builds that do not utilize conjures wouldn't be affected. Now, they nerfed the dps, require the SAME complex rotation AND nerfed every build that uses Staff.

Adding complexity isn't a bad thing. It's why I prefer to play ele over anything else. If I want to play a braindead dps, I have plenty to pick from. It is good to have intricate, complex builds that reward you accordingly for playing them. It's just the reward part that got screwed up. Complexity is fine. It's a feature.

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