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Concerns about Elementalist


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@Usagi.4835 said:

  • Adjust soothing mist to 10 players instead of just 5 (at least in PvE/traited)I was thinking about this actually; perhaps add an increased target cap of 10, rather than 5, to Soothing Power. Or make it baseline. I think also
    Healing Rain
    could stand to have its target cap increased to 10.

Yeah thought about healing rain also, and I thing it would be great there too, but soothing mist is more important to me as it may affect all weapons and not only staff.The good thing is, these traits are in no meta setup, so raising it to 10 would most likely not break anything. Worst that could happen is making them more viable, but most likely not op, especially not when done in PvE only. Even though it would maybe even more welcomed in WvW... :)It would help to get rid of those 5/4/1 group setups, and I think that would streamline the experience without taking away anything cool really.

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To cellofrog: he spend 12000 hours on his elemtalist. You exspect everyone to do this just to get to a decent level? He killed Turai Ossa with all gamblits, in on of his answers he wrote:

@"Lasiurus.4067" said:But anyway it was really enjoyable, even with no AP/Title, for the challenge, & how I was so kitten happy when I finally did it after a full night of try hard, at 8 am.

Nearly all the fight is "scripted", each skill is calculated to be in the right order, after hundred of try & death, I know that if I go in this direction with FGS, boss will follow me with this attack, then this one, etc. Its like SAB tribulation mode, you learn from your death/error to learn the good path.For example at 0:58 I dont use Earth #4 to DPS (its instant cast) because I knew I would need it 20s later to reflect his projectile before breakbar. All is calculated, but for this I had to die a lot & a lot.

But I took me like 3h of full try hard to even reach the first phase with break bar. With boss still at 100%First hours were very discouraging haha.

You see the dedication. It took him 15 hours. imagine what he learned in all the other time as an ele. Ele should be difficult to play, but you should be able to win a 1vs1 against an average mesmer before you trained 1000 hours.

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@alez.2137 said:

@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.

That is Cello. I would love to see a vid from you, alez.2137, playing as an Ele in WvW or PvP and able to do only 5% of Celle did. In PvE, I would love to see a vid from you doing Raids, Fractals with the dps meter on.

Please amaze me and many others. After seeing your vid. I will never say a word about Ele again. its a promise.

Ps: Vid should be in this current patch, not in the future patches where Ele got balanced.

I never played weaver, so I cannot do what this guys does. But, unless he is using cheats (he isnt) you all experiences Eles can play like him. I dont want to talk about other classes that really need improvements because this will distort what Im saying, but Imho, you Eles atm have a very strong PVE dps (top 3 class), and a very strong WvW roamer, and ofc very strong sPvP duelist.

Translation: I don't play it, never have, and have no clue what I'm talking about, but the grass is always greener on the other side. Lol. Moving on...

Can someone elaborate why Cellofrag, and other high tier eles, shouldnt be taken into account in the balance equation. I mean, if you buff cello character, instead of being superb he is gona be godmode.

Does this guy have 10 fingers in each hand? Has he super-human reaction times? Its an AI? Does he plays with different skills or lower cooldowns than you?

You asking me to do 5% of what he does. Probably if you just play as good as half of that he does, u wont even be asking for ele buffs. Of course, the day I hear Cello, or another top tier, saying his class need a buff (like I've been hearing from other classes top players in the last months), I'll just fold and not gonna discuss if you need a buff or not.

First, sindrener is pretty much godmode. Vaanss is pretty much godmode. Cellofrag is pretty much godmode. They are all able to take on many enemies at once alone .So? Should we nerf all the classes according to them? Should we nerf thief so hard that even Sindrener will only be able to take on an average mesmer? No, ofc. not. They do take the maximum skill level into consideration, but they don't balance around it. And to be honest, Sindrener as a roamer is pretty much unkillable, because the potential of thieves goes close to infinity. Game is made for the crowd, not for the top tiers only. Balance has been in that direction for a long time, with each xpac having builds that are easier to play than before.

Now for your comments:"Does he have 10 finger?"No, but u sure think this is all about who spam skills the fastest right? I can spam it just as fast, but I will still die 100x faster than him.

"Does he have super-human reaction times?"No, but this game isn't just about reaction time. Are you sure you are playing this game?

"It's an AI?"Makes no sense. Cello is better than all AI's together if they were to exist.

" Does he plays with different skills or lower cooldowns than you? "No.

Also, playing half as good as cello means you still kill nothing and will die all the time. Just saying. Even experieced eles can only perform around 10-60% of cello's level. Not a fact, but from my experience. I've only ever met one ele besides cello that is "good" and plays sword weaver, but even that guy couldn't kill my spellbreaker, despite me having almost no experience as a spellbreaker. But when you fight cello, you know he is different from the others, by far.

In general, you like to use optimistic terms such as "experienced" and try to equate that with a top tier player. Or, expecting that these "experienced" eles all can become high end E-Sports players. No wonder no one can take you seriously. If you want people to take you seriously, make a weaver, play it, roam around and kill 1vsX like these "Pros" . You will quickly notice how much trouble it is to even kill a single mesmer, not to mention a group of players. And make sure to record it, so we can all see how OP weaver is, and how fast someone can master this class.

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@VanWilder.6923 said:

@"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.

That is Cello. I would love to see a vid from you, alez.2137, playing as an Ele in WvW or PvP and able to do only 5% of Celle did. In PvE, I would love to see a vid from you doing Raids, Fractals with the dps meter on.

Please amaze me and many others. After seeing your vid. I will never say a word about Ele again. its a promise.

Ps: Vid should be in this current patch, not in the future patches where Ele got balanced.

I can cherry pick the good bits too

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I've been running cellofrag's build in WvW myself for the better part of the summer in NA. It is extremely effective in 1vXing unskillful players. If you battle another serious PvPer, you will not be face rolling as he does. The pressure of the build is also lacking, all it takes is for a player to kite you about for it all to wear off. And good luck fighting anyone who can cleanse conditions fast, because your raw damage output just can't make up for that extra condi damage. Cellofrag's build is really, really good and he has contributed alot to the meta of Elementalist. But remember that even in those highlight vids, he is cherry picking his best encounters to make an entertaining highlight reel. His videos prove Weaver (not core ele or tempest) can be played effectively using a sustain heavy build that uses condis to help with keeping the damage constant. Or, in other words, a hybrid build.

I think my issue isn't that Weaver can succeed in running a hybrid build, its more that Elementalist has little pay off for running anything other than Hybrid, then more often than not fails at even running hybrid due to the classes weaknesses. At least thats my take on it.

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I don't think you could say Hybrid sword weaver exactly 'succeeds' either in WvW. I find it comical that people would consider such builds 'effective' when:1) WvW roaming doesn't actually contribute much to anything unless you can kill stragglers and claim objectives fast enough.2) Other classes have the kill potential to settle things much quicker and don't need to rely on stat-investment into surviving. i.e. actually prey on separated zergling necros who are trying to regroup much more efficiently.3) Winning 1vX just doesn't happen if they simply revive each other. This is especially true on ele who doesn't have enough raw pressure to force people off rezzing (see 2).4) Any decent mesmer/warrior/ranger/thief/engi would know when to disengage when they are losing. You aren't going to be defeating any of the meta roaming builds with their mobility especially when your damage pretty much drops to zero when they simply move away out of melee range. So you're pretty much only going to be killing inexperienced players since the veteran WvWer understands 1) 2) and 3) with roaming actually being helpful only if you kill the scattered guys fast enough before they pile up.

What we CAN be grateful for though is the remaining glass staff potential in zergs but even that grows ever more questionable with more reliable means of damage with other professions powercreeping while Ele keeps either gets nerfed or remains stagnant. Even with Lava Font being buffed back abit it's kill securing potential isn't like it once was but hey it's better for tagging downed players now!

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Because the other thread about tempest/support might not get any traction, I'll just dump this here:

@Usagi.4835 said:Floating an idea because I only just realised how much raw healing output and burst healing Ventari revs are capable of in the right situation, thanks to their plethora of outgoing healing modifiers (with all modifiers, a Transference sigil and Monk runes rather than Water, if I calculated correctly, 130% outgoing healing effectiveness; without Invoking Harmony, which is conditional upon swapping legends, around 110-120%). I've not got a rev but am now tempted to test it out. The whole Salvation line for Revenant synergises so well. They benefit a lot from investing fairly heavily into Minstrel's and their scaling from Bountiful Maintenance Oils is a lot better, going off numbers alone.

In another thread, somebody mentioned increasing the target cap of Soothing Mist from 5 to 10. I suggested adding it onto Soothing Power i.e. the trait increases target cap of Soothing Mist to 10, and also perhaps increase the target cap of Healing Rain to 10, though that might be asking for too much?

Auras aside for now, since they're looking to give each spec a loose 'identity', I was thinking that if Ventari revs excel at burst healing, perhaps support tempests can occupy a niche in providing the best sustained AOE heals for large groups?

As it stands, Invigorating Torrents is virtually identical to Soothing Disruption. I suspect it'd be straddling the line of powercreep in adding too much to one trait but do you think it'd be possible to instead move Powerful Aura to major master in Tempest and then condense Invigorating Torrents into Elemental Bastion, perhaps removing the AOE Frost Aura at the same time? Or if Powerful Aura were to become the GM trait, consider combining it with Invigorating Torrents since auras and, to a degree, tempest are skewed towards group-play? So, for instance, in the Tempest line:

  • Powerful Aura, Major MasterAny aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies.

  • Elemental Bastion, Major GrandmasterHeal allies you grant an aura to. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

OR

  • Elemental Bastion, Major MasterHeal allies you grant an aura to. Grant Frost Aura to nearby allies when struck below the health threshold.

  • Powerful Aura, Major GrandmasterAny aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

It'd open up a slot for a different GM in Water. I think some traits could be condensed. I don't like Latent Stamina as there's already too much vigor in the Tempest line so it's redundant, and I'm not sure many people take or even consider it since it's so mediocre compared to the other two.

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@Usagi.4835 said:Because the other thread about tempest/support might not get any traction, I'll just dump this here:

@Usagi.4835 said:Floating an idea because I only just realised how much raw healing output and burst healing Ventari revs are capable of in the right situation, thanks to their plethora of outgoing healing modifiers (with all modifiers, a Transference sigil and Monk runes rather than Water, if I calculated correctly, 130% outgoing healing effectiveness; without Invoking Harmony, which is conditional upon swapping legends, around 110-120%). I've not got a rev but am now tempted to test it out. The whole Salvation line for Revenant synergises so well. They benefit a lot from investing fairly heavily into Minstrel's and their scaling from Bountiful Maintenance Oils is a lot better, going off numbers alone.

In another thread, somebody mentioned increasing the target cap of
Soothing Mist
from 5 to 10. I suggested adding it onto Soothing Power i.e. the trait increases target cap of
Soothing Mist
to 10, and also perhaps increase the target cap of
Healing Rain
to 10, though that might be asking for too much?

Auras aside for now, since they're looking to give each spec a loose 'identity', I was thinking that if Ventari revs excel at burst healing, perhaps support tempests can occupy a niche in providing the best sustained AOE heals for large groups?

As it stands, Invigorating Torrents is virtually identical to Soothing Disruption. I suspect it'd be straddling the line of powercreep in adding too much to one trait but do you think it'd be possible to instead move Powerful Aura to major master in Tempest and then condense Invigorating Torrents into Elemental Bastion, perhaps removing the AOE
Frost Aura
at the same time? Or if Powerful Aura were to become the GM trait, consider combining it with Invigorating Torrents since auras and, to a degree, tempest are skewed towards group-play? So, for instance, in the Tempest line:
  • Powerful Aura
    , Major MasterAny aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies.
  • Elemental Bastion
    , Major GrandmasterHeal allies you grant an aura to. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

OR
  • Elemental Bastion
    , Major MasterHeal allies you grant an aura to. Grant
    Frost Aura
    to nearby allies when struck below the health threshold.
  • Powerful Aura
    , Major GrandmasterAny aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

It'd open up a slot for a different GM in Water. I think some traits could be condensed. I don't like Latent Stamina as there's already too much vigor in the Tempest line so it's redundant, and I'm not sure many people take or even consider it since it's so mediocre compared to the other two.

Before tempest, there was basically 0 healing or any support coming out of auras (not like core ele has many auras to begin with), so I really dont understand why powerful aura even existed before HoT.

Imo water should have regen/heal/cleanse on aura application (and maybe vulnerability on aura detonation with improved duration on frost aura) while powerful aura becomes minor trait of tempest. Everything that tempest does is through auras so I really dont see why powerful aura should be major trait on any spec.

Considering that fire is offensive spec, but it received defensive aura trait, maybe water can get full offensive one - apply vulnerability on top of chill on being hit and freeze enemies on detonation. Keep the heal on auras on tempest. There's so many possibilities...

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Elementalist should have never been forced into melee range. Anyone who wants to argue that point, take a step back from gameplay mechanics and just look at the issue from a thematic perspective. Here you have a frail person (low HP), in armor made of cloth, running headlong into a melee brawl with some mountain of flesh in plate armor, to willingly trade blows with them. All of this, while lacking the evades/agility of even a medium armor/health thief.

That doesn't make any sense. No rational actor would do that. "Because magic" isn't really an answer, either. It's not as if the Elementalist has a unique relationship with arcane energy in the GW2 gameworld, every single class uses supernatural abilities, so it's a level playing field in that regard.

The Elementalist has always been a thematic mess in this game, and the only fix is re-focusing the entire class, not just one elite spec, around ranged combat. D/D should have been, at most, a niche playstyle. Weaver as an elite spec is fine, but not if it's at the expense of the base class and other elites.

It's fine to discuss gameplay mechanic issues, but IMO the issues with Elementalist are deeper than that. Anet needs to figure out what they want this class to be.

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@Gaile Gray.6029 said:Those of you who care about the ele and its balance, please join this thread and continue to add your thoughtful and constructive comments. Thank you.

Dear Gaile Gray,

sPVP:

Thanks you for adding an option to rid-of from water. Implementation is not good yet, but It's a good direction at least.Unfortunately still not possible to survive vs Mesmer or Necro 1v1 without water trait.It's not enough conditions removal from auras because detonation skills are too situational and unreachable and have too big CD.Mesmer and Necro can put conditions 4 times faster than we can remove. Even with [Cleansing Fire] and [burning Fire]

But we asked to add sustain to Ele, last patch did nothing with this...NOTHING (even worse: another nerf of reptide...)So still any Warrior or Engineer or Mesmer can win us EASILY 1v1 ... This is unfair and not fun.

Please consider to add at least stun-break to signets and stances and 3 stacks of stability to [bolstered Elements],and for sure add self detonate and stun-break to auras...

Best Regards,Your Ele

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Something i find odd is that a lot of "support" classes are getting 10 targets caps on there support effects but the old aura support from ele still only effects 5 ppl even with the icd of reactivation is in play so you cant be chilled by other ppl even if they all have frost aura. So the only thing the aura support is missing out on is being able to effect 10 ppl with support and not being able to offensively effect more targets.

What with the 5 target cap on ele support effects its even odd as the old ideal of balancing behind ele is that its self support was aoe so it was weaker and now other classes have 10 targets support but the support effects are often stronger.

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Personally, I think the profession needs a deep redesign, not just numbers here and there. The whole profession needs to be analyzed from the bottom to the top, including weapon, slot, and mechanic skills. At the current state, you're just applying bandaids to something that is broken at the early design phase.

I think the major problem is that there's way too many skills per weapon. Yeah, that's what makes ele fun, but that's what's killing balance as well, and to be fair, I'm tired of the same thing for 6 years, with no positive changes in the horizon, only nerfs and nerfs that don't address the main issue: We need to work twice as hard for the same results, or worse.

My take on a deep redesign:

  • Reduce attunements from 4 to 2. Merge fire+earth (condition damage and defense), and water+air (direct damage and healing). This reduces the total amount of individual weapon skills from 20 to 10, and removes a lot of useless and redundant skills.
  • Add weapon swap. Now we can switch between melee and ranged weapons in the middle of combat, and the total amount of weapon skills becomes 10+10=20, going back to the original numbers, but with two weapon sets instead, with their own distinct roles.
  • Remove conjure weapons altogether. Enable shortbow and greatsword for core elementalist.
  • Attunements give the profession personality, but they aren't an "impactful game mechanic" per se. I'd suggest revamping the combo system, and giving elementalist their own piece, letting them merge combo fields for unique effects. For example, fire+water=steam (burning+healing), water+earth=mud (slow+protection), mud+fire=clay (immobilize). The new gameplay is about swapping the two attunements constantly to perform combos with the specific order and timing.

More about these ideas here.

Slot skills need a review too. With conjures removed, minions could be made their own slot skill family, taking them away from glyphs. Add the missing healing skill and elite skills, and make them more impactful for the profession, because right now, most slot skills feel really useless and situational, whereas other professions use them all the time, almost as much as their weapon skills.

Elementalists are far from the only profession with design problems, but they're right at the top next to revenant.

@"Sunshine.5014" said:We should swap Mesmer and Ele health pool.

This. Look at the base health numbers, how's that right in any way whatsoever?

  • Move engineer from mid to top.
  • Move guardian and elementalist from bottom to mid.
  • Move mesmer and revenant from mid to bottom.
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This is clearly never going to happen but:

This thread has been at the top of the forum 2 weeks, had 10K views, 300 replies and in that time even outside the Ele forum we saw this poll and this poll - both giving Ele twice as many votes for being the most underpowered class as all the other classes combined.

Can we get some kind of response from a Systems team Dev acknowledging the thread has at least been read by the team, with a brief summary of what they have taken away from the thread as the core issues and how to approach them.

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One thing that I was wondering was how badly designed Staff is. Let's take a look at what each attunement is "supposed" to do:Fire: raw damage and burning, area of effect/lingering fieldsAir: critical chance and critical damage, single/cleave targetEarth: bleeding, single/close target

Let's see what the main hand weapons do now:FireScepter: raw damage and burningDagger: raw damage and burningSword: raw damage and burningStaff: no burning, the most widely used skills, Fireball and Lava Font do not have any burning. Meteor Shower doesn't have burning either. Weird outlier here.

AirScepter: single target damageDagger: cleave/close range damageSword: cleave/close range damageStaff: does it even do damage? Is there anyone that swaps to Air on Staff to deal damage?

EarthScepter: lots of bleeding, single/close targetDagger: lots of bleeding, single/close targetSword: lots of bleeding, single/close targetStaff: where is the good bleeding? Eruption is slow and Shock Wave has a long cooldown

Other than Water skills (damage, vulnerability, healing) all the Elementalist weapons are consistent with the exception of the Staff which follows completely different rules. No wonder why the Staff meta has been to camp fire for the last 6 years, because the other attunements on Staff are only situational useful for some crowd control or healing.

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Dunno for the years before HoT, but ever since Tempest was around meta was never to camp fire, though to be fair it always used something else to cover the dps downtime of switching into Air. Weaver changed that a bit with its shorter attunement cooldown and the availability of two damage skills in F/A.

That being said, a revised air and earth weapon skills would be nice. Particularly Air should offer more offensive power.

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Feel like conjuration line should just be gotten rid of and isntead we swap our current conjurations over to kit. 30 seconds isnt really much time, especially since other weapons of other classes do conjurations job much better, no point in the share if the abilities have all been nerfed. No point in the 30 second limit either.

Seriously just make them kits and theyd be so much better then they are now.

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