Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Concerns about Elementalist


System

Recommended Posts

The problem with elementalist is it has no relevant boons or sustainable DPS in staff (anymore) scepter is okay, and Tempest Warhorn is still sad and needs a complete rework. To compete against a firebrand, a boon mesmer or anything than can give more than 5 boons and share them ele would have to be given better support.Elementalist Elites aren't anything to be excited about. The weaver elite is alright, better than Tornado by a long shot. Better than The aura mancer elite by alot more but it's a tossup between FGS and the weaver elite. I say this because the weaver elite is only decent with the slight buffs you get based on your attunements you swap to. FGS is a great escape with terrible DPS. All elementalist conjure weapons are terrible for the record.

Ele needs relevant boons. Quickness from Air, Alacrity from traiting Arcane, Resistance from Earth and better stability. In ALL gamemodes.

Another thing about ele is where is it supposed to stand against support classes? Where is it supposed to stand against DPS classes? Where is it supposed to stand in WvW? PvP? PvE? Raids?I want an honest answer to find out why it's a jack of all trades and mediocre at best. Sure, the sword dps is pretty nice but only in.....RAIDS! (And PvE when you are babysat.)Ele is superb atm for clearing some siege in WvW. That's it. 25 stacks of might and I can down a pug in low gear with Meteor Sprinkle.

PvP, I can 1v1 most other classes and win but it's a struggle to get the boons I want and on the right attunements because I can't even enjoy myself since I'm trying not to die. You have to play Weaver to even be effective for your team if you are at all.

Tempest support can seem invulnerable if you aren't DPS spec. A simple stun will easily take them down because they do not, I repeat, do not have the sustain a firebrand has or the support a chronomancer has. Tempest is like the WoW Shaman, it has beautiful animations and the AoE's seem like a bonus but it's so lacking. The warhorn is good if you are fighting an enemy that is standing still. It has no escape, it has no invul, it has no real utility other than to give boons that still are lacking.

Staff in all gamemodes. - In PvP: if you are bringing this weapon into PvP at the current state, you are a troll and purposely throwing the game (even if you did not know that the dps on this weapon is lacking) You would think staff should bring the hurt, and it should. Ice Spike should be instant cast, not a 3 second cast then a slow drop.Meteor Shower should be instant cast and last longer, hit more than 5 targets and cause burning. (if you decide to never touch the dps on it again)If the dmg is increased, then leave it at 5 per target but still should be quicker cast and length of MS should stay the same.Lava Font- the damage should stack quicker and it needs a damage buff. The only use for it atm is to tag something because that's about all it can do.Earth is fine,Air - Lightning Surge, takes too long to cast. Speed it up. It should also qualify for a lightning strike on lightning rod. (I cant remember if it does or doesnt)

Ele needs relevant boons, quicker animation cast times, allowed build diversity, warhorn needs a rework, and staff needs quicker cast times and a slight dmg buff to ice spike, meteor sprinkle., churning earth and Lightning Surge.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 986
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

@Dante.1763 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:

  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ehm, no. In GW1 the attunements were kinda like this:

  • Fire: Superior flat fire damage in varying sized areas, most skills applied Burning (massive health degeneration, not intensity stacking). Aside from Energy Management skills and the knockdowns on meteors, it had little to no utility.
  • Air: Very good damage on single targets, further enhanced by Armor Penetration, which ignored 25% of the victim's armor rating. Roughly translates to Critical chance and Ferocity in GW2, which is what we are moving towards as of last balance patch. Air had some utility in the form of blinding, weakness, a few knockdowns, and Cracked Armor condition that translates to 20 stacks of Vulnerability in GW2.
  • Earth: Reasonably good earth damage with varying sized areas. It was the defensive element with Wards (area effects that provide +armor against specific sources) and +Armor skills. Massive area control knockdowns, blinds, a few armor ignoring skills (Magnetic wave, Obsidian Flame), basic condition removal. Only bleed application I can recall is Stone Daggers. Some movement-impairing area skills.
  • Water: Weakest damage but most offensive long-lasting utility. Varying degrees of movement reduction on foes (from 50% up to 90%!!). Blurred Vision (a weaker version of Blind if you will), spell-casting denial in an area with Maelstrom. Specific armor skills working around the Burning condition. Water was hydromancy and cryomancy instead of aquamancy: It had no heals in GW1. (Oddly the best Ward spell was in Water instead of Earth though)

The biggest difference between Ele in GW1 and GW2 is that you could put together a build in GW1 that couldn't touch an element other than what you specialized for even if you wanted. If you are a pyromancer and build up accordingly, you were completely locked out from the other 3 elements. And the system rewarded specializing heavily in two or maximum three attribute lines (basically the elements for the GW1 ele + energy storage, and Energy Storage was a must for the stronger spells).

On the other hand GW1 had some spells that tried to bridge through the elements in ways we don't see in GW2 (where it would shine, ironically). Like Steam, a water spell putting blind on burning foes, or Stoning knocking down weakened foes (weakness primarily coming from Air), or Chilling Winds (air skill) that increased duration of water hexes. Traits that try to bridge through elements would be great in GW2. Just a few ideas with not a massive amount of consideration in them yet:Steam - Water trait line - Water weapon skills hitting burning foes apply Blind, (internal cooldown needed)Obsidian Flame - Earth trait line - Earth weapon skills infict 1 second burning on target or around caster.Hypothermic reaction - Fire and/or Water trait lines - Applying burning on chilled foes and applying chill on burning foes inflict damage.Icy Shackles - Water trait line - Applying immobilization inflicts chill.Conductivity - Air trait line - Air weapon skills hitting chilled foes hit nearby additional enemies with lightning strike (internal cooldown needed)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What should be done is due to ele haveing less hp / def as a base class it should have higher power maybe the highest base power in the game. Right now hp / def are the only things that very from class to class a pure def so having the lowest means your starting with the only disavages with out have any benefit. Dmg effects on skill and dmg +% will be normalized in time to mach up but for some reason hp / def is not moving at all.

So its normalized hp / def or give the lower def classes higher power then classes with high hp / def (or take away power from the high hp / def classes).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:
  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. , BUT i could stand it if we actually gained something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would have much preffered an elemental focus on the core class that could allow me to use skills and abilities specific to one or two elements. Having all 4 elements being part of the core design locks us into having all the damage, control, and defensive abilities on every build and essentially in order to balance that they have to water everything down because by default ele brings too much to the table without any choice in the matter. This takes away the ability to build a fire only nuke build because no matter what you're bring the utility and heals from earth and water, so the damage fire skills can do needs to be weakened. This ultimately makes it so you must run some type of jack of all trades build (avatar amulet for damage and healing) in order to be at your maximum potential.

They should have made being able to weild all four elements an espec as opposed to the core class.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dante.1763 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:
  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. ,
BUT
i could stand it if we actually
gained
something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be.

That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:
  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. ,
BUT
i could stand it if we actually
gained
something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be.

That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

More rewarding?! have you tried at 14k 15k hp ele build in wvw yet? The level of risk you must put your self into to land viable dmg on part with scorge and rev is out right silly when you realized both scorge and the rev are far more tankly and more able to self support there dmg. Mostly dying to retal alone in wvw fights.

When a rev can hit you for 6k but you can only hit them for 3k back (1 skills) there is something very wrong.

Ele needs counter dmg mitigation badly hitting harder vs lower hp targets is not working at any level for counter dmg mitigation nor is vulnerability working and burning is not dealing with healing. Ele needs real counter def tools unblockables counter boons counter healing and real dmg buffs vs high armor classes (not higher dmg but blunt conter to high armor).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jski.6180 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:
  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. ,
BUT
i could stand it if we actually
gained
something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be.

That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

More rewarding?! have you tried at 14k 15k hp ele build in wvw yet? The level of risk you must put your self into to land viable dmg on part with scorge and rev is out right silly when you realized both scorge and the rev are far more tankly and more able to self support there dmg. Mostly dying to retal alone in wvw fights.

When a rev can hit you for 6k but you can only hit them for 3k back (1 skills) there is something very wrong.

Ele needs counter dmg mitigation badly hitting harder vs lower hp targets is not working at any level for counter dmg mitigation nor is vulnerability working and burning is not dealing with healing. Ele needs real counter def tools unblockables counter boons counter healing and real dmg buffs vs high armor classes (not higher dmg but blunt conter to high armor).

Listen to this guy. He's talking sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ele core not viable vs the instant burst or condi of POF. Weaver spams small packets of damage with telegraphic attack. You will have a hard time standing toe to toe with Mirage hybrid, holo hybrid with condi, deadeye hybrid range spammer and reaper. Since chill will really mess you up and if you sacrifice barrier trait line. Either way you die. If ele is not seen in any of the top 3 tiers META, Great and Very Good. You class is not viable to play in wvw or spvp. You clear can only rely on player skill vs enemy skill. Weaver is a flat recovery bot but that can only go so long. Fancy looking low damage telegraphic moves are super effective. If I have to hit some one 9-16 times in 3-4 seconds to equal 2-3 hits from a Path of fire meta profession attack I lose. Over a time I will lose. And I main weaver so that means I have to do rotations maybe 1.5-2.5 hours per night in wvw that's a lot of rotations to yield low results. Don't even get me started on the results. Could we have more damage on our number 2 skills please or have our base sword range increased.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jski.6180 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:
  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. ,
BUT
i could stand it if we actually
gained
something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be.

That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

More rewarding?! have you tried at 14k 15k hp ele build in wvw yet? The level of risk you must put your self into to land viable dmg on part with scorge and rev is out right silly when you realized both scorge and the rev are far more tankly and more able to self support there dmg. Mostly dying to retal alone in wvw fights.

When a rev can hit you for 6k but you can only hit them for 3k back (1 skills) there is something very wrong.

Ele needs counter dmg mitigation badly hitting harder vs lower hp targets is not working at any level for counter dmg mitigation nor is vulnerability working and burning is not dealing with healing. Ele needs real counter def tools unblockables counter boons counter healing and real dmg buffs vs high armor classes (not higher dmg but blunt conter to high armor).

So basically what I just said - there need to be advantages to balance out the disadvantages of taking an ele. It is commonly referred as risk/reward balance, hence the use of "rewarding".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jski.6180 said:

More rewarding?! have you tried at 14k 15k hp ele build in wvw yet? The level of risk you must put your self into to land viable dmg on part with scorge and rev is out right silly when you realized both scorge and the rev are far more tankly and more able to self support there dmg. Mostly dying to retal alone in wvw fights.

When a rev can hit you for 6k but you can only hit them for 3k back (1 skills) there is something very wrong.

Ele needs counter dmg mitigation badly hitting harder vs lower hp targets is not working at any level for counter dmg mitigation nor is vulnerability working and burning is not dealing with healing. Ele needs real counter def tools unblockables counter boons counter healing and real dmg buffs vs high armor classes (not higher dmg but blunt conter to high armor).

not only that but revs and necros are able to move while casting all their skills and hitting more targets with their cancer. Why are necros given all the tools to do damage and still have good sustain with barriers and eles are given nothing for self sustain?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

WvW staff elementalist used to be high risk/high reward, and I was fine with that, but now the reward for putting ourselves in massive danger amounts to nothing. We get low damage from nerfed skills which shouldn't have been touched and next to nothing to compensate for that. Sure, the ferocity buffs were nice, but an added 10% on Lava Font ain't gotta cut it, mate. Not after shaving off 40% before. Let's not talk about Meteor Shower either.

It's coming to that time where we should just give up on the class altogether, but those of us who have put countless hours into it, myself included, will play it regardless, because we can't let go of what was once a great class that has turned to (insert your choice of word here which isn't kitten) because of stupid changes done to benefit the carebears in PvE.

cue sad music

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Dante.1763 said:Ele was my favorite class in GW1 because of how it was done, here its saddly the opposite. I want to love ele, but the lack of knowledgeable developer attention i cannot.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me?

Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements.

The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted.

Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.

Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here?

See what I mean:
  • We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.
  • Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.
  • Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).
  • Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.
  • Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.
  • Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.

It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. ,
BUT
i could stand it if we actually
gained
something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be.

That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

More rewarding?! have you tried at 14k 15k hp ele build in wvw yet? The level of risk you must put your self into to land viable dmg on part with scorge and rev is out right silly when you realized both scorge and the rev are far more tankly and more able to self support there dmg. Mostly dying to retal alone in wvw fights.

When a rev can hit you for 6k but you can only hit them for 3k back (1 skills) there is something very wrong.

Ele needs counter dmg mitigation badly hitting harder vs lower hp targets is not working at any level for counter dmg mitigation nor is vulnerability working and burning is not dealing with healing. Ele needs real counter def tools unblockables counter boons counter healing and real dmg buffs vs high armor classes (not higher dmg but blunt conter to high armor).

So basically what I just said - there need to be advantages to balance out the disadvantages of taking an ele. It is commonly referred as risk/reward balance, hence the use of "rewarding".

Ya i went too hard and started to rant sorry.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to mention ele favourite weapon: Staff. Why follow the strict rule, that each skill has to be 1200 range? How about giving it a more variability. For example, who ever uses earth skill 1 ? Make it a melee cleave skill. Or the whole attunened elements can differ in usage: some can be long range (like fire and air), some mid range (water) and close range (earth). This example is just an idea, it can be any other way. But the point is, to give ele some options in adapting to actual situation. This goes for all game types. Almost no one playing ele in pvp is using staff. Getting into close range fight in WvW while wielding staff is a death sentece. Conjured weapons are not helping either. Making conjured weapons swappable, the same way like engineer has, might help a bit. But it would require some rework as well. Who ever used Conjured Flame Axe or Conjured Earth Shield? Totaly useless. I hope the conjured weapons doesn't count as a actual "weapons" that ele has access to and thus prevent ele from getting them in future expansions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that ele risk vs reward needs to be looked at but ele does have a really high sustain potential unfortunately that potential is locked behind barriers that if you cross those your damage is going to take a huge hit just taking water over fire or air is a very large damage reduction. What could they do to make this better without making ele op? I could give lots of suggestions about what would be really nice for ele and help in many areas like conjures lower lighting flash cd and such but what else?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Legendofzelda.1278 said:I agree that ele risk vs reward needs to be looked at but ele does have a really high sustain potential unfortunately that potential is locked behind barriers that if you cross those your damage is going to take a huge hit just taking water over fire or air is a very large damage reduction. What could they do to make this better without making ele op? I could give lots of suggestions about what would be really nice for ele and help in many areas like conjures lower lighting flash cd and such but what else?

Most ppl ideal is to simply give ele more dmg or harder to deal with dmg (i am more for harder to deal with dmg then more max dmg my self) nothing to do with giving them better staying power.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Senji.2048" said:I would like to mention ele favourite weapon: Staff. Why follow the strict rule, that each skill has to be 1200 range? How about giving it a more variability. For example, who ever uses earth skill 1 ? Make it a melee cleave skill. Or the whole attunened elements can differ in usage: some can be long range (like fire and air), some mid range (water) and close range (earth). This example is just an idea, it can be any other way. But the point is, to give ele some options in adapting to actual situation. This goes for all game types. Almost no one playing ele in pvp is using staff. Getting into close range fight in WvW while wielding staff is a death sentece. Conjured weapons are not helping either. Making conjured weapons swappable, the same way like engineer has, might help a bit. But it would require some rework as well. Who ever used Conjured Flame Axe or Conjured Earth Shield? Totaly useless. I hope the conjured weapons doesn't count as a actual "weapons" that ele has access to and thus prevent ele from getting them in future expansions.

This really feels like a bit of a non-issue to me and, in my opinion, these sorts of suggestions over-complicate the class and would limit staff as a weapon. The weaponset you're looking for was mainhand dagger/x which has been resurrected as holosmith. As you mentioned, staff is already fairly well spread-out in a mixture of AOE damage, crowd control and utility. It used to be workable because you had a lot more damage to pressure people with but besides occasionally roaming with it, even I'd admit it's not meant to be used for melee. Besides, what's the difference between casting it at your feet (within 300 range) and actually lowering the range to <600 range? I agree with you about perhaps reworking earth auto into a cleave skill but this can be done without lowering the range à la revenant hammer auto.

@Legendofzelda.1278 said:I agree that ele risk vs reward needs to be looked at but ele does have a really high sustain potential unfortunately that potential is locked behind barriers that if you cross those your damage is going to take a huge hit just taking water over fire or air is a very large damage reduction. What could they do to make this better without making ele op? I could give lots of suggestions about what would be really nice for ele and help in many areas like conjures lower lighting flash cd and such but what else?I don't mind that there's a compromise; in fact, I think it should be extended across all classes. I'd rather have more damage than be mediocre at everything because you can be fairly certain that, while the devs are fine with where holosmith is at the moment, they're unlikely to buff d/d ele to those sorts of levels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

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

Create an account

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

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...